Part 8

If you would win the victory in the battle of life, my young friends, you must watch the little things. It is said that there is a barn upon the Alleghany Mountains so built that the rain which falls upon it separates in such a manner that that which falls upon one side of the roof runs into a little stream that flows into the Susquehanna and thence into Chesapeake Bay and on into the Atlantic Ocean; that which falls upon the other side is carried into the Alleghany River, thence into the Ohio, and onward to the Gulf of Mexico. The point where the waters divide is very small, but how different the course of these waters! So it is with people, young or old. A very little thing changes the channel of their lives. Much will depend upon the kinds of tempers you have, boys and girls. If you are sour and cross and crabbed, no one will love you. If you are kind and cheerful, you will have friends wherever you go. Much will depend upon the way in which you improve your school days; upon the kind of companions you have; and upon the kind of habits you form. If you would win a great victory in fighting the battle of life you must look well to the little things.

XLI. RULED BY PRIMITIVE METHODS.[6]

I learned that the colored male citizens of Laurens County Ga., had organized a unique “Good Government Club,” and, being anxious to learn something of it, I called on the secretary. The secretary explained the club to me as follows:

“Our society is a voluntary organization, and has for its object the betterment of the race. It doesn’t cost anything to join, and any male citizen upward of twenty-one years old may become a member by taking an oath to be governed by our constitution and by-laws. There are no monthly dues. Now and then we make up a purse to help a needy brother. Our plan is to inquire into the mode of living of our members and correct, if possible, any faults. If any member fails or refuses to correct a fault complained of, he is then tried by a sort of courtmartial. The man under charge is allowed to have counsel from among the members of the organization. If he is found guilty, the punishment is usually a flogging given in the presence of the other members. We whip a man for a number of things: getting drunk, wife-beating, vagrancy, selling his vote, failure to provide for his family, failure to make an honest effort to pay his debts, using profane language and so on.

“It was reported to the society that one man’s wife was badly in need of a wash pot. The man was cited to show cause why he had not provided his wife with the article. He failed to buy one before the trial came off, and, when tried, failed to show how his wife could get along without one and still be put to no great inconvenience. Conviction followed. He was whipped, and ordered to get a pot within thirty days.... In riding past the home of another man it was seen by one of our members that the front gate had fallen down. From appearances he had made no effort to put it up. At the trial it was proved that the gate had been down for several weeks, and that his wife had tried many times to get him to take more pride in the care of his home. Conviction followed and the husband will remember a long time the flogging he got that night....”

We had a man before us once charged with kissing a girl on the street. The girl did not appear against him; we could not get her to do so; and the man stoutly denied the charge. He told our judge that he had never kissed a woman in his life. The judge asked him if he wasn’t married. ‘No, sah,’ he said, ‘my wife’s dead. I’m de daddy uv nine chilluns, an’ I nevah kissed a woman in my life.’ In the midst of much laughter, the judge asked, ‘Did you never kiss your wife?’ Without a moment’s hesitation the man said: ‘No, sah; no sah.’ Then the judge said: ‘Jim, you’re the biggest liar in town, and I sentence you to be given forty-nine lashes, but I’ll suspend the sentence if you’ll agree to leave town within the next five hours.’ ‘Judge,’ said Jim, ‘I don’t want no five hours; I’ll be gone in five minutes.’... The strangest case I remember was the case of a man charged with beating his wife. His wife was a hard-working washerwoman. She had complained to us three or four times, but always repented before the time for trial, and would not appear against her husband. When she did come to our meeting she said: ‘Now, judge, I’se a-gwine ter tell you evaht’ing.’ And she told how her husband would get drunk and come home and curse and beat her unmercifully. She gave a graphic account of the last whipping she had received. The judge said: ‘I sentence this man to be given one hundred and one lashes—the maximum of the law.’ ‘Dar, now!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘Dar now! I’se done fixed you at las’! I tol’ you ’bout beatin’ on me like I wuz a dawg!’ Turning to the judge she said: ‘Judge, I’ll take de whuppin’ fur him ef you’ll lemme; I ’spec’ he’ll be good atter dis.’”

XLII. HUNTING AN EASY PLACE.

A nicely dressed young man, fifteen or sixteen years old, who had just finished his course in the high school, stepped into the office of the president of the Smutville Short Line Railroad.

“Well,” said the president, looking up from a mass of correspondence, “what can I do for you, sir?”

“I have just finished my course in the high school,” the young man began nervously, “and I thought that I might be able to secure a desirable position with your company. I came in to talk with you about it.”

The president asked the young man to have a seat.

“So,” said the president, “you want a desirable place, eh?”

