The Last Step Counts.
If Chris had shown the white feather, 1492 would not be the date of the first line in the geography, announcing the "Discovery of America." Chris had perseverance—the stuff that makes men successful. He started to find India by sailing westward. He didn't succeed in his purpose, but his determination was rewarded just the same, for he found a new country, and that was worth while.
Before he started, he was promised ten per cent of the revenue from any lands he might discover. Just imagine what that would mean to-day.
Columbus had perseverance and pep, and his unwavering fidelity to his cause brought him success in his efforts.
The world has improved since 1492, but the percentage of men who would keep everlastingly at it like Columbus did, has not increased, perhaps.
Columbus sailed with three ships, the largest sixty-six feet long. He steered in the direction of the setting sun. His crew was 120 men. None of them were enthusiastic at the start; all of them disgusted, discouraged and ready to mutiny toward the last.
Keeping Everlastingly at It.
But Christopher kept the ships pointed West, through rain and shine, through drifting, breezeless days and through wild stormy nights. He kept on and on and on, and he brought home the bacon, which, being interpreted, means that success crowned his efforts.
Perseverance and pep—when all is said and done, these are the factors without which no great achievement is possible.
It was the mileage made on October 12th, 1492, that counted.
It is the last step in a race that counts.
It is the last stroke on the nail that counts.
The moral is that many a prize has been lost just when it was ready to be plucked.
Perseverance—patience—pluck—pep—these are magic words. They are the "Open Sesame" of modern life. They open the door to opportunity, and will bring you prosperity, peace and plenty.
The man who ridicules everything is on the toboggan slide, and he will end up by becoming an out-and-out grouch.
You and I know men who never have a pleasant word to say of anyone, or a serious commendation of anything.
Ridicule and Humor.
Ridicule and sarcasm are often coated with would-be humor, and are sometimes decked out as puns. By and by, however, this bias toward ridicule and sarcasm gets to be a habit, and the coat of humor becomes threadbare.
Just at this time friends depart, for the grouch phase of the disease has started.
Sarcasm and ridicule are powerful weapons when used adroitly and for good purposes. But when sarcasm and ridicule are used constantly as a means to generate fun, or as vehicles for humor, then the evil commences. The fun disappears; the sting remains.
People will listen to you for awhile if you good-naturedly ridicule a thing, but when you areknown to have the habit, that is when friends give you the go-by.
Sarcasm and ridicule wound deeply; they are hot pokers jabbed in quivering flesh.
A Dangerous Weapon.
Don't juggle with ridicule or sarcasm, for people look beneath the veneer nowadays. They remember and repeat the axiom, "There's many a true word spoken in jest." There are so many beautiful things to say, so many kind expressions to utter, so many helpful hints to give, that we should be ashamed to say or do things even jokingly that may hurt another.
When you ridicule a thing or a person, you may ridicule the tender heart of one you should cheer and help.
Ridicule is the negative approach to a subject anyway; the only good it can accomplish is by reflex action or rebound force.
Ridicule is mistakenly conceived, by many, as humor. It is used because it can so easily be employed, in a seemingly clever way, to create a laugh.
Humor of the clean sort is a rare gift. Humor may easily descend to low comedy through the use of ridicule, and often the audience does not differentiate between low comedy and rare humor.
The masses will laugh when the comedian on the stage hits his friend with a club; that sort of fun-making satisfies adults who have children's brains, and people of similar brain-construction will also laugh at jokes which ride on ridicule. But you who read these lines are worthy of better things; that's why you are reading this book. If, in my audience, there are those who have the ridicule habit, I want to arouse you to a better sense of humor than is possible through the employment of ridicule and sarcasm.
I don't want you to descend to the level of the grouch. The slide-down is so easy; the climbing back is so very hard.
Ridicule and sarcasm are cheap, slap-stick methods to produce fun. They leave a sting many times when you are not aware of it.
When You Can Go the Limit.
When fighting whiskey, sin, corruption or organized evil, then use burning ridicule and caustic sarcasm to sizzle and destroy the things that need to be destroyed. Next time you find yourself using ridicule or sarcasm to provoke mirth, remember you are toying with a habit-forming practice that is likely to get the best of you unless you stop and stop now.
Your Wife and Partner.
A wife is either a partner or an employee. If a partner, she has a right to the fifty-fifty split on profits; if an employee, she is entitled to her wages. A thrifty husband is commendable, but a show-me-what-you-did-with-that-money husband should be punished by being sentenced to attend pink teas, afternoon receptions, and to match samples at the dry goods store.
Married folks must be on a partnership basis, or there's sand in the gear box.
Give the wife the check-book; let her pay the bills. Play fair with her; show her what your income is; give her all you can afford and what economic and wise administration warrants. She'll cut the cloth to fit the garment.
