Chapter 4

full of gods and temples." Let not the Vandals and Goths of after-life swoop down upon this sunny region in our lives; yet if they do, may we not look upon our noble ruins, our Coliseum and our Parthenon, in a kind of classic love that shall endear and sanctify the rights of the young about us and lengthen out their "golden age." Youth should be young. Says Shakspeare: "Youth no less becomes

THE LIGHT AND CARELESS LIVERY THAT IT WEARS,

than settled age its sables and its weeds, importing health and graveness." Youth is like Adam's early walk in the Garden of Paradise. "The senses," says Edmund Burke, "are unworn and tender, and the whole frame is awake in every part." The dew lies upon the grass. No smoke of busy life has darkened or stained the morning of our day. The pure light shines about us. "If any little mist happen to rise," says Willmott, "the sunbeam of hope catches and glorifies it."

Youth is rash. It "skips like the hare over the meshes of good counsel," says Shakspeare. "Then let our nets and snares of benevolence be laid with the more cunning. Youth is a continual intoxication," says Rochefoucauld; "it is the fever of reason." We must cool this fever, spread around it cheering flowers of truth, bathe it in the water-brooks of gentleness and self-sacrifice. "Young men," according to Chesterfield, "are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough," yet joined with this self-esteem, we find that "youth is ever confiding; and we can almost forgive its disinclination to follow the counsels of age, for the sake of the generous disdain with which it rejects suspicion." "How charming the young would be," writes Arthur Helps, "with their freshness, fearlessness, and truthfulness, if only--to take a metaphor from painting--they would make more use of grays and other neutral tints, instead of dabbing on so recklessly the strongest positives in color." Why should their colors not be rich? Are not the hues upon their cheeks as rich as the sunset?

DOES NOT THE CHERRY

"dab on" the scarlet and the carmine direct from the gorgeous sun himself? Age marvels at the happiness of youth. The sombre lessons of the world have left their marks on the mind of the one; the other has everything to learn. It would seem as though its residence had been (as the poet has written so beautifully at the head of the chapter) in some Paradise, whence, it issued to this earth, "trailing clouds of glory" as it came. Age has suffered from the heats and dust of the previous day, and sees in the blood-red "copper sun," only the indication of another march of weariness and thirst.

YOUTH BREATHES THE DEWY AIR,

and beholds only the roseate tints of the sunrise. Why should not its heart rejoice? Says Lord Lytton: "Let youth cherish the happiest of earthly boons while yet it is at its command; for there cometh a day to all 'when neither the voice of the lute nor the birds' shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fall on their young eyes as unbidden as the dews." "Youth holds no society with grief," says old Euripides. Perhaps, rather, it makes those "formal calls" which have no feeling in them.

THE LITTLE GIRL'S KITTEN DIES,

and the little human heart is inconsolable for half an hour. In half a day, when asked to tell her greatest grief, she will relate an accident to her doll, forgetting the poor kitten yet waiting for burial! How could those lips and cheeks retain their delicate tints if the wet seasons of grief set in with tropical intensity? Lord Lytton, often, in his highly colored writings, cries out "O youth! O youth!" and there is a world of regret in the exclamation. "O the joy of young ideas," sighs Hannah Moore, "painted on the mind, in the warm, glowing colors which fancy spreads on objects not yet known, when all is new and all is lovely!"

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

has justly claimed the respect and admiration of the world for many high qualities of mind. One of the most admirable of his remarks is an admonition to youth, which runs as follows: "Use thy youth so that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof. Use it as the spring-time which soon departeth, and wherein thou oughtest to plant and sow all provisions for a long and happy life." But this is difficult to do. The march of youth is through a mountainous country. The scenery is changing, but the progress is not encouraging. "Self-flattered, unexperienced, high in hope when young," says the poet Young, "with sanguine cheer and streamers gay, we cut our cable, launch into the world, and fondly dream each wind and star our friend." How many youths have believed they would, by merit alone, rise to the Presidency of the United States--

THE FIRST MAN IN FIFTY MILLIONS!

