One reason why we have such poor health is because we have been steeped in poor-health thought from infancy. We have been saturated with the idea that pain, physical suffering, and disease, are a part of life; necessary evils which can not be avoided. We have had it so instilled into us that robust health is the exception and could not be expected to be the rule that we have come to accept this unfortunate condition of things as a sort of fate from which we can not hope to get away.

The child hears so much sick talk, is cautioned so much about the dangers of catching all sorts of diseases, that he grows up with the conviction that physical discords, aches, pains, all discomfort and suffering, are a necessary part of his existence, that at any time disease is liable to overtake him and ruin his happiness and thwart his career.

Think of what the opposite training would do for the child; if he were taught that health is the ever-lasting fact and that disease is but the manifestation of the absence of harmony! Think what it would mean to him if he were trained to believe that abounding health, rich, full, complete, instead of sickness, that certainty instead of uncertainty were his birthright! Think what it would mean for him to expect this during all his growing years, instead of building into his consciousness the opposite, instead of being saturated with the sick thought and constantly being cautioned against disease and the danger of contracting it!

The child should be taught that God never created disease, and never intended that we should suffer; that we were made for abounding health and happiness, made for enjoyment not for pain—made to be happy, not miserable, to express harmony, not discord.

Children are extremely credulous. They are inclined to believe everything that an adult tells them, especially the nurse, the father and mother, and their older brothers and sisters. Even the things that are told them in jest they take very seriously; and their imaginations are so vivid and their little minds so impressionable that they magnify everything. They are often punished for telling falsehoods, when the fault is really due to their excessively active imagination.

Many ignorant or thoughtless parents and nurses constantly use fear as a means of governing children. They fill their little minds full of all sorts of fear stories and terror pictures which may mar their whole lives. They often buy soothing syrups and all sorts of sleeping potions to prevent the little ones from disturbing their rest at night, or to keep them quiet and from annoying them in the day time, and thus are liable to stunt their brain development.

Even if children were not seriously injured by fear, it would be wicked to frighten them, for it is wrong to deceive them. If there is anything in the world that is sacred to the parent or teacher, it is the unquestioned confidence of children.

I believe that the beginnings of deterioration in a great many people who go wrong could be traced to the forfeiting of the children's respect and confidence by the parents and teachers. We all know from experience that confidence once shaken is almost never entirely restored. Even when we forgive, we seldom forget; the suspicion often remains. There should never be any shadows between the child and his parents and teachers. He should always be treated with the utmost frankness, transparency, sincerity. The child's respect is worth everything to his parents. Nothing should induce them to violate it or to shake it. It should be regarded as a very sacred thing, a most precious possession.

Think of the shock which must come to a child when he grows up and discovers that those he has trusted implicitly and who seemed almost like gods to him have been deceiving him for years in all sorts of ways!

I have heard mothers say that they dreaded to have their children grow up and discover how they had deceived them all through their childhood; to have them discover that they had resorted to fear, superstition, and all sorts of deceits in order to govern or influence them.

Whenever you are tempted to deceive a child again, remember that the time will come when he will understand, and that he will receive a terrible shock when he discovers that you, up to whom he has looked with such implicit trust, such simple confidence, have deceived him.

Parents should remember that every distressing, blood-curdling story told to a child, every superstitious fear instilled into his young life, the mental attitude they bear towards him, the whole treatment they accord him, are making phonographic records in his nature which will be reproduced with scientific exactness in his future life.

Whatever you do, never punish a child when he is suffering with fear. It is a cruel thing to punish children the way most mothers and teachers do, anyway; but to punish a child when he is already quivering with terror is extremely distressing, and to whip a child when you are angry is brutal. Many children never quite forget or forgive a parent or teacher for this cruelty.

Parents, teachers, friends often put a serious stumbling-block in the way of a youth by suggesting that he ought to study for the ministry, or the law; to be a physician, an engineer, or enter some other profession or business for which he may be totally unfitted. I know a man whose career was nearly ruined by the suggestion of his grandmother when he was a child that she would educate him for the church, and that it was her wish for him to become a clergyman.

It was not that she saw in the little child any fitness for this holy office, but because she wanted a clergyman in the family, and she often reminded him that he must not disappoint her. The boy, who idolized his grandmother, pondered this thought until he became a young man. The idea possessed him so strongly that every time he tried to make a choice of a career the picture of a clergyman rushed first to his mind, and, although he could see no real reason why he should become a clergyman, the suggestion that he ought to worked like leaven in his nature and kept him from making any other choice until too late to enable him to succeed to any great extent.

I know a most brilliant and marvelously fascinating woman who is extremely ambitious to make a name for herself, but she is almost totally lacking in her ability to apply herself, even in the line where her talent is greatly marked. She seems to be abundantly endowed in every faculty and quality except this. Now, if her parents had known the secret of correcting mental deficiencies, building up weak faculties, this girl could have been so trained that she would probably have had a great career and made a world-wide name for herself.

I have in mind another woman, a most brilliant linguist, who speaks fluently seven languages. She is a most fascinating conversationalist and impresses one as having read everything, but, although in good health, she is an object of charity to-day, simply because she has never developed her practical faculties at all, and this because she was never trained to work, to depend upon herself even in little things when she was a child. She was fond of her books, was a most brilliant scholar, but never learned to be practical or to do anything herself. Her self-reliance and independence were never developed. All of her early friends predicted a brilliant future for her, but because of the very consciousness of possessing so many brilliant qualities and of the fact that she was flattered during all her student life and not obliged to depend upon herself for anything, she continued to exercise her strong scholarship faculties only, little dreaming that the neglect to develop her weaker ones would wreck her usefulness and her happiness.

It is not enough to possess ability. We must be able to use it effectively, and whatever interferes with its activity to that extent kills efficiency. There are many people who are very able in most qualities and yet their real work is seriously injured and often practically ruined, or they are thrown into the mediocre class, owing to some weakness or deficiency which might have been entirely remedied by cultivation and proper training in earlier life.

I know a man of superb ability in nearly every respect who is so timid and shy that he does not dare push himself forward or put himself in the position of greatest advantage, does not dare begin things. Consequently his whole life has been seriously handicapped.

If children could only be taught to develop a positive, creative mind, it would be of infinitely more value and importance to them than inheriting a fortune with a non-productive one. Youths should be taught that the most valuable thing to learn in life next to integrity is how to build their minds up to the highest possible producing point, the highest possible state of creative efficiency.

The most important part of the education of the future will be to increase the chances of success in life and lessen the danger of failure and the wrecking of one's career by building up weak and deficient faculties, correcting one-sided tendencies, so that the individual will become more level-headed, better balanced, and have a more symmetrical mind.

Many students leave school and college knowing a great deal, but without a bit of improvement in their self-confidence, their initiative ability. They are just as timid, shy, and self-depreciatory as before entering.

Now, what advantage is it to send a youth out into the world with a head full of knowledge but without the confidence or assurance to use it effectively, or the ability to grapple with life's problems with that vigor and efficiency which alone can bring success?

It is an unpardonable reflection upon a college which turns out youths who dare not say their souls are their own, who have not developed a vigorous self-confidence, assurance, and initiative. Hundreds of students are turned out of our colleges every year who would almost faint away if they were suddenly called upon to speak in public, to read a resolution, or even to put a motion.

The time will come when an education will enable a youth while upon his feet in public to express himself forcefully, to use the ability he has and summon his knowledge quickly. He will be so trained in self-control, in self-confidence, in level-headedness, that he will not be thrown off his guard in an emergency. The future education will mean that what the student knows will be available, that he can utilize it at will, that he will be trained to use it efficiently.

Many of our graduates leave college every year as weak and inefficient in many respects as when they began their education. What is education for if it is not to train the youth to be the master of his faculties, master of every situation, able to summon all of his reserves of knowledge and power at will?

A college graduate, timid, stammering, blushing, and confused, when suddenly called upon to use his knowledge whether in public or elsewhere, ought to be an unknown thing. Of what use is education which can not be summoned at will? Of what good are the reserves of learning which can not be marshaled quickly when we need them, which do not help one to be master of himself and the situation, whatever it may be?

The time will come when no child will be allowed to grow up without being taught to believe in himself, to have great confidence in his ability. This will be a most important part of his education, for if he believes in himself enough, he will not be likely to allow a single deficient faculty or weakness to wreck his career.

He should be reared in the conviction that he was sent into this world with a mission and that he is going to deliver it.

