Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill, and fortitude of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter the diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for acquaintances.

Beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works. Schiller wrote his best books in great bodily suffering. He was not free from pain for fifteen years. Milton wrote his leading productions when blind, poor, and sick. "Who best can suffer," said he, "best can do." Bunyan said that, if it were lawful, he could even pray for greater trouble, for the greater comfort's sake.

"Do you know what God puts us on our backs for?" asked Dr. Payson, smiling, as he lay sick in bed. "No," replied the visitor. "In order that we may look upward." "I am not come to condole but to rejoice with you," said the friend, "for it seems to me that this is no time for mourning." "Well, I am glad to hear that," said Dr. Payson, "it is not often I am addressed in such a way. The fact is I never had less need of condolence, and yet everybody persists in offering it; whereas, when I was prosperous and well, and a successful preacher, and really needed condolence, they flattered and congratulated me."

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 any poetry, any higher manhood.

Not until the breath of the plague had blasted a hundred thousand lives, and the great fire had licked up cheap, shabby, wicked London, did she arise, phoenix-like, from her ashes and ruin, a grand and mighty city.

True salamanders live best in the furnace of persecution.

"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if the truth were known," said Albion Tourgee. "Grant's failure as a subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to."

The appeal for volunteers in the great battle of life, in exterminating ignorance and error, and planting high on an everlasting foundation the banner of intelligence and right, is directed to you. Burst the trammels that impede your progress, and cling to hope. Place high thy standard, and with a firm tread and fearless eye press steadily onward.

Not ease, but effort, not facility, but difficulty, makes men. Toilsome culture is the price of great success, and the slow growth of a great character is one of its special necessities. Many of our best poets

"Are cradled into poetry by wrong, And learn in suffering what they teach in song."

Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing criticism of his first book, "Hours of Idleness," published when he was but nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, "There is scarce an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byron reached." In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott, Southey, and Campbell, and died at thirty-seven, that age so fatal to genius. Many an orator like "stuttering Jack Curran," or "Orator Mum," as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by ridicule and abuse.

This is the crutch age. "Helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. We have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries, newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are all worked out in "explanations" and "keys." Our boys are too often tutored through college with very little study. "Short roads" and "abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. Newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from Eden's curse.

But do not misinterpret her edict. She emancipates from the lower only to call to the higher. She does not bid the world go and play while she does the work. She emancipates the muscles only to employ the brain and heart.

The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on a stubborn soil. It is no chance that returns to the Hindoo ryot a penny and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes Mexico with its mineral wealth poor, and New England with its granite and ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, it is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and calls the race out of barbarism. Labor found the world a wilderness and has made it a garden.

As the sculptor thinks only of the angel imprisoned in the marble block, so Nature cares only for the man or woman shut up in the human being. The sculptor cares nothing for the block as such; Nature has little regard for the mere lump of breathing clay. The sculptor will chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. Nature will chip and pound us remorselessly to bring out our possibilities. She will strip us of wealth, humble our pride, humiliate our ambition, let us down from the ladder of fame, will discipline us in a thousand ways, if she can develop a little character. Everything must give way to that. Wealth is nothing, position is nothing, fame is nothing, manhood is everything.

Not ease, not pleasure, not happiness, but a man, Nature is after. In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure on the canvas is subordinate to it, but pointing to the central idea, finds its true expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object of creation is but a guideboard with an index-finger pointing to the central figure of the created universe—Man. Nature writes this thought upon every leaf, she thunders it in every creation. It is exhaled from every flower; it twinkles in every star.

Oh, what price will Nature not pay for a man! Ages and aeons were nothing for her to spend in preparing for his coming, or to make his existence possible. She has rifled the centuries for his development, and placed the universe at his disposal. The world is but his kindergarten, and every created thing but an object-lesson from the unseen universe. Nature resorts to a thousand expedients to develop a perfect type of her grandest creation. To do this she must induce him to fight his way up to his own loaf. She never allows him once to lose sight of the fact that it is the struggle to attain that develops the man. The moment we put our hand upon that which looks so attractive at a distance, and which we struggled so hard to reach, Nature robs it of its charm by holding up before us another prize still more attractive.

"Life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them or no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to sleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and do its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes are not wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who labor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our temple-building, whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life with cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our daily business, the fiercer animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of defeat,—these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life ever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them? We are here, my brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God's quarry and on God's anvil for a nobler life to come." Only the muscle that is used is developed.

The constantly cheerful man, who survives his blighted hopes and disappointments, who takes them just for what they are, lessons, and perhaps blessings in disguise, is the true hero.

There is a strength Deep bedded in our hearts of which we reck But little, till the shafts of heaven have pierced Its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent Before her gems are found? MRS. HEMANS.

"If what shone afar so grand Turns to ashes in the hand, On again, the virtue lies In the struggle, not the prize."

"The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails."

"So many great Illustrious spirits have conversed with woe, Have in her school been taught, as are enough To consecrate distress, and make ambition Even wish the frown beyond the smile of fortune."

Then welcome each rebuff, That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand but go. BROWNING.



CHAPTER VI.

ONE UNWAVERING AIM.

Life is an arrow—therefore you must know What mark to aim at, how to use the bow— Then draw it to the head and let it go. HENRY VAN DYKE.

The important thing in life is to have a great aim, and to possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it.—GOETHE.

Concentration alone conquers.—C. BUXTON.

"He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither."

"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways."

Let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and then stick to it if he would be successful.—FRANKLIN.

"Digression is as dangerous as stagnation in the career of a young man in business."

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.—BULWER.

Genius is intensity.—BALZAC.

"Why do you lead such a solitary life?" asked a friend of Michael Angelo. "Art is a jealous mistress," replied the artist; "she requires the whole man." During his labors at the Sistine Chapel, according to Disraeli, he refused to meet any one, even at his own house.

"That day we sailed westward, which was our course," were the simple but grand words which Columbus wrote in his journal day after day. Hope might rise and fall, terror and dismay might seize upon the crew at the mysterious variations of the compass, but Columbus, unappalled, pushed due west and nightly added to his record the above words.

"Cut an inch deeper," said a member of the Old Guard to the surgeon probing his wound, "and you will find the Emperor,"—meaning his heart. By the marvelous power of concentrated purpose Napoleon had left his name on the very stones of the capital, had burned it indelibly into the heart of every Frenchman, and had left it written in living letters all over Europe. France to-day has not shaken off the spell of that name. In the fair city on the Seine the mystic "N" confronts you everywhere.

Oh, the power of a great purpose to work miracles! It has changed the face of the world. Napoleon knew that there were plenty of great men in France, but they did not know the might of the unwavering aim by which he was changing the destinies of Europe. He saw that what was called the "balance of power" was only an idle dream; that, unless some master-mind could be found which was a match for events, the millions would rule in anarchy. His iron will grasped the situation; and like William Pitt, he did not loiter around balancing the probabilities of failure or success, or dally with his purpose. There was no turning to the right nor to the left; no dreaming away time, nor building air-castles; but one look and purpose, forward, upward and onward, straight to his goal. He always hit the bull's-eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. He was like a great burning-glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went. The secret of his power lay in his ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place in the enemy's ranks, he would mass his men and hurl them like an avalanche upon the critical point, crowding volley upon volley, charge upon charge, till he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of concentration there is in this man's life! He was able to focus all his faculties upon the smallest detail, as well as upon an empire. But, alas! Napoleon was himself defeated by violation of his own tactics,—the constantly repeated crushing force of heavy battalions upon one point.

To succeed to-day a man must concentrate all the faculties of his mind upon one unwavering aim, and have a tenacity of purpose which means death or victory. Every other inclination which tempts him from his aim must be suppressed.