“I do, sir,” said the young man, his heart beating high with hope.

“A place,” continued the president, “that would pay you something like a hundred dollars a month?”

“Something like that,” said the young man eagerly.

“I guess you would like it very well, too, if I could arrange it so that you could report for work at nine o’clock in the mornings and get off every afternoon at three or four o’clock. In other words, you want something easy. I can see by looking at you that you are not accustomed to hard work, and you could not fill a place that required you to report at six o’clock every morning and work until six every afternoon. Do I size you up correctly?”

“I think so, sir,” was the reply.

“In plain English then, you are looking for a soft place with the Short Line?”

“I am, sir.”

“Well, sir,” said the president, smiling for the first time, “I regret to inform you that there is only one such place on our railroad. I occupy that place myself, and I am not thinking of resigning.”

The young man’s face flushed.

The president continued: “I hope you will not think that it is going beyond what is right and proper for me to say, but I must tell you, young man, that you have started out in life with the wrong notion. No brave and strong young man is going about looking for an easy place. The brave and true man asks only for work. And the men who are occupying what you call the easy places in this life to-day are the men who have climbed into them by hard work. You are very much mistaken if you think that they have stepped into them from the high school. In fact, and you’ll find it out soon enough for yourself, there are really no soft or easy places in this world, and the man who goes about seeking such places stamps himself at once as a failure. Nobody will ever employ such a boy, and such a boy would be no good if he were employed. Let me, as a friend, advise you, young man, that the next place you go to to apply for a job, you ask for a chance to begin at the bottom. If it happens to be a railroad, ask to be given a chance to do anything—firing an engine, or cleaning cars, or laboring in the roundhouse. Be willing to begin low down in the business, and, if you’re made out of the right stuff, you will fight your way to the front. I started in with the Short Line as a day laborer myself, and if I had not done so I would not be at its head to-day. You advertise your own folly when you go and ask a sensible business man to put you at the start at the head of something. You must begin at the bottom and work up to the top. That is the rule everywhere, and you will not, I am sure, prove an exception to it.”

Let us hope, boys and girls, that this young man left the president’s office a wiser young man. Be sure not to follow his example. Don’t go around hunting for easy places.

XLIII. BURT BANKSTON’S BEQUEST.

Burt Bankston was a noted Kentucky gambler. Those who knew him best said that he had some redeeming traits. He never drank whiskey; he used tobacco in no form; and he seldom indulged in profanity. Moreover he frequently went to church.

But he never made any excuses for his gambling. He rather defended it, saying that gambling was not a sport or pastime with him, but a business. He said he gambled for the same reason that a man kept a store or practiced law—for a living.

His wife declared that he was peaceable and quiet at home. The only fault she found with him, according to her own testimony, was that he kept late hours and often spent the whole night away from home. And she begged him many times to quit the gambling table. Her appeal always fell on deaf ears.

“Burt, I’m going to quit; I’ve got enough; this is my last night at this kind of thing.” The speaker was Bill Mobley, one of Burt’s chums.

“All right, Bill,” said Burt, “I guess I’ll follow you in a few days; I’m getting old now.”

The next morning Bill Mobley was found dead upon the streets of Lecompton. Whether he had taken his own life or been sandbagged on his way home was never found out.

From that day forward no man ever saw Burt Bankston in a gambling house. He opened a grocery store—that failed. He started a laundry—that fell through. He tried a peanut stand; he peddled flowers about the street. Compared with his former high living, his existence was miserable. His wife died after a few years. Friends said that she died of remorse, or a broken heart, or something of that kind. She could not bear to live on after her husband’s downfall—that is, his downfall in the eye of the world. Soon after she died Burt was stricken with a dreadful sickness. He came near dying. By-and-by he was restored to health, but he was broken and bent with old age. Friends pitied him, and secured him a place as watchman at a celebrated orphan’s home.

At last one day Burt Bankston died, everybody believing him to be a pauper. When his will was probated it was found that he left an estate worth nearly $500,000. This sum Burt designated to be divided into three parts—one part to be devoted to the common school education of the masses; another part to the work of the Y. M. C. A., and the third to the orphan asylum. Among other things, in the body of the will Burt Bankston said:

“For twenty years I was a gambler. The past twenty years I have spent repenting. I advise all young men to let gambling alone; and I hope that those who may be benefited by my bequest may be willing to follow the advice of one who has passed through the fire.”

XLIV. THE BIG BLACK BURGLAR.

One cold winter night, about midnight, my good wife called to me, saying:

“Dan! Dan! Get up! Get up!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked with much alarm.