Every youth should be taught that it was intended he should fill a place in the world which no one else can fill; that he should expect to fill it, and train himself for it; taught that he was made in the Creator's image, that in the truth of his being he is divine, perfect, immortal, and that the image of God can not fail. He should be taught to think grandly of himself, to form a sublime estimate of his possibilities and of his future. This will increase his self-respect and self-development in well-proportioned living.



CHAPTER LVIII

THE HOME AS A SCHOOL OF GOOD MANNERS

Not long ago I visited a home where such exceptionally good breeding prevailed and such fine manners were practised by all the members of the family, that it made a great impression upon me.

This home is the most remarkable school of good manners, refinement, and culture generally, I have ever been in. The parents are bringing up their children to practise their best manners on all occasions. They do not know what company manners mean.

The boys have been taught to treat their sisters with as much deference as though they were stranger guests. The politeness, courtesy, and consideration which the members of this family show toward one another are most refreshing and beautiful. Coarseness, gruffness, lack of delicacy find no place there.

Both boys and girls have been trained from infancy to make themselves interesting, and to entertain and try to make others happy.

The entire family make it a rule to dress before dinner in the evening, just as they would if special company were expected.

Their table manners are specially marked. At table every one is supposed to be at his best, not to bring any grouch, or a long or sad face to it, but to contribute his best thought, his wittiest sayings, to the conversation. Every member of the family is expected to do his best to make the meal a really happy occasion. There is a sort of rivalry to see who can be the most entertaining, or contribute the spiciest bits of conversation. There is no indication of dyspepsia in this family, because every one is trained to laugh and be happy generally, and laughter is a fatal enemy of indigestion.

The etiquette of the table is also strictly observed. Every member of the family tries to do just the proper thing and always to be mindful of others' rights. Kindness seems to be practised for the joy of it, not for the sake of creating a good impression on friends or acquaintances. There is in this home an air of peculiar refinement which is very charming. The children are early taught to greet callers and guests cordially, heartily, in real Southern, hospitable fashion, and to make them feel that they are very welcome. They are taught to make every one feel comfortable and at home, so that there will be no sense of restraint.

As a result of this training the children have formed a habit of good behavior and are considered an acquisition to any gathering. They are not embarrassed by the awkward slips and breaks which are so mortifying to those who only wear their company manners on special occasions.

A stranger would almost think this home was a school of good breeding, and it is a real treat to visit these people. It is true the parents in this family have the advantage of generations of fine breeding and Southern hospitality back of them, which gives the children a great natural advantage. There is an atmosphere of chivalry and cordiality in this household which is really refreshing.

Many parents seem to expect that their children will pick up their good manners outside of the home, in school, or while visiting. This is a fatal mistake. Every home should be a school of good manners and good breeding. The children should be taught that there is nothing more important than the development of an interesting personality, an attractive presence, and an ability to entertain with grace and ease. They should be taught that the great object of life is to develop a superb personality, a noble manhood and womanhood.

There is no art like that of a beautiful behavior, a fine manner, no wealth greater than that of a pleasing personality.



CHAPTER LIX

MOTHER

"All that I am or hope to be," said Lincoln, after he had become President, "I owe to my angel mother."

"My mother was the making of me," said Thomas Edison, recently. "She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt that I had some one to live for; some one I must not disappoint."

"All that I have ever accomplished in life," declared Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist, "I owe to my mother."

"To the man who has had a good mother, all women are sacred for her sake," said Jean Paul Richter.

The testimony of great men in acknowledgment of the boundless debt they owe to their mothers would make a record stretching from the dawn of history to to-day. Few men, indeed, become great who do not owe their greatness to a mother's love and inspiration.

How often we hear people in every walk of life say, "I never could have done this thing but for my mother. She believed in me, encouraged me when others saw nothing in me."

"A kiss from my mother made me a painter," said Benjamin West.

A distinguished man of to-day says: "I never could have reached my present position had I not known that my mother expected me to reach it. From a child she made me feel that this was the position she expected me to fill; and her faith spurred me on and gave me the power to attain it."

Everything that a man has and is he owes to his mother. From her he gets health, brain, encouragement, moral character, and all his chances of success.

"In the shadow of every great man's fame walks his mother," says Dorothy Dix. "She has paid the price of his success. She went down into the Valley of the Shadow to give him life, and every day for years and years thereafter she toiled incessantly to push him on toward his goal.

"She gave the labor of her hands for his support; she poured into him ambition when he grew discouraged; she supplemented his weakness with her strength; she filled him with her hope and faith when his own failed.

"At last he did the Big Thing, and people praised him, and acclaimed him, and nobody thought of the quiet, insignificant little woman in the background, who had been the real power behind the throne. Sometimes even the king himself forgets who was the kingmaker."

Many a man is enjoying a fame which is really due to a self-effacing, sacrificing mother. People hurrah for the governor, or mayor, or congressman, but the real secret of his success is often tucked away in that little unknown, unappreciated, unheralded mother. His education and his chance to rise may have been due to her sacrifices.

It is a strange fact that our mothers, the molders of the world, should get so little credit and should be so seldom mentioned among the world's achievers. The world sees only the successful son; the mother is but a round in the ladder upon which he has climbed. Her name or face is seldom seen in the papers; only her son is lauded and held up to our admiration. Yet it was that sweet, pathetic figure in the background that made his success possible.

The woman who merits the greatest fame is the woman who gives a brilliant mind to the world. The mothers of great men and women deserve just as much honor as the great men and women themselves, and they will receive it from the better understanding of the coming days.

"A wife may do much toward polishing up a man and boosting him up the ladder, but unless his mother first gave him the intellect to scintillate and the muscles to climb with, the wife labors in vain," continues Dorothy Dix, in the Evening Journal.

"You can not make a clod shine. You can not make a mollusk aspire. You must have the material to work with, to produce results.

"By the time a man is married his character is formed, and he changes very little. His mother has made him; and no matter how hard she tries, there is very little that his wife can do toward altering him.

"It is not the philosophies, the theories, the code of ethics that a man acquires in his older years that really influence him. It is the things that he learned at his mother's knee, the principles that she instilled in him in his very cradle, the taste and habits that she formed, the strength and courage that she breathed into him.

"It is the childish impressions that count. It is the memory of whispered prayers, of bedtime stories, of old ideals held unfalteringly before a boy's gaze; it is half-forgotten songs, and dim visions of heroes that a mother taught her child to worship, that make the very warp and woof of the soul.

"It is the pennies, that a mother teaches a boy to save and the self-denial that she inculcates in doing it, that form the real foundation of the fortune of the millionaire.

"It is the mother that loves books, and who gives her sons her love of learning, who bestows the great scholars, the writers, and orators, on the world.

"It is the mother that worships science, who turns the eyes of the child upon her breast up to the wonder of the stars, and who teaches the little toddler at her side to observe the marvel of beast, and bird, and flower, and all created things, whose sons become the great astronomers and naturalists, and biologists."

The very atmosphere that radiates from and surrounds the mother is the inspiration and constitutes the holy of holies of family life.

"In my mother's presence," said a prominent man, "I become for the time transformed into another person."

How many of us have felt the truth of this statement! How ashamed we feel when we meet her eyes, that we have ever harbored an unholy thought, or dishonorable suggestion! It seems impossible to do wrong while under that magic influence. What revengeful plans, what thoughts of hatred and jealousy, have been scattered to the four winds while in the mother's presence! Her children go out from communion with her resolved to be better men, nobler women, truer citizens.

"How many of us have stood and watched with admiration the returning victor of some petty battle, cheering until we were hoarse, exhausting ourselves with the vehemence of our enthusiasm," says a writer, "when right beside us, possibly touching our hand, was one greater than he? One whose battle has not been petty—whose conflict has not been of short duration, but has for us fought many a severe fight.

"When we had the scarlet fever or diphtheria and not one would come near us, who held the cup of cold water to our fever-parched lips? Who bent over us day and night and fought away with almost supernatural strength the greatest of all enemies—death? The world's greatest heroine—Mother! Who is it that each Sunday dinner-time chose the neck of the chicken that we might have the juicy wing or breast or leg? Who is it stays home from the concert, the social, the play, that we may go with the others and not be stinted for small change? Who is it crucifies her love of pretty clothes, her desire for good things, her longing for pleasure that we may have all these? Who is it? Mother!"

The greatest heroine in the world is the mother. No one else makes such sacrifices, or endures anything like the suffering that she uncomplainingly endures for her children.

