Chapter 1

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE GOLDEN CENSER OR THE DUTIES OF TO-DAY and THE HOPES OF THE FUTURE.

BY

JOHN McGOVERN, (OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.)

AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF COMMUNISM," "WORLDS WITHOUT END," "CROWN JEWELS," "A PASTORAL POEM," ETC

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UNION PUBLISHING HOUSE.

CHICAGO, ILL. COLUMBUS, OHIO. KANSAS CITY, MO. MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. LEXINGTON, KY. BUFFALO, N.Y.

1884.

COPYRIGHTED BY M.B. DOWNER & F.C. SMEDLEY, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 1881-1882.

PREFACE.

I take pleasure in laying before my readers a volume the aim of which is to lighten the cares of to-day and heighten the hopes of to-morrow. Every human aspiration which is not an _ignis fatuus_ or fool's beacon is built on the realities of to-day. Every young person evincing talents in any direction hears predictions which are alone built on what he is doing at present. He takes this hope and redoubles his efforts. He usually succeeds--therefore, the inherited universality of hope.

Looking thus upon hope as a beautiful edifice rising above the foundations of our lives, I have striven to give my special attention to the duties of to-day, those stones whereon the structure is reared, that the first cruel tempest of adversity may not transport an unsubstantial fabric, like the palace of Aladdin, into the deserts of despair.

I have also tried to show that the lesson, so true in a proper view of this life, is also applicable to the far grander vista of eternity which, in the mind of philosopher as well as divine, lies so clearly before us.

In a Hard-Pan Series of ten chapters I have endeavored to point out, to the young men just starting in practical life, some things less general in their scope than the other thoughts spread forth in the book. The necessity of arming our youth with those qualities which lead to business success has made me confident that this attempt would be approved by the general reader.

Wherever a writer versed in the deep mysteries of the heart has left his thoughts on record, and they have fallen under my eye, I have eagerly chained them to my humble chariot, always, when possible, giving the authorship of the idea. The value of a thoroughly good admonition is frequently enhanced by the knowledge that it comes from the mouth of a thoroughly good man.

CONTENTS.

Preface.

The Hopes of To-Morrow Must Have a Foundation in what We Are Doing To-Day--The same Thing True of Our Hopes of the Next Life--The Hard-Pan Series. Page 3.

The Golden Censer.

The Golden Censer which Hangs in the Temple of Life--The Palace of the Soul--The Alarm-Bell Called Conscience--George Washington--The Soldier in Battle--Goldsmith's Pastor--Duty the Reason for Living--Duty the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God--Victor Hugo's Maxim--A Celebrated Piece of Verse. Page 21.

The Flights of Time.

We Are Old Before We Know It--We are Then Shocked and Regretful--Need of Impressing the Young with This Truth--A Golden Thought--How We Learned to Read--Lorena--Coal-Oil Johnny--Get Interest on Your Own Money Instead of Paying Interest on Other People's--You Thus Save Double Interest--You Wish to Succeed--Put out Your Ideas at Interest--"Lost!" an Advertisement--Haste and Waste--Get to Bed Early and Cheat Rheumatism and Neuralgia--Time the Corrector of Fools--The Mill Never Grinds with the Water that Has Gone Past. Page 25.

Home.

Byron, Thomson, and Payne's Sweet Thoughts--A Grand Thought in a Grand Syllable--The Murderer in His Cell--The Letter from Home--The Thatch of Avarice--The Man Who Wrote "Home, Sweet Home," Had no Home--Dr. Johnson--The Halo that Surrounds the Word--The Long-Ago is Hidden in It--Rembrandt and His Sister--Dickens--The Cottage of a Godly Man--Kings Have no Homes--Democritus--The Old Home Was Happy Because We Were Shielded--We Must, in Our Turn, Shield the Little Ones--Suffer Little Children--Get a Home--See that Your Children Get Settled. Page 31.

Duties of Parents.

Thoughts Intended Especially for Their Ears--Children a Blessing--Through Our Children We Become Immortal on the Earth--Shakspeare--How Character is Built Up--Good Example--Father and Son--Starting the Boys and the Girls--The Daughter--Do not Blight Her Life--Happy Wives and Mothers--"Thanking Death"--Education of the Young--The Power and Beauty of the Bible--Bible, Shakspeare, and Geography More Necessary than Grammar, Botany, and Latin--Worship--A Suspicious Parent--The School-Master Experience--Try and Cut Down the Extent of His Services in the Education of Your Child. Page 42.