New Jersey has many ports, but they are so shallow and narrow that the shipping of the entire state amounts to but little. On the other hand, New York has but one ocean port, and yet it is so broad, deep, and grand, that it leads America in its enormous shipping trade. She sends her vessels into every port of the world, while the ships of her neighbor are restricted to local voyages.

A man may starve on a dozen half-learned trades or occupations; he may grow rich and famous upon one trade thoroughly mastered, even though it be the humblest.

Even Gladstone, with his ponderous yet active brain, says he cannot do two things at once; he throws his entire strength upon whatever he does. The intensest energy characterizes everything he undertakes, even his recreation. If such concentration of energy is necessary for the success of a Gladstone, what can we common mortals hope to accomplish by "scatteration?"

All great men have been noted for their power of concentration which makes them oblivious of everything outside their aim. Victor Hugo wrote his "Notre Dame" during the revolution of 1830, while the bullets were whistling across his garden. He shut himself up in one room, locking his clothes up, lest they should tempt him to go out into the street, and spent most of that winter wrapped in a big gray comforter, pouring his very life into his work.

Genius is intensity. Abraham Lincoln possessed such power of concentration that he could repeat quite correctly a sermon to which he had listened in his boyhood. Dr. O. W. Holmes, when an Andover student, riveted his eyes on the book he was studying as though he were reading a will that made him heir to a million.

A New York sportsman, in answer to an advertisement, sent twenty-five cents for a sure receipt to prevent a shotgun from scattering, and received the following; "Dear Sir: To keep a gun from scattering put in but a single shot."

It is the men who do one thing in this world who come to the front. Who is the favorite actor? It is a Jefferson, who devotes a lifetime to a "Rip Van Winkle," a Booth, an Irving, a Kean, who plays one character until he can play it better than any other man living, and not the shallow players who impersonate all parts. It is the man who never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality. It is an Edison, a Morse, a Bell, a Howe, a Stephenson, a Watt. It is Adam Smith, spending ten years on the "Wealth of Nations." It is Gibbon, giving twenty years to his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It is a Hume, writing thirteen hours a day on his "History of England." It is a Webster, spending thirty-six years on his dictionary. It is a Bancroft, working twenty-six years on his "History of the United States." It is a Field, crossing the ocean fifty times to lay a cable, while the world ridicules. It is a Newton, writing his "Chronology of Ancient Nations" sixteen times. It is a Grant, who proposes to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." These are the men who have written their names prominently in the history of the world.

A one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than the ten-talent man who scatters his energies and never knows exactly what he will do. The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers upon one thing, can accomplish something; the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. Drop after drop, continually falling, wears a passage through the hardest rock. The hasty tempest, as Carlyle points out, rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind.

A great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts all that is kindred along the stream of life.

A Yankee can splice a rope in many different ways; an English sailor only knows one way, but that is the best one. It is the one-sided man, the sharp-edged man, the man of single and intense purpose, the man of one idea, who turns neither to the right nor to the left, though a paradise tempt him, who cuts his way through obstacles and forges to the front. The time has gone forever when a Bacon can span universal knowledge; or when, absorbing all the knowledge of the times, a Dante can sustain arguments against fourteen disputants in the University of Paris, and conquer in them all. The day when a man can successfully drive a dozen callings abreast is a thing of the past. Concentration is the keynote of the century.

Scientists estimate that there is energy enough in less than fifty acres of sunshine to run all the machinery in the world, if it could be concentrated. But the sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without setting anything on fire; although these rays focused by a burning-glass would melt solid granite, or even change a diamond into vapor. There are plenty of men who have ability enough; the rays of their faculties, taken separately, are all right, but they are powerless to collect them, to bring them all to bear upon a single spot. Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have no power to concentrate their talents upon one point, and this makes all the difference between success and failure.

Chiseled upon the tomb of a disappointed, heart-broken king, Joseph II. of Austria, in the Royal Cemetery at Vienna, a traveler tells us, is this epitaph: "Here lies a monarch who, with the best of intentions, never carried out a single plan."

Sir James Mackintosh was a man of remarkable ability. He excited in every one who knew him the greatest expectations. Many watched his career with much interest, expecting that he would dazzle the world. But there was no purpose in his life. He had intermittent attacks of enthusiasm for doing great things, but his zeal all evaporated before he could decide what to do. This fatal defect in his character kept him balancing between conflicting motives; and his whole life was almost thrown away. He lacked power to choose one object and persevere with a single aim, sacrificing every interfering inclination. He vacillated for weeks trying to determine whether to use "usefulness" or "utility" in a composition.

One talent utilized in a single direction will do infinitely more than ten talents scattered. A thimbleful of powder behind a ball in a rifle will do more execution than a carload of powder unconfined. The rifle-barrel is the purpose that gives direct aim to the powder, which otherwise, no matter how good it might be, would be powerless. The poorest scholar in school or college often, in practical life, far outstrips the class leader or senior wrangler, simply because what little ability he has he employs for a definite object, while the other, depending upon his general ability and brilliant prospects, never concentrates his powers.

"A sublime self-confidence," says E. P. Whipple, "springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, lifts him altogether above the fear of danger and death, and communicates an almost superhuman audacity to his will."

* * * * * *



What a sublime spectacle is that of a man going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles which dishearten others, as though they were stepping-stones.

* * * * * *

It is fashionable to ridicule the man of one idea, but the men who have changed the front of the world have been men of a single aim. No man can make his mark on this age of specialties 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, who would make a breach in the compact conservatism of our civilization, must play all his guns on one point. A wavering aim, a faltering purpose, has no place in the nineteenth 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.

"Mr. A. often laughs at me," said a young American chemist, "because I have but one idea. He talks about everything, aims to excel in many things; but I have learned that, if I ever wish to make a breach, I must play my guns continually upon one point." This great chemist, when an obscure schoolmaster, used to study by the light of a pine knot in a log cabin. Not many years later he was performing experiments in electro-magnetism before English earls, and subsequently he was at the head of one of the largest scientific institutes of this country. This man was the late Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

Douglas Jerrold once knew a man who was familiar with twenty-four languages but could not express a thought in one of them.

We should guard against a talent which we cannot hope to practice in perfection, says Goethe. Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the matter has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching. An old proverb says: "The master of one trade will support a wife and seven children, and the master of seven will not support himself."

It is the single aim that wins. Men with monopolizing ambitions rarely live in history. They do not focus their powers long enough to burn their names indelibly into the roll of honor. Edward Everett, even with his magnificent powers, disappointed the expectations of his friends. He spread himself over the whole field of knowledge and elegant culture; but the mention of the name of Everett does not call up any one great achievement as does that of names like Garrison and Phillips. Voltaire called the Frenchman La Harpe an oven which was always heating, but which never cooked anything. Hartley Coleridge was splendidly endowed with talent, like Sir James Mackintosh, but there was one fatal lack in his character—he had no definite purpose, and his life was a failure. Unstable as water, he could not excel. Southey, his uncle, says:

"Coleridge has two left hands." He was so morbidly shy from living alone in his dreamland that he could not open a letter without trembling. He would often rally from his purposeless life, and resolve to redeem himself from the oblivion he saw staring him in the face; but, like Mackintosh, he remained a man of promise merely to the end of his life.

The world always makes way for the man with a purpose in him, like Bismarck or Grant. Look at Rufus Choate, concentrating all his attention first on one juryman, then on another, going back over the whole line again and again, until he has burned his arguments into their souls; until he has hypnotized them with his purpose; until they see with his eyes, think his thoughts, feel his sensations. He never stopped until he had projected his mind into theirs, and permeated their lives with his individuality. There was no escape from his concentration of purpose, his persuasive rhetoric, his convincing logic. "Carry the jury at all hazards," he used to say to young lawyers; "move heaven and earth to carry the jury, and then fight it out with the judge on the law questions as best you can."