When the husband questions every turn, every move, and doles out every cent, the wife feels like a prisoner or a slave. Wives will do good team work when they are broken to double harness with their husbands.
Women are generally raised without being required to economize. They have probably been petted and humored, and are used to preening and smoothing their plumage and looking pretty.
Fine Feathers.
It's the female instinct in the human. In the animal world, the male has the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating; but in the human animal, the female is the bird with the bright plumage.
You can't expect her to know much about the economic side of the home the moment you slip the ring on her finger.
But she'll shop better than her husband if he takes an interest in her shopping and encourages her in the economical administration of the household budget.
She wants a word of appreciation once in a while. She chills under the surveillance and parsimony of an eagle-eyed, meddlesome husband.
She's a sweet bird, and sweet birds and hawks don't nest well together.
Where the hawk and the dove are in the same cage, the feathers will fly.
As I came through the park this morning, I saw a pair of robins who had the right idea. They shared home responsibilities and did fine team work. I think they were mighty happy, too;daddy red breast looked mighty proud as he hustled worms for the family breakfast.
Mama Robin looked down with loving eyes at her hubby, and the little baby robins sang a chorus of joy at the very privilege of living in such a home.
Worry will fly out of the window the moment the husband and wife lay their cards on the table and play the open hand. The moment one or the other keeps a few cards up their sleeve, then worry and trouble come back.
The moral of this is, husbands and wives: live together, get together, stay together, play together, save together, grow together, share together. Travel the same road; don't take different paths.
To-night I am in the Ozarks, and old Mother Earth is passing through the belt of meteoric dust—that great mysterious sea in the universe through which we pass every year about the middle of November.
The Stars.
I look out into the night and marvel at the countless stars in the infinite black void, and wonder how closely those stars may be connected with humanity. That they are connected, I have no doubt, for truly, "the sun, the moon, the stars, and endless space as well, are parts, are things, like me, that cometh from and runneth by one grand power of which I am in truth a part, an atom though I be."
How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I can see about 3,000; with opera glasses I could see 30,000.
Franklin Adams some years ago photographed the whole canopy with 206 exposures. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and published his finding that there were 1,600,000,000 stars.That number is just about the number of humans on this earth. So, then, there is one star for each of us.
Finite and Infinite.
Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth. It is thought that many of them may have human beings who think and reason like we do. Multiply the 1,600,000,000 population on this earth by any portion of the 1,600,000,000 stars that may have thinking creatures on them; multiply that total by the millions of years and millions of generations that have passed out of existence.
Think of these numbers and limitless boundaries, and then tell me, if you can, that one little man on one little star we call Earth has a strangle-hold on truth, and that his viewpoint, his ism, his little dogma, his narrow creed, is all-sufficient, all-right, all-inclusive.
Verily, little protoplasm, you have another guess. We can, by experience and tests, prove two and two make four. We can by practice and experience prove that love, kindness, help, gentleness, sympathy, cheer and courage bring happiness.
The Sense of Proportion.
These are tangible things that fall within the province of human experience. But when one weeWillie with sober face tells you and me and others that he has the truth about the definite, full workings of God's plans and purposes, I think of the greatness of 1,600,000,000 stars, each with 1,600,000,000 humans, and of the unnumbered generations gone by, and say that verily, we must live TO-DAY and do the best we can to-day in act and thought and word.
Yesterday is dead; to-morrow is unknown. Where we have been, where we will be, we know not. Where we are to-day, we know, and only God in His omniscience knows the final answer as to our future estate.
He will take us and hold us and place us in His keeping and according to His purpose, even though we do not or cannot follow or believe any one of the little man-formed creeds, isms or cults as the measure and rule for our beliefs.
Those stars testify to the certainty of God, and I believe in Him.
Success and Envy.
When a man by his brains, or by a fortunate combination of circumstances, rises to a position of prominence, he becomes a target for the envious and a pattern for the imitator. Emulation and envy are ever alert in trying to steal the fruits of the leader or the doer of things.
The man who makes a name gets both reward and punishment. The reward is his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told about him.
When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the envious many.
If he does a mediocre thing, he is unnoticed; if his work is a masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting.
Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was pronounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced mutiny on his ship on the very eve of his discovery of land. Millet starved in his attic. Time has passed, and the backbiters are all in unmarked graves. The world, until the end of time, will enjoy Wagner's music. Whistler and Millet's paintings attract artists from all over the world, and inventors reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.
The Price of Greatness.
The leader is assailed because he has done a thing worth while; the slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to prove his greatness. Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader, they seek to belittle him. But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and he remains a leader. He has made his genius count, and has given the creature of his brain and imagination to the world.
Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him, his masterpiece and his fame endure.
