Y
ou live. To live is costly. Who will pay for it? Your soul cries out "I." But how will you get the money? "Oh! I'll get it!"—that is the confident cry of youth. The confidence oozes out as life lengthens—and yet there are certain lines of action which, if followed, in this bright land of liberty, are sure to result in the accumulation of something for our old age.
THE MYSTERIOUS JUNIUS
one of the great exemplars in the matter of keeping a secret wrote to his publisher: "Let all your views in life, therefore, be directed to a solid, however moderate independence. Without it no man can be happy, nor even honest." This celebrated sentence was written by a man who was refusing a proffer of money for his writings (then in print) and it should not be read as inspiring one to avarice. The vice of avarice is more honest than envy, but is not the less unpleasant and reprehensible. Let us suppose you are fortunate enough to have some grit and spunk about you. At the earliest point practicable you get something to do. Perhaps at a Fourth of July celebration your Sunday school teacher trusts you in a booth to deal out lemonade and handle money. It is a good beginning. Perhaps you are
ESTABLISHED BEHIND A COUNTER
in a general store and intrusted with the great secret of a cost-mark, fully as important a secret, let me assure you, as you can buy in the most secret of places! What spot in your character will "wear down" the quickest? When you were little it was your toes. They were copper-plated. Now the wear falls where copper will not protect you. Nothing but experience will now serve as the copper did then. The first place that "rubs" will be
YOUR TONGUE.
When you have conquered the natural inclination to be what is familiarly known as a "smarty," there is still a greater wisdom to acquire. Avoid hearing, where it is not absolutely necessary, anything that you will have to keep secret. The less secrets you have the less discretion will be necessary to protect them. After you have heard a thing from your employer, keep it to yourself. The youth who talks about his employer's business must have other marvelous faculties to succeed in life. He is a Blind Tom. He plays the piano, but the wonder is how he does it. It must be that it would hurt your feelings if you heard another merchant say of your employer that he keeps a pretty good boy, except that
HE "BLABS A GOOD DEAL."
If you can shut up your mouth now, you can keep it shut when you get to be Secretary of the Treasury and a whole syndicate of bankers are trying to pump out of you whether you mean to pay off $100,000,000 of 5 per cent bonds the next week, or merely reduce the interest 1-1/2 per cent. If they could tell, they could make a million dollars, and unless you have been all your life a discreet man, be assured theywilltell. If your employer's rivals in business find out through you where your people get a certain line of goods, how much is paid for it, or
THE TIME ON WHICH IT IS BOUGHT,
be assured you will never succeed either as a man in business for yourself, or as a worker under the direction of others. Your employer may be embarrassed and the fatal knowledge may have come into your unlucky ears. You will hear it whispered all around you. Why? Because no one knows "for sure." Everybody wants to see if you know anything about it. Can you not see how much luckier you would have been had you really known nothing of the state of things? A word, a look, from you, may turn from your employer just the helping hand that would have carried him across a tight place. How many battles have been won by the arrival, just in time, of a reinforcement! Make it a point that, if you are inclined
TO "BLOW YOUR AFFAIRS,"
you were not cut out for "business." You had better become a lecturer, a farmer, or something else, and occupy a field where industry alone will save all your interests. Remember the miserable barber of King Midas in mythology. The King had been cursed by the offended god Apollo with asses' ears. To hide his deformity he had his barber dress the hair over the ears, and the barber was then sworn with an awful oath of secrecy. But the "tonsorial artist" (as they call him in the city!) was one of those people who could not stand the pressure. He went out in the field and dug a little hole, and
INTO THIS HOLE HE BREATHED THE SECRET
that His Majesty had been smitten by Apollo. What was the astonishment of the world at hearing the reeds that grew hard by whispering among themselves, whenever the wind blew them confidentially together, "King Midas hath asses' ears!"
Be in mortal fear of the first error in this regard. When a boy has made a record for bad, it seems to hang to him. The fact that he has told something which he ought to have kept to himself is quoted against him until it becomes a positive habit to speak about it every time his name is mentioned.
"Jimmie, where's your outside man? I heard he was in town. His cousin asked me to inquire."
"Oh! no! he's not in town. He went out on the road last night. He will be in Eagertown to-morrow, Brightside Wednesday, and Upearly Saturday."
That is exactly what was wanted out of you, and you must excuse your questioner if he hurries on, so as not to be seen pumping you any longer than is necessary.