“Somebody’s in the dining-room; I heard them rattling the dishes just a minute ago.”

“I don’t hear anything, wife,” I said slowly.

“There’s somebody in there sure; I heard them myself. Do get up, Dan, before they take everything we’ve got.”

“I haven’t got a gun or any kind of weapon,” I said, still fighting for time.

“Well, get up and make a noise—walk around heavy—that’ll frighten ’em and make ’em leave.”

I got up quietly, turned up the lamp, and looked about me with a sigh.

“Be quick,” said my wife.

“In a minute,” said I.

I tipped around to the wall on the side of the bed, and took down an old iron sword, which had done duty in the Mexican war, and which we had preserved as an heirloom.

“Hurry, hurry, Dan!” said my wife.

“All right,” I said with meekness.

I took the sword in one hand and the lamp in the other, and moved gently toward the door, which opened from our bed-room into the dining-room.

Pausing at the door, I said,——

“Hallo! Hallo, in there!”

The response came from my wife in bed.

“Open the door, Dan; open the door!”

Humbly I placed the lamp on the floor close by the door, caught a tight grip on my old war-piece, and then quickly shoved the door wide open. I intended, of course, after getting my bearings, to pick up the lamp and enter the dining-room on a tour of inspection. But, I assure you, there was no time for any such careful procedure. As soon as the door was opened and the light went streaming into the dining-room, something fell to the floor with a terrible thud, and quicker than it takes to tell it a great big black something, that looked to me like a buffalo or elephant, came bounding toward me. It was all so sudden that it surprised me, and I fell back trembling. Over went the lamp. It broke. Out came the oil. It took fire and pretty soon the lambrequin close by took fire also. Down I snatched it and threw it into the grate. I reached for the first thing handy, and tried to smother the fire on the floor. In doing so, I stepped on a piece of glass and cut my foot. I burnt my hands terribly. And, to beat it all, my night shirt caught on fire. I ran to the bed, and sat down in order to quench the blaze. This shows that I still had some presence of mind left, although, as a matter of fact, this new extinguishing process scorched my legs awfully.

When all was quiet again, and I lit another lamp in order to take an inventory, my bed-room was a sight to behold! I found that in the struggle, my old army sword had been plunged amidship into the handsome mirror of our dresser, and had also made havoc of a reproduction, of Millet’s Angelus. I discovered, also, that I had used my brand-new $50 overcoat to extinguish the fire, and that many of the handsome photos of our friends that stood on the mantle had been ruined. Altogether that one night’s experience cost me in the neighborhood of $100, not to mention my own personal injuries. It was a terrible night, I tell you. And far-off in one corner, I saw, crouching in abject fear, the cause of all my troubles—the burly black burglar. And what do you think it was? It was nothing in the world but an old black Tom Cat, who had been a member of our family for many years!

XLV. PIN-MONEY MADE WITH THE NEEDLE.

Surely all young girls ought to know how to sew, and, not only sew, but all girls, I think, ought to love the purely feminine occupation of sewing. Since I am sure that many of the little girls who will read this book know how to sew, I am going to tell you about some little sewing that my wife did.

In 1903, the Ladies’ Home Journal, of Philadelphia, offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best way to make pin-money at home. You know, girls, that pin-money means pocket change or spending money. Many hundreds of women all over the world sent in suggestions to the Ladies’ Home Journal, each one hoping, I am sure, that her suggestion would win first prize. The following letter sent to my wife will tell you just how her suggestion was received:

“THE LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL, “Philadelphia. February 5, 1903.

“Dear Madam:

“It gives me much pleasure to tell you that among the hundreds of letters received in response to the offer made in our January magazine in connection with The Editor’s Want-Box, Mr. Bok has chosen your offering as the one entitled to the first prize of fifty dollars. He congratulates you upon your success and thanks you for the interest you have shown.

“Our Treasurer will send you a check within a week.

Very truly yours, “Wm. V. Alexander, “Managing Editor.

“Mrs. Ella Floyd.”

The check came all right, girls, and my wife thought, as she said to me, that in winning the prize she had found a new way to make pin-money—that is, by telling others how to make pin-money at home.