The man who succeeds has a programme. He fixes his course and adheres to it. He lays his plans and executes them. He goes straight to his goal. He is not pushed this way and that every time a difficulty is thrown in his path; if he can't get over it he goes through it. Constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. The mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces.

This age of concentration calls, not for educated men merely, not for talented men, not for geniuses, not for jacks-of-all-trades, but for men who are trained to do one thing as well as it can be done. Napoleon could go through the drill of his soldiers better than any one of his men.

Stick to your aim. The constant changing of one's occupation is fatal to all success. After a young man has spent five or six years in a dry goods store, he concludes that he would rather sell groceries, thereby throwing away five years of valuable experience which will be of very little use to him in the grocery business; and so he spends a large part of his life drifting around from one kind of employment to another, learning part of each, but all of none, forgetting that experience is worth more to him than money, and that the years devoted to learning his trade or occupation are the most valuable. Half-learned trades, no matter if a man has twenty, will never give him a good living, much less a competency, while wealth is absolutely out of the question.

How many young men fail to reach the point of efficiency in one line of work before they get discouraged and venture into something else. How easy to see the thorns in one's own profession or vocation, and only the roses in that of another. A young man in business, for instance, seeing a physician riding about town in his carriage, visiting his patients, imagines that a doctor must have an easy, ideal life, and wonders that he himself should have embarked in an occupation so full of disagreeable drudgery and hardships. He does not know of the years of dry, tedious study which the physician has consumed, the months and perhaps years of waiting for patients, the dry detail of anatomy, the endless names of drugs and technical terms.

Scientists tell us that there is nothing in nature so ugly and disagreeable but intense light will make it beautiful. The complete mastery of one profession will render even the driest details interesting. The consciousness of thorough knowledge, the habit of doing everything to a finish, gives a feeling of strength, of superiority, which takes the drudgery out of an occupation. The more completely we master a vocation the more thoroughly we enjoy it. In fact, the man who has found his place and become master in it could scarcely be induced, even though he be a farmer, or a carpenter, or grocer, to exchange places with a governor or congressman. To be successful is to find your sphere and fill it, to get into your place and master it.

There is a sense of great power in a vocation after a man has reached the point of efficiency in it, the point of productiveness, the point where his skill begins to tell and bring in returns. Up to this point of efficiency, while he is learning his trade, the time seems to have been almost thrown away. But he has been storing up a vast reserve of knowledge of detail, laying foundations, forming his acquaintances, gaining his reputation for truthfulness, trustworthiness, and integrity, and in establishing his credit. When he reaches this point of efficiency, all the knowledge and skill, character, influence, and credit thus gained come to his aid, and he soon finds that in what seemed almost thrown away lies the secret of his prosperity. The credit he established as a clerk, the confidence, the integrity, the friendships formed, he finds equal to a large capital when he starts out for himself and takes the highway to fortune; while the young man who half learned several trades, and got discouraged and stopped just short of the point of efficiency, just this side of success, is a failure because he didn't go far enough; he did not press on to the point at which his acquisition would have been profitable.

In spite of the fact that nearly all very successful men have made a life work of one thing, we see on every hand hundreds of young men and women flitting about from occupation to occupation, trade to trade, in one thing to-day and another to-morrow,—just as though they could go from one thing to another by turning a switch, as if they could run as well on another track as on the one they have left, regardless of the fact that no two careers have the same gauge, that every man builds his own road upon which another's engine cannot run either with speed or safety. This fickleness, this disposition to shift about from one occupation to another, seems to be peculiar to American life, so much so that, when a young man meets a friend whom he has not seen for some time, the commonest question to ask is, "What are you doing now?" showing the improbability or uncertainty that he is doing to-day what he was doing when they last met.

Some people think that if they "keep everlastingly at it" they will succeed, but this is not so. Working without a plan is as foolish as going to sea without a compass. A ship which has broken its rudder in mid-ocean may "keep everlastingly at it," may keep on a full head of steam, driving about all the time, but it never arrives anywhere, it never reaches any port unless by accident, and if it does find a haven, its cargo may not be suited to the people, the climate, or conditions among which it has accidentally drifted. The ship must be directed to a definite port, for which its cargo is adapted, and where there is a demand for it, and it must aim steadily for that port through sunshine and storm, through tempest and fog. So a man who would succeed must not drift about rudderless on the ocean of life. He must not only steer straight toward his destined port when the ocean is smooth, when the currents and winds serve, but he must keep his course in the very teeth of the wind and the tempest, and even when enveloped in the fogs of disappointment and mists of opposition. The Cunarders do not stop for fogs or storms; they plow straight through the rough seas with only one thing in view, their destined port, and no matter what the weather is, no matter what obstacles they encounter, their arrival in port can be predicted to within a few hours. It is practically certain, too, that the ship destined for Boston will not turn up at Fort Sumter or at Sandy Hook.

On the prairies of South America there grows a flower that always inclines in the same direction. If a traveler loses his way and has neither compass nor chart, by turning to this flower he will find a guide on which he can implicitly rely; for no matter how the rains descend or the winds blow, its leaves point to the north. So there are many men whose purposes are so well known, whose aims are so constant, that no matter what difficulties they may encounter, or what opposition they may meet, you can tell almost to a certainty where they will come out. They may be delayed by head winds and counter currents, but they will always head for the port and will steer straight towards the harbor. You know to a certainty that whatever else they may lose, they will not lose their compass or rudder.

Whatever may happen to a man of this stamp, even though his sails may be swept away and his mast stripped to the deck, though he may be wrecked by the storms of life, the needle of his compass will still point to the North Star of his hope. Whatever comes, his life will not be purposeless. Even a wreck that makes its port is a greater success than a full-rigged ship with all its sails flying, with every mast and rope intact; which merely drifts into an accidental harbor.

To fix a wandering life and give it direction is not an easy task, but a life which has no definite aim is sure to be frittered away in empty and purposeless dreams. "Listless triflers," "busy idlers," "purposeless busybodies," are seen everywhere. A healthy, definite purpose is a remedy for a thousand ills which attend aimless lives. Discontent, dissatisfaction, flee before a definite purpose. An aim takes the drudgery out of life, scatters doubts to the winds, and clears up the gloomiest creeds. What we do without a purpose begrudgingly, with a purpose becomes a delight, and no work is well done nor healthily done which is not enthusiastically done. It is just that added element which makes work immortal.

Mere energy is not enough, it must be concentrated on some steady, unwavering aim. What is more common than "unsuccessful geniuses," or failures with "commanding talents"? Indeed, "unrewarded genius" has become a proverb. Every town has unsuccessful educated and talented men. But education is of no value, talent is worthless, unless it can do something, achieve something. Men who can do something at everything, and a very little at anything, are not wanted in this age. In Paris, a certain Monsieur Kenard announced himself as a "public scribe, who digests accounts, explains the language of flowers, and sells fried potatoes." Jacks-at-all-trades are at war with the genius of the times.

What this age wants is young men and women who can do one thing without losing their identity or individuality, or becoming narrow, cramped, or dwarfed. Nothing can take the place of an all-absorbing purpose; education will not, genius will not, talent will not, industry will not, will-power will not. The purposeless life must ever be a failure. What good are powers, faculties, unless we can use them for a purpose? What good would a chest of tools do a carpenter unless he could use them? A college education, a head full of knowledge, are worth little to the men who cannot use them to some definite end.