Now this style of gaining information is low and contemptible, but of two boys who talked, one of whom said a good deal that did not amount to much, learning a good deal that did, and the other letting out a great deal and learning nothing, there can be little doubt of the business success of the first as compared to that of the second.
Put a copper-toe on your tongue. Remember that Gen. Grant made a great part of his fame by letting other folks do his talking.
courtesy
When my friends are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile.—Joubert.
T
here is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation. If you are always courteous without difficulty, you are endowed with a nature naturally moral. You are naturally a gentleman. Anyhow, you are behind the counter, and you desire to sell goods. You wish to have customers brighten up when they see you. Very well, brighten up yourself. You ought to be glad to see them. If they are not glad, they, perhaps, have less reason for joy. They are about to part with their money in order to get something they cannot part with so easily. You went to work in the morning hoping a good many people would come in. Now here they are. You can smile on the young lady, but can you smile on the old woman? You can if you are a man. It is nothing but good-breeding to do it. What is this boasted word "good-breeding?" It is "the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them." Chesterfield, a man who was as prominent in England as Daniel Webster in America, expressed his astonishment that anybody who had good sense and good nature could essentially fail in good-breeding.
STUDY YOUR CUSTOMER.
If he or she be brusque, be yourself pliable, respectful, and by all means quick. Do not stand in front of him or her with your head down ready to hook or to butt. You are glad the customer has come in. That should solve the whole problem. In the city you are required to "put up with" the bad mannered fashion that people have of treating a clerk as if he were a piece of furniture, but in the town this is all changed. A majority of the citizens know you, and all regard you with better breeding than would the city customer. You are young and positive, because you know very little about life. Curb yourself. Let the customer make all the statements he has to make. He will run out of them presently. In case he want any of yours, he will then ask for them, and literally be at your mercy. As to
YOUR HANDS,
have them very clean. It will be a positive advantage to you to wear no rings. In case the people like jewelry, it distracts their attention from the great idea (a sale); in case they do not like gew-gaws, it will put you in opposition. Make your great effort in the direction you think the customer's mind is taking. Sell him what he thinks he wants first. So much, sure. Then, if he changes his mind, it will be to your profit, generally. When the customer speaks to you, it gives you your programme. If he be cheery, imitate him. He is your friend and is giving you an example. If he look hard at you,
LOOK RESPECTFULLY
at him. Serve him with alacrity, say nothing not necessary, and the joy in your heart will thaw him out before long. Express to your customers your desire that they should come again,—never by words, because that is too difficult, except in a barber-shop, where it is a custom—but by opening the door for them at their departure, even if you have to keep another customer waiting, and by thanking them on receipt of the money, or upon delivery of the goods if it be on account. There are very few people who will remain cold toward you after they find out you are really glad to see them. The general store of the rural town makes
THE FINEST-MANNERED MEN IN THE COUNTRY,
respectful, dignified, alert, and unruffled. I saw a clerk at the postal money-order office in St Paul. The Swedes and Poles go there often to send away money. That young man had such a charming way of showing an old Swedish woman just how to make out an order before she had learned to write, and he had such an awe-stricken way of receiving the instructions of other money-senders who knew all about it, that I felt he was a credit to America, and I mention the reminiscence only with diminished pleasure from the fact that I have forgotten the young man's name. Courteous treatment of a customer is necessary under every conceivable circumstance. It may be a busybody has come in to worry you, who never bought a cent's worth of you or anybody else whom you know; nevertheless her tongue is an advertisement. If you can gain her good will, even comparatively, as weighed by her estimate of other clerks, it is better than a column advertisement in the local papers. When Zachariah Fox, a great merchant of Liverpool, was asked by what means he contrived to amass so large a fortune as he possessed, his reply was: "Friend, by one article alone, and in which thou mayest deal too, if thou pleasest,—it is civility." "Hail! ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in."