Youth keeps a diary, into which it pours a volume of "thought" that seems a very mine of gems. Take up that chronicle at middle age and see its weak and driveling character. Observe the almost total lack of one idea that will aid you to some honorable end! And yet there is something touching even in the great trust and confidence of childhood. How sweet and true are the beautiful lines of Thomas Hood called "I remember, I remember:

I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm further off from heaven Than when I was a boy.

Dr. Watts lays down to youth that it should have a decent and agreeable behavior among men, "a modest freedom of speech, a soft and elegant manner of address, a graceful and lovely deportment, a cheerful gravity and good humor, with a mind appearing ever serene under the ruffling accidents of life." This programme of action is far beyond the reach of a well-balanced adult, much further the inexperienced and untried mind of younger life. But the character which should attain to such angelic proportions would truly have a reverent place among men's memories.

THE ALPENA.

Youth has no knowledge of God's power. The confidence that early years implant in the mind supplies an unsubstantial substitute. I have pictured to myself an illustration: A bright young man is present at a grand concert. It is between the parts. He bends suavely over the back of a lady's chair and talks sweet music to her ear. He says: "Could you not follow every thought of the composer in that symphony?" (which they have just heard). "And was not the effect sublime when the storm reached the heights of the mountains, and all the elements of Nature struggled so stubbornly?" And the young woman demurely gives him an assuring look which conserves all her interests; whereupon he backs off in triumph, and feels that the concert _is_ worth his week's wages after all!

AGAIN,

this young man at Grand Haven, on the western border of Lake Michigan, boards the structure of pine wood and ten-penny nails called the Alpena. The Alpena floats out into her last night--into the valley of the shadow of death. Presently the young man feels his vessel and his life trembling like a captive wild bird in a remorseless grasp. Anon this trembling grows into the awful, final, fatal paroxysms. Then suddenly the mind of the young man breaks from the shackles of vanity and self-sufficiency, and he views, for the first time, the visible forms of angered Nature. He recalls his white gloves, his former complete idea of a storm, his triumphant, _au revoir_ retreat from the opera-box, and, as the discords of the Everlasting gradually resolve toward the diapason, the full chant, of His solemn eternity, the young man cries out, in a spirit of revelation, "What a worm am I!" and adds his own piteous tragedy to the unheard murmurs of bubbling death and muddy burial!

"REMEMBER NOW THY CREATOR,

in the days of thy youth," says Solomon. "Train up a child in the way he should go," says the proverb, "and when he is old he will not depart from it." Be not afraid of the sneers of the ungodly. "As the cracking of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool." "The fairest flower in the garden of creation," says Sir James E. Smith, "is a young mind, offering and unfolding itself to the influence of Divine Wisdom, as the heliotrope turns its sweet blossoms to the sun."

Lord Bacon, in his forty-third essay, thus sums up the qualities of youth: "Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business;

BUT THE ERRORS OF AGED MEN

amount to but this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end without consideration of the means and degrees, pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them--like an unready horse, they will neither stop nor turn."

THE HARD-PAN SERIES.

Now with this wise parallel of youth and age before me, with the importance which I attach to this period of life as the precise moment at which the final cast of the clay of life is set, and with the belief in Goethe's statement that the destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on the opinions of its young men under twenty-five years of age, I beg to call the especial attention of the young to a Hard-Pan Series of ten chapters which follow, devoted largely to just this forming-period of life, when the mould is ready and the governing characteristics are fast pouring in. I beg parents and preceptors, if they approve my efforts, to lend their aid in attracting toward these admonitions such consideration as their merit shall warrant, and I have so endeavored to dispose the bitterness of practical advice as to both somewhat cover its presence and gratify a youthful and adventurous literary taste.

PRUDENCE IN SPEECH.

Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar;

Do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new hatched unfledged comrade

Give every man thine ear but few thy voice; Take each man's counsel but reserve thy judgment. --Shakspeare.