The man without a purpose never leaves his mark upon the world. He has no individuality; he is absorbed in the mass, lost in the crowd, weak, wavering, incompetent. His outlines of individuality and angles of character have been worn off, planed down to suit the common thought until he has, as a man, been lost in the throng of humanity.

"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity."

What a great directness of purpose may be traced in the career of Pitt, who lived—ay, and died—for the sake of political supremacy. From a child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public career worthy of his illustrious father. Even from boyhood he bent all his energy to this one great purpose. He went straight from college to the House of Commons. In one year he was Chancellor of the Exchequer; two years later he was Prime Minister of England, and reigned virtually king for a quarter of a century. He was utterly oblivious of everything outside his aim; insensible to the claims of love, art, literature, living and steadily working for the sole purpose of wielding the governing power of the nation. His whole soul was absorbed in the overmastering passion for political power.

"Consider, my lord," said Rowland Hill to the Prime Minister of England, "that a letter to Ireland and the answer back would cost thousands upon thousands of my affectionate countrymen more than a fifth of their week's wages. If you shut the post office to them, which you do now, you shut out warm hearts and generous affections from home, kindred, and friends." The lad learned that it cost to carry a letter from London to Edinburgh, four hundred and four miles, one eighteenth of a cent, while the government charged for a simple folded sheet of paper twenty-eight cents, and twice as much if there was the smallest inclosure. Against the opposition and contempt of the post-office department he at length carried his point, and on January 10, 1840, penny postage was established throughout Great Britain. Mr. Hill was chosen to introduce the system, at a salary of fifteen hundred pounds a year. His success was most encouraging, but at the end of two years a Tory minister dismissed him without paying for his services, as agreed. The public was indignant, and at once contributed sixty-five thousand dollars; and, at the request of Queen Victoria, Parliament voted him one hundred thousand dollars and ten thousand dollars a year for life.

Christ knew that one affection rules in man's life when he said, "No man can serve two masters." One affection, one object, will be supreme in us. Everything else will be neglected and done with half a heart. One may have subordinate plans, but he can have but one supreme aim, and from this aim all others will take their character.

It is a great purpose which gives meaning to life, it unifies all our powers, binds them together in one cable; makes strong and united what was weak, separated, scattered.

"Painting is my wife and my works are my children," replied Michael Angelo when asked why he did not marry.

"Smatterers" are weak and superficial. Of what use is a man who knows a little of everything and not much of anything? It is the momentum of constantly repeated acts that tells the story. "Let thine eyes look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left." One great secret of St. Paul's power lay in his strong purpose. Nothing could daunt him, nothing intimidate. The Roman Emperor could not muzzle him, the dungeon could not appall him, no prison suppress him, obstacles could not discourage him. "This one thing I do" was written all over his work. The quenchless zeal of his mighty purpose burned its way down through the centuries, and its contagion will never cease to fire the hearts of men.

"Try and come home somebody," said the fond mother to Gambetta as she sent him off to Paris to school. Poverty pinched this lad hard in his little garret study and his clothes were shabby, but what of that? He had made up his mind to get on in the world. For years this youth was chained to his desk and worked like a hero. At last his opportunity came. Jules Favre was to plead a great cause on a certain day; but, being ill, he chose this young man, absolutely unknown, rough and uncouth, to take his place. For many years Gambetta had been preparing for such an opportunity, and he was equal to it, for he made one of the greatest speeches that up to that time had ever been made in France. That night all the papers in Paris were sounding the praises of this ragged, uncouth Bohemian, and soon all France recognized him as the Republican leader. This sudden rise was not due to luck or accident. He had been steadfastly working and fighting his way up against opposition and poverty for just such an occasion. Had he not been equal to it, it would only have made him ridiculous. What a stride; yesterday, poor and unknown, living in a garret, to-day, deputy elect, in the city of Marseilles, and the great Republican leader! The gossipers of France had never heard his name before. He had been expelled from the priest-making seminary as totally unfit for a priest and an utterly undisciplinable character. In two weeks, this ragged son of an Italian grocer arose in the Chamber, and moved that the Napoleon dynasty be disposed of and the Republic be declared established.

When Louis Napoleon had been defeated at Sedan and had delivered his sword to William of Prussia, and when the Prussian army was marching on Paris, the brave Gambetta went out of the besieged city in a balloon barely grazed by the Prussian guns, landed in Amiens, and by almost superhuman skill raised three armies of 800,000 men, provided for their maintenance, and directed their military operations. A German officer said, "This colossal energy is the most remarkable event of modern history, and will carry down Gambetta's name to remote posterity." This youth who was poring over his books in an attic while other youths were promenading the Champs Elysees, although but thirty-two years old, was now virtually dictator of France, and the greatest orator in the Republic. What a striking example of the great reserve of personal power, which, even in dissolute lives, is sometimes called out by a great emergency or sudden sorrow, and ever after leads the life to victory! When Gambetta found that his first speech had electrified all France, his great reserve rushed to the front, he was suddenly weaned from dissipation, and resolved to make his mark in the world. Nor did he lose his head in his quick leap into fame. He still lived in the upper room in the musty Latin quarter, and remained a poor man, without stain of dishonor, though he might easily have made himself a millionaire. When Gambetta died the "Figaro" said, "The Republic has lost its greatest man." American boys should study this great man, for he loved our country, and made our Republic the pattern for France.

There is no grander sight in the world than that of a young man fired with a great purpose, dominated by one unwavering aim. He is bound to win; the world stands one side and lets him pass; it always makes way for the man with a will in him. He does not have one half the opposition to overcome that the undecided, purposeless man has who, like driftwood, runs against all sorts of snags to which he must yield, because he has no momentum to force them out of his way. What a sublime spectacle it is to see a youth going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles, which dishearten others, as though they were but stepping-stones! Defeat, like a gymnasium, only gives him new power; opposition only doubles his exertions, dangers only increase his courage. No matter what comes to him, sickness, poverty, disaster, he never turns his eye from his goal.

"Duos qui sequitur lepores, neutrum capit."



CHAPTER VII.

SOWING AND REAPING.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.—GALATIANS.

Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.—G. D. BOARDMAN.

Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.—POPE.

How use doth breed a habit in a man.—SHAKESPEARE.

All habits gather, by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. DRYDEN.

Infinite good comes from good habits which must result from the common influence of example, intercourse, knowledge, and actual experience—morality taught by good morals.—PLATO.

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt till they are too strong to be broken.—SAMUEL JOHNSON.

Man is first startled by sin; then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed. Then man is impenitent, then obstinate, then he is damned.—JEREMY TAYLOR.

"Rogues differ little. Each began as a disobedient son."

In the great majority of things, habit is a greater plague than ever afflicted Egypt.—JOHN FOSTER.

You cannot in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be true if the habit of your life has been insincere.—F. W. ROBERTSON.

The tissue of the life to be, We weave with colors all our own; And in the field of destiny, We reap as we have sown. WHITTIER.

"Gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider your verdict," said the great lawyer, Lord Tenterden, as he roused from his lethargy a moment, and then closed his eyes forever. "Tete d'armee" (head of the army), murmured Napoleon faintly; and then, "on the wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior." "Give Dayrolles a chair," said the dying Chesterfield with his old-time courtesy, and the next moment his spirit spread its wings. "Young man, keep your record clean," thrilled from the lips of John B. Gough as he sank to rise no more. What power over the mind of man is exercised by the dominant idea of his life "that parts not quite with parting breath!" It has shaped his purpose throughout his earthly career, and he passes into the Great Unknown, moving in the direction of his ideal; impelled still, amid the utter retrocession of the vital force, by all the momentum resulting from his weight of character and singleness of aim.