"We must be as courteous," says
RALPH WALDO EMERSON,
"to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light." There is more natural courtesy in the country than in the city, just as there are more privileges where three clerks are at work than where there are a hundred. And then, again, civility seems to be lacking in the city as well naturally as out of necessity. Milton has put this forcibly by saying "courtesy oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, with smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls and courts of princes, where it first was named." The small courtesies sweeten life. The great ones ennoble it. The extent to which a man can make himself agreeable, as seen in the lives of Swift, Thomas Moore, Chesterfield, Coleridge, Sydney Smith, Aaron Burr, Edgar Poe, and those odd creatures called
"BEAUX," SUCH AS BRUMMEL, NASH, ETC.,
goes to show the immense importance of the art, and its influence in determining the success of any man in business. Good-breeding shows itself the most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. Says Chesterfield: "How often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, and even rejected; while flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired." You have seen beautiful swords of auroral flame dart into the zenith; you have seen marvelous flights of meteors, which were gone ere your admiration had given rise to a cry of pleasure. So it is with manners. They irradiate our presence, giving to our associates
MOMENTARY VIEWS
of those qualities which are universally loved and respected—gentleness, unselfishness, gladness and peace. Your clothes, while under twenty-five years of age, should be very neat. Your shirt should be clean. This does not imply that you are to break extra backs to keep fresh shirts ready for you, but that you are to make extra efforts to keep the one you have on unsoiled for a decent length of time. If your clothes are dark, get in the habit of wearing a black silk or satin neck-tie and wear it some one way all your life. It helps people to "place" you. Generally a sack coat makes a very tall man look shorter, and a frock-coat looks all the better for a change. The clothes should be loose, so that they will
OCCUPY AS LITTLE OF THE MIND AS POSSIBLE.
The young man who purposely keeps his mind on his fine clothes is lost. He is a coxcomb. He has no greater influence with the young ladies for all his fine feathers. Let me leave you selling a large bill, remembering that civility costs nothing and buys everything, and feeling that the very perfection of good manners is not to think of yourself.
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economy
Behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand.—I Kings, XVIII, 44.
F
ranklin says that, if you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. Cicero, many hundreds of years before Ben Franklin said: "Economy is of itself a great revenue," and another Roman writer put it still better when he said: "There is no gain so certain as that which arises from sparing what you have." "Beware of small expenses," again writes Franklin; "a small leak will sink a great ship." In our large cities there are thousands of servant girls earning from two and a half to three dollars a week. The men who employ them often get from twenty-five to one hundred dollars per week, yet it is a notorious fact that the prudent servant girl usually has more money at her command, clear of all debts, than her employer, whose expenses scrape very closely against his income. Now you are on a salary in a store. Perhaps that salary is yours, to spend as you see fit. If so, remember that, like the highest officer in the land, you have certain duties. If you were President you could not appoint your old schoolmate Secretary of State unless he had made as much progress in politics as yourself. So, too,
IN YOUR MONEY MATTERS,
you cannot make yourself so valuable to your employer that he will not, before he advances you, inquire into your personal expenses, and find out what you do with your money. If you have spent it, year after year, as fast as you could get it, he will have great misgivings about letting you into a position where your desire to distribute currency can possibly lead you to practice on his funds. Among the easy ways to spend money in a small town is the habit of hiring livery-rigs. The business is just as useful as a drug-store, but no poor boy should hire equipages for mere pleasure. To attend a funeral, or to take a sick mother or sister out in the sunshine, is commendable. The youth who does that rarely needs the other suggestion, however, for those who spend the most money at a livery stable are usually seen with their mothers and sisters the least. No young man who thinks well of himself will enter a saloon at all. Often the worst classes in the whole country frequent
RURAL SALOONS,
men who dare not walk through the streets of any of the large cities. Perhaps at the card-table in the groggery across the street is a man who has come to your town to break into your employer's store! Anyway, there is no "business" in the world which returns so little for the money accepted as the saloon. Take
A GALLON OF WHISKY,
for instance. It is worth a dollar to a dollar and a half. It has been taxed ninety cents by the Government, leaving it worth that much less. Well, now, a man is expected to go into a saloon, and, for about three tablespoonsful of this stuff, he pays ten cents in the town and fifteen cents in the city. Your news dealer pays eight cents for an illustrated paper, and twenty-eight cents for a popular magazine. He sells the one for ten cents and the other for thirty-five cents, taking all the risk of not getting a sale. If you could afford to travel with such people as are found in saloons, in the first place, and to put such truly abominable stuff in your mouth in the second place, you could not, even then, in the third place, afford to give fifteen cents for what is in fact worth less than a mill. You are in reality giving away your money to the Government and the saloon keeper.