And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to the noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers.
In his own heart he knows he has done a thing worth while; his own conscience is clear, and he cares not for the estimate of the world.
His own character is his chief concern, and he is content in the knowledge that time will bring its reward.
If you have high ideals in business, if you achieve success on a big scale, mark well, you will be a subject of attacks, of lies, of malice, of envy, of disreputable competition. There is no way out of it.
Compensation.
But you will be repaid. The lover of fair play, the grateful, true, honest, worth-while people will flock to your standard; the riff-raff will skulk behind bushes and throw rocks and mud, but their acts will prove to the great mass of the people that your purposes, practices and policies are right.
Therefore, courage is to be your chief asset; patience, pride, perseverance, your lieutenants.
Be not weary, grow not discouraged when your progress is hampered by obstacles. Every truly great man of the past has had his backbiters and detractors.
There are three periods in our lives: the youthful, or prospective period, the adult, or introspective period, and the old age, or retrospective period.
Growing Old.
Too many there are who look forward to old age with fear or dread. But old age has its joys and pleasures as well as middle age and youth, and these pleasures are the keener if the first and second periods of life were lived sanely, worthily and properly. Numerous are the great men of the past who have extolled the old-age period of human life with its wisdom and wealth of worldly experience.
If the middle period is spent in getting dollars only, then old age will be days of empty nothingness.
Youth is the planning time—the time for ideals and ambitions; middle age the building time, and old age the dividend time.
With many, old age is spent in reading the book of the past—with sadness as the readerrecognizes that the ideals, plans and hopes were shattered. As age turns the page in the book of the past, he reads one hope after another vanished in smoke.
Anticipation is seldom realized, and this is as it should be, for in time, men will learn to live each day for each day's good and each day's happiness.
Let us perform our duty to-day; let us lay away a kindly act, a smile, a word of cheer in the bank of good deeds.
Each of us has a share in this world's work. It matters little whether our actual share is what we had guessed or wished it to be.
The Value of Ideals.
Vicissitudes will cross our path here and there; so-called misfortune or bad luck will strike us when least expected. The failure of our dreams should not grieve us. We cannot reach up and grasp the stars, but like the pilot at the wheel at sea, we can steer by those stars that help us on our way.
Our ideal may not be realized, but the journey to it may still be a pleasant one.
Our ideals, plans and hopes had a real purpose, a real service; they gave us courage and made us work, and thus they were well worth while.
We must not, in the old age period, condemnourselves because our plans failed or our castles were shattered.
There is no hard luck except incurable disease or death. It is not for us to mourn the past or weep for the flowers that are gone.
In our active days, we should realize that we are putting memories away in our brains that will come back to us in old age.
Only that which we put in our brains can we take out.
So then, Mr. Avarice, I warn you: If gold is your God, it's cold comfort you will get in your sunset days.
Build up loving ties, appreciation and the worth-while riches of good deeds, and in your evening of life, you will be welcome wherever you go.
Put Not Your Faith in Gold.
If your life was sold for gold, your evening of life will be short and miserable; legatees will grudge you your every breath; they will endure you simply because they are checking off the days from Time's calendar until the day of your passing, and the dollars you sold your soul and heart and life for, will be lavishly spent by cold-blooded heirs who cared nothing for you.
Leave a legacy of love, example and character,and if, with these, there are a few dollars, they simply prove your frugality, economy and independence.
A few dollars left to heirs will help. Many dollars will hurt. Dollars in old age will give you pleasure by helping in tight corners. They will enable you to help your loved ones over the bumps in the road.
Use the dollars to help those you love to help themselves, and your old age will be a busy, happy one, and you won't be in the way.
To prepare for that happy period of your life, the foundation must be built in the active to-day period.
Carry smiles into your old age; they will keep the heart young, the digestion good, and life will be worth while.
I have traveled horseback over the great arid plains of the West, and have read the story of the ages gone before.
The Remote Past.
In Arizona and New Mexico there are ancient ruins of forts and cities built by people we know not of. Chalcedony Park with its petrified forest of mammoth trees silently testifies to a period when vegetation was rampant on what is now a desert.
In Wyoming there is coal enough to furnish fuel for the United States for several centuries.
Coal is carbon made from decayed trees and vegetation, which became covered with earth and rock, and was subjected to tremendous pressure throughout the thousands of years required to effect the transformation.
Oceans and floods gradually covered millions of acres of trees and plants with ooze and soil and sand. Ages turned some of these deposits to stone.
There in bleak Wyoming is testimony and evidence of changes that time only can bring about.
"A thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years." Thus wrote the scribe of old. So, then, we must consider this estimate of time in reading the first chapter of Genesis which describes the order of the world's creation.
First took place the dividing of light from darkness, thus bringing about the rotation of day and night.