* * * * * *



"Every one is the son of his own works."

"Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe: it is seed-grain that cannot die."

* * * * * *

"It is a beautiful arrangement in the mental and moral economy of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty may, by frequent repetitions, become a habit, and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around the neck like a wreath of flowers."

Cholera appeared mysteriously in Toulon, and, after a careful examination, the medical inspectors learned that the first victims were two sailors on the Montebello, a government transport, long out of service, anchored at the entrance to the port. For many years the vessel had been used for storing old, disused military equipments. Some of these had belonged to French soldiers who had died before Sebastopol. The doctors learned that the two poor sailors were seized, suddenly and mortally, a few days after displacing a pile of equipments stored deep in the hold of the Montebello. The cholera of Toulon came in a direct line from the hospital of Varna. It went to sleep, apparently gorged, on a heap of the cast-off garments of its victims, to awaken thirty years later to victorious and venomous life.

Professor Bonelli, of Turin, punctured an animal with the tooth of a rattlesnake. The head of this serpent had lain in a dry state for sixteen years exposed to the air and dust, and, moreover, had previously been preserved more than thirty years in spirits of wine. To his great astonishment an hour afterward the animal died. So habits, good or bad, that have been lost sight of for years will spring into a new life to aid or injure us at some critical moment, as kernels of wheat which had been clasped in a mummy's hand four thousand years sprang into life when planted. They only awaited moisture, heat, sunlight, and air to develop them.

In Jefferson's play, Rip Van Winkle, after he had "sworn off," at every invitation to drink said, "Well, this time don't count." True, as Professor James says, he may not have counted it, as thousands of others have not counted it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is in strict scientific literalness wiped out. There is a tendency in the nervous system to repeat the same mode of action at regularly recurring intervals. Dr. Combe says that all nervous diseases have a marked tendency to observe regular periods. "If we repeat any kind of mental effort at the same hour daily, we at length find ourselves entering upon it without premeditation when the time approaches."

"The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisition, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as soon as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we would guard against the plague."

The nervous system is a living phonograph, infinitely more marvelous than that of Edison. No sound, however feeble, however slight, can escape being recorded in its wonderful mechanism. Although the molecules of this living machine may all be entirely changed many times during a lifetime, yet these impressions are never erased or lost. They become forever fixed in the character. Like Rip Van Winkle, the youth may say to himself, I will do this just once "just to see what it is like," no one will ever know it, and "I won't count this time." The country youth says it when he goes to the city. The young man says it when he drinks "just to be social." Americans, who are good church people at home, say it when in Paris and Vienna. Yes, "just to see what it is like" has ruined many a noble life. Many a man has lost his balance and fallen over the precipice into the sink of iniquity while just attempting "to see what it was like." "If you have been pilot on these waters twenty-five years," said a young man to the captain of a steamer, "you must know every rock and sandbank in the river." "No, I don't, but I know where the deep water is."

Just one little lie to help me out of this difficulty; "I won't count this." Just one little embezzlement; no one will know it, and I can return the money before it will be needed. Just one little indulgence; I won't count it, and a good night's sleep will make me all right again. Just one small part of my work slighted; it won't make any great difference, and, besides, I am usually so careful that a little thing like this ought not to be counted.

But, my young friend, it will be counted, whether you will or not; the deed has been recorded with an iron pen, even to the smallest detail. The Recording Angel is no myth; it is found in ourselves. Its name is Memory, and it holds everything. We think we have forgotten thousands of things until mortal danger, fever, or some other great stimulus reproduces them to the consciousness with all the fidelity of photographs. Sometimes all one's past life will seem to pass before him in an instant; but at all times it is really, although unconsciously, passing before him in the sentiments he feels, in the thoughts he thinks, in the impulses that move him apparently without cause.

"Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

In a fable one of the Fates spun filaments so fine that they were invisible, and she became a victim of her cunning, for she was bound to the spot by these very threads.

Father Schoenmaker, missionary to the Indians, tried for years to implant civilization among the wild tribes. After fifteen years' labor he induced a chief to lay aside his blanket, the token of savagery; but he goes on to say, "It took fifteen years to get it off, and just fifteen minutes to get it on him again."

Physiologists say that dark-colored stripes similar to those on the zebra reappear, after a hundred or a thousand generations, on the legs and shoulders of horses, asses, and mules. Large birds on sea islands where there are no beasts to molest them lose the power of flight.

After a criminal's head had been cut off his breast was irritated, and he raised his hands several times as if to brush away the exciting cause. It was said that the cheek of Charlotte Corday blushed on being struck by a rude soldier after the head had been severed from the body.

Humboldt found in South America a parrot which was the only living creature that could speak a word of the language of a lost tribe. The bird retained the habit of speech after his teachers had died.

Caspar Hauser was confined, probably from birth, in a dungeon where no light or sound from the outer world, could reach him. At seventeen he was still a mental infant, crying and chattering without much apparent intelligence. When released, the light was disagreeable to his eyes; and, after the babbling youth had been taught to speak a few words, he begged to be taken back to the dungeon. Only cold and dismal silence seemed to satisfy him. All that gave pleasure to others gave his perverted senses only pain. The sweetest music was a source of anguish to him, and he could eat only his black crust without violent vomiting.

Deep in the very nature of animate existence is that principle of facility and inclination, acquired by repetition, which we call habit. Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. In spite of the protests of his weakened will the trained nerves continue to repeat the acts even when the doer abhors them. What he at first chooses, at last compels. Man is as irrevocably chained to his deeds as the atoms are chained by gravitation. You can as easily snatch a pebble from gravitation's grasp as you can separate the minutest act of life from its inevitable effect upon character and destiny. "Children may be strangled," says George Eliot, "but deeds never, they have an indestructible life." The smirched youth becomes the tainted man.

Practically all the achievements of the human race are but the accomplishments of habit. We speak of the power of Gladstone to accomplish so much in a day as something marvelous; but when we analyze that power we find it composed very largely of the results of habit. His mighty momentum has been rendered possible only by the law of the power of habit. He is now a great bundle of habits, which all his life have been forming. His habit of industry no doubt was irksome and tedious at first, but, practiced so conscientiously and persistently, it has gained such momentum as to astonish the world. His habit of thinking, close, persistent, and strong, has made him a power. He formed the habit of accurate, keen observation, allowing nothing to escape his attention, until he could observe more in half a day in London than a score of men who have eyes but see not. Thus he has multiplied himself many times. By this habit of accuracy he has avoided many a repetition; and so, during his lifetime, he has saved years of precious time, which many others, who marvel at his achievements, have thrown away.

Gladstone early formed the habit of cheerfulness, of looking on the bright side of things, which, Sydney Smith says, "is worth a thousand pounds a year." This again has saved him enormous waste of energy, as he tells us he has never yet been kept awake a single hour by any debate or business in Parliament. This loss of energy has wasted years of many a useful life, which might have been saved by forming the economizing habit of cheerfulness.

The habit of happy thought would transform the commonest life into harmony and beauty. The will is almost omnipotent to determine habits which virtually are omnipotent. The habit of directing a firm and steady will upon those things which tend to produce harmony of thought would produce happiness and contentment even in the most lowly occupations. The will, rightly drilled, can drive out all discordant thoughts, and produce a reign of perpetual harmony. Our trouble is that we do not half will. After a man's habits are well set, about all he can do is to sit by and observe which way he is going. Regret it as he may, how helpless is a weak man bound by the mighty cable of habit, twisted from the tiny threads of single acts which he thought were absolutely within his control!