LET VANDERBILT SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT,
and those who have made their fortunes and their bad habits the saloon-keeper. I have dwelt on this, because these are few young men who are not tempted. All the above applies to tobacco. It is an utterly obnoxious habit to use tobacco. It is the cause, together with the dough falsely called pastry, of all the dyspepsia in our climate. It ruins the eyes, it costs money in vast quantities, returning almost nothing in goods, and has but one redeeming feature that I know of—it is
JUST AS BAD ON MOTHS AS IT IS ON MEN,
and it makes a musty room smell a little better. If you can keep out of saloons and shooting galleries, you will not play billiards or cards—both very expensive—you will not use tobacco, and you will be less apt to go to dances and hire livery teams. Should you preserve yourself against these vices of our young men, you will have money without denying yourself clothes as handsome as a poor young man looks well in. Three short years' savings will put you in possession of a sum of money sufficient to set you to thinking about business for yourself, either with your employer or alone, for
LIFE IN AMERICA IS SHORT.
A man is a failure almost before he thinks he ought to have been considered as started. If you have been receiving small remuneration, be assured that a capital all the smaller is needed in your town. The market value of labor is the largest element in the problem of business. If you worked cheap, then others will, and if they will, it is because living is cheap. The high-priced man in the city has to be paid highly because of his expenses, not because he has taken a vow to save a large amount of money. "He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he that has a great deal left to him does to his father's care," says William Penn. "He is a good wagoner who can turn in a little room," says Bishop Hall. How many a man, in getting a costly home, has found that old Franklin was right when he said it was easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. Therefore, when you get anything,
BEWARE IT ENTAILS LITTLE EXPENSE OF KEEPING.
A horse will eat you poor; a gun will cost you a hundred guns. Think of it when you buy them, and you will thereafter have no regrets, besides being less apt to make such purchases. "Gain may be temporary and uncertain," says Franklin, "but expense is constant and certain." "Not to be covetous is money; not to be a purchaser is income," says Cicero. "A fool and his money are soon parted," says the adage. "Live by hope, and you will die by despair," says the Italian proverb. Save all you can honorably. Harness it up and make it pull also by bringing in to you a little interest. Here will be your first real business move—one of grave importance. The little cloud that ariseth out of the sea, like a man's hand, will soon cover your financial sky, and bring an abundant shower of the good things of this life.
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courage
I dare do all that may become a man;Who dares do more is none.—Shakspeare.
C
ourage is adversity's lamp. Perhaps the young man's courage is more sorely tried than that of the man of middle age, for age dreads the whip of events, while youth champs their bit. Youth cannot endure the thought of a long siege. The ladders must be put against the walls, the breach must be clambered through, and if the citadel be strong, the rash onset will be repulsed with heavy loss. But Hope dotes on youth. The young are her flock, her fold, her children. Into the hands of her children she puts the scimitar of courage, and bids them go forth again. Let us suppose you have been cast down your ladder, and have little but your courage. It may be necessary to leave your pleasant little town and seek employment where men are used as machines—in the great cities. Such a fate is, indeed, a sad reverse. The safety of home, the magazines of moral ammunition stored all about you, the bomb-proofs against the shells of soul-destruction aimed at every soldier in life, will all be torn from you, and you will be as a Knight of the Cross, alone on the desert. Perhaps
YOU HAVE REACHED THE GREAT CITY.
Now buckle on your armor. You do not need an intrepid courage, now; intrepid courage may have brought you here; intrepid courage is but a holiday kind of a virtue, to be seldom exercised, as experience will teach you. You need firmness to resist all kinds of attacks. You need good-nature, and yet you must repel temptation with a look as black as Erebus. You need affability, yet you must speak almost by rote, and the opportunities to keep from speaking outnumber the exigencies in which you must speak by ten to one. You must be tender, and yet you must be cruel as a surgeon. Without these opposites well balanced in your character, you will not fight the battle successfully.