What is the giving of one's life in battle or in a wreck at sea to save another, in comparison with the perpetual sacrifice of many mothers of a living death lasting for half a century or more? How the world's heroes dwindle in comparison with the mother heroine! There is no one in the average family, the value of whose services begins to compare with those of the mother, and yet there is no one who is more generally neglected or taken advantage of. She must remain at home evenings, and look after the children, when the others are out having a good time. Her cares never cease. She is responsible for the housework, for the preparation of meals; she has the children's clothes to make or mend, there is company to be entertained, darning to be done, and a score of little duties which must often be attended to at odd moments, snatched from her busy days, and she is often up working at night, long after every one else in the house is asleep.

No matter how loving or thoughtful the father may be, the heavier burdens, the greater anxieties, the weightier responsibilities of the home, of the children, usually fall on the mother. Indeed, the very virtues of the good mother are a constant temptation to the other members of the family, especially the selfish ones, to take advantage of her. They seem to take it for granted that they can put all their burdens on the patient, uncomplaining mother; that she will always do anything to help out, and to enable the children to have a good time; and in many homes, sad to say, the mother, just because of her goodness, is shamefully imposed upon and neglected. "Oh, mother won't mind, mother will stay at home." How often we hear remarks like this from thoughtless children!

It is always the poor mother on whom the burden falls; and the pathetic thing is that she rarely gets much credit or praise.

Many mothers in the poor and working classes practically sacrifice all that most people hold dearest in life for their children. They deliberately impair their health, wear themselves out, make all sorts of sacrifices, to send a worthless boy to college. They take in washing, go out house-cleaning, do the hardest and most menial work, in order to give their boys and girls an education and the benefit of priceless opportunities that they never had; yet, how often, they are rewarded only with total indifference and neglect!

Some time ago I heard of a young girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirit and vigor, who married and had four children. Her husband died penniless, and the mother made the most heroic efforts to educate the children. By dint of unremitting toil and unheard of sacrifices and privations she succeeded in sending the boys to college and the girls to a boarding-school. When they came home, pretty, refined girls and strong young men, abreast with all the new ideas and tastes of their times, she was a worn-out, commonplace old woman. They had their own pursuits and companions. She lingered unappreciated among them for two or three years, and then died, of some sudden failure of the brain. The shock of her fatal illness woke them to consciousness of the truth. They hung over her, as she lay prostrate, in an agony of grief. The oldest son, as he held her in his arms, cried: "You have been a good mother to us!" Her face brightened, her eyes kindled into a smile, and she whispered: "You never said so before, John." Then the light died out, and she was gone.

Many men spend more money on expensive caskets, flowers, and emblems of mourning than they ever spent on their poor, loving, self-sacrificing mothers for many years while alive. Men who, perhaps, never thought of carrying flowers to their mothers in life, pile them high on their coffins.

Who can ever depict the tragedies that have been enacted in the hearts of American mothers, who have suffered untold tortures from neglect, indifference, and lack of appreciation?

What a pathetic story of neglect many a mother's letters from her grown-up children could tell! A few scraggy lines, a few sentences now and then, hurriedly written and mailed—often to ease a troubled conscience—mere apologies for letters, which chill the mother heart.

I know men who owe their success in life to their mother; who have become prosperous and influential, because of the splendid training of the self-sacrificing mother, and whose education was secured at an inestimable cost to her, and yet they seldom think of carrying to her flowers, confectionery, or little delicacies, or of taking her to a place of amusement, or of giving her a vacation or bestowing upon her any of the little attentions and favors so dear to a woman's heart. They seem to think she is past the age for these things, that she no longer cares for them, that about all she expects is enough to eat and drink, and the simplest kind of raiment.

These men do not know the feminine heart which never changes in these respects, except to grow more appreciative of the little attentions, the little considerations, and thoughtful acts which meant so much to them in their younger days.

Not long ago I heard a mother, whose sufferings and sacrifices for her children during a long and trying struggle with poverty should have given her a monument, say, that she guessed she'd better go to an old ladies' home and end her days there. What a picture that was! An aged woman with white hair and a sweet, beautiful face; with a wonderful light in her eye; calm, serene, and patient, yet dignified, whose children, all of whom are married and successful, made her feel as if she were a burden! They live in luxurious homes, but have never offered to provide a home for the poor, old rheumatic mother, who for so many years slaved for them. They put their own homes, stocks, and other property in their wives' names, and while they pay the rent of their mother's meagerly furnished rooms and provide for her actual needs, they apparently never think what joy it would give her to own her own home, and to possess some pretty furnishings, and a few pictures.

In many cases men through thoughtlessness do not provide generously for their mothers even when well able to. They seem to think that a mother can live most anywhere, and most anyway; that if she has enough to supply her necessities she is satisfied. Just think, you prosperous business men, how you would feel if the conditions were reversed, if you were obliged to take the dependent, humiliating position of your mother!

Whatever else you are obliged to neglect, take no chances of giving your mother pain by neglecting her, and of thus making yourself miserable in the future.

The time may come when you will stand by her bedside, in her last sickness, or by her coffin, and wish that you had exchanged a little of your money for more visits and more attentions and more little presents to your mother; when you will wish that you had cultivated her more, even at the cost of making a little less money.

There is no one else in this world who can take your mother's place in your life. And there is no remorse like that which comes from the remembrance of ill-treating, abusing, or being unkind to one's mother. These things stand out with awful vividness and terrible clearness when the mother is gone forever from sight, and you have time to contrast your treatment with her long suffering, tenderness, and love, and her years of sacrifice for you.

One of the most painful things I have ever witnessed was the anguish of a son who had become wealthy and in his prosperity neglected the mother, whose sacrifices alone had made his success possible. He did not take the time to write to her more than twice a year, and then only brief letters. He was too busy to send a good long letter to the poor old lonely mother back in the country, who had risked her life and toiled and sacrificed for years for him! Finally, when he was summoned to her bedside in the country, in her last sickness, and realized that his mother had been for years without the ordinary comforts of life, while he had been living in luxury, he broke down completely. And while he did everything possible to alleviate her suffering, in the few last days that remained to her on earth, and gave her an imposing burial, what torture he must have suffered, at this pitiful picture of his mother who had sacrificed everything for him!

"The regrets for thoughtless acts and indifference to admonitions now felt and expressed by many living sons of dead mothers will, in time, be felt and expressed by the living sons of living mothers," says Richard L. Metcalfe, in the "Commoner." "The boys of to-day who do not understand the value of the mother's companionship will yet sing—with those who already know—this song of tribute and regret:

"'The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one apart, My rosary.

"'Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, To still a heart in absence wrung; I tell each bead unto the end, and there A cross is hung.

"'O memories that bless—and burn! Oh mighty gain and bitter loss! I kiss each bead and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross, Sweet heart, To kiss the cross.'"

No man worthy of the name ever neglects or forgets his mother.

I have an acquaintance, of very poor parentage, who had a hard struggle to get a start in the world; but when he became prosperous and built his beautiful home, he finished a suite of rooms in it especially for his mother, furnished them with all conveniences and comforts possible, and insisted upon keeping a maid specially for her. Although she lives with her son's family, she is made to feel that this part of the great home is her own, and that she is as independent as though she lived in her own house. Every son should be ambitious to see his mother as well provided for as his wife.

Really great men have always reverenced and cared tenderly for their mothers. President McKinley provided in his will that, first of all, his mother should be made comfortable for life.

The first act of Garfield, after he was inaugurated President, was to kiss his aged mother, who sat near him, and who said this was the proudest and happiest moment of her life.

Ex-President Loubet of France, even after his elevation to the presidency, took great pride in visiting his mother, who was a humble market gardener in a little French village. A writer on one occasion, describing a meeting between this mother and her son, says: "Her noted son awaited her in the market-place, as she drove up in her little cart loaded with vegetables. Assisting his mother to alight, the French President gave her his arm and escorted her to her accustomed seat. Then holding over her a large umbrella, to shield her from the threatening weather, he seated himself at her side, and mother and son enjoyed a long talk together."

I once saw a splendid young college graduate introduce his poor, plainly dressed old mother to his classmates with as much pride and dignity as though she was a queen. Her form was bent, her hands were calloused, she was prematurely old, and much of this deterioration was caused by all sorts of drudgery to help her boy to pay his college expenses.

I have seen other college men whose mothers had made similar sacrifices, and who were ashamed to have them attend their graduating exercises, ashamed to introduce them to their classmates.

