The beautiful can never die.—Kingsley
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.—Keats
The love of beauty is an essential part of all healthy human nature.—Ruskin
The sense of beauty is its own excuse for being.—Dr. Hedge
If eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being.—Emerson
One of the principal objects of the large amount of "nature study" that, within recent years, has been pursued in our public schools, is to develop in the pupils the love of the beautiful. The beautiful in nature and art is that which gives pleasure to the senses. The question might be asked, "Why do some forms and colors please, and others displease?" Yankee fashion, it might be answered by the question, "Why do we like sugar and dislike wormwood?" It is also a fact that cultivated minds derive more pleasure from nature and art than uncultivated minds.
This fact is aptly illustrated by the following remark of a little girl in one of the lower grades of our public schools. Shortly after she had taken up the study of plants and minerals she came to her teacher and said, "Oh! we have a lovely time now when we go up to the reservoir to play. Before we studied about plants and stones, we used to go up there and sit down and look around; but now we find so many beautiful things to look at. We know the plants and stones; and what pleasure it does give us to find a new specimen!" This child's love of the beautiful was being intelligently developed.
Natural beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds into the numberless flowers of spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams from the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun—all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side. This beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial to our tenderest and noblest feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of persons living in the midst of it and yet remaining almost as blind to it as if they were tenants of a dungeon.
All persons should seek to become sufficiently acquainted with the beautiful in nature to secure to themselves the rich fund of happiness which it is so well able to give. There is not a worm we tread upon, nor a rare leaf that dances merrily as it falls before the autumn winds, but has superior claims upon our study and admiration. The child who plucks a rose to pieces, or crushes the fragile form of a fluttering insect, destroys a work which the highest art could not create, nor man's best skilled hand construct.
One of the first forms in which man's idea of the beautiful shaped itself was in architecture. Extremely crude at first, this love for beautiful buildings has been highly developed among civilized nations. Ruskin says, "All good architecture is the expression of national life and character, and is produced by a permanent and eager desire or taste for beauty."
A taste for pictures, merely, is not in itself a moral quality; but the taste forgoodpictures is. A beautiful painting by one of the great artists, a Grecian statue, or a rare coin, or magnificent building, is a good and perfect thing; for it gives constant delight to the beholder.
The absence of the love of nature is not an assured ground of condemnation. Its presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart, though by no means an evidence of moral practice. In proportion to the degree in which it is felt, will probably be the degree in which nobleness and beauty of character will be attained.
One of our great artists has said, that good taste is essentially a moral quality. To his mind, the first, last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, What do you like? Tell me what you like, and I will tell you what you are.
Let us examine this argument. Suppose you go out into the street and ask the first person you meet what he likes? You happen to accost a man in rags with an unsteady step, who, straightening himself up in a half uncertain way, answers, "A pipe and a quart of beer." You can take a pretty good measure of his character from that answer, can you not? But here comes a little girl, with golden hair and soft, blue eyes. "What do you like, my little girl?" "My canary, and to run among the flowers," is her answer. And you, little boy, with dirty hands and low forehead, "What do you like?" "A chance to hit the sparrows with a stone." When we have secured so much knowledge of their tastes, we really know the character of these persons so well that we do not need to ask any further questions about them.
The man who likes what you like must belong to the same class with you. You may give him a different form of work to do, but as long as he likes the things that you like, and dislikes that which you dislike, he will not be content while employed in an inferior position.
Hearing a young lady highly praised for her beauty, Gotthold asked, "What kind of beauty do you mean? Merely that of the body, or that also of the mind? I see well that you have been looking no further than the sign which Nature displays outside the house, but have never asked for the host who dwells within. Beauty is an excellent gift of God, but many a pretty girl is like the flower called 'the imperial crown,' which is admired for its showy appearance, and despised for its unpleasant odor. Were her mind as free from pride, selfishness, luxury, and levity, as her countenance is from spots and wrinkles, and could she govern her inward inclinations as she does her external carriage, she would have none to match her."
The power to appreciate beauty does not merely increase our sources of happiness,—it enlarges our moral nature too. Beauty calms our restlessness and dispels our cares. Go into the fields or the woods, spend a summer day by the sea or the mountains, and all your little perplexities and anxieties vanish. Listen to sweet music, and your foolish fears and petty jealousies pass away. The beauty of the world helps us to seek and find the beauty of goodness.
The love of the beautiful is an unfailing source of happiness. In his brief life, Regnault, the great painter, had more genuine enjoyment than a score of men of duller perceptions. He had cultivated his sense of color and proportion until nothing beautiful escaped his eye. If we are to enjoy the beauty about us, there is need of similarpreparation. What we get out of communion with the beauty of nature or art, depends largely on what we bring to that communion. We must make ourselves sensitive to beauty, or else the charms of form and color and graceful motion and sweet music will be unheeded or unappreciated. It is also true, as Lowell said:
"Thou seest no beauty save thou make it first;Man, woman, nature, each is but a glassIn which man sees the image of himself."
Alfred Tennyson, England's greatest modern poet, was a devoted lover of the beautiful from the very beginning of his career. The earliest verses he composed, which were written upon his slate when but a child of seven or eight years of age, had for their subject, "The Flowers in the Garden." As a dreamy boy, he loved to throw himself upon the grass and listen to the bird voices in the adjoining thicket, or to the lowing of the cattle as they stood knee-deep in the glittering waters of the river shallows which lay about his home.
How close an observer he became, even as a lad, is clearly shown in these lines, written as he lay under a tree, listening to the music of the birds:
"The creeping mosses and clambering weeds,And the willow branches hoar and dank,And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,And the silvery marish flowers that throngThe desolate creeks and pools among,Were flooded over with eddying song."