NAPOLEON
won his battles by hurling ten thousand men upon two thousand. Simple, was it not? Now you are one young soldier. You will have to find a place in the enemy's lines which is even weaker than you before you can throw yourself against it with success. You, therefore, cannot be too circumspect. If the General pushes two thousand men against one thousand, on ground that is otherwise even, he is a wise leader, but if he finds four thousand enemies there, and if his principal attack is hazarded in the action, he is always accounted a daring fool. Let me recall
THE ATTACK OF A YOUNG MAN
who broke through the enemy's lines, in the City of Chicago. He got eight dollars a week in a city on the Mississippi River, and was led to believe that, if he went to Chicago, he could get ten dollars. He was employed as a clerk in a Commercial Agency, a business which aims to ascertain the standing and degree of success or lack of fortune of the retail dealers of the region it covers. He felt that eight dollars a week were all that he could ever get where he was. Upon his arrival in the City of Chicago he was put at work for seven dollars, the representations made to him having proven unreliable. There were about fifty young men and women in the same room. Seated at his desk when eight o'clock came, he found that his chances to rise were seemingly restricted to the hours of noon and six o'clock. In this way he worked for six months. He was fortunate enough to obtain board at five dollars a week, leaving him, after his washing, perhaps a dollar and a quarter clear. To a man of twenty-five years who could see the real difficulties of his future, the need of a high quality of moral courage was urgent. And he had it. He got acquainted with a humble friend, considerably better off, who therefore, could talk to him very bravely of the dignity of labor, and the honor of paying one's way, even if it took only five dollars and seventy-five cents to do it. This young friend did thus encourage and inspire the young clerk, and he was able to set about improving his mind.
HE READ THE BIBLE THROUGH
during this six months, and thus acquired a style of simple expression which would be of value to him in his reports when he should travel. He read Plutarch's Lives. He studied French, and read "The Man Who Laughs" and "Paul and Virginia," two remarkably different works. You see he was a man of persistence. But such a mind finds the humiliation of a dollar and a quarter a week all the more bitter. A man conversing with Plutarch about the relative merits of Pompey and Lucullus, or of Marius and Sylla, dislikes to be
DOCKED THREE HOURS
for being ten minutes late, and dislikes to return to his landlady at the end of the week and give her five-sevenths of the whole spoil of Bythnia and the Propontis! One day the second assistant manager spoke to him, and this ray of hope lit his way to a seat on a high stool to write out "tickets" for merchants who send in to see about Blow & Co., of Bugleville. This gave him eight dollars a week, and enabled him to go to a theatre once in a while and hear
SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.
One night he approached his friend and announced that the die was cast, and that he should become an actor. Nothing could be worse than he was doing. Absolutely no business paid less than eight dollars per week, unless it were his own itself which had paid him seven dollars. It was a summer month. A theatre was empty. A dramatic agent had agreed to get up a company and run the place a week. It would require only twenty-five dollars from the young man. He would then be a sharer in the profits, would be given a minor part in the cast of characters, and would thereafter be secured
AN ENGAGEMENT WITH JOHN M'CULLOUGH
or John Raymond at about fifteen dollars a week. The dramatic agent was to have ten dollars from the first week's salary of the regular engagement. As he was working at absolutely bottom figures (board usually costing at least six dollars a week) and as he was skillful at his business, and could command work at all times if he were willing to work for his board, the young man thought he was not very rash in making an attempt, and yet it seemed to the friend of the young man like the memorable jump of the fish out of the frying-pan. The difficulty of going back to work after a failure was entirely overlooked. The young man paid his twenty-five dollars, absolutely the frugal hoard of six months of toil, got a leave of absence for three weeks, and studied all one week, meanwhile eating five dollars' worth of very poor board.
HE "ACTED" THROUGH THE WEEK
up to Thursday, when the company failed to pay in advance for the gas, and it was shut off. He spent the next two or three days preparing himself for a part in "The Gilded Age." On the second night the "heavy man," Raymond, became enraged at the manner in which this part was borne, and demanded that the character be given into the hands of another person. This was the finishing stroke. The young man stayed at "home" for three days, and on Friday night went to see his more fortunate associate. To his friend, who perhaps saw things in a prejudiced light, it seemed like a conspiracy to make good the dramatic agent's word of promise—to keep it to the ear and break it to the hope.
THE YOUNG MAN'S MONEY WAS GONE,
he was in debt for three weeks' board, and he had been ruthlessly and ignominiously branded with failure. He reverted to Brutus at Philippi, to Cato, and he was nearly on the verge of suicide. It may be that the cheering words of his friend brought out his true but latent courage. What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary to cheat a poor landlady!