Think of the humiliation and suffering of the slave mother, who has given all the best of her life to a large family, battling with poverty in her efforts to dignify her little home, and to give her children an education, when she realizes that she is losing ground intellectually, yet has no time or strength for reading, or self-culture, no opportunity for broadening her mental outlook by traveling or mingling with the world! But this is nothing compared to the anguish she endures, when, after the flower of her youth is gone and there is nothing left of her but the ashes of a burned-out existence, the shreds of a former superb womanhood, she awakes to the consciousness that her children are ashamed of her ignorance and desire to keep her in the background.

From babyhood children should be taught to look up to, not down on their mother. For that reason she should never appear before them in slovenly raiment, nor conduct herself in any way that would lessen their respect. She should keep up her intellectual culture that they may not advance beyond her understanding and sympathies.

No matter how callous or ungrateful a son may be, no matter how low he may sink in vice or crime, he is always sure of his mother's love, always sure of one who will follow him even to his grave, if she is alive and can get there; of one who will cling to him when all others have fled.

It is forever true, as Kipling poignantly expresses it in his beautiful verses on "Mother Love":

"'If I were hanged on highest hill, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose love would follow still, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

"'If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

"'If I were cursed of body and soul, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose prayer's would make me whole! Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!'"

One of the saddest sights I have ever seen was that of a poor, old, broken-down mother, whose life had been poured into her children, making a long journey to the penitentiary to visit her boy, who had been abandoned by everybody but herself. Poor old mother! It did not matter that he was a criminal, that he had disgraced his family, that everybody else had forsaken him, that he had been unkind to her—the mother's heart went out to him just the same. She did not see the hideous human wreck that crime had made. She saw only her darling boy, the child that God had given her, pure and innocent as in his childhood.

Oh, there is no other human love like this, which follows the child from the cradle to the grave, never once abandons, never once forsakes him, no matter how unfortunate or degenerate he may become.

"So your best girl is dead," sneeringly said a New York magistrate to a young man who was arrested for attempting suicide. "Who was she?" Without raising his eyes, the unfortunate victim burst into tears and replied, "She was my mother!" The smile vanished from the magistrate's face and, with tears in his eyes, he said, "Young man, go and try to be a good man, for your mother's sake." How little we realize what tragedy may be going on in the hearts of those whom we sneeringly condemn!

What movement set on foot in recent years, deserves heartier support than that for the establishment of a national Mothers' Day?

The day set apart as Mothers' Day by those who have inaugurated this movement is the second Sunday in May. Let us unite in doing all we can to make it a real Mothers' Day, by especially honoring our mothers; in the flesh, those of us who are so fortunate as to have our mothers with us; in the spirit, those who are not so fortunate.

If away from her, write a good, loving letter, or telephone or telegraph to the best mother who ever lived—your mother. Send her some flowers, an appropriate present; go and spend the day with her, or in some other way make her heart glad. Show her that you appreciate her, and that you give her credit for a large part of your success.

Let us do all we can to make up for past neglect of the little-known, half-appreciated, unheralded mothers who have had so little credit in the past, and are so seldom mentioned among the world's achievers, by openly, and especially in our hearts, paying our own mothers every tribute of honor, respect, devotion, and gratitude that love and a sense of duty can suggest. Let us acknowledge to the world the great debt we owe them by wearing, every one of us, boy and girl, man and woman, on Mothers' Day, a white carnation—the flower chosen as the symbol and emblem of motherhood.

Happily chosen emblem! What could more fittingly represent motherhood with its whiteness symbolizing purity; its lasting qualities, faithfulness; its fragrance, love; its wide field of growth, charity; its form, beauty!

What an impressive and beautiful tribute to motherhood it would be for a whole nation to unite one day in wearing its chosen emblem, and in song and speech, and other appropriate exercises, to honor its mothers!



CHAPTER LX

WHY SO MANY MARRIED WOMEN DETERIORATE

A woman writes me: "You would laugh if you knew the time I have had in getting the dollar which I enclose for your inspiring magazine. I would get a pound less of butter, a bar less of soap. I never have a cent of my own. Do you think it wrong of me to deceive my husband in this way? I either have to do this or give up trying at all."

There are thousands of women who work harder than their husbands and really have more right to the money, who are obliged to practise all sorts of deceit in order to get enough to buy clothing and other things essential to decent living.

The difficulty of extracting money from an unwilling husband has been the beginning of thousands of tragedies. The majority of husbands are inclined to exert a censorship over their wives' expenditures. I have heard women say that they would go without necessary articles of clothing and other requirements just as long as possible and worry for days and weeks before they could summon courage to ask for money, because they dreaded a scene and the consequent discord in the home. Many women make it a rule never to ask for money, except when the husband is leaving the house and in a hurry to get away. The disagreeable scene is thus cut as short as possible, as he has not time then to go into all the details of his wife's alleged extravagances and find out what has become of every cent of the money given her on some similar previous occasion.

The average man does not begin to realize how it humiliates his wife to feel that she must ask him for fifty cents, a dollar, or five dollars every time she needs it, and to tell him just exactly what she is going to do with it, and then perhaps be met with a sharp reproof for her extravagance of foolish expenditures.

Men who are extremely kind and considerate with their wives in most things are often contemptibly mean regarding money matters. Many a man who is generous with his tips and buys expensive cigars and orders costly lunches for himself and friends at the club because he wants to be considered a "good fellow," will go home at night and bicker with his wife over the smallest expenditure, destroying the whole peace of the household, when perhaps she does not spend as much upon herself as he does for cigars and drink.

Why is it that men are so afraid to trust their wives with money when they trust them implicitly with everything else, especially as women are usually much more economical than men would be in managing the home and providing for the children? A large part of the friction in the average home centers around money matters and could be avoided by a simple, definite understanding between husband and wife, and a business arrangement of household finances. A regular advance to the wife for the household and a certain sum for personal use which she need not account for, would do more to bring about peace and harmony in the majority of homes than almost anything else.

To be a slave to the home, as many women are, and then to be obliged to assume the attitude of a beggar for every little bit of money she needs for herself, or to have to give an accounting for every cent she spends and tell her lord and master what she did with her last money before she can get any more, is positively degrading.

When the husband gets ready to regard his wife as an equal partner in the marriage firm instead of as an employee with one share in a million-dollar company, or as merely a housekeeper; when he is willing to regard his income as much his wife's as his own and not put her in the position of a beggar for every penny she gets; when he will grant her the same privileges he demands for himself; when he is willing to allow his wife to live her own life in her own way without trying to "boss" her, we shall have more true marriages, happier homes, a higher civilization.

Some one says that a man is never so happy as when he has a few dollars his wife knows nothing about. And there is a great deal of truth in it. Men who are perfectly honest with their wives about most things are often secretive about money matters. They hoodwink them regarding their incomes and especially about any ready cash they have on hand.

No matter how much the average man may think of his wife, or how considerate he may be in other matters, he rarely considers that she has the same right to his cash that he has, although he may be boasting to outsiders of her superior management in matters of economy. He feels that he is the natural guardian of the money, as he makes it; that he has a little more right to it than has his wife, and that he must protect it and dole it out to her.

What disagreeable experiences, unfortunate bickerings, misunderstandings and family prejudice could be avoided if newly-married women would insist upon having a certain proportion of the income set aside for the maintenance of the home and for their own personal needs, without the censorship of their husbands and without being obliged to give an itemized account of their expenditures!

It is a rare thing to find a man who does not waste ten times as much money on foolish things as does his wife, and yet he would make ten times the talk about his wife's one-tenth foolishness as his own ten-tenths.

On the other hand, thousands of women, starving for affection, protest against their husband's efforts to substitute money for it—to satisfy their cravings, their heart-hunger, with the things that money can buy.

It is an insult to womanhood to try to satisfy her nature with material things, while the affections are famishing for genuine sympathy and love, for social life, for contact with the great, throbbing world outside. Women do admire beautiful things; but there is something they admire infinitely more. Luxuries do not come first in any real woman's desires. She prefers poverty with love to luxury with an indifferent or loveless husband.

How gladly would these women whose affections are blighted by cold indifference or the unfaithfulness of their husbands, exchange their liberal allowance, their luxuries, for genuine sympathy and affection!

One of the most pathetic spectacles in American life is that of the faded, outgrown wife, standing helpless in the shadow of her husband's prosperity and power, having sacrificed her youth, beauty, and ambition—nearly everything that the feminine mind holds dear—to enable an indifferent, selfish, brutish husband to get a start in the world.