He became so thoroughly acquainted with the various orders of vegetation with which his native land is clothed, and which mark the progress of the growth and development of plant and flower, that there is scarcely a false note in his music from first to last. His pictures of animal life are drawn in vivid master strokes, and are as notable for their correctness as for their grace. While we cannot speak of him as an astronomer, yet no one can read his verses without admitting that he was a close observer of the starry heavens. We could not rightly give him an equal place with Shelley as a painter of cloud-scenery, yet we know how he loved to lie on his back on the Down of Farringford and watch for hours the swiftly-moving and rapidly-changing panorama of the midday heavens. It was his chiefest joy to dream away his peaceful days among the trees and brooks and flowers. He sometimes spent weeks at a time in the open air wandering for miles in meditative silence along the banks of some sparkling stream, or over the sand and shingle that form the dividing line between the land and sea.
His pictures are photographic in their fidelity, and yet, in them all, the outbursting life and movement of nature is carefully preserved. They cover the widest possible field; dealing with the cloud and sunshine, the storm wind and the zephyr, the roaring of the ocean surge and the murmuring of the running brook, the crashing of the thunder peal and the whisper of the pine-trees. The fields and the hedgerows, the flowers and the grasses, the darkness and the dawn; all are exhibited under every possible shade of variation. His studies of the beautiful are as broad and true to life as any that have ever been written. So sensitive was his soul to these outward impressions of beauty that even those acquired in childhood never entirely passed out of his mind.
[Footnote: On Tennyson, see Dixon's "Tennyson Primer" (New York, 1896);Van Dyke's "Poetry of Tennyson" (New York, 1894); Tainsh's "A Study ofTennyson" (New York, 1893), and Tennyson's Poems.]
Knowledge is the eye of the soul.—T. Watson
Common sense is knowledge of common things.—M. C. Peters
It is noble to seek truth, and it is beautiful to find it.—Sydney Smith
It has cost many a man life or fortune for not knowing what he thoughthe was sure of.—J. Staples White
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever withthe acquisition of it.—Sterne
It has been well said that "Nothing is so costly as ignorance. You sow the wrong seed, you plant the wrong field, you build with the wrong timber, you buy the wrong ticket, you take the wrong train, you settle in the wrong locality, or you take the wrong medicine—and no money can make good your mistake."
The knowledge attained by any man appears to be a poor thing to boast of, since there is no condition or situation in which he may be placed without feeling or perceiving that there is something or other which he knows little or nothing about. A man can scarcely open his eyes or turn his head without being able to convince himself of this truth. And yet, without a fair working knowledge of the ordinary affairs of life, every man is, in some respects, as helpless as a child. Indeed there is no kind of knowledge which, in the hands of the diligent and skillful, may not be turned to good account. Honey exudes from all flowers, the bitter not excepted, but the bee knows how to extract it, and, by this knowledge, succeeds in providing for all its needs.
Learning is like a river. At its first rising the river is small and easily viewed, but as it flows onward it increases in breadth and depth, being fed by a thousand smaller streams flowing into it on either side, until at length it pours its mighty torrent into the ocean. So learning, which seems so small to us at the beginning, is ever increasing in its range and scope, until even the greatest minds are unable to comprehend it as a whole.
Sir Isaac Newton felt this when, after his sublime discoveries in science had been accomplished, he said, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem only like a boy playing upon the seashore, and diverting myself by now and then finding a choice pebble, or a prettier shell than ordinary; while the great ocean of truth lies all undiscovered before me."
Strabo was entitled to be called a profound geographer eighteen hundred years ago, but a geographer who had never heard of America would now be laughed at by boys and girls of ten years of age. What would now be thought of the greatest chemist or geologist of 1776? The truth is that, in every science, mankind is constantly advancing. Every generation has its front and its rear rank; but the rear rank of the later generation stands upon the ground which was occupied by the front rank of its predecessor.
It is important that our knowledge should be as full and complete as we can make it. Partial knowledge nearly always leads us into error. A traveler, as he passed through a large and thick wood, saw a part of a huge oak which appeared misshapen, and almost seemed to spoil the scenery. "If," said he, "I was the owner of this forest, I would cut down that tree." But when he had ascended the hill, and taken a full view of the forest, this same tree appeared the most beautiful part of the landscape. "How erroneously," said he, "I have judged while I saw only a part!" The full view, the harmony and proportion of things, are all necessary to clear up our judgment.
Walter A. Wood, whose keen business ability made him a wealthy man, and sent him to congress as a representative from the great state of New York, is reported to have said, "I would give fifty thousand dollars for a college education." When he came to measure his ability with that of men who had had greater opportunities in an educational line, he realized his loss. Chauncey M. Depew is also reported as having said, "I never saw a self-made man in my life who did not firmly believe that he had been handicapped, no matter how great his success, by deficiency in education, and who was not determined to give his children the advantages of which he felt, not only in business, but in intercourse with his fellow-men, so great a need."
There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom and understanding; but without the first the rest cannot be gained, any more than you can have a harvest of wheat without seed and skill of cultivation. Understanding is the right use of facts; facts make knowledge; knowledge is the root of wisdom. Many men know a great deal, but are not wise or capable; many others know less, but are able to use what they have learned. Wisdom is the ripe fruit of knowledge; knowledge is the beginning of character.
The love of knowledge has been characteristic of most great men. They not only loved knowledge but they were willing to work hard to attain it. As examples of this: Gibbon was in his study every morning, winter and summer, at six o'clock. Milton is said to have stuck to the study of his books with the regularity of a paid bookkeeper. Raphael, the great artist, lived only to the age of thirty-seven, yet so diligent was his pursuit of knowledge, that he carried his art to such a degree of perfection that it became the model for his successors. When a man like one of these wins success, people say "he is a genius." But the real reason for success, was, as you may see, that the love of knowledge led to the effort to obtain it.
Useful knowledge is the knowledge of what is of benefit to ourselves and to others; and that is the most important which is the most useful. It is the belief of those who have spent their lives in the search for it, that knowledge is better than riches, and that its possession brings more comfort to the owner. To be acquainted with the great deeds enacted in past ages; to find out how some nations have grown powerful while others have fallen; or to learn something about the great mysteries of nature, brings with it to the diligent searcher many hours of pleasure. Also the experience of man teaches that the exercise of the mind brings great satisfaction.