You live. To live is costly. Who will pay for it? Your soul cries out "I." But how will you get the money? "Oh! I'll get it!"--that is the confident cry of youth. The confidence oozes out as life lengthens--and yet there are certain lines of action which, if followed, in this bright land of liberty, are sure to result in the accumulation of something for our old age.

THE MYSTERIOUS JUNIUS

one of the great exemplars in the matter of keeping a secret wrote to his publisher: "Let all your views in life, therefore, be directed to a solid, however moderate independence. Without it no man can be happy, nor even honest." This celebrated sentence was written by a man who was refusing a proffer of money for his writings (then in print) and it should not be read as inspiring one to avarice. The vice of avarice is more honest than envy, but is not the less unpleasant and reprehensible. Let us suppose you are fortunate enough to have some grit and spunk about you. At the earliest point practicable you get something to do. Perhaps at a Fourth of July celebration your Sunday school teacher trusts you in a booth to deal out lemonade and handle money. It is a good beginning. Perhaps you are

ESTABLISHED BEHIND A COUNTER

in a general store and intrusted with the great secret of a cost-mark, fully as important a secret, let me assure you, as you can buy in the most secret of places! What spot in your character will "wear down" the quickest? When you were little it was your toes. They were copper-plated. Now the wear falls where copper will not protect you. Nothing but experience will now serve as the copper did then. The first place that "rubs" will be

YOUR TONGUE.

When you have conquered the natural inclination to be what is familiarly known as a "smarty," there is still a greater wisdom to acquire. Avoid hearing, where it is not absolutely necessary, anything that you will have to keep secret. The less secrets you have the less discretion will be necessary to protect them. After you have heard a thing from your employer, keep it to yourself. The youth who talks about his employer's business must have other marvelous faculties to succeed in life. He is a Blind Tom. He plays the piano, but the wonder is how he does it. It must be that it would hurt your feelings if you heard another merchant say of your employer that he keeps a pretty good boy, except that

HE "BLABS A GOOD DEAL."

If you can shut up your mouth now, you can keep it shut when you get to be Secretary of the Treasury and a whole syndicate of bankers are trying to pump out of you whether you mean to pay off $100,000,000 of 5 per cent bonds the next week, or merely reduce the interest 1-1/2 per cent. If they could tell, they could make a million dollars, and unless you have been all your life a discreet man, be assured they _will_ tell. If your employer's rivals in business find out through you where your people get a certain line of goods, how much is paid for it, or

THE TIME ON WHICH IT IS BOUGHT,

be assured you will never succeed either as a man in business for yourself, or as a worker under the direction of others. Your employer may be embarrassed and the fatal knowledge may have come into your unlucky ears. You will hear it whispered all around you. Why? Because no one knows "for sure." Everybody wants to see if you know anything about it. Can you not see how much luckier you would have been had you really known nothing of the state of things? A word, a look, from you, may turn from your employer just the helping hand that would have carried him across a tight place. How many battles have been won by the arrival, just in time, of a reinforcement! Make it a point that, if you are inclined

TO "BLOW YOUR AFFAIRS,"

you were not cut out for "business." You had better become a lecturer, a farmer, or something else, and occupy a field where industry alone will save all your interests. Remember the miserable barber of King Midas in mythology. The King had been cursed by the offended god Apollo with asses' ears. To hide his deformity he had his barber dress the hair over the ears, and the barber was then sworn with an awful oath of secrecy. But the "tonsorial artist" (as they call him in the city!) was one of those people who could not stand the pressure. He went out in the field and dug a little hole, and

INTO THIS HOLE HE BREATHED THE SECRET

that His Majesty had been smitten by Apollo. What was the astonishment of the world at hearing the reeds that grew hard by whispering among themselves, whenever the wind blew them confidentially together, "King Midas hath asses' ears!"