Brother and Sister.

The Noble Brother Will Have a Noble Sister--The Young Man of High Tone Will See to It that His Sister is Treated with Respect--He Sets the Example to All Others--Utter Selfishness of a Young Man Who Drags Down His Sister by Falling into Bad Society Himself--The Summer Vacation--Why a "Crooked Stick" Has Been Picked up By the Sister--Your Sister Your Other Half--Watch Her and Mend Your Weak Places--A Quick Temper--Scene in a Field Near Stone River Battle-field--The Sister's Influence on Your Fortunes--Brother and Sister as the Two Heads of One Home. Page 53.

Youth.

"Heaven Lies About Us in Our Infancy"--The Great History Written by Thiers, and Its Central Thought--The Impressibility of Youth--Much Can Be Accomplished in Youth--Alexander, Cæsar, Pompey, Hannibal, Scipio, Napoleon, Charles XII, Alexander Hamilton, Shelley, Keats, Bryant--Youth Our Italy and Greece, full of Gods and Temples--Edmund Burke--Rochefoucauld --Chesterfield--Lord Lytton's Love of Youth--Shortness of Youthful Griefs --Hannah More--Sir Walter Raleigh's Wise Remark--The Extraordinary Expectations of Youth--Dr. Watts--Story of the Alpena--Lord Bacon's Summing up of the Differences Between Youth and Age--Introduction to the Hard-Pan Series. Page 62.

Prudence in Speech.

Need of Money--Difficulty of Getting It--Testimony of the Closest Mouthed Man Who Perhaps Ever Lived--"No Man Can Be Happy or Even Honest Without a Moderate Independence"--You Find Yourself Behind a Counter--The Little Boy's Shoes Wear Out at the Toe--They are Therefore Copper-plated--The Young Man's Common Sense Gives Way at the Tip of His Tongue--Difficulties in the Way of a Boy Who "Blabs"--A Man Who Is "Pumped" Like the Secretary of the Treasury Must Have Practiced Silence All His Life--Story of the Barber of King Midas--Beware of the First Error--How Things Leak out--Put a Copper-Toe on Your Tongue. Page 74.

Courtesy.

Courtesy Rests on a Deep Foundation--He Who is Naturally Polite is Naturally Moral--You Wish to Have Your Customers Brighten up--Brighten up Yourself--What is Good-Breeding?--Read Chesterfield--Study Your Customer--You are Young and Positive--Be Careful on That Account--Your Hands--Jewelry--Act Respectfully and You Will Be Full of Good Manners--An Example--How to Treat the Busybody--Zachariah Fox--Ralph Waldo Emerson--Milton's Allusion to the origin of the Word "Courtesy"--The Celebrated "Beaux" of History--Momentary Views of Our Souls--Your Clothes--They Should Occupy Little of Your Mind--Civility Costs Nothing and Buys Everything. Page 80.

Economy.

A Small Leak Will Sink a Great Ship--The Little Cloud Arising out of the Sea Waxes into the Storm that Lashes the Trembling Ocean--The People with Small Wages Can Often Save the Most Money--You Cannot Spend Your Money Without the Righteous Criticism of Others--How Young Men Spend Much of Their Extra Cash--Rural Saloons--A Gallon of Whiskey--What It is Actually Worth--What It is Sold For--Ordinary Profits of Legitimate Business--Tobacco--What Three Years' Savings Will Do for a Man in America--A Good Wagoner Can Turn in a Little Room--When You Buy a Horse Reckon on What He Will Eat Instead of What His Price Is--Save all You Can--Harness It up and Make It Pull in Interest. Page 88.

Courage.