Even in seemingly little things the same holds true. There is a fountain in London that is opened by a concealed spring. One day the Bishop of London wanted to drink, but no one could tell him how to open it. At last a little dirty bootblack stepped up and touched the spring and the water gushed out. He knew more than the bishop about that one thing, and so was able to render the great man a real service.
The power of intellectual knowledge, without the power of moral principle, can only tend to evil. It has been said that education would empty our jails; but the greatest criminals, whether of scientific poisoning, or of fraud and forgery, are well educated. It has been asserted lately that "there is a race between scientific detection and prevention, on the one hand, and scientific roguery on the other."
Character is the criterion of knowledge. Not what a man has, but what he is, is the question, after all. The quality of soul is more than the quantity of information. Personal, spiritual substance is the final result. Have that, and your intellectual furnishings and attainments will turn naturally to the loftiest uses. Add obedience to knowledge, and your education will be worth all that it has cost.
We may further illustrate this topic by a brief glance at the life of Alexander Von Humboldt. His brother, Wilhelm, acquired a distinguished name; but the greater renown fell to the younger, who was born at Berlin, Germany, September 14, 1769,—his full name being Friedrich Heinrich Alexander Von Humboldt. In circumstances of life, his lot was easy; his father had the means to educate him well. No very striking outward event occurred in his youth. Tutors prepared him for college; his own aim was not at once seized. "Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I showed little inclination for scientific pursuits. I was of a restless disposition, and wished to be a soldier."
But another current was flowing in his mind. "From my earliest youth I had an intense desire to travel in those distant lands which have been but rarely visited by Europeans." And again he says: "The study of maps and the perusal of books of travel exercised a secret fascination over me." These early tastes blended at last with a serious purpose, and became "the incentive to scientific labor, or to undertakings of vast import."
To show that Humboldt was not a mere fact-gatherer, we select one incident out of many in his early life. When about twenty-one years of age, he made an extended journey with George Forster over the continent. Forster wrote the following after they had visited the cathedral at Cologne. After describing the glories of the structure he adds: "My attention was arrested by a yet more engrossing object: before me stood a man of lively imagination and refined taste, riveted with admiration to the spot. Oh, it was glorious to see, in his rapt contemplation, the grandeur of the temple repeated as it were by reflection!" In this scene we behold the actual process of knowledge being changed into true learning and ideas; it was always so with Humboldt in his long and varied career.
Humboldt studied hard, held official positions, and matured. His mother died in 1796. To her this son owed much, for the father had died when Alexander was only ten years old, and she watched his education with fidelity. She saw the bent of the "little apothecary,"—as Alexander was called because of his passion for collecting and labeling shells, plants, and insects,—and guided it. Her death set Humboldt free to go afar in travels. In June, 1799, he started on a five years' absence, in which time he climbed Teneriffe and the Cordilleras, explored the Orinoco, visited the United States, and gathered a mass of knowledge which afterward won him lasting fame. Often he was in peril, often baffled, often put to dreary discomforts by savage tribes; but through all ran his unconquerable purpose.
In his scientific work he often took great risks in order to ascertain facts, as all earnest investigators do. In testing a new lamp for miners, he crept into a "crosscut" of the mine, lamp in hand, and continued there so long and persistently that two men rushed in and drew him out by the feet, the gases having overcome him.
We have not space to give details of his splendid career. Humboldt shone with greater light from year to year. Honors were lavished upon him. His works aided science, his life was a constant inspiration. He lived to be ninety years old, dying in 1859,—possessing to the last, a strong memory, and a tireless love of research.
[Footnote: On Humboldt, consult Haym's "Biography of Humboldt" (London, 1856); Bruhn's "Biography of Humboldt" (Leipsic, 1872, translated by the Misses Lassell); Klenke's "Alexander Von Humboldt" (1859); "Humboldt's Correspondence with Goethe" (London, 1876).]
The child is father of the man.—Wordsworth
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.—Chesterfield
No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.—Emerson
A man cannot live a broad life if he runs only in one groove.—J. Staples White
'Tis education forms the common mind,Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.—Pope
As the child grows into the youth the utmost care should be exercised, both by himself and by his friends, to prevent the dwarfing of his prospects by evil influences arising either from within or from without himself.
The youthful period of man's life is by far the most important. No subsequent training can entirely obliterate the results of early impressions. They may be greatly modified; the character may be changed; but some, and indeed many, of the impressions of youth will cling to the mind forever.
It is in this period that the mind forms the ideas which will govern the will throughout the whole career. Then is the twig bent to the direction in which the tree will grow. The faintest whisperings of counsel are eagerly caught, and the slightest direction instantaneously followed. Then is the seed sown which will bring forth fruit in harvest time.
Bishop Vincent, writing about boyhood, says, "If I were a boy? Ah, if I only were! The very thought of it sets my imagination afire. That 'if' is a key to dreamland. First I would want a thorough discipline, early begun and never relaxed, on the great truth of will force as the secret of character. I would want my teacher to put the weight of responsibility upon me; to make me think that I must furnish the materials and do the work of building my own character; to make me think that I am not a stick, or a stone, or a lump of putty, but a person. That what I am in the long run, is what I am to make myself."
Boys and girls should early form a taste for good reading. In the choice of books, as in the choice of friends, there is but one rule,—choose the best. A witty gentleman, having received an invitation from a wealthy but not very refined lady, on arriving was ushered into her library, where she was seated surrounded by richly-bound books. "You see, Mr. X.," she said, "I never need to be lonely, for here I sit surrounded by my best friends." Without replying, the gentleman approached a shelf and took down a volume which he perceived to be uncut, and smilingly observed, "I am happy to find, madam, that unlike the majority of people, you do not cut your friends."
Macaulay says, "I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of good books to read, than a king who did not love reading."
A boy ten years of age was seen to enter Westminster Abbey shortly before evening prayers. Going straight up the main aisle he stopped at the tomb of Charles Dickens. Then, looking to see that he was not observed, he kneeled before the tombstone, and tenderly placed upon it a bunch of violets. The little fellow hovered affectionately round the spot for a few moments and went away with a happy, contented smile upon his face. Curiosity led a gentleman present to examine the child's offering, and this is what he found written in half-formed letters on an envelope attached to the violets:—
"For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than atChristmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.—ChristmasCarol."