JEREMY COLLIER
has said that "true courage is the result of reasoning. Resolution lies more in the head than in the veins, and a just sense of honor and of infamy, of duty and religion, will carry us farther than all the force of mechanism." The young man had the courage to go back. His friend was gratified. As the months passed the bitterness departed. Christmas Day the young man was sent to the Stock Yards to do a week's-reporting. That Christmas-week was one of the coldest ever seen in this climate. The young man's unweathered ears and nose were badly frost-bitten. But notwithstanding this great obstacle of a cold snap he made a success of his expedition. His reports demonstrated that the Bible and Plutarch had not been sown on stony places, and that good English could be used in reporting the standing and prospects of a retail firm as well as in a memorial to Congress. When he got back
THE MANAGER OF THE HOUSE HIMSELF
spoke to him, and the second assistant assured him that one of the "outside men" would soon be put aside to give him a chance on the road. When a young man goes on the road his board is paid, so that it is that much of an advance of salary. Six long months, however, ran along at eight dollars a week, and the unsatisfactory man on the road proved more influential than the second assistant. When our young man saw this, he went to the manager, demanded nine dollars a week, and got it after a loud protest from that broad-hearted functionary. The next week—this was in the summer—he went on the road in place of a sick man, traveled through nearly all the towns in Illinois and Iowa, and made a fine record, both as to the character of his work, his speed, and his expenses. Upon his return a rival firm, hearing of his work, made him a proposition at a thousand dollars a year and expenses, with two months' holiday each year, and he signed a contract. His first year's tramp took him through nearly all the towns of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. He returned in August, with nine hundred dollars in cash credited to his account in the bank and demanded and received fifteen hundred dollars and expenses for going over the same route the next year, and to-day he stands with his head as high among his fellows as any young man in America. Now a retrospect of the young man's short career shows that
HE HAD GENUINE COURAGE.
He never failed when he had any chance to succeed. He never will. For such a man the world is not a world of chance. It is almost a certainty. The opportunities are more frequent than the men with courage.
DURING THE HARDEST WINTER
since 1842 the young man passed through experiences on the road, brought about by deep snows and blundering Postmasters that would sicken anybody's heart, experiences that without excellent brain-work would simply have stalled anybody, but his coolness, his use of the telegraph with unerring judgment in following the movements of his superior (who was traveling in like difficulties—it was like Kepler making a path for Mars while himself riding on the earth),—extricated him, and made his journeys little more costly, all told, than those of the preceding year. In the city all depends on courage. This young man espied a few weak places in the enemy's lines. He attacked with vigor. In the charge on the theatre he met the enemy in force and was thrown back with heavy loss, but in all the other onsets the enemy had no force to withstand him. One quality which the young man had in a large measure was the fear of failure. "The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul its fear subdues, and bravely dares the danger Nature shrinks from." There is a quality much akin to moral courage, which, however, is not present very noticeably in the strongest natures, but which is
THE ANCHOR TO MANY LIVES.
I will present it in the following pages. But let me assure you that if you have the truest courage—the kind that this young man had—you will not need the quality which I will next take up. Hope rides in a palace-car, along the railroad, and over the tremendous bridges which Courage has constructed.
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Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,Adorns and cheers the way:And still, as darker grows the night,Emits a brighter ray.—Goldsmith.
H
ope is the best part of our riches. For it alone reaches further than any other—off into the world which is to come. But I am speaking to you of the practical advantages of hope. Bacon says: "Hope is leaf-joy, which may be beaten out to a great extension, like gold." It has been most beautifully said by Hillard that the shadow of human life is traced upon a golden ground of immortal hope. Shakspeare says the miserable have no other medicine. "Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker, but his drafts are seldom honored, since there is often a heavy balance against him." Now to make his account good in the First National Bank of Experience, what should Hope do? He plainly should begin the deposit of probabilities to draw against. Walter Scott says: "Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears," and I should think his drafts would be honored just so far as they were drawn with circumspection. "Folly ends" writes Cowper "where genuine hope begins." But where there is no hope there can be no endeavor, so whether it exist in superabundance or not let us cultivate it as one of the loveliest of the flowers of life, as absolutely the sweetest perfume that ever burns in the Golden Censer. Let me tell you how
HOPE ALONE SAVED THE LIFE
of one of the finest young men in the land. He was the son of a wealthy wine merchant who had failed in business near Bath-Easton, England. Like many other lads, he felt the sting of circumstances which promised to alter, and without good advice got ready to come to America. He was well trained in the wine trade, and supposed that employment would at once open to him. He brought over two guns, two revolvers, a field glass, a sword, much valuable jewelry, about twelve suits of clothes and not a very large amount of money—possibly three hundred dollars. After seeing Boston and New York, he "left for the plains," and
ARRIVED IN CHICAGO ON CHRISTMAS,
the year before the great conflagration. Here he was met by other English friends, and the New Year's calls customary in the city were made "in fine style," for he was an engaging young man. In just a casual way he inquired for work, but found his trade did not exist in the New World. He was thus in the worst business position conceivable. He had had no drill in anything that would do him any good. Upon spending the last of his money one night—I think it was for a game of billiards—he made up his mind that he would go out after work the next day. This he did. He tramped the snowy streets early in the morning. He waded in the slush at noon. He clambered over the frozen mud at night. But everywhere it was dull. The employers were keeping their men simply to have them when the busy season began. All would say:
"CALL IN NEXT MAY!"