Adversity's Lamp--Youth Has Great need of Courage--It should be Long-Suffering Rather than Intrepid--You Must Gain the Battle by Taking Sudden Advantages--You Must Hurl 10,000 Men Against 2,000 Before Your Enemy Can Be Reinforced--Story of a Young Man Who Broke Through the Enemy's Lines at Chicago--His Low Wages--His Bad Prospects--Reading the Bible and Plutarch--Studying French--The Attempt to Become an Actor--Dismal Failure--Difficulty of Conquering Wounded Pride--The Return to "Hard Work"--Progress--Triumph--Reason of the Victory--Hope a Quality Closely Akin to Courage--Courage, However, the Grand Motor that Moves the World--Courage Builds the Great Bridges and Hope Rides on a Free Pass over Them. Page 95.

Hope.

Hope is a Gold-Leaf Which Can Be Beaten with the Hammer of Adversity to Exceeding Thinness--The Medicine of the Miserable--Hope Should Deposit Probabilities with Experience, His Banker--Story of a Young Man Whose Hope Carried him Across a Bad Place in Life--Making Garden--Sandpapering Window-Frames in a Cellar--Selling "Milton Gold Jewelry"--Working in a "gang," on a Farm, after the English Fashion--A Situation Found on the Very Day of the Great Fire, Just Without the Bounds of the Conflagration--Map-Making--Success--Hope Is the Cork to the Net--We Will Part With Our Money, but we will Never Sell Our Hope at any Price--The Celebrated Shield--Hope Unjustly Defamed. Page 107.

Be Correct.

God's Exactitude--One at a Time is the Way Rats Get into a Granary--The First Rat Eats Out the Hole--Story of Sag Bridge--The Collision--The Horror--The Cause--Imitate the Detectives--Story of a Cashier Who Left Off a "Simple Cipher," which Stood for a Hundred Thousand Dollars in Cash to His Employers--How to Mail a Letter--"We Never Make Mistakes --The Way People Are Convinced That Care Is Necessary--How a Careless Clerk Can Drive Away Custom--The Lightning Calculator--He Is Simply a Hard Worker--Our Multiplication-Table Does Not Run High Enough--The Freaks of Figures--Correct Your Spelling--Learn to Avoid Foolish Exaggeration--Force of Habit--"A Man of Good Habits" Is a Man Who Would Be Positively Uncomfortable and Unhappy if He Attempted to Become Dissolute. Page 119.

Success.

Hard-Pan Reason Why Nothing Succeeds So Well as Success--Your Good Fortune in Living on American Soil--Missing Battles and Allowing Others to Be Promoted Instead of Yourself--No City Ever Withstood a Good Siege--Get into the Strong Sunshine of active Life--The Safe Time to Become Discontented--What Praise Means--What Gloomy Predictions Mean When Your Employer Makes Them--Practice--Example in Proof-Reading--Captains are Made out of First Lieutenants--The Retail Business--Fools Rushing in Where Angels Fear to Tread--The Successful Grocery--No Wonder Success Sits on That Corner--The Painter Who Mixed His Colors With Brains--Story of The Man Who Could Imitate Birds--Do not Attempt Impossible Journeys--Stop at Each Inn. Page 132.

Companions.

Truth of the adage that a Man Is Known by the Company He Keeps--Tam O'Shanter's Habits--Building a House With a Party-Wall--Playing Billiards at Noon-Time--Smelling of the Smoke of the Kitchen--Bar-Room Manners--Judging a Man by His Clothes--A Piece of Impertinence which Cost the Keeping of Five Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars--"The Companion of Fools Shall Be Destroyed"--Learn to Admire Rightly--Charm which the Look of Certain Loafers Has for Many Young Men--Getting a Sitting in Church--Keep in Company Where You Will Be Under a Pleasant Restraint--Either Wise Bearing or Ignorant Carriage Is Caught, as Men Take Diseases One from Another. Page 144.

On The Road.

Natural Depression--Certainty of Its Discontinuance--The Best Salesmen Have Been Very Soft-Hearted on Their Early Trips--Entering the Town--Riding One Block for Half a Dollar--A Poor Meal--Getting Your Wind--Planning the Charge--Canvassing Yourself--What Is the Almost Limitless Power of Persuasion?--Abraham Lincoln--The Whisky Which Made Generals Win Battles was the Kind of Whisky He Was in Search of--Your Dress--Your Entrance at Your Customer's Place--Your Speed in Getting Started--Your Ease after the Start Is Made--Never Stop the Customer--Your Perfect Accuracy as to Men and Places--Story of a Meteoric Salesman--Trouble of Putting a Stop to his Flight--Your Supper Tastes Good--The Men of Cold Exterior--Stay Out but Do not Stay Up--How to Get Vim and Sparkle--Extraordinary Value of a Man Who Can "Place Goods." Page 152.