The young person that loves books as this little fellow did, will have friends that will unconsciously transform him into a great, noble-hearted man.
It is the thoughts of the boy that shape the future man. Garfleld, when asked as a boy, what he was going to do when he grew up, would answer, "First of all I am going to try to be a man. If I become that I shall be fit for anything." To make the most of one's youth is to qualify one's self to become a real man.
Some men, it is true, have been seemingly created by circumstances, and have figured prominently in the world's history. But, as a general rule, the child makes the man; and the foundation of all greatness and usefulness is laid by the impressions of youth. "Alexander the Great would not have been the conqueror of the world had his father not been Philip of Macedon. Hannibal would not have been the scourge of the Romans if Hamilcar had not sworn him to eternal vengeance against his enemies. Napoleon Bonaparte would not have deluged Europe with blood, if he had not been inspired by the genius of war from the pages of Homer." And in our own days, those men whose early impressions were the most favorable have been the most successful, both in their own lives, and in their influence upon the world at large.
But it will not be enough to keep children during the season of youth from the reach of improper associates and influences. The seed of right principles must be diligently sown in their minds. Lessons of purity and conscientiousness must be written deep on the tables of the heart. Parental restraint is outward and visible, but the guiding principles of life are inward and invisible. The day will come when the youth must quit the parental roof, and perhaps entirely bid adieu to the influences of home. If he be then destitute of right principles, if his mind be like a ship without a rudder, he will stand in imminent danger of being swept away by the waves of corruption.
Care should be taken to keep good company or none. No sensible person will willingly keep bad horses or bad dogs. Should he be less particular in selecting his companions? And yet, at this very point, some of life's most cruel blunders are made.
A story is told of two parrots which lived near to each other. The one was accustomed to sing songs, while the other was addicted to swearing. The owner of the latter obtained permission for it to associate with the former, in the hope that its bad habits would be corrected; but the opposite result followed, for both learned to swear alike. This aptly illustrates the usual effect of bad company, and no young man, however strong he may imagine himself to be, can afford to be careless in this matter.
In the forming of your friendships, be less anxious about social standing, and more particular about character. Remember that President Garfield used to say that he never passed a ragged boy in the street without feeling that one day he might owe him a salute, No one knows what possibilities of goodness and greatness are buttoned up under a boy's coat.
On the tomb of Schubert, the great musician, is written, "He gave much, but promised more"; and it is this immeasurable wealth of promise that makes the lives of our boys and girls so full of beauty and of power.
Genius is nothing but labor and diligence.—Hogarth.
Know something of everything and everything of something.—Lord Brougham
The difference between one boy and another lies not so much in talent asin energy.—Dr. Arnold
Work wields the weapons of power, wins the palm of success, and wearsthe crown of victory.—A. T. Pierson.
A lazy man is of no more use than a dead man, and he takes up moreroom.—O. S. Harden.
By industry we mean activity that is regular and devoted to the carrying out of some purpose. More definitely, it is activity that is designed to be useful to ourselves or to others. It is thus aregulated activityby which our welfare, or that of others, may be furthered.
We are apt to think, or at least to feel, that the necessity of working regularly is a hardship. Because we get tired with our work and look forward with eagerness to the time of rest, we form the opinion that the pleasantest life would be one which should be all rest.
Industry might well be urged as a duty. But we would rather now speak of it chiefly as an aid in accomplishing other duties. Few things are more helpful toward right living than industry, and few more conducive to wrong living than idleness.
No doubt there are on this subject opposing opinions. Some believe, whether they openly confess it or not, that the glory of the highest success is not within the reach of every honest toiler; that it is, like other legacies, the good fortune to which some are heirs, but which others are denied—the inheritance only of those whom nature has well endowed. These are the advocates of genius.
The reader of "Ivanhoe"—that finest romance of Sir Walter Scott—pronounces its author a genius. The fact is, that book is a conspicuous illustration of industry—patient, persevering toil. It has been pointed out that, "for years Scott had made himself familiar with the era of chivalry; plodded over, in imagination, the weary march of the Crusaders; studied the characteristics and contradictions of the Jewish character; searched carefully into the records of the times in which the scenes of his story were laid; and even examined diligently into the strange process whereby the Norman-French and the Anglo-Saxon elements were wrought into a common tongue."
Labor is indeed the price set upon everything which is valuable. Nothing can be accomplished without it. The greatest of men have risen to distinction by unwearied industry and patient application. They may have had inborn genius; their natures may have been quick and active; but they could not avoid the necessity of persevering labor.
Labor is the great schoolmaster of the race. It is the grand drill in life's army, without which we are confused and powerless when called into action. What a teacher industry is! It teaches patience, perseverance, forbearance, and application. It teaches method and system, by compelling us to crowd the most possible into every day and hour. Industry is a perpetual call upon the judgment and the power of quick decision; it makes ready and practical men.
Industry is essential for that usefulness by which each man may fill his place in the world. The lazy, like the wicked, may be made useful. The Spartans used to send a drunken slave through the city that the sight of his folly and degradation might disgust young men with intemperance. He was made useful; he did not make himself useful. From this it will be seen that the necessity of labor is something at which we should rather rejoice than complain, and that habits of industry are the great helpers to virtue, happiness, and usefulness.
Industry is now as important to the woman as to the man. Some years ago, in an art store in Boston, a group of girls stood together gazing intently upon a famous piece of statuary. The silence was broken by the remark, "Just to think that a woman did it." "It makes me proud," said another. The famous statue was that of Zenobia, the product of Harriet Hosmer, whose love of knowledge and devotion to art, gave the world a masterpiece.
Work is difficult in proportion as the end to be attained is high and noble. The highest price is placed upon the greatest worth. If a man would reach the highest success he must pay the price. He must be self-made, or never made.
Our greatest men have not been men of luck and broadcloth, nor of legacy and laziness, but men accustomed to hardship; not afraid of threadbare clothes and honest poverty; men who fought their way to their own loaf.