It does not matter that in her unselfish effort to help him she burned up much of her attractiveness over the cooking stove; that she lost more of it at the washtub, in scrubbing and cleaning, and rearing and caring for their children during the slavery of her early married life; it does not matter how much she suffered during those terrible years of poverty and privation. Just as soon as the selfish husband begins to get prosperous, finds that he is succeeding, feels his power, he often begins to be ashamed of the woman who has given up everything to make his success possible.

It is a sad thing to see any human being whose life is blighted by the lack of love; but it is doubly pathetic to see a woman who has given everything to the man she loved and who gets in return only her board and clothes and an allowance, great or small.

Some men seem to think that the precept, "Man does not live by bread alone," was not meant to include woman. They can not understand why she should not be happy and contented if she has a comfortable home and plenty to eat and wear. They would be surprised to learn that many a wife would gladly give up luxuries and live on bread and water, if she could only have her husband's sympathy in her aspirations, his help and encouragement in the unfolding of her stifled talents.

I know a very able, promising young man who says that if he had had a rich father he never would have developed his creative power; that his ambition would have been strangled; that it was the desperate struggle to make a place for himself in the world that developed the real man in him.

This young man married a poor girl who had managed by the hardest kind of work and sacrifice to pay her way through college. She had just begun to develop her power, to feel her wings, when her husband caged her in his home, took away her highest incentive for self-development. He said that a man who could not support a wife without her working had no business to marry. He dressed his wife like a queen; gave her horses and carriages and servants. But all the time he was discouraging her from developing her self-reliance, taking away all motives for cultivating her resourcefulness and originality.

At first the wife was very eager to work. Her ambition rebelled against the gilded chains by which she was bound. She was restless, nervous, and longed to use her powers to do something for herself and the world.

But her husband did not believe in a woman doing the things she wished to do. He wanted his wife to look pretty and fresh when he returned from his business at night; to keep young and to shine in society. He was proud of her beauty and vivacity. He thought he loved her, but it was a selfish love, for real love has a tender regard for a person's highest good, for that person's sake.

Gradually the glamour of society, the lethe of a luxurious life, paralyzed her ambition, which clamored less and less peremptorily for recognition, until at length she subsided into a life of almost total inaction.

Multitudes of women in this country to-day are vegetating in luxurious homes, listless, ambitionless, living narrow, superficial, rutty lives, because the spur of necessity has been taken away from them; because their husbands, who do not want them to work, have taken them out of an ambition-arousing environment.

But a life of leisure is not the only way of paralyzing the development of a wife's individuality. It can be done just as effectively by her becoming a slave of her family. I believe that the average wife is confined to her home a great deal too much.

Many women do not seem to have any existence outside of the little home orbit; do not have any special interests or pleasures to speak of apart from their husbands. They have been brought up to think that wives have very little purpose in life other than to be the slaves and playthings of their lords and masters, to bear and bring up children, and to keep meekly in the background.

The wife who wishes to hold her husband's affection, if he is ambitious, must continue to grow, must keep pace with him mentally. She must make a continual investment in self-improvement and in intellectual charm so that her mental growth will compensate for the gradual loss of physical charm. She must keep her husband's admiration, and if he is a progressive man he is not likely to admire a wife who stands still mentally. Admiration is a very important part of love.

You may be very sure that if you have an ambitious husband you must do something to keep up with him besides lounging, idling about the home, reading silly novels, dressing stylishly and waiting for him to return at night. If he sees that your sun rises and sets in him, that you have little interest outside, that you are not broadening and deepening your life in other ways by extending your interests, reaching out for self-enlargement, self-improvement, he will be disappointed in you, and this will be a great strain upon his love.

It is impossible for a girl who has had only a little schooling to appreciate the transforming power that comes from liberal education and broad culture. For the sake of her husband and children and her own peace of mind and satisfaction, she should try to improve herself in every possible way. Think of what it means to be able to surround one's home with an atmosphere of refinement, culture and superior intelligence! The quality of one's own ideals has a great deal to do with the quality of the ideals of one's family.

Even considered alone from the standpoint of self-protection, as a safeguard, a woman ought to get a liberal education; a college education, if possible. The conditions of home life in this country are such that it is very difficult for the wife to keep up with her husband's growth, to keep pace with him, because he is constantly in an ambition-arousing, stimulating environment. Unless she is unusually ambitious and has great power of application and concentration and plenty of leisure, she is likely to drop behind her husband.

As a rule, the husband has infinitely more to encourage and stimulate him than has the wife. Success itself is a tremendous tonic. The consciousness of perpetual triumph, of conquering things, is a great stimulus.

It is true that women have developed more admirable and loving qualities in their home life than have men; but during all these centuries, while women have been shut up in the home, men have been touching hands with the great, busy world, absorbing knowledge of human nature and broadening their minds by coming into contact with men and things. They have developed independence, stamina, strength, by being compelled to solve the larger, more practical problems of life.

The business man and the professional man are really in a perpetual school, a great practical university. The strenuous life, however dangerous, is essentially educative. The man has the incalculable advantage of a great variety of experiences and of freshness of view. He is continually coming in contact with new people, new things, being molded by a vast number of forces in the busy world which never touch the wife.

If women, equally with men, do not continue to grow and expand after marriage, how can we expect race improvement? Woman must ascend to higher, wider planes, or both man and woman must descend. "Male and female created He them." There is no separating them; they must rise or fall together.

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free."

Many a man has tired of his wife because she has not kept pace with him; because, instead of growing broader and keener as the years pass, she has become narrow. It never occurs to him that the fault may be wholly his own. In the early years of their married life he perhaps laughed at her "dreams," as he called her longings for self-improvement. He discouraged, if he did not actually oppose, every effort she made to grow to the full stature of her womanhood. His indifference or hostility quenched the hopes she had indulged before marriage. The bitterness of her disappointment crushed her spirit. She lost her buoyancy and enthusiasm and gradually sank to the level of a household drudge. And the husband wonders what has changed the joyous, high-spirited girl he married into the dull, apathetic woman who now performs her duties like an automaton.

There are to-day thousands of wives doing the work of ordinary housemaids, who, putting it on a low standard, are smothering ability to earn perhaps more money than the men who enslave them, if they only had an opportunity to unfold the powers which God has given them; but they have been brought up from infancy to believe that marriage is the only real career for a woman, that these longings and hungerings for self-expression are to be smothered, covered up by the larger duties of a wife and mother.

If the husbands could change places with their wives for a year, they would feel the contracting, narrowing influence in which the average wife lives. Their minds would soon cease to reach out, they would quickly feel the pinching, paralyzing effect of the monotonous existence, of doing the same things every day, year in and year out. The wives, on the other hand, would soon begin to broaden out. Their lives would become richer, fuller, more complete, from contact with the world, from the constant stretching of their minds over large problems.

I have heard men say that remaining in the home on Sundays or holidays just about uses them up; that it is infinitely harder and more trying than the same time spent in their occupations, and that while they love their children their incessant demands, the noise and confusion would drive them to drink if they had to bear it all the time. Strong men admit that they can not stand these little nerve-racking vexations of the home. Yet they wonder why the wife and mother is nervous, and seem to think that she can bear this sort of thing three hundred and sixty-five days in the year without going away and getting relief for a half-dozen days during the whole time. Few men would exchange places with their wives. Their hours are shorter, and when their day's work is done, it is done, while a wife and mother not only works all day, but is also likely to be called during the night. If any one is disturbed in the night by the children, it is the mother; rarely the father.

How long would men continue to conduct their business offices or factories with the primitive, senseless methods in vogue in the average kitchen to-day? Man puts all his inventiveness, his ingenuity, in improving methods, in facilitating his business and getting the drudgery out of his work in his office and factory, but the wife and mother still plods along in an ill-fitted kitchen and laundry. And yet our greatest modern inventor has said that the cares of the home could be reduced to a minimum and the servant problem solved if the perfectly practicable devices, for lightening household labor were adopted in the home!

"But," many of our men readers will say, "is there any profession in the world grander than that of home making? Can anything be more stimulating, more elevating, than home making and the rearing of children? How can such a vocation be narrowing or monotonous?"

Of course it is grand. There is nothing grander in the universe than the work of a true wife, a noble mother. But it would require the constitution of a Hercules, an infinitely greater patience than that of a Job, to endure such work with almost no change or outside variety, year in and year out, as many wives and mothers do, without breaking down.