Examples.

The Tracks of Giants--Napoleonic Miracles--Webster and Astor--George Peabody--Giving Away Eight Millions of Dollars--Stewart--Andrew Johnson--Barnum and Stanford--Ulysses S. Grant--Commodore Vanderbilt--Elihu Burritt--Edgar Poe--Greeley, Chase, Garfield and William Tecumseh Sherman--Tennyson--Robert E. Lee--Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg--James Gordon Bennett--Carlyle and Victor Hugo--Garibaldi --Agassiz, Humboldt, Proctor, Seward, Farragut, Nelson, Abercrombie, Joseph E. Johnston, Longstreet, and Fifty Others--The Habit of Riding Over Obstacles--Herodotus, Seneca and Franklin on the Power of Example--Christ Never Wrote a Tract--The System of Redoubling the Effort and Coming out, after one Victory, Ahead after Reckoning all Losses. Page 164.

Man.

Shakspeare's Eulogy, just as He Penned It--Emerson--A Columbus of the Skies--Carlyle's Panegyric--Whately--Man's Faults--Horace Man and Pascal--The Poet Cowley and Boileau--Fallacy of their Scoldings as Applied to all Humankind--What Is Man?--Plato's Answer--Addison's Answer--Burke's Answer--Adam Smith's Answer--Buffon's Failure to Make a Satisfactory Answer--Plutarch's Answer--"The Proper Study of Mankind is Man"--Henry Giles and John Ruskin--The Wonderful Instrument Called the Hand--The Violin Slave--Man's Opportunities--What God has Said of His Children--The Beautiful Language in Which It is Written--Nobility of Our Destiny--A Stinging Epigram. Page 175.

Woman.

The Hand That Made Woman Fair Made Her Good--Wordsworth's Beautiful lines to His Wife--"She Was a Phantom of Delight"--Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope"--A Pleasant Subject--The Difference Between Love in Man and Love in Woman--Jean Paul Richter's Encomium--Schiller's Tribute--Shelley--Shakspeare--Rousseau, Barrett and Balzac--The Duke of Halifax--Addison--Boyle--Sex in The Soul--Woman's Love of Ornament--Her Dress the Perfection of What Man Demands of Her--Dr. Johnson's Explanation--Testimony of John Ledyard to the Goodness of Woman--His History--Woman's Enormous Influence over Man--How Men Live Where There Are No Women--The History of Human Sickness a Monument of the Goodness of Woman. Page 187.

Father.

Overshadowing Antiquity of the Word "Papa"--The Pope Is Simply Papa, in Italian--Duties of the Son Toward the Father--Honesty of His Love for You--Patriarchal Government the Beginning and Still the Prop of Society--Old Age the Childhood of Immortality--Honor Attaching to Greatness of years in the past--Age Still a Necessity in Many of the Learned Professions--Age Is Indulgent Because It sees no Fault it Has not Itself Committed--Time the Harper, Laying His Hand Gently on the Harp of Life--Love of Little Children--The Village Blacksmith, the Mighty Man--Respect for Venerable Years a Fitting Thing in the Most Dignified of Young Men--Two Pictures, One Dark and the Other Bright. Page 197

Mother.

A Great Subject--Chords Struck by Coleridge and Tennyson--She Has Risked Her Life that Her Child Might Live--She Has Grown Spectre-Like that Her Child Might Wax Strong--She Has Forgotten the Debt Due to Her in Her Anxiety to Obtain an Acknowledgment of the Debt Due to God--Her Memory--Christmas--Her Sick Child--Man the Mighty at His Mother's Knee--The Best Friend--"An Ounce of Mother Worth a Pound of Clergy"--A Mother's Praise--The Dead--Unalterable Fidelity--Forgetting a Mother's Claims--The Mother Still in Middle Life--The Mother of Greater Years--The Mother of Mothers--She Gathered the Orphans Together and Poured Out Her Tenderness Upon Them. Page 207.