Sir Joshua Reynolds had the passion for work of the true artist. Until he laid aside his pencil from illness, at the age of sixty-six, he was constantly in his painting-room from ten till four, daily, "laboring" as he himself said, "as hard as a mechanic working for his bread."
Laziness is said to be one of the greatest dangers that besets the youth of this country. Some young men shirk everything that requires effort or labor. Few people entertain the idea that they are of no use in the world; or that they are ruining themselves by their laziness. Yet lazy persons lose the power of enjoyment. Their lives are all holiday, and they have no interval of leisure for relaxation. The lie-a-beds have never done anything in the world. Events sweep past and leave them slumbering and helpless.
Industry is one of the best antidotes to crime. As the old proverb has it, "An idle brain is the devil's workshop," for by doing nothing we learn to do ill. The man who does not work, and thinks himself above it, is to be pitied as well as condemned. Nothing can be worse than active ignorance and indulged luxury. Self-indulgence saps the foundation of morals, destroys the vigor of manhood, and breeds evils that nothing but death can blot out.
No one is very anxious about a young man while he is busy in useful work. But where does he eat his lunch at noon? Where does he go when he leaves his boarding-house at night? What does he do after supper? Where does he spend his Sundays and holidays? The way he uses his spare moments reveals his character. The great majority of youth who go to the bad are ruined after supper. Most of those who climb upward to honor and fame devote their evenings to study or work, or to the society of the wise and good. The right use of these leisure hours, we would cordially recommend to every youth. Each evening is a crisis in the career of a young man.
Rome was a mighty nation while industry led her people, but when her great conquest of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above the necessity of labor, that moment her glory began to fade; vice and corruption induced by idleness, doomed the proud city to an ignominious overthrow.
There can be no doubt that industry has been the backbone of the English character. By it her people have made their island respected all over the habitable globe. By industry our own land has come to be recognized as the workshop of the world.
It is a rule in the imperial family of Germany that every young man shall learn a trade, going through a regular apprenticeship till he is able to do good journeywork. This is required because, in the event of unforeseen changes, it is deemed necessary to a manly independence that the heir apparent, or a prince of the blood, should be conscious of ability of making his own way in the world. This is an honorable custom, worthy of universal imitation. The Jews also wisely held the maxim that every youth, whatever his position in life, should learn some trade.
Franklin says, "He that hath a trade hath an estate." Work, however looked down upon by people who cannot perform it, is an honorable thing; it may not be very profitable, but honorable it always is, and there is nothing to be ashamed of about it. The man who has reason to be ashamed is the one who does nothing, or is always on the lookout for an easy berth with good pay and no work. Let the young man whose conceit greatly exceeds his brains, be ashamed of his cane and kid gloves; but never let a man who works be ashamed of his hard hands. There is an old proverb which says, "Mere gentility sent to market, won't buy a peck of oats."
A keen but well deserved rebuke was once administered to a Southern student at Andover who had bought some wood, and who then went to Professor Stuart to learn whom he could get to saw it. "I am out of a job of that kind," said Mr. Stuart; "I will saw it myself." It is to be hoped that the young man learned the lesson which his teacher thus sought to impress upon his mind.
"What is the secret of success in business?" asked a friend of Cornelius Vanderbilt. "Secret! there is no secret about it," replied the commodore; "all you have to do is to attend to your business and go ahead."
If you would adopt Vanderbilt's method, know your business, attend to it, and keep down expenses until your fortune is safe from business perils. Note the following incidents in his career: In the year 1806, when about twelve years of age, Cornelius was sent by his father, who was removing the cargo from a vessel stranded near Sandy Hook, with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry the cargo across a sandbar to the lighters.
When the work was finished, he started, with but a few dollars in his pocket, to travel a long distance home over the Jersey sands, and at length reached South Amboy. He was anxious to get his teams ferried over to Staten Island, and as the money at his disposal was not sufficient for the purpose, he went to an innkeeper, explained the situation and said, "If you will put us across, I'll leave with you one of my horses in pawn, and if I don't send you back six dollars within forty-eight hours you may keep the horse." "I'll do it," said the innkeeper, as he looked into the bright honest eyes of the boy. The horse was soon redeemed.
In the spring of 1810, he applied to his mother for a loan of one hundred dollars with which to buy a boat, having imbibed a strong liking for the sea. Her answer was, "My son, on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be sixteen years old. If, by that time, you will plow, harrow, and plant with corn the eight acre lot, I will advance you the money." The field was rough and stony, but the work was done in time, and well done. From this small beginning Cornelius Vanderbilt laid the foundation of a colossal fortune. He would often work all night; and, as he was never absent from his post by day, he soon had the best business in New York harbor.
In 1813, when it was expected that New York would be attacked by British ships, all the boatmen, except Cornelius, put in bids to convey provisions to the military posts around New York, naming extremely low rates, as the contractor would be exempted from military duty. "Why don't you send in a bid?" asked his father. "Of what use?" replied young Vanderbilt; "they are offering to do the work at half price. It can't be done at such rates." "Well," said his father, "it can do no harm to try for it." So, to please his father, but with no hope of success, Cornelius made an offer fair to both sides, but did not go to hear the award. When his companions had all returned with long faces, he went to the commissary's office and asked if the contract had been given. "Oh, yes," was the reply; "that business is settled. Cornelius Vanderbilt is the man. What?" he asked, seeing that the youth was apparently thunderstruck, "is it you?" "My name is Cornelius Vanderbilt," said the boatman. "Well," said the commissary, "don't you know why we have given the contract to you? Why, it is because we want this business done, and we know you'll do it."
Here we see how character begets confidence, and how character rests upon industry as the house rests upon its foundation.
[Footnote: Consult Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol.VII., pp. 240, 241; Crofut's "The Vanderbilts and the Story of theirFortune" (1886); also article in Munsey's Magazine, Vol. VI., p. 34.]