His campaign in Chicago was methodic. He took a certain street each day. He canvassed one side in the forenoon. He returned in the afternoon, often carrying his lunch. He never lost hope. But oh! it was discouraging to those who saw it. Another young man came from St. Louis to the boarding-house and got a situation in a great dry-goods house, as entry clerk, for he was a skilled man. This was unfortunate for our friend, for the companionship of the St. Louis accession was a positive injury. He resembled the pictures of Byron and was of a viciously despondent turn of mind. He hated life and life's duties. Our friend fell into the toils. Together they bemoaned the hardness of the world, and presently,
LIKE THE COMMUNISTS IN AMERICA,
they overturned kingdoms and systems of society as they blew the foam from their beer. This folly led to a fight at the boarding-house which lowered our friend from an English gentleman to a fellow who was destitute and drunken, but it opened his eyes. St. Louis left for warmer climes, but our friend redoubled his energy, and finished the actual canvass of every decent-looking place of business and factory in Chicago! This is, as I believe, from actual evidences I had at the time, an actual fact.
A FINE-LOOKING HEALTHY YOUNG MAN
asked every probable employer in Chicago whose attention he could secure if there were any work, and the answer was "No, sir!" This took him till about the first of May. He had no influence. He had no friend who had influence, nor any chance to get one. His watch, rings, and scarf-pin gradually went to the landlady. His shot-gun, field-glass and clothes were carried to the pawnbrokers. For his musket he got a dollar, and
FOR HIS SWORD
half as much—upon a solemn promise to redeem it, as even the pawnbroker doubted the wisdom of such an investment at his own figures. That week the young man encountered a gentleman who, in England, had known him well. The disparity in their positions was great, as the gentleman was now able to give and recently had given his church ten thousand dollars, but that disparity had been greater in England, where it had been in favor of the young man. However, this did not prevent the gentleman offering the young man a job of gardening at a dollar a day, as that was a good bargain, and that did not prevent the young man eagerly accepting the offer. That week he earned his board. The next week he was adrift again, quite well used up from heavy work, but very active. His hope was the one striking point in his character.
HIS CHEERY VOICE
could always be heard. People liked to have him around, but they never seemed to pay him anything in return. Early in June he got a job sandpapering window-frames in a city cellar. This tried his mettle for it broke his hands to pieces, but he worked through the job at eight dollars a week. It ruined about twenty-five dollars' worth of clothes unavoidably. Coming out of the cellar the last day of the job, he looked into a store which was just opening. Did they want clerks? Oh, yes. "Lots" of them. How much did they pay? Five per cent. What were they to sell? "Milton gold jewelry." All right.
"MILTON GOLD JEWELRY"
was made a sensation. It was all in the name. Had they called it brass the people would have stood off. Make a chain that looks like gold, call it Milton or Shakspeare or Byron gold, and the people want it—or, at least they did, the year of the fire. The sales of our friend footed up more than those of any of thirty clerks, and netted him about a dollar and a quarter a day. But this charming industry could not last. The people had bought a chain which they supposed to be worth sixty dollars for a dollar and a half. In two weeks the chain would fade. It was a necessity of the business to keep moving. Our friend could have gone to some other city with the lover of Milton, if he had paid his own fare, but he was heartily disgusted with the business, the scheme being essentially American. He next was taken to Morris, Ill., by some kind of a gang-worker. The English system of working from farm to farm with a large force was to be tried. There he was treated a good deal worse than hogs should be used. Finding his way back to Chicago, he again began
HIS TRAMP FOR WORK.