Love.

A Great Passion, Therefore not one to Trifle and Be Familiar With--Its Tyranny--Feelings and Actions of a Young Man in Love--Utter Uselessness for Business of a Young Man During the Uncertain Period Between Desire and Possession--Love Rules The Universe--How The Sages Look upon Love--It Is But the Flash in the Broad Pan of True Happiness--Shakspeare, Tennyson, Overbury, Mrs. Sigourney, South, Dryden, Plautus, Goethe, Burton, Valerius Maximus, Rochefoucauld, Addison. Hazlitt and Emerson--"The Wooden God's Remorse"--"Love Me Little Love Me Long"--The Poet Petrarch's Strange Behavior--"If She Do not Care for Me, What Care I How Fair She Be!" --LaFontaine, Lyttleton, Schiller, Ruffini, Ducoeur, DeStael, Colton, Dudevant, Balzac, Moore, Beecher, Victor Hugo, Longfellow, Limayrac, Howe, Deluzy and Jane Porter--"Solomon was So Seduced, and He Had a Very Good Wit"--Alexander Smith--Great Space Given to Love in all the Books of the World--Some Things to Remember While Viewing the Passion in Others. Page 219.

Courtship.

The Young Man Finds Himself in Love and "Begins to Think"--He Wonders That He Never Before Thought of Money--Difference Between a Wharf-Rat and a Man--Difference Between a Married Man and an Old Bachelor Who Has Always Been Afraid of the Expense--Everything Natural in Marriage--Be "Square" with Your Sweetheart--The Circus-Poster--The Quarry of Truth--Do not "Talk Big" and Love Little--Courtship and Marriage not a Matter of "Want to or Don't Want to," but a Strenuous Case of "Got to"--Marriage Like Life Insurance--Closing Hints. Page 234.

Marriage.

Sample of a "Swell Wedding"--Undignified Aspects of a Swell Wedding Where It Takes Every Cent a Man Can Earn, Beg and Borrow--A Farce, and an Example to Shun--Let us Have Some Manhood and Womanhood at a Critical Point, the Start in Real Life--To Be a Man Is to Be Married--Nature's Artful Treatment of Human Beings--Folly of Men Who Throw Away Their Happiness--Be Inquisitive Before Marriage--Be Blind Thereafter--The Law Approves and Encourages the Married State--The Married Man Is of the Greater Importance in the Nation--A Thing to Be Kept in Mind--Married Men Healthier than Bachelors--Married Women Healthier than Maids--A Married Man Has a Greater Excess of Comforts than of Troubles as Compared with the Comforts and Troubles of the Bachelor. Page 246.

Wedded Life.

A Practical Chapter on Life as It Is Actually Lived by a Man and Woman Who Have a Fair Chance in the World--A Home With a Young Wife in It no Place for Other Men, no Matter How Dear they May Be to the Husband--Give the Wife a Chance--Kindness--Do not Be Afraid of Honoring Your Wife any Too Much--The Wife's Proper Cares--A Reply to the Common Form of Attack on the Principle that Marriage Is Both Natural and Expedient--McFarland--A Man's Happy Experience as a Husband--Judgment, Vanity, Selfishness and Trepidation--Good for Evil--Astonishing Changes in a Man's Needs--The Fireside of a Man Who Is Trying to Do Right--His Profound Gratitude at the Accuracy of His Taste in Earlier Years--Death, or Worse than Death--Three Studies--Apology for a Somewhat Uncharitable Reply to a Selfish Argument. Page 256

Bachelors.

A Chapter on Bachelors Apt to Diverge into a Dissertation on Solitude--Arguments which the Bachelor Applies to the Question of Marriage--Being the Soul of Selfishness He Is Unwilling to Believe Happiness In Marriage Possible until He Shall Himself Have Embarked in Matrimony--Manner in Which He Usually Proclaims That all Men Who Marry Are Fools--Single Life Unavoidable with Some Men--A Mere Spectator of Other Men's Fortunes--The One Grand Result of Single Life--Wearing Out One Set of Faculties by Forty--Losing Control of the Other Set by Disuse--The Way a Bachelor Judges a Young Girl--His Somewhat Sordid Ideas--Events Have Distorted His Nature--A Bachelor's Great opportunities for Getting Book-Knowledge--Good out of Evil--Mistaken Ideas about Bachelors, which the Ladies are Apt to Entertain--Foolish Diatribes against Women--The Lack of Knowledge which Those Diatribes Betray--The Front-Porch View of Girlhood Esteemed to be the whole of Woman's Nature! Page 270.