Hope without an object cannot live.—Coleridge
Have an aim in life, or your energies will all be wasted.—M. C. Peters
Every one should take the helm of his own life, and steer instead ofdrifting.—C. C. Everett
Ambition is to life just what steam is to the locomotive.—J. C. Jaynes
No toil, no hardships can restrain ambitious men inur'd to pain.—Horace
Ambition is one of the great forces of human life. We may describe it as a strong, fixed desire in the heart to get honor, or to attain the best things. It is a kind of hunger or thirst for success that makes men dare danger and trial to satisfy it. A man is of little use in the world unless he have ambition to set him in motion. Small talent with great ambition often does far more than genius without it.
The severest censure that can be passed upon a man is that of the poet, "Everything by turns and nothing long." The words contain a sad revelation of wasted opportunities, wasted powers, wasted life. These words apply, with a painful degree of exactness, to the career of Lord Brougham. Few men have been more richly endowed by nature. Few men have exhibited a greater plasticity of intellect, a greater affluence of mental resources. He was a fine orator, a clear thinker, a ready writer. It is seldom that a man who sways immense audiences by the power of his eloquence attains also to a high position in the ranks of literature. Yet Brougham did this; while, as a lawyer, he gained the most splendid prize of his profession, the Lord Chancellorship of England; and as a scientific investigator, merited and received the applause of scientific men.
All this may seem to indicate success; and, to a certain extent, Brougham was successful. Nevertheless, having been everything by turns and nothing long—having given up to many pursuits the powers which should have been reserved for one or two—he was on the whole, a failure. Not only did he fail to make any permanent mark on the history or literature of his country, but he even outlived his own fame. He was almost forgotten before he died. He frittered away his genius on too many objects.
It has long been a question of debate whether circumstances make men, or men control circumstances. There are those who believe that men are governed by their environments; that their surroundings determine their lives.
The other school of philosophers boldly assert the opposite view. Men may control their surroundings. They are not the sport of the winds of circumstance. Carlyle, who is a member of this school, does not hesitate, in one of his essays, to say that "there have been great crises in the world's history when great men were needed, but they did not appear."
This much is certain, we have many instances in which people have risen above their surroundings. Warren Hastings's case is one in point. Macaulay tells the story with his accustomed brilliancy and attractiveness. When Hastings was a mere child, the ancestral estate, through some mismanagement, passed out of the hands of the family. Warren would often go—for the family remained in the neighborhood—and gaze through the bars upon what had once been his home. He registered a mental vow to regain that estate. That became the ambition of his life; the one great purpose to which he devoted all his energies. Many years passed; Hastings went to other climes; but there was ever with him the determination to get that estate; and he succeeded.
After all, would it not appear that the true theory is that of a golden mean between these two extremes? Circumstances sometimes control men or, at any rate, some kind of men; men, especially men of strong will power sometimes control their environments. Circumstances give men an opportunity to display their powers. The fuller study of this subject clearly shows the need of some principles of morality that are not dependent upon any chance companionship, and that may belong to the man himself, and not merely to his surroundings.
An ambition to get on in the world, the steady struggle to get up, to reach higher, is a constant source of education in foresight, in prudence, in economy, in industry and courage; in fact is the great developer of many of the strongest and noblest qualities of character.
The men at the summit fought their way up from the bottom. "John Jacob Astor sold apples on the streets of New York; A. T. Stewart swept out his own store; Cornelius Vanderbilt laid the foundation of his vast fortune with a hundred dollars given him by his mother; Lincoln was a rail splitter; Grant was a tanner; and Garfield was a towboy on a canal."
By hard work and unconquerable perseverance you can rise above the low places of poverty. True, you may never shine in the galaxy of the great ones of this earth, but you may fill your lives and homes with blessings, and make the world wiser and better for your having lived in it. Cash cannot take the place of character. It is far better to be a man, than merely to be a millionaire.
A man who heard Lincoln speak in Norwich, Connecticut, some time before he was nominated for the presidency, was greatly impressed by the closely-knit logic of the speech. Meeting him next day on a train, he asked him how he acquired his wonderful logical powers and such acuteness in analysis. Lincoln replied: "It was my terrible discouragement which did that for me. When I was a young man I went into an office to study law. I saw that a lawyer's business is largely to prove things. I said to myself, 'Lincoln, when is a thing proved?' That was a poser. What constitutes proof? Not evidence; that was not the point. There may be evidence enough, but wherein consists the proof? I groaned over the question, and finally said to myself, 'Ah! Lincoln, you can't tell.' Then I thought, 'What use is it for me to be in a law office if I can't tell when a thing is proved?' So I gave it up and went back home.
"Soon after I returned to the old log cabin, I fell in with a copy of Euclid. I had not the slightest notion what Euclid was, and I thought I would find out. I therefore began, at the beginning, and before spring I had gone through that old Euclid's geometry, and could demonstrate every proposition like a book. Then in the spring, when I had got through with it, I said to myself one day, 'Ah, do you know now when a thing is proved?' And I answered, 'Yes, sir, I do.' 'Then you may go back to the law shop;' and I went."
We may be rightly ambitious in various ways. It is right to be ambitious forfame and honor. The love of praise is not bad in itself, but it is a very dangerous motive. Why? Because in order to be popular, one may be tempted to be insincere. Never let the world's applause drown the voice of conscience.
It is right to be ambitious to excel in whatever you do. Slighted work and half-done tasks are sins. "I am as good as they are"; "I do my work as well as they"; are cowardly maxims. Not what others have done, but perfection, is the only true aim, whether it be in the ball-field or in the graver tasks of life.
Many people think that ambition is an evil weed, and ought to be pulled up by the roots. Shakespeare makes Wolsey say,—
"I charge thee, fling away ambitionBy that sin fell the angels."
But the great cardinal had abused ambition, and had changed it into a vice. Ambition is a noble quality in itself, but like any other virtue it may be carried to excess, and thus become an evil. Like fire or water, it must be controlled to be safe and useful. Napoleon, while commanding armies, could not command his own ambition; and so he was caged up like a wild beast at St. Helena. A millionaire may be so ambitious for gain as purposely to wreck the fortunes of others. A politician may sell his manhood to gratify his desire for office. Boys and girls may become so ambitious to win their games, or to get the prizes at school, that they are willing to cheat, or take some mean advantage; and then ambition becomes to them not a blessing but a curse.