The average man does not appreciate how almost devoid of incentives to broadmindedness, to many-sidedness, to liberal growth, the home life of many women is.

There is a disease called arrested development, in which the stature of the adult remains that of a child, all physical growth and expansion having stopped.

One of the most pitiable phases of American life and one of the most discouraging elements in our civilization is the suppressed wife who is struggling with arrested development after marriage.

I have known of beautiful young wives who went to their husbands with the same assurance of confidence and trust as to their hopes and ambitions with which a child would approach its mother, only to meet with a brutal rebuff for even venturing to have an ambition which did not directly enhance the husband's comfort or convenience in his home.

It is a strange fact that most men think that when a woman marries she goes to her new home with as rigid vows as the monks take on entering the monastery, or the nuns the convent, and they regard the suggestion of a career for her, which does not directly bear upon the home, as domestic treason.

There are some women, especially sensitive ones, who would never again tell their husbands of their hopes and aspirations after they had been laughed at and ridiculed a few times, but would be forever silent, even when the canker of bitter disappointment was consuming them.

Suppose a girl has the brains and the ability of a George Eliot and she marries a young business man who thinks that writing articles or books or devoting a large part of her time to music is all nonsense; that her place is at home, taking care of it and bringing up her children, and denies her the right to exercise her talent. How would he like to have the conditions reversed? It is true that woman is peculiarly fitted for the home, and every normal woman should have a home of her own, but her career should not be confined or limited to it any more than a man's. I do not see why she should not be allowed to live the life normal to her; why she should be denied the right of self-expression, any more than the man. And I regard that man as a tyrant who tries to cramp her in the natural expression of her ambition or sneers at, nags, and criticizes her for seeking to bring out, to unfold, the sacred thing which the Creator has given her. This is one of her inalienable rights which no man should dare interfere with. If he does, he deserves the unhappiness which is likely to come to his home.

A wife should neither be a drudge nor a dressed-up doll; she should develop herself by self-effort, just as her husband develops himself. She should not put herself in a position where her inventiveness, resourcefulness, and individuality will be paralyzed by lack of motive.

We hear a great deal about the disinclination of college girls to marry. If this is a fact, it is largely due to the unfairness of men. The more education girls get, the more they will hesitate to enter a condition of slavery, even under the beautiful guise of home.

Is it any wonder that so many girls refuse to marry, refuse to take chances of suppressing the best thing in them? Is it any wonder that they protest against putting themselves in a position where they will not be able to deliver to the world the sacred message which the Creator has given them?

I believe in marriage, but I do not believe in that marriage which paralyzes self-development, strangles ambition, discourages evolution and self-growth, and which takes away the life purpose.

To be continually haunted by the ghosts of strangled talents and smothered faculties prevents real contentment and happiness. Many a home has been made miserable, not because the husband was not kind and affectionate, not because there was not enough to eat and to wear, but because the wife was haunted with unrealized hopes and disappointed ambitions and expectations.

Is there anything more pitiful than such a stifled life with its crushed hopes? Is there anything sadder than to go through life conscious of talents and powers which we can not possibly develop; to feel that the best thing in us must be strangled for the want of opportunity, for the lack of appreciation even by those who love us best; to know that we can never by any possibility reach our highest expression, but must live a sordid life when under different conditions a higher would be possible?

A large part of the marital infelicity about which we hear so much comes from the husband's attempt to cramp his wife's ambition and to suppress her normal expression. A perversion of native instinct, a constant stifling of ambition, and the longing to express oneself naturally, gradually undermine the character and lead to discontentment and unhappiness. A mother who is cramped and repressed transmits the seeds of discontent and one-sided tendencies to her children.

The happiest marriages are those in which the right of husband and wife to develop broadly and naturally along individual lines has been recognized by each. The noblest and most helpful wives and mothers are those who develop their powers to their fullest capacity.

Woman is made to admire power, and she likes to put herself under the domination of a masterful man and rest in his protection. But it must be a voluntary obedience which comes from admiration of original force, of sturdy, rugged, masculine qualities.

The average man can not get away from the idea of his wife's service to him personally; that she is a sort of running mate, not supposed to win the race, but to help to pull him along so that he will win it. He can not understand why she should have an ambition which bears no direct relation to his comfort, his well-being, his getting on in the world.

The very suggestion of woman's inferiority, that she must stand in the man's shadow and not get ahead of him, that she does not have quite the same rights in anything that he has, the same property rights, the same suffrage rights; in other words, the whole suggestion of woman's inferiority, has been a criminal wrong to her. Many women who are advocating woman's suffrage perhaps would not use the ballot if they had it. Their fight is one for freedom to do as they please, to live their own lives in their own way. The greatest argument in the woman's suffrage movement is woman's protest against unfair, unjust treatment by men. Man's opposition to woman suffrage is merely a relic of the old-time domestic barbarism. It is but another expression of his determination to "boss" everybody and everything about him.

The time will come when men will be ashamed that they ever opposed woman's suffrage. Think of a man considering it right and just for his most ignorant workman to have an equal vote with himself on public matters and yet denying the right to his educated wife and daughters!



CHAPTER LXI

THRIFT

"Mony a mickle makes a muckle."—SCOTCH PROVERB.

"A penny saved is a penny earned."—ENGLISH SAYING.

"Beware of little extravagances; a small leak will sink a big ship."—FRANKLIN.

"No gain is more certain than that which proceeds from the economical use of what we have."—LATIN PROVERB.

"Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can."—JOHN WESLEY.

"All fortunes have their foundation laid in economy."—J. G. HOLLAND.

In the philosophy of thrift, the unit measure of prosperity is always the smallest of coins current. Thrift is measured not by the pound but by the penny, not by the dollar but by the cent. Thus any person in receipt of an income or salary however small finds it in his power to practise thrift and to lay the foundation of prosperity.

The word thrift in its origin means the grasping or holding fast the things that we have. It implies economy, carefulness, as opposed to waste and extravagance. It involves self-denial and frugal living for the time being, until the prosperity which grows out of thrift permits the more liberal indulgence of natural desires.

One of the primary elements of thrift is to spend less than you earn, to save something however small from the salary received, to lay aside at regular intervals when possible some part of the money earned or made, in provision for the future.

"Every boy should realize, in starting out, that he can never accumulate money unless he acquires the habit of saving," said Russell Sage. "Even if he can save only a few cents at the beginning, it is better than saving nothing at all; and he will find, as the months go on, that it becomes easier for him to lay by a part of his earnings. It is surprising how fast an account in a savings bank can be made to grow, and the boy who starts one and keeps it up stands a good chance of enjoying a prosperous old age. Some people who spend every cent of their income on their living expenses are always bewailing the fact that they have never become rich. They pick out some man who is known to have made a fortune and speak of him as being 'lucky.' There is practically no such thing as luck in business, and the boy who depends upon it to carry him through is very likely not to get through at all. The men who have made a success of their lives are men who started out right when they were boys. They studied while at school, and when they went to work, they didn't expect to be paid wages for loafing half the time. They weren't always on the lookout for an 'easy snap' and they forged ahead, not waiting always for the opportunities that never came, and bewailing the supposed fact that times are no longer what they used to be."

"A young man may have many friends," says Sir Thomas Lipton, "but he will find none so steadfast, so constant, so ready to respond to his wants, so capable of pushing him ahead, as a little leather-covered book, with the name of a bank on the cover. Saving is the first great principle of success. It creates independence, it gives a young man standing, it fills him with vigor, it stimulates him with proper energy; in fact, it brings to him the best part of any success,—happiness and contentment."

It is estimated that if a man will begin at twenty years of age to lay by twenty-six cents every working day, investing at seven per cent. compound interest, he will at seventy years of age have amassed thirty-two thousand dollars.

"Economy is wealth." This proverb has been repeated to most of us until we are either tired of it or careless of it, but it is well to remember that a saying becomes a proverb because of its truth and significance. Many a man has proved that if economy is not actual wealth, it is, in many cases, potentially so.

Professor Marshall, the noted English economist, estimates that $500,000,000 is spent annually by the British working classes for things that do nothing to make their lives nobler or happier. At a meeting of the British Association, the president, in an address to the economic section, expressed his belief that the simple item of food-waste alone would justify the above-mentioned estimate. One potent cause of waste to-day is that very many of the women do not know how to buy economically, and are neither passable cooks nor good housekeepers. Edward Atkinson estimated that in the United States the waste from bad cooking alone is over a hundred million dollars a year!