Drop a stone down a precipice. By the law of gravitation it sinks with rapidly increasing momentum. If it falls sixteen feet the first second, it will fall forty-eight feet the next second, and eighty feet the third second, and one hundred and forty-four feet the fifth second, and if it falls for ten seconds it will in the last second rush through three hundred and four feet till earth stops it. Habit is cumulative. After each act of our lives we are not the same person as before, but quite another, better or worse, but not the same. There has been something added to, or deducted from, our weight of character.

"There is no fault nor folly of my life," said Ruskin; "that does not rise against me and take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession, of sight, of understanding; and every past effort of my life, every gleam of righteousness or good in it, is with me now to help me in my grasp of this hour and its vision."

"Many men of genius have written worse scrawls than I do," said a boy at Rugby when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanship; "it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault." Ten years later, when he had become an officer in the Crimea, his illegible copy of an order caused the loss of many brave men.

"Resist beginning" was an ancient motto which is needed in our day. The folly of the child becomes the vice of the youth, and then the crime of the man.

In 1880 one hundred and forty-seven of the eight hundred and ninety-seven inmates of Auburn State Prison were there on a second visit. What brings the prisoner back the second, third, or fourth time? It is habit which drives him on to commit the deed which his heart abhors and which his very soul loathes. It is the momentum made up from a thousand deviations from the truth and right, for there is a great difference between going just right and a little wrong. It is the result of that mysterious power which the repeated act has of getting itself repeated again and again.

When a woman was dying from the effects of her husband's cruelty and debauchery from drink she asked him to come to her bedside, and pleaded with him again for the sake of their children to drink no more. Grasping his hand with her thin, long fingers, she made him promise her: "Mary, I will drink no more till I take it out of this hand which I hold in mine." That very night he poured out a tumbler of brandy, stole into the room where she lay cold in her coffin, put the tumbler into her withered hand, and then took it out and drained it to the bottom. John B. Gough told this as a true story. How powerless a man is in the presence of a mighty habit, which has robbed him of will-power, of self-respect, of everything manly, until he becomes its slave!

Walpole tells of a gambler who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy, and his companions began to bet upon his chances of recovery. When the physician came they refused to let him bleed the man because they said it would affect the bet. When President Garfield was hanging between life and death men bet heavily upon the issue, and even sold pools.

No disease causes greater horror or dread than cholera; yet when it is once fastened upon a victim he is perfectly indifferent, and wonders at the solicitude of his friends. His tears are dried; he cannot weep if he would. His body is cold and clammy and feels like dead flesh, yet he tells you he is warm, and calls for ice water. Have you never seen similar insensibility to danger in those whose habits are already dragging them to everlasting death?

Etherized by the fascinations of pleasure, we are often unconscious of pain while the devil amputates the fingers, the feet and hands, or even the arms and legs of our character. But oh, the anguish that visits the sad heart when the lethe passes away, and the soul becomes conscious of virtue sacrificed, of manhood lost.

The leper is often the last to suspect his danger, for the disease is painless in its early stages. A leading lawyer and public official in the Sandwich Islands once overturned a lighted lamp on his hand, and was surprised to find that it caused no pain. At last it dawned upon his mind that he was a leper. He resigned his offices and went to the leper's island, where he died. So sin in its early stages is not only painless but often even pleasant.

The hardening, deadening power of depraving habits and customs was strikingly illustrated by the Romans.

Under Nero, the taste of the people had become so debauched and morbid that no mere representation of tragedy would satisfy them. Their cold-blooded selfishness, the hideous realism of "a refined, delicate, aesthetic age," demanded that the heroes should actually be killed on the stage. The debauched and sanguinary Romans reckoned life worthless without the most thrilling experiences of horror or delight. Tragedy must be genuine bloodshed, comedy, actual shame. When "The Conflagration" was represented on the stage they demanded that a house be actually burned and the furniture plundered. When "Laureolus" was played they demanded that the actor be really crucified and mangled by a bear, and he had to fling himself down and deluge the stage with his own blood. Prometheus must be really chained to his rock, and Dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull, and Orpheus be torn to pieces by a real bear, and Icarus was compelled to fly, even though it was known he would be dashed to death. When the heroism of "Mucius Scaevola" was represented, a real criminal was compelled to thrust his hand into the flame without a murmur, and stand motionless while it was being burned. Hercules was compelled to ascend the funeral pyre, and there be burned alive. The poor slaves and criminals were compelled to play their parts heroically until the flames enveloped them.

The pirate Gibbs, who was executed in New York, said that when he robbed the first vessel his conscience made a hell in his bosom; but after he had sailed for years under the black flag, he could rob a vessel and murder all the crew, and lie down and sleep soundly. A man may so accustom himself to error as to become its most devoted slave, and be led to commit the most fearful crimes in order to defend it, or to propagate it.

When Gordon, the celebrated California stage-driver, was dying, he put his foot out of the bed and swung it to and fro. When asked why he did so, he replied, "I am on the down grade and cannot get my foot on the brake."

In our great museums you see stone slabs with the marks of rain that fell hundreds of years before Adam lived, and the footprint of some wild bird that passed across the beach in those olden times. The passing shower and the light foot left their prints on the soft sediment; then ages went on, and the sediment hardened into stone; and there the prints remain, and will remain forever. So the child, so soft, so susceptible to all impressions, so joyous to receive new ideas, treasures them all up, gathers them all into itself, and retains them forever.

A tribe of Indians attacked a white settlement and murdered the few inhabitants. A woman of the tribe, however, carried away a very young infant, and reared it as her own. The child grew up with the Indian children, different in complexion, but like them in everything else. To scalp the greatest possible number of enemies was, in his view, the most glorious thing in the world. While he was still a youth he was seen by some white traders, and by them conducted back to civilized life. He showed great relish for his new life, and especially a strong desire for knowledge and a sense of reverence which took the direction of religion, so that he desired to become a clergyman. He went through his college course with credit, and was ordained. He fulfilled his function well, and appeared happy and satisfied. After a few years he went to serve in a settlement somewhere near the seat of war which was then going on between Britain and the United States, and before long there was fighting not far off. He went forth in his usual dress—black coat and neat white shirt and neckcloth. When he returned he was met by a gentleman of his acquaintance, who was immediately struck by an extraordinary change in the expression of his face and the flush on his cheek, and also by his unusually shy and hurried manner. After asking news of the battle the gentleman observed, "But you are wounded?" "No." "Not wounded! Why, there is blood upon the bosom of your shirt!" The young man quickly crossed his hands firmly upon his breast; and his friend, supposing that he wished to conceal a wound which ought to be looked to, pulled open his shirt, and saw—what made the young man let fall his hands in despair. From between his shirt and his breast the friend took out—a bloody scalp! "I could not help it," said the poor victim of early habits, in an agonized voice. He turned and ran, too swiftly to be overtaken, betook himself to the Indians, and never more appeared among the whites.

An Indian once brought up a young lion, and finding him weak and harmless, did not attempt to control him. Every day the lion gained in strength and became more unmanageable, until at last, when excited by rage, he fell upon his master and tore him to pieces. So what seemed to be an "innocent" sin has grown until it strangled him who was once its easy master.

Beware of looking at sin, for at each view it is apt to become better looking.

Habit is practically, for a middle-aged person, fate; for is it not practically certain that what I have done for twenty years I shall repeat to-day? What are the chances for a man who has been lazy and indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious; or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane, foul-mouthed man, clean and chaste?

A Grecian flute-player charged double fees for pupils who had been taught by inferior masters, on the ground that it was much harder to undo than to form habits.