Then, the separating of land and water; then, the birth of vegetation on the land, the creation of fish and reptiles in the sea, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and finally, the higher animal, man.
The Measure of Time.
The pages of the earth's surface carry in their stratification indelible records harmonizing with this scriptural account of the evolution of the earth from its chaotic misty past to its concrete definite present. Yes, this earth of ours is old, so old that mere man cannot contemplate or accurately estimate its wondrous age.
The fossils of the mammoth reptiles and beasts which lived before the appearance of man on this planet are numerous in the fascinating West I know so well.
In those arid desert hills are bones of the ancient rhinoceros—parent of our horse—andthere are shells, and fossils of fish, and bones of animals imbedded in the strata of rock.
Man reads these pages and he is lost in bewilderment, impoverished in thought, dumb for words, paralyzed by his inability to co-ordinate this evidence with any measure of time that will fall within the range of human comprehension.
Age of the Earth.
Historians say the world was 4,004 years old before the Christian era, and 1918 years have passed since then, making the age to date 5,922 years. It is not surprising that through the dark ages, dates and facts were lost. We have not a complete history in written language, but we have some very definite history in the rocks and hills and lands and seas.
The world certainly is more than 5,922 years old. Read the record of time so plainly visible at Niagara Falls.
Niagara Falls eats away about two feet of rock in a century; the gorge is a good many miles long. At the present rate of erosion, it takes 2,640 years to eat away a mile. Multiply that by the distance between the falls and Lake Ontario and you have an idea of how many years Niagara Falls has been at work.
Before Niagara Falls was in existence, thecountry round about was under the sea; before that, under glaciers; before that, in the tropics, and I don't know how many times it has swung on its pendulum between Frigid, Temperate and Torrid Zones.
We are certain to become lost in a labyrinth of mystery when we take these known facts concerning the earth's age, and try to specify any particular number of millions of years as the old world's age.
And now my pleasant occupation of writing this book draws to an end. I sincerely hope you have received some definite suggestions that will be helpful to you.
To get you to think—that has been my aim. To get you to analyze yourself—to take stock of yourself—to know yourself—that has been the task I set before me.
How to Think.
Think vital thoughts of courage, faith and hope. Then will your days pass joyfully, and your path be one of peace, happiness and contentment. If you fill your mind with gloom and sorrow thoughts, your surroundings will reflect your mental attitude and will accentuate your misery and dejection. Do not give way to this weak, gloomy, pernicious thinking. You can be strong, you will be strong if you learn to control your thought habits.
Can you face disagreeable facts without wavering? Can you meet adversity with courage in your heart and a smile on your lips? You can,if you have read this book carefully, calmly, thoughtfully, and put into practice the rules I have laid down.
Do not think that you can go through life without your share of pain, disillusion and disappointment. It can't be done. No man has ever done it. Clouds will come, but they can be dispelled. Obstacles will arise, but they can be surmounted. Troubles will visit you, but meet them boldly and courageously and do not show the white feather.
To the thinking man or woman, life is a great arena wherein good and bad, joy and sorrow, faith and disillusion, happiness and unhappiness, success and failure are inextricably intermingled. The joy and happiness, accept gratefully; the sorrow and disillusion, bear with fortitude. And remember, although it is not possible to enjoy an absolute and continued state of happiness, it always lies within your power to have serenity, poise, peace and contentment.
When you are in the dumps—when that feeling of the hopelessness and un-worth-whileness of life comes over you, then, more than ever,think. Do not give way to fear and despondency. Think cheerful thoughts; think of the good things that life has given you, not the least of them being life itself. Think of the ringingwords that Milton put into the mouth of Lucifer, the fallen angel, in "Paradise Lost":
"The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
Life's Ever-Newness.
To the person who thinks, life is ever-new, ever-interesting. If you have lost your grip on reality—if you have dwelt too long in the shadowland of doubt, fear and despondency—the thing to do is to correct your thinking. Let your mind soar in contemplation of the beautiful things of nature. Steel yourself against petty pull-backs and recognize them for what they really are—trifling annoyances that serve no purpose except to distract you from the pursuit of the great and glorious goal that lies ahead.
Only to the thinking man is it given to see life and see it whole. He only has the true sense of proportion. He keeps his eye on the main objective, secure in the realization that he is master of himself and captain of his own soul. He is self-sufficient, for he knows that no matter what befalls, he carries happiness and contentment within himself wherever he goes.
The practice of thinking is a tower of strength.If you are a thinker, life's little troubles serve but to reinforce your spirit of resistance and make you stronger.
So then, let this be my last word to you—think!—for it is by thinking that man has risen to his present high estate in the world. It is by thinking that the future joy and happiness and peace of the world must be increased.