"Provided he has some ability and good sense to start with, is thrifty, honest, and economical," said Philip D. Armour, "there is no reason why any young man should not accumulate money and attain so-called success in life." When asked to what qualities he attributed his own success, Mr. Armour said: "I think that thrift and economy had much to do with it. I owe much to my mother's training and to a good line of Scotch ancestors, who have always been thrifty and economical."

"A young man should cultivate the habit of always saving something," said the late Marshall Field, "however small his income." It was by living up to this principle that Mr. Field became the richest and most successful merchant in the world. When asked by an interviewer, whom I sent to him on one occasion, what he considered the turning point in his career, he answered, "Saving the first five thousand dollars I ever had, when I might just as well have spent the modest salary I made. Possession of that sum, once I had it, gave me the ability to meet opportunities. That I consider the turning point."

The first savings prove the turning point in many a young man's career. But it is true that the lack of thrift is one of the greatest curses of modern civilization. Extravagance, ostentatious display, a desire to outshine others, is a vice of our age, and especially of our country. Some one has said that "investigation would place at the head of the list of the cause of poverty, wastefulness inherited from wasteful parents."

"If you know how to spend less than you get," said Franklin, "you have the philosopher's stone." The great trouble with many young people is that they do not acquire the saving habit at the start, and never find the "philosopher's stone." They don't learn to spend less than they get. If they learned that lesson in time, they would have little difficulty in making themselves independent. It is this first saving that counts.

John Jacob Astor said it cost him more to get the first thousand dollars than it did afterwards to get a hundred thousand; but if he had not saved the first thousand, he would have died poor.

"The first thing that a man should learn to do," says Andrew Carnegie, "is to save his money. By saving his money he promotes thrift,—the most valued of all habits. Thrift is the great fortune-maker. It draws the line between the savage and the civilized man. Thrift not only develops the fortune, but it develops, also, the man's character."

The savings bank is one of the greatest encouragements to thrift, because it pays a premium on deposits in the form of interest on savings. One of the greatest benefits ever extended by this government to its citizens is the opening of Postal Savings Banks where money can be deposited with absolute security against loss, because the Federal Government would have to fail before the bank could fail. The economies which enable a man to start a savings account are not usually pinching economies, not the stinting of the necessaries of life, but merely the foregoing of selfish pleasures and indulgences which not only drain the purse but sap the physical strength and undermine the health of brain and body.

The majority of people do not even try to practise self-control; are not willing to sacrifice present enjoyment, ease, for larger future good. They spend their money at the time for transient gratification, for the pleasure of the moment, with little thought for to-morrow, and then they envy others who are more successful, and wonder why they do not get on better themselves. They store up neither money nor knowledge for the future. The squirrels know that it will not always be summer. They store food for the winter, which their instinct tells them is coming; but multitudes of human beings store nothing, consume everything as they go along, so that when sickness or old age come, there is no reserve, nothing to fall back upon. They have sacrificed their future for the present.

The facility with which loose change slips away from these people is most insidious and unaccountable. I know young men who spend more for unnecessary things, what they call "incidentals"—cigars, drinks, all sorts of sweets, soda-water and nick-nacks of various kinds—than for their essentials, board, clothes, rooms. Then they wonder where all their money goes to, as they never keep any account of it, and rarely restrain a desire. They do not realize it when they fling out a nickel here and a dime there, pay a quarter for this and a quarter for that; but in a week it counts up, and in a year it amounts to a large sum.

"He never lays up a cent" is an expression which we hear every day regarding those who earn enough to enable them to save a competence.

A short time ago, a young man in New York complained to a friend of poverty and his inability to save money.

"How much do you spend for luxuries?" asked the friend.

"Luxuries!" answered the young man, "if by luxuries you mean cigars and a few drinks, I don't average,—including an occasional cigar or a glass of light wine for a friend,—over six dollars a week. Most of the boys spend more, but I make it a rule to be moderate in my expenditures."

"Ten years ago," declared the friend, "I was spending about the same every week for the same things, and paying thirty dollars a month for five inconvenient rooms up four flights of stairs. I had just married then, and one day I told my wife that I longed to have her in a place befitting her needs and refinement. 'John,' was her reply, 'If you love me well enough to give up two things which are not only useless, but extremely harmful to you, we can, for what those things alone cost, own a pretty home in ten years.'

"She sat down by me with a pencil and paper, and in less than five minutes had demonstrated that she was right. You dined with me in the suburbs the other day, and spoke of the beauty and convenience of our cottage. That cottage cost three thousand dollars, and every dollar of it was my former cigar and drink money. But I gained more than a happy wife and pretty home by saving; I gained self-control, better health, self-respect, a truer manhood, a more permanent happiness. I desire every young man who is trying to secure pleasure through smoking and drinking, whether moderately or immoderately, to make use of his judgment, and pencil and paper, and see if he is not forfeiting in a number of directions far more than he is gaining."

There is an impressive fact in the Gospel story of the Prodigal Son. The statement "he wasted his substance in riotous living" means more than that he wasted his funds. It implies that he wasted himself. And the most serious phase of all waste is not the waste of substance but the waste of self, of one's energy, capital, the lowering of morals, the undermining of character, the loss of self-respect which thrift encourages and promotes.

Thrift is not only one of the foundation-stones of a fortune, but also one of character. The habit of thrift improves the quality of the character.

The saving of money usually means the saving of a man. It means cutting off indulgences or avoiding vicious habits which are ruinous. It often means health in the place of dissipation. It often means a clear instead of a cloudy and muddled brain.

Furthermore, the saving habit indicates an ambition to get on and up in the world. It develops a spirit of independence, of self-reliance. A little bank account or an insurance policy indicates a desire to improve one's condition, to look up in life. It means hope, it means ambition, a determination to "make good."

People believe in the young man, who, without being mean or penurious, saves a part of his income. It is an indication of many sterling qualities. Business men naturally reason that if a young man is saving his money, he is also saving his energy, his vitality, from being wasted, that he is looking up in the world, and not down; that he is longheaded, wise; that he is determined not to sacrifice the larger gain of the future for the gratification of the hour.

A snug little bank account will add to your self-respect and self-confidence, because it shows that you have practicability, a little more independence. You can look the world in the face with a little more assurance, you can stand a little more erect and face the future with more confidence, if you know that there stands between yourself and want a little ready money or a safe investment of some kind.

The very consciousness that there is something back of you that will prove a barrier to the wolf which haunts so many human beings, and which is a terror and an efficiency destroyer to so many, will strengthen and buttress you at every point. It will relieve you from worry and anxiety about the future; it will unlock your faculties, release them from the restraint and suppression which uncertainty, fear, and doubt impose, and leave you free to do your best work.

Another great aid and incentive to thrift is the life insurance policy. "Primarily devised for the support of widows and orphans, life insurance practise has been developed so as to include the secure investment of surplus earnings in conjunction with the insurance of a sum payable at death."

I am a great believer in the efficiency of savings-banks as character builders; but life insurance has some greater advantages, especially in furnishing that imperious "must," that spur of necessity so important as a motive to most people.

People can put money into savings-banks when they get it, provided some stronger desire does not overcome the inclination; but they feel that they must pay their insurance premium.

Then again, money obtainable just by signing the name is so easily withdrawn for spending in all sorts of ways. This is one reason why I often recommend life insurance to young people as a means of saving. It has been of untold value as an object-lesson of the tremendous possibilities in acquiring the saving habit.

I believe that life insurance is doing a great deal to induce the habit of saving. When a young man on a salary or a definite income takes out an insurance policy he has a definite aim. He has made up his mind positively to save so much money every year from his income to pay his premium. Then it is easier for him to say "No," to the hundred-and-one alluring temptations to spend his money for this and that. He can say "No," then with emphasis, because he knows he must keep up his insurance.

An insurance policy has often changed the habits of an entire family from thriftlessness and spendthrift tendencies to thrift and order. The very fact that a certain amount must be saved from the income every week, or every month, or every year, has often developed the faculty of prudence and economy of the entire household. Everybody is cautioned to be careful because the premium must be paid. And oftentimes it is the first sign of a program or order,—system in the home.

The consciousness of a sacred obligation to make payments on that which means protection for those dear to you often shuts out a great deal of foolishness, and cuts out a lot of temptation to spend money for self-gratification and to cater to one's weak tendencies.