Habit tends to make us permanently what we are for the moment. We cannot possibly hear, see, feel, or experience anything which is not woven in the web of character. What we are this minute and what we do this minute, what we think this minute, will be read in the future character as plainly as words spoken into the phonograph can be reproduced in the future.

"The air itself," says Babbage, "is one vast library on whose pages are written forever all that man has ever said, whispered, or done." Every sin you ever committed becomes your boon companion. It rushes to your lips every time you speak, and drags its hideous form into your imagination every time you think. It throws its shadow across your path whichever way you turn. Like Banquo's ghost, it will not down. You are fastened to it for life, and it will cling to you in the vast forever. Do you think yourself free? You are a slave to every sin you ever committed. They follow your pen and work their own character into every word you write.

Rectitude is only the confirmed habit of doing what is right. Some men cannot tell a lie: the habit of truth telling is fixed, it has become incorporated with their nature. Their characters bear the indelible stamp of veracity. You and I know men whose slightest word is unimpeachable; nothing could shake our confidence in them. There are other men who cannot speak the truth: their habitual insincerity has made a twist in their characters, and this twist appears in their speech.

"I never in my life committed more than one act of folly," said Rulhiere one day in the presence of Talleyrand. "But where will it end?" inquired the latter. It was lifelong. One mistake too many makes all the difference between safety and destruction.

How many men would like to go to sleep beggars and wake up Rothschilds or Astors? How many would fain go to bed dunces and wake up Solomons? You reap what you have sown. Those who have sown dunce-seed, vice-seed, laziness-seed, always get a crop. They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

Habit, like a child, repeats whatever is done before it. Oh, the power of a repeated act to get itself repeated again and again! But, like the wind, it is a power which we can use to force our way in its very teeth as does the ship, and thus multiply our strength, or we can drift with it without exertion upon the rocks and shoals of destruction.

What a great thing it is to "start right" in life. Every young man can see that the first steps lead to the last, with all except his own. No, his little prevarications and dodgings will not make him a liar, but he can see that they surely will in John Smith's case. He can see that others are idle and on the road to ruin, but cannot see it in his own case.

There is a wonderful relation between bad habits. They all belong to the same family. If you take in one, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, you will soon have the whole. A man who has formed the habit of laziness or idleness will soon be late at his engagements; a man who does not meet his engagements will dodge, apologize, prevaricate, and lie. I have rarely known a perfectly truthful man who was always behind time.

You have seen a ship out in the bay swinging with the tide and the waves; the sails are all up, and you wonder why it does not move, but it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So we often see a young man apparently well equipped, well educated, and we wonder that he does not advance toward manhood and character. But, alas! we find that he is anchored to some secret vice, and he can never advance until he cuts loose.

"The first crime past compels us into more, And guilt grows fate that was but choice before."

"Small habits, well pursued betimes, May reach the dignity of crimes."

Thousands can sympathize with David when he cried, "My sins have taken such hold upon me that I am not able to look up; my heart faileth me." Like the damned spot of blood on Lady Macbeth's hand, these foul spots on the imagination will not out. What a penalty nature exacts for physical sins. The gods are just, and "of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us."

Plato wrote over his door, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." The greatest value of the study of the classics and mathematics comes from the habits of accurate and concise thought which it induces. The habit-forming portion of life is the dangerous period, and we need the discipline of close application to hold us outside of our studies.

Washington at thirteen wrote one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior, and was most careful in the formation of all habits. Franklin, too, devised a plan of self-improvement and character building. No doubt the noble characters of these two men, almost superhuman in their excellence, are the natural result of their early care and earnest striving towards perfection.

Fielding, describing a game of cards between Jonathan Wild, of pilfering propensities, and a professional gambler, says: "Such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him."

"Habit," says Montaigne, "is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the aid of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance against which we have no more the courage nor the power so much as to lift up our eyes." It led a New York man actually to cut off his hand with a cleaver under a test of what he would resort to, to get a glass of whiskey. It has led thousands of nature's noblemen to drunkards' and libertines' graves.

Gough's life is a startling illustration of the power of habit, and of the ability of one apparently a hopeless slave to break his fetters and walk a free man in the sunlight of heaven. He came to America when nine years old. Possessed of great powers of song, of mimicry, and of acting, and exceedingly social in his tastes, a thousand temptations

"Widened and strewed with flowers the way Down to eternal ruin."

"I would give this right hand to redeem those terrible seven years of dissipation and death," he would often say in after years when, with his soul still scarred and battered from his conflict with blighting passion, he tearfully urged young men to free themselves from the chains of bestial habits.

In the laboratory of Faraday a workman one day knocked into a jar of acid a silver cup; it disappeared, was eaten up by the acid, and could not be found. The question came up whether it could ever be found. The great chemist came in and put certain chemicals into the jar, and every particle of the silver was precipitated to the bottom. The mass was then sent to a silversmith, and the cup restored. So a precious youth who has fallen into the sink of iniquity, lost, dissolved in sin, can only be restored by the Great Chemist.

What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. "Out of a church of twenty-seven hundred members, I have never had to exclude a single one who was received while a child," said Spurgeon. It is the earliest sin that exercises the most influence for evil.

Benedict Arnold was the only general in the Revolution that disgraced his country. He had great military talent, wonderful energy, and a courage equal to any emergency. But Arnold did not start right. Even when a boy he was despised for his cruelty and his selfishness. He delighted in torturing insects and birds that he might watch their sufferings. He scattered pieces of glass and sharp tacks on the floor of the shop he was tending, to cut the feet of the barefooted boys. Even in the army, in spite of his bravery, the soldiers hated him, and the officers dared not trust him.

Let no man trust the first false step Of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice, Whose steep descent in last perdition ends. YOUNG

Years ago there was a district lying near Westminster Abbey, London, called the "Devil's Acre,"—a school for vicious habits, where depravity was universal; where professional beggars were fitted with all the appliances of imposture; where there was an agency for the hire of children to be carried about by forlorn widows and deserted wives, to move the compassion of street-giving benevolence; where young pickpockets were trained in the art and mystery which was to conduct them in due course to an expensive voyage for the good of their country to Botany Bay.

Victor Hugo describes a strange association of men in the seventeenth century who bought children and distorted and made monstrosities of them to amuse the nobility with; and in cultured Boston there is an association of so-called "respectable men," who have opened thousands of "places of business" for deforming men, women, and children's souls. But we deform ourselves with agencies so pleasant that we think we are having a good time, until we become so changed and enslaved that we scarcely recognize ourselves. Vice, the pleasant guest which we first invited into our heart's parlor, becomes vulgarly familiar, and intrenches herself deep in our very being. We ask her to leave, but she simply laughs at us from the hideous wrinkles she has made in our faces, and refuses to go. Our secret sins defy us from the hideous furrows they have cut in our cheeks. Each impure thought has chiseled its autograph deep into the forehead, too deep for erasure, and the glassy, bleary eye adds its testimony to our ruined character.

The devil does not apply his match to the hard coal; but he first lights the shavings of "innocent sins," and the shavings the wood, and the wood the coal. Sin is gradual. It does not break out on a man until it has long circulated through his system. Murder, adultery, theft, are not committed in deed until they have been committed in thought again and again.

"Don't write there," said a man to a boy who was writing with a diamond pin on a pane of glass in the window of a hotel. "Why not?" inquired the boy. "Because you can't rub it out." Yet the glass might have been broken and all trace of the writing lost, but things written upon the human soul can never be removed, for the tablet is immortal.

"In all the wide range of accepted British maxims," said Thomas Hughes, "there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one, as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will, and I defy you to make anything but a devil's maxim of it. What man, be he young, old, or middle-aged, sows, that, and nothing else, shall he reap. The only thing to do with wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come with long, tough roots and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them."