Two hundred of the little articles were afterwards published from time to time in The Ladies’ Home Journal. The first article of the series appeared in the magazine for January, 1904, and my wife’s little story, which won first money, was at the head of the list. I am going to give here the whole of the little article, as published in The Ladies’ Home Journal. Of course, I am proud that she won the prize, and I hope other young ladies by-and-by may be the happy winners in such contests. And here is the article:

“When one’s pin-money is all gone but twenty-five cents the question comes as to the way to replenish it. One day when I found that I had only that amount I invested it as follows:

1 yard of lawn .10 1 yard of lace .10 1 spool of cotton .05 ——— .25

“The same day I made three baby caps as daintily as I could with these materials. The next day I sold them for twenty-five cents each, and then I had seventy-five cents. I then bought

1 yard of lawn .15 2½ yards of lace .25 2 yards of ribbon .25 2 tiny buckles .05 1 spool of cotton .05 ——— .75

“With these materials I made two baby caps, somewhat larger than the first ones, and trimmed more prettily. I found no trouble in selling them for $1.50. Straightway I invested the sum in lawn, lace, ribbon, etc., and as I had done so well with the caps I thought I would try my hand on little bonnets. I made two. A friend offered me $5 for them before they were finished. I accepted her offer and from that day to this I have never been troubled about pin-money.

“In four weeks’ time I made and sold twenty caps and eleven bonnets. The material for the caps cost me $2.50—twelve and a half cents for each. I sold them for twenty-five cents each. The material for the bonnets cost me $8.25, or seventy-five cents each. I sold them for $2.50 each. So I netted $21.75 for my work. The time which I devoted to this enterprise was that which ordinarily I would have used in calling or in running up bills for my husband to pay.

“Since the first four weeks of which I have spoken in detail I have made more expensive caps and bonnets for babies from six months to about three years old. The last one I made was of silk, beautifully trimmed, tucked and hemstitched. I sold it for $6, making a clear profit of $3. My husband says I’ll soon be in position to organize a trust.”

XLVI. SELF-HELP.

If there is one idea for which more than any other the public school system should stand, it is the idea of self-help. Self-help is the best kind of help in the world, and one cannot learn this lesson too early in life. Even little children—three, four, five, six and eight years old—should be taught to work. Any little child is just as capable of doing the little things in work as he is in play. Why should not the little girl be taught to trim and wash the dress of her doll? Why should not the little children be taught to sweep up the dirt that they have scattered in play? Why should they not be taught to remove the dishes from the table, brush up the crumbs, set back the chairs, pick up chips, put the kindling wood in its place, bring the potatoes in from the garden, help to pick over the berries, and so forth? We might argue this question from now until doom’s day, and nobody, I think, would be able to give any good reason why children should not be taught to do the little things. Little children who are accustomed to having everything done for them by others are very soon beset with the rust of laziness and the canker of pride. Whereas, on the other hand, if children are taught to help themselves as soon as and as much as they are able, it will tend to improve their faculties, and will, at the same time, have a good influence upon their dispositions.

Childhood and youth are periods of life which materially influence all of its following periods, and whether the earlier years of one’s life be passed in idleness and indolence, or in well-directed industry, is a point on which greatly depends the worth or the worthlessness of human character. Where is the man who guides his affairs with discretion, or the woman that looketh well to the ways of her household, and yet was not in some measure imbued with industrious and provident habits in early life? On the other hand, who that has been treated until the age of fifteen or twenty like a helpless infant, and had every want supplied without being put to the necessity of either mental or bodily exertion, was ever good for anything afterwards?

The tendency of the age is by far too much in the direction of keeping our young boys solely for the purpose of loafing about the streets, or standing around the soda fountains on Sunday—and our young girls for parties, social entertainments, picnics, excursions and the like. So that by the time our boys and girls reach manhood and womanhood, they despise honest labor and are afraid to engage in real hard work. A young woman may know how to read and write—may understand grammar, history, and geography—may sing sweetly and play the piano well; but, whatever else she may know or may not know, if she does not know how to bake a hoe-cake of bread, make her little brother or sister a pair of pants or a plain dress, she is only half educated. In fact, every young woman should not only know how to perform every duty connected with a household, but every young woman should take some part in household work. No girl need tell me that she really loves her mother if she is willing to leave to her mother the work of washing the dishes, sweeping and scouring the floors, caring for the little children, doing the Monday washings, the house cleaning, and the like, while she devotes herself to pleasure, novel reading, social calling, butterfly parties, or playing rag-time music or singing rag-time songs.

The home and the public school are the two great agencies which are jointly engaged, or which should be jointly engaged, in teaching children to help themselves. If children are taught, as boys and girls, to think for themselves, speak for themselves and act for themselves, when they are old they will not forget the precious lesson, and will be less likely to become burdens on the community. The highest ambition of every American man and woman should be to be of some useful service to the world; and the first step will be taken toward this noble end when we have thoroughly learned the value and importance of the lesson of self-help. First, learn to help yourself, and then you will be able to see more clearly how to help others.

XLVII. HENRY WARD BEECHER’S TESTIMONY.