We ought now and then to stop and test our ambition, just as the engineer tries the steam in the boiler; if we do not, it may in some unexpected moment wreck our lives. There are two ways of finding out whether our ambition is too strong for safety. First, if we discover that ambition is hurting our own character, there is danger. Second, if we find ambition blinding us to the rights of others, it is time to stop. These are the two tests; and so long as your ambition is harming neither your own life nor the lives of others, it is good and wholesome, and will add value and brightness to your life.
Henry Havelock, commonly known as "The Hero of Lucknow," was born in England, 1795, just about the time when Napoleon was beginning his brilliant career, and all Europe was a battlefield. As a boy he was rather serious and thoughtful, so that his school fellows used to call him "Old Phlos," a nickname for Old Philosopher. And yet he loved boyish sports, and never was behind any of his companions in courage and daring.
He was not the first scholar in his class, but he was a great reader and took intense delight in stories of war and descriptions of battles. Napoleon was his hero, and he watched all his movements with breathless interest; and soon began to dream of being a soldier, too. Thus was born in the boy's heart that ambition which afterward lifted the man into honor and fame.
At the age of sixteen Havelock began to study law, but he soon tired of it, and three years later obtained an appointment in the army. He now gave himself, with all the love and enthusiasm of his nature, to his chosen profession. He was to be a soldier; and he decided that he would be a thorough one, and would understand the art of war completely. He studied very hard, and it is said that it was his habit to draw with a stick upon the ground the plan of some historic battlefield, then, in imagination fight the battle over again, so that he might clearly see what made the one side lose and the other win.
After eight years of service in England, he was ordered to go to India. There he became a soldier in earnest. It would take too long to tell of the battles he was in, and of the terrible campaigns through which he served. It is enough to say that he always followed where duty led, and always seemed to know just what to do amid the confusion of the battlefield. It was the dream of his life to become a general, but he was doomed, year after year, to stand still and see untried, beardless men promoted above his head. This certainly was hard to bear, but he never lost heart, never sulked, never neglected any opportunity to serve his government. His ambition was to do his best; and this he did, whether the world saw and applauded or not.
Until he reached the age of sixty-two, he was scarcely known outside of India; but then came the occasion that made him famous. All India was in mutiny. The native soldiers, mad with power, were murdering the English in every city. Far up in the interior, at Lucknow, was a garrison of English soldiers, women, and children, hemmed in by thousands of these bloodthirsty Sepoys. To surrender meant a horrible death. To hold the fort meant starvation at last, unless rescue should speedily come.
Although, when the news reached him, he was hundreds of miles away, Havelock undertook to save that little garrison. It seemed an impossible task, and yet with a few hundred brave soldiers, in a country swarming with the enemy, through swamps, over swollen rivers, he fought his way to the gates at Lucknow. And then, beneath a hailstorm of bullets from every house-top, he marched up the narrow street, and never paused until he stood within the fortress walls, and heard the shout of welcome from the lips of the starving men and women. It was a wonderful march, and put him among the great soldiers of history; but it was the direct result of that powerful ambition which had influenced his entire career.
The world rang with applause of his heroism; but praise came too late; for while the queen was making him a baronet, and Parliament was voting him a princely pension, he was dying of a fever within the very city he had so bravely stormed. But his life-work was fully completed, and his name shines brightly among those of the great military heroes of his native land.
[Footnote: See Marshman's "Life of Havelock" (1860); Headley's "Life ofHavelock" (1864); Brock's "Life of General Sir Henry Havelock" (1854);Molesworth's "History of England," Vol. III., Chap, ii., and Mitchell's"History of India" (London, 1895).]
Success grows out of struggles to overcome difficulties.—Smiles
He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither.—Franklin
The important thing in life is to have a great aim and the determinationto attain it.—Goethe
A healthy definite purpose is a remedy for a thousand ills.—O. S. Marden
The evidence of superior genius is the power of intellectualconcentration.—B. R. Hayden
Concentration begins with the habit of attention. The highest success in learning depends on the power of the learner to command and hold his own attention,—on his ability to concentrate his thought on the subject before him. By the words "habit of attention," we do not mean here the outward, respectful attitude of a docile pupil who listens when his teacher speaks, but something much rarer, much more important, and far more difficult of attainment. We mean that power of the mind by which a person is able to give an intelligent account of what is said, whether in conversation, in lecture, or in sermon; which enables him to grasp at one reading the important points of a problem or a paragraph; and which makes it possible for a student or a reader to so concentrate his attention on what he is doing as to be entirely oblivious, so long as it does not concern him, of what is going on around him.
This is the age of concentration or specialization of energy. The problem of the day is to get ten-horse power out of an engine that shall occupy the space of a one-horse power engine, and no more. Just so society demands a ten-man power out of one individual. It crowns the man who knows one thing supremely, and can do it better than anybody else, even if it be only the art of raising turnips. If he raises the best turnips by reason of concentrating all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor to the race, and is recognized as such. The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck all their blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose. "Scatteration" is the curse of American business life. Too many are like Douglas Jerrold's friend, who could converse in twenty-four languages, but had no ideas to express in any one of them.
"The weakest living creature," says Carlyle, "by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind."
It is interesting to read how, with an immense procession passing up Broadway, the streets lined with people, and the bands playing their loudest, Horace Greeley would sit upon the steps of the Astor House, use the top of his hat for a desk, and write an editorial for the New YorkTribunewhich would be quoted all over the country; and there are many incidents in his career which go to show that his wonderful power of concentration was one of the great secrets of his success.
Men who have the right kind of material in them will assert their personality, and rise in spite of a thousand adverse circumstances. You cannot keep them down. Every obstacle seems only to add their ability to get on. The youth Opie earned his bread by sawing wood, but he reached a professorship in the Royal Academy. When but ten years old he showed the material he was made of by a beautiful drawing on a shingle. Antonio Canova was a son of a day laborer; Thorwaldsen's parents were poor; but, like hundreds of others, these men did with their might what their hands found to do, and ennobled their work. They rose by being greater than their calling.