We scatter seeds with careless hand, And dream we ne'er shall see them more; But for a thousand years Their fruit appears, In weeds that mar the land. JOHN KEBLE.

Theodora boasted that she could draw Socrates' disciples away from him. "That may be," said the philosopher, "for you lead them down an easy descent whereas I am forcing them to mount to virtue—an arduous ascent and unknown to most men."

"When I am told of a sickly student," said Daniel Wise, "that he is 'studying himself to death,' or of a feeble young mechanic, or clerk, that his hard work is destroying him, I study his countenance, and there, too often, read the real, melancholy truth in his dull, averted, sunken eye, discolored skin, and timid manner. These signs proclaim that the young man is in some way violating the laws of his physical nature. He is secretly destroying himself. Yet, say his unconscious and admiring friends, 'He is falling a victim to his own diligence!' Most lame and impotent conclusion! He is sapping the very source of life, and erelong will be a mind in ruins or a heap of dust. Young man, beware of his example! 'Keep thyself pure;' observe the laws of your physical nature, and the most unrelaxing industry will never rob you of a month's health, nor shorten the thread of your life; for industry and health are companions, and long life is the heritage of diligence."

"How shall I a habit break?" As you did that habit make. As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse. Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist. Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stand. As we builded, stone by stone, We must toil, unhelped, alone, Till the wall is overthrown.

But remember, as we try, Lighter every test goes by; Wading in, the stream grows deep Toward the centre's downward sweep; Backward turn, each step ashore Shallower is than that before.

Ah, the precious years we waste Leveling what we raised in haste; Doing what must be undone, Ere content or love be won! First across the gulf we cast Kite-borne threads till lines are passed, And habit builds the bridge at last. JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.



CHAPTER VIII.

SELF-HELP.

I learned that no man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.—PESTALOZZI.

What I am I have made myself.—HUMPHRY DAVY.

Be sure, my son, and remember that the best men always make themselves.—PATRICK HENRY.

Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? BYRON.

God gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest.—J. G. HOLLAND.

Never forget that others will depend upon you, and that you cannot depend upon them.—DUMAS, FILS.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven.—SHAKESPEARE.

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to obtain a living.—WENDELL PHILLIPS.

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives himself.—GIBBON.

What the superior man seeks is in himself: what the small man seeks is in others.—CONFUCIUS.

Who waits to have his task marked out, Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. LOWELL.

In battle or business, whatever the game, In law, or in love, it's ever the same: In the struggle for power, or scramble for pelf, Let this be your motto, "Rely on yourself." SAXE.

Let every eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent. SHAKESPEARE.

"Colonel Crockett makes room for himself!" exclaimed a backwoods congressman in answer to the exclamation of the White House usher to "Make room for Colonel Crockett!" This remarkable man was not afraid to oppose the head of a great nation. He preferred being right to being president. Though rough, uncultured, and uncouth, Crockett was a man of great courage and determination.

Garfield was the youngest member of the House of Representatives when he entered, but he had not been in his seat sixty days before his ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there. He succeeded because all the world in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because when once in the front he played his part with an intrepidity and a commanding ease that were but the outward evidences of the immense reserves of energy on which it was in his power to draw.



"Take the place and attitude which belong to you," says Emerson, "and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man with profound unconcern to set his own rate."

Grant was no book soldier. Some of his victories were contrary to all instructions in military works. He did not dare to disclose his plan to invest Vicksburg, and he even cut off all communication on the Mississippi River for seven days that no orders could reach him from General Halleck, his superior officer; for he knew that Halleck went by books, and he was proceeding contrary to all military theories. He was making a greater military history than had ever been written up to that time. He was greater than all books of tactics. The consciousness of power is everything. That man is strongest who owes most to himself.

"Man, it is within yourself," says Pestalozzi, "it is in the inner sense of your power that resides nature's instrument for your development."

Richard Arkwright, the thirteenth child, in a hovel, with no education, no chance, gave his spinning model to the world, and put a sceptre in England's right hand such as the queen never wielded.

"A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them," says Livy.

Solario, a wandering gypsy tinker, fell deeply in love with the daughter of the painter Coll' Antonio del Fiore, but was told that no one but a painter as good as the father should wed the maiden. "Will you give me ten years to learn to paint, and so entitle myself to the hand of your daughter?" Consent was given, Coll' Antonio thinking that he would never be troubled further by the gypsy. About the time that the ten years were to end the king's sister showed Coll' Antonio a Madonna and Child, which the painter extolled in terms of the highest praise. Judge of his surprise on learning that Solario was the artist. But later, his son-in-law surprised him even more by his rare skill.

Louis Philippe said he was the only sovereign in Europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots.

When asked to name his family coat-of-arms, a self-made President of the United States replied, "A pair of shirtsleeves."

"Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify," said James A. Garfield; "but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my acquaintance I have never known a man to be drowned who was worth the saving."

It is not the men who have inherited most, except it be in nobility of soul and purpose, who have risen highest; but rather the men with no "start" who have won fortunes, and have made adverse circumstances a spur to goad them up the steep mount, where

"Fame's proud temple shines afar."

To such men, every possible goal is accessible, and honest ambition has no height that genius or talent may tread, which has not felt the impress of their feet.

You may leave your millions to your son, but have you really given him anything? You cannot transfer the discipline, the experience, the power which the acquisition has given you; you cannot transfer the delight of achieving, the joy felt only in growth, the pride of acquisition, the character which trained habits of accuracy, method, promptness, patience, dispatch, honesty of dealing, politeness of manner have developed. You cannot transfer the skill, sagacity, prudence, foresight, which lie concealed in your wealth. It meant a great deal for you, but means nothing to your heir. In climbing to your fortune, you developed the muscle, stamina, and strength which enabled you to maintain your lofty position, to keep your millions intact. You had the power which comes only from experience, and which alone enables you to stand firm on your dizzy height. Your fortune was experience to you, joy, growth, discipline, and character; to him it will be a temptation, an anxiety, which will probably dwarf him. It was wings to you, it will be a dead weight to him; it was education to you and expansion of your highest powers; to him it may mean inaction, lethargy, indolence, weakness, ignorance. You have taken the priceless spur—necessity—away from him, the spur which has goaded man to nearly all the great achievements in the history of the world.

You thought it a kindness to deprive yourself in order that your son might begin where you left off. You thought to spare him the drudgery, the hardships, the deprivations, the lack of opportunities, the meagre education, which you had on the old farm. But you have put a crutch into his hand instead of a staff; you have taken away from him the incentive to self-development, to self-elevation, to self-discipline and self-help, without which no real success, no real happiness, no great character is ever possible. His enthusiasm will evaporate, his energy will be dissipated, his ambition, not being stimulated by the struggle for self-elevation, will gradually die away. If you do everything for your son and fight his battles for him, you will have a weakling on your hands at twenty-one.

"My life is a wreck," said the dying Cyrus W. Field, "my fortune gone, my home dishonored. Oh, I was so unkind to Edward when I thought I was being kind. If I had only had firmness enough to compel my boys to earn their living, then they would have known the meaning of money." His table was covered with medals and certificates of honor from many nations, in recognition of his great work for civilization in mooring two continents side by side in thought, of the fame he had won and could never lose. But grief shook the sands of life as he thought only of the son who had brought disgrace upon a name before unsullied, the wounds were sharper than those of a serpent's tooth.

During the great financial crisis of 1857 Maria Mitchell, who was visiting England, asked an English lady what became of daughters when no property was left them. "They live on their brothers," was the reply. "But what becomes of the American daughters," asked the English lady, "when there is no money left?" "They earn it," was the reply.