Sickness.

Health, Even with Memory, cannot conceive the Feelings of Disease--The Invalid's Sad Weakness--The King cannot Hire a man to Have the Typhoid Fever for Him--The Strong man Felled to His Couch--Chances for Philosophy--The Chances Usually Thrown Away with the Medicine Bottles--The Bachelor Sick--His Body now as Full of the need of Woman's attention as It was of Brags that He would Have none of Her--Let Us do something, by not attempting Everything in the way of Reformation. Page 281.

Sorrow.

The Tallest mountains, although They Gather the Heaviest Clouds about Their Solemn Sides, Yet Look Through Cloudless Skies up Toward the Sun--Effect of Deep Sorrow on the Appearance of Beauties of Nature--We Deprecate Grief, and yet We Rail at Its Short Duration--The Stricken Wife--The Young man who Loves and Is Rejected--His Dilemma--His Erroneous and Immature Decision that He would Love But One, and Love Forever--A Peak which Hardly Rises to the Bottom of the Valleys in the Mountains Piled Down by Events in After-life--True Greatness is True Humility--Affliction Beautifies Human Nature--Blessedness of Employment--Efficacy of Religion--The Beautiful Poem of "The Lamb in the Shepherd's Arms." Page 290.

Poverty.

A Topic That Hits Close to Every Man--In the Old World the Countries Are to Blame; In the New the Individual Is Generally at Fault--Case of Vanderbilt--Fears of Enormously Rich men that their Wealth will excite the Irresistible Cupidity of their Governments--Burdens of Immense Riches in an Active Land Like This--The Shocking Imbecility of False Poverty--"Appearances"--Popular Errors as to Servants--Big Houses--Story of the Happy Man. Page 300.

Facts About Progress.

Progress the Stride of God--The Field-Hand in 1350--One hundred and Twelve Hours' Labor for a Bushel of Wheat--The same Laborer in 1550, in 1675, and in 1795--Seventy Hours for a Bushel of Wheat--The Same Laborer To-day--Twenty Hours for the Bushel of Wheat--The Children of the Laborer who Came to America--Seven or Eight Hours for a Bushel of Wheat. Page 311.

Failure in Life.

Lightning Is More Apt To hit a Scrag than a Tree Which has Never Been Riven--The Scrags in Society--The Loadstone of Failure at the Foot of the Scrag--The Lesson to be Derived from Hopeless Failure in Others--Sorrows March in Battalions, not as Single Spies. Page 321.

Gains and Brains.

The Man of Success--Eggs Trying to Dance with Stones--Trying to Draw the Prize in a Lottery Without any Ticket--Dray Horses' Honest Belief that the Earth Moves Backward under the Racer's Feet, He Being So Lucky--The Heavy End of the Lifting--How Fortune Tellers Make Their Money--Great Opportunities for All Who Were not Born Tired. Page 325.

Discipline.

One Reason of the Prosperity of the Present Era--Obey Orders--How the Wonders have been Piled Up--Metaphor of the Organ and Its Pipes and Reeds--Sound Your Pipe only in Your Proper Turn, and You will hear Beautiful Music. Page 332.

Books.

We Multiply Our Sensations by Books--Everyone Can have a Library--Books are the Best of Friends--Charm of a Well-Read Comrade--Bindings--A Book as Great a Thing as a Battle--Importance of Some Battles--Our Eyes--How to Judge a Book Rightly--Large Type--Need of Handy Volumes--Aid Others, as a Duty. Page 337.

Friendship.

Reason of the Melancholy Tone which Pervades the Great Writings of the Ages on this Subject--Man Expects to Get More than He Gives--How a man Prepares the Nostrum called Friendship--Unsuccessful Substitution of Selfishness for a Mother's Love--What is Possible in the way of Ordinary Friendship--Spot Friendship--Let us not Rail against Friendship. Page 345.

Envy.