It is fashionable to ridicule the man of one idea; but the men who have changed the face of the world have been men of a single aim. No man can make his mark on this age of specialities who is not a man of one idea, one supreme aim, one master passion. The man who would make himself felt on this bustling planet, must play all his guns on one point. A wavering aim, a faltering purpose, will have no place in the twentieth century. "Mental shiftlessness" is the cause of many a failure. The world is full of unsuccessful men who spend their lives letting empty buckets down into empty wells.
As opposed to men of the latter class, what a sublime picture of determination and patience was that of Charles Goodyear, of New Haven, buried in poverty and struggling with hardships for eleven long years, to make India rubber of practical use! See him in prison for debt; pawning his clothes and his wife's jewelry to get a little money to buy food for his children, who were obliged to gather sticks in the field for fire. Observe the sublime courage and devotion to his idea, when he had no money to bury a dead child, and when his other five were near starvation; when his neighbors were harshly criticising him for his neglect of his family, and calling him insane. But, behold his vulcanized rubber; the result of that heroic struggle, applied to thousands of uses by over sixty thousand employees.
A German knight undertook to make an immense Aeolian harp by stretching wires from tower to tower of his castle. When he finished the harp it was silent; but when the breezes began to blow he heard faint strains like the murmuring of distant music. At last a tempest arose and swept with fury over his castle, and then rich and grand music came from the wires. Ordinary experiences do not seem to touch some lives, to bring out their higher manhood; but when patience and firmness bring forth their fruit it is always of the very finest quality.
It is good to know that great people have done great things through concentration; but it is better still to know that concentration belongs to the everyday life of the everyday boy and girl. Only they must not be selfish about it. Understand the work in hand before it is begun. Don't think of anything else while doing it; and don't dream when learning a lesson. Do one thing at a time and do it quickly and thoroughly. "I go at what I am about," said Charles Kingsley, "as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being." That's the secret of the success of all hard-working men.
S. T. Coleridge possessed marvelous powers of mind, but he had no definite purpose; he lived in an atmosphere of mental dissipation, which consumed his energy and exhausted his stamina, and his life was in many respects a miserable failure. He lived in dreams and died in reverie. He was continually forming plans and resolutions, but to the day of his death they remained resolutions and plans. He was always just going to do something, but never did it. "Coleridge is dead," wrote Charles Lamb to a friend, "and is said to have left behind him above forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity—not one of them complete!"
Commodore MacDonough, on Lake Champlain, concentrated the fire of all his vessels upon the "big ship" of Downie, regardless of the fact that the other British ships were all hurling cannon balls at his little fleet. The guns of the big ship were silenced, and then the others were taken care of easily.
By exercising this art of concentration in a higher degree than did his brother generals, Grant was able to bring the Civil War to a speedy termination. This trait was strongly marked in the character of Washington. The same is true in regard to General Armstrong and the Hampton Institute. That stands as a living monument to his power of concentration. He had a great purpose: the education of the Negro and Indian races; and from the close of the Civil War to the day of his death he labored steadily at that one undertaking, and now the whole country is proud of the outcome of his toil.
People who have concentration never make excuses. They get more done than others, and have a better time doing it. Excuses are signs of shiftlessness. They do not answer in play any better than in lessons or business. Who ever heard of excuses in football-playing? When we go into all our duties with the same earnestness and devotion, we shall find ourselves rapidly rising into one of those foremost places which most of us so greatly desire.
Few men in this century have followed a single purpose through their entire lives with greater devotion than the famous missionary and explorer, David Livingstone.
He was born in Scotland, March 19, 1813, of poor parents. He loved books as a boy, studied hard to know about rocks and plants, worked in a cotton mill and earned money to go to a medical school. He was honest, helped his mother, and read all the books he could. "My reading in the factory," he said, "was carried on by placing the book on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that I could catch sentence after sentence as I passed at my work. I thus kept up a pretty constant study, undisturbed by the roar of machinery."
Very early Livingstone began to think about being a missionary. He read about travels in Africa, about the work of Henry Martyn, and about the Moravian missions. He heard about China and the need of medical missionaries there; and he says that "from this time my efforts were constantly devoted toward this object without any fluctuation."
Livingstone wanted to go to China; but he met Dr. Moffat, who was then home from Africa, and was persuaded to change his plans. Early in 1841 he reached Algoa Bay, at the south end of Africa. Then he went to Dr. Moffat's mission station at Kuruman; but here he found the missionaries did not work well together, that there were more men than work, so he pushed on into regions where no one had been before. "I really am ambitious," he wrote, "to preach beyond other men's lines. I am determined to go on, and do all I can, while able, for the poor, degraded people in the North."
This feeling sent him into the great wilderness to find what opportunities it afforded. In 1852 he started on his first great journey, made more discoveries, and crossed Africa from east to west, and then back again to the east coast. It was hard work; many were the difficulties; and his life was often in peril. Yet he saw Africa as no one before had seen it; and when he returned to England in 1857 he found himself famous, honored on every hand, and everybody ready to help on his great and noble work.
In 1859 he returned to Africa with men and money to explore further, and to see what could be done for the good of the country. He explored the Zambezi river, on the east coast; and became familiar with that side of Africa,—its people, rivers, lakes, and mountains. He returned home in 1864, but went back the next year to seek out the source of the Nile. In 1865 he started on his longest and last journey, going this time to the northwest. This was the hardest and most perilous of all his journeys; for he was often sick, his men were not faithful, the country was in a state of war, his money gave out; and he was in a very bad condition when Henry M. Stanley found him in 1871.
Stanley furnished him with money and men, and he started again for the great interior region to discover the source of the Nile, and then to return home and die. He was now sixty years old, his health had given way, but he persisted in the effort to finish his work. He grew weaker from month to month, but would not turn back. Finally, on May 1, 1873, his men found him on his knees in his tent, dead; but the results of his patient and persevering efforts will never die.
[Footnote: Consult Livingstone's "Last Journals" (1874); Blaikie's"Life of Livingstone;" and Stanley's "How I found Livingstone" (1873).]