He called on an advertiser who wanted him to travel at a figure so low that the question arose as to how he would pay his board, when the advertiser told him he supposed his applicant understood that he "would have to beat the hotels!" In September came the news of the death of his sister and mother. And still he tramped. He was now in what his casual acquaintances considered "a hard hole." His landlady was "carrying" him—that is, she was wanting his room worse than his company, but, being a kind-hearted Irish woman, she could not believe another week would pass without better success. No one with a trade—no one with the slightest influence—knows what difficulties are before a stranger in a strange land.
AS GOD WOULD HAVE IT,
on Saturday the seventh of October, 1871, he started out, again full of hope. About a mile and a half to the west of the city he entered a hotel at which he had often applied before. The proprietor had broken his leg the day before. He wanted "a likely young man," Here was one. The proprietor was himself an Englishman. Here was a youth whose rosy cheeks proclaimed the shores of Albion. On Sunday he made ready. That night and the following two days there came a calamity that horrified the civilized world—perhaps the barbarians as well. The employers who had refused him shelter and food ran like droves of wolves before a prairie-fire, and filled their famished bodies off a charity that has been likened to that of the Savior of the world, so freely was it given. His hotel was not burned. In the arduous labors of housing three where one had before been quartered he showed an ability which attracted the attention of a dealer in real estate who soon took him into his office. Here he learned a trade. His employer soon found that he had a man who could make a map worth fifty dollars as well as the map-makers, and this gave the young man practice. Hope, kindled into such a flame, led the young man in a march of improvement that even continued in his dreams, for he often dreamed out some combination of colors, some freak of lettering, that elicited everybody's admiration. All this improvement
DID NOT COME IN A WEEK OR A YEAR,
but it led to his permanent engagement in a substantial enterprise of the kind, where work, elegant and original, will always await him, and where his usefulness is ever apparent to the most unwilling investigator. From being the victim of the most cruel circumstances which a man in health ever encountered under my observation, he has become the valued companion of the leaders of thought, of art, and of music, and I feel confident that the whole of his ultimate success at one time in his career depended on the fact that he had more hope than any other man I ever saw.
HOPE IS LIKE THE CORK TO THE NET,
which keeps the soul from sinking in despair. Hope is the sun, which as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us. Dr. Johnson has well and truly said that the flights of the human mind are not from enjoyment to enjoyment, but from hope to hope. It is a strange frailty of human nature that we part more willingly with what we really possess than with our expectations of what we wish for. The man who curbs this tendency is known as a man of wisdom. What a beautiful poem is
CAMPBELL'S "PLEASURES OF HOPE!"
How the changes ring upon the beauties of "Hope, the charmer," until, at last, we see her smiling at the general conflagration, we see her lighting her torch at nature's funeral pile! And yet what an ingenious device was that of the ancient, who, knowing the powerful allurements of Hope, put on the front of the magic shield "Be bold! Be bold!" and on the other side "Be not too bold!" There is a development of hope known as audacity. A touch of audacity is generally considered necessary to get along in the world. Be careful that your audacity is never called "cheek." When you have rights to retrieve, you cannot be too audacious; when you expect something for nothing, and demand instead of appealing, you are "cheeky." It does not pay in the long run. It is the sign and seal of a greedy nature.
WHEN POOR FRANCE
trembled in the nightmare of the Revolution, and the Kings of Europe had agreed to conquer and dismember her, there arose a dark-faced man in the tribune of the French Congress. He was a man of terrible personal power and magnetism. Hope must have cradled him in his babyhood. He hurled a defiance at Europe that fairly shook France to a delirium of patriotism, and as he was drawing to a close he thundered; "What needs France to vanquish her enemies, to terrify them? Naught but audacity!—still more audacity!—always! audacity!" Fourteen republican armies sprang forth full armed, as though Danton's words had been the fabulous dragon's teeth sown ages before in the bright fields of mythology.
FRANCE WAS RIGHT,
therefore God inspired her. Be sure, when your flights are bold, that you have the right. "Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just." Hope has been defamed more than any other of the joys of life, just as the most charitable become the target of the greater portion of the malignity of fault-finding fellow-creatures. Treat Hope fairly, my young friend, and she will never desert you, neither will she poison your expectations, as did the hags who prophesied to Macbeth.
be correct
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,A hero perish or a sparrow fall,Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,And now a bubble burst, and now a world.—Pope.