The life insurance policy has thus proved to be a character insurance as well, an insurance against silly expenditures, an insurance against one's own weak will power, or vicious, weak tendencies; a real protection against one's self, one's real enemy.

Among the sworn enemies of thrift may be named going into debt, borrowing money, keeping no itemized account of daily expenditures, and buying on the instalment plan. That great English preacher Spurgeon said that debt, dirt, and the devil made up the trinity of evil. And debt can discount the devil at any time for possibilities of present personal torment. The temptations to go into debt are increasing rapidly. On every hand in the cities one may read such advertisements as "We Trust You," "Your Credit is Good With Us," and with these statements come offers of clothing, furniture, and what not "on easy payments." But as the Irishman remarked after an experience with the instalment purchase of furniture: "Onaisy payments they sure are." As a matter of fact, the easy payments take all the ease and comfort out of life—they are easy only for the man who receives them.

Beware of the delusions of buying on the instalment plan. There are thousands of poor families in this country who buy organs and sets of books and encyclopedias, lightning rods, farming implements, and all sorts of things which they might get along without, because they can pay for them a little at a time. In this way, they keep themselves poor. They are always pinching, sacrificing, to save up for the agent when he comes around to collect.

All through the South there are poor homes of both colored and white families, where there are not sufficient cooking utensils and knives, forks, and spoons to enable the members to eat with comfort, and yet you will find expensive things in their homes which they have bought on the instalment plan, and which keep them poor for years trying to pay for them.

As far as borrowing money is concerned the bitter experience of countless men and women is crystallized in that old saying: "He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing." There is a world of safety for the man who follows Shakespeare's advice: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."

It is sometimes said flippantly that "poverty is no disgrace but it's mighty uncomfortable." And yet poverty is often a real disgrace. People born to poverty may rise above it. People who have poverty thrust upon them may overcome it. In this great land of abundance and opportunity poverty is in most cases a disgrace and a reproach.

Dr. Johnson said to Boswell, "I admonish you avoid poverty, the temptation and worry it breeds." There is something humiliating in being poor. The very consciousness that we have nothing to show for our endeavor besides a little character and the little we have done, is anything but encouraging. Somehow, we feel that we have not amounted to much, and we know the world looks upon us in the same way if we have not managed to accumulate something. It is a reflection upon our business ability, upon our judgment, upon our industry. It is not so much for the money, as for what it means to have earned and saved money; it is the idea of thrift. If we have not been thrifty, if we have not saved anything, the world will look upon us as good for nothing, as partial failures, as either lazy, slipshod, or extravagant. They regard us as either not having been able to make money, or if we have, not being able to save it.

But let it be remembered that thrift is not parsimony not miserliness. It often means very liberal spending. It is a perpetual protest against putting the emphasis on the wrong thing.

No one should make the mistake of economizing to the extent of planting seeds, and then denying liberal nourishment to the plants that grow from them; of conducting business without advertising; or of saving a little extra expense by pinching on one's table or dress. "A dollar saved is a dollar earned," but a dollar spent well and liberally is often several dollars earned. A dollar saved is often very many dollars lost. The progressive, generous spirit, nowadays, will leave far behind the plodder that devotes time to adding pennies that could be given to making dollars.

The only value a dollar has is its buying power. "No matter how many times it has been spent, it is still good." Hoarded money is of no more use than gold so inaccessible in old Mother Earth that it will never feel the miner's pick. There is plenty in this world, if we keep it moving and keep moving after it. Imagine everybody in the world stingy, living on the principle of "We can do without that," or "Our grandfathers got along without such things, and I guess I can." What would become of our parks, grand buildings, electrical improvements; of music and art? What would become of labor that nurses a tree from a forest to a piano or a palace car? What would become of those dependent upon the finished work? What would happen, what panic would follow, if everybody turned stingy, is indefinable.

"So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says Bulwer. "With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man's help; I may at least have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' But with five thousand pounds a year, I may dread a ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whose wages I can not pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering man who enters judgement against me; for the flesh that lies nearest my heart, some Shylock may be dusting his scales and whetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage that, with five thousand a year, I purchase the worst evils of poverty,—terror and shame; I may so well manage my money that, with one hundred pounds a year, I purchase the best blessings of wealth,—safety and respect."



CHAPTER LXII

A COLLEGE EDUCATION AT HOME

"Tumbling around in a library" was the phrase Oliver Wendell Holmes used in describing in part his felicities in boyhood. One of the most important things that wise students get out of their schooldays is a familiarity with books in various departments of learning. The ability to pick out from a library what is needed in life is of the greatest practical value. It is like a man selecting his tools for intellectual expansion and social service. "Men in every department of practical life," says President Hadley of Yale, "men in commerce, in transportation, or in manufactures—have told me that what they really wanted from our colleges was men who have this selective power of using books efficiently. The beginnings of this kind of knowledge are best learned in any home fairly well furnished with books."

Libraries are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. A home without books and periodicals and newspapers is like a house without windows. Children learn to read by being in the midst of books; they unconsciously absorb knowledge by handling them. No family can now afford to be without good reading.

Children who are well supplied with dictionaries, encyclopedias, histories, works of reference, and other useful books, will educate themselves unconsciously, and almost without expense, and will learn many things of their own accord in moments which would otherwise be wasted; and which, if learned in schools, academies, or colleges, would cost ten times as much as the expense of the books would be. Besides, homes are brightened and made attractive by good books, and children stay in such pleasant homes; while those whose education has been neglected are anxious to get away from home, and drift off and fall into all manner of snares and dangers.

It is astonishing how much a bright child will absorb from being brought up in the atmosphere of good books, being allowed to constantly use them, to handle them, to be familiar with their bindings and titles. It is a great thing for children to be brought up in the atmosphere of books.

Many people never make a mark on a book, never bend down a leaf, or underscore a choice passage. Their libraries are just as clean as the day they bought them, and, often, their minds are just about as clean of information. Don't be afraid to mark your books. Make notes in them. They will be all the more valuable. One who learns to use his books in early life, grows up with an increasing power for effective usefulness.

It is related that Henry Clay's mother furnished him with books by her own earnings at the washtub.

Wear threadbare clothes and patched shoes if necessary, but do not pinch or economize on books. If you can not give your children an academic education you can place within their reach a few good books which will lift them above their surroundings, into respectability and honor.

Is not one's early home the place where he should get his principal training for life? It is here we form habits which shape our careers, and which cling to us as long as we live. It is here that regular, persistent mental training should fix the life ever after.

I know of pitiable cases where ambitious boys and girls have longed to improve themselves, and yet were prevented from doing so by the pernicious habits prevailing in the home, where everybody else spent the evenings talking and joking, with no effort at self-improvement, no thought of higher ideals, no impulse to read anything better than a cheap, exciting story. The aspiring members of the family were teased and laughed at until they got discouraged and gave up the struggle.

If the younger ones do not want to read or study themselves, they will not let anybody else so inclined do so. Children are naturally mischievous, and like to tease. They are selfish, too, and can not understand why anyone else should want to go off by himself to read or study when they want him to play.

Were the self-improvement habit once well established in a home, it would become a delight. The young people would look forward to the study hour with as much anticipation as to playing.

Were it possible for every family that squanders precious time, to spend an evening in such a home, it would be an inspiration. A bright, alert, intelligent, harmonious atmosphere so pervades a self-improving home that one feels insensibly uplifted and stimulated to better things.

I know a New England family in which all the children and the father and mother, by mutual consent, set aside a portion of each evening for study or some form of self-culture. After dinner, they give themselves completely to recreation. They have a regular romp and play, and all the fun possible for an hour. Then when the time comes for study, the entire house becomes so still that you could hear a pin drop. Everyone is in his place reading, writing, studying, or engaged in some form of mental work. No one is allowed to speak or disturb anyone else. If any member of the family is indisposed, or for any reason does not feel like working, he must at least keep quiet and not disturb the others. There is perfect harmony and unity of purpose, an ideal condition for study. Everything that would scatter the efforts or cause the mind to wander, all interruptions that would break the continuity of thought, is carefully guarded against. More is gained in one hour of close, uninterrupted study, than in two or three broken by many interruptions, or weakened by mind wandering.

Sometimes the habits of a home are revolutionized by the influence of one resolute youth who declares himself, taking a stand and announcing that, as for himself, he does not propose to be a failure, that he is going to take no chances as to his future. The moment he does this, he stands out in strong contrast with the great mass of young people who are throwing away their opportunities and have not grit and stamina enough to do anything worth while.