Be in mortal fear of the first error in this regard. When a boy has made a record for bad, it seems to hang to him. The fact that he has told something which he ought to have kept to himself is quoted against him until it becomes a positive habit to speak about it every time his name is mentioned.

"Jimmie, where's your outside man? I heard he was in town. His cousin asked me to inquire."

"Oh! no! he's not in town. He went out on the road last night. He will be in Eagertown to-morrow, Brightside Wednesday, and Upearly Saturday."

That is exactly what was wanted out of you, and you must excuse your questioner if he hurries on, so as not to be seen pumping you any longer than is necessary.

Now this style of gaining information is low and contemptible, but of two boys who talked, one of whom said a good deal that did not amount to much, learning a good deal that did, and the other letting out a great deal and learning nothing, there can be little doubt of the business success of the first as compared to that of the second.

Put a copper-toe on your tongue. Remember that Gen. Grant made a great part of his fame by letting other folks do his talking.

COURTESY.

When my friends are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile. --Joubert.

There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation. If you are always courteous without difficulty, you are endowed with a nature naturally moral. You are naturally a gentleman. Anyhow, you are behind the counter, and you desire to sell goods. You wish to have customers brighten up when they see you. Very well, brighten up yourself. You ought to be glad to see them. If they are not glad, they, perhaps, have less reason for joy. They are about to part with their money in order to get something they cannot part with so easily. You went to work in the morning hoping a good many people would come in. Now here they are. You can smile on the young lady, but can you smile on the old woman? You can if you are a man. It is nothing but good-breeding to do it. What is this boasted word "good-breeding?" It is "the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them." Chesterfield, a man who was as prominent in England as Daniel Webster in America, expressed his astonishment that anybody who had good sense and good nature could essentially fail in good-breeding.

STUDY YOUR CUSTOMER.

If he or she be brusque, be yourself pliable, respectful, and by all means quick. Do not stand in front of him or her with your head down ready to hook or to butt. You are glad the customer has come in. That should solve the whole problem. In the city you are required to "put up with" the bad mannered fashion that people have of treating a clerk as if he were a piece of furniture, but in the town this is all changed. A majority of the citizens know you, and all regard you with better breeding than would the city customer. You are young and positive, because you know very little about life. Curb yourself. Let the customer make all the statements he has to make. He will run out of them presently. In case he want any of yours, he will then ask for them, and literally be at your mercy. As to

YOUR HANDS,

have them very clean. It will be a positive advantage to you to wear no rings. In case the people like jewelry, it distracts their attention from the great idea (a sale); in case they do not like gew-gaws, it will put you in opposition. Make your great effort in the direction you think the customer's mind is taking. Sell him what he thinks he wants first. So much, sure. Then, if he changes his mind, it will be to your profit, generally. When the customer speaks to you, it gives you your programme. If he be cheery, imitate him. He is your friend and is giving you an example. If he look hard at you,

LOOK RESPECTFULLY

at him. Serve him with alacrity, say nothing not necessary, and the joy in your heart will thaw him out before long. Express to your customers your desire that they should come again,--never by words, because that is too difficult, except in a barber-shop, where it is a custom--but by opening the door for them at their departure, even if you have to keep another customer waiting, and by thanking them on receipt of the money, or upon delivery of the goods if it be on account. There are very few people who will remain cold toward you after they find out you are really glad to see them. The general store of the rural town makes

THE FINEST-MANNERED MEN IN THE COUNTRY,

respectful, dignified, alert, and unruffled. I saw a clerk at the postal money-order office in St Paul. The Swedes and Poles go there often to send away money. That young man had such a charming way of showing an old Swedish woman just how to make out an order before she had learned to write, and he had such an awe-stricken way of receiving the instructions of other money-senders who knew all about it, that I felt he was a credit to America, and I mention the reminiscence only with diminished pleasure from the fact that I have forgotten the young man's name. Courteous treatment of a customer is necessary under every conceivable circumstance. It may be a busybody has come in to worry you, who never bought a cent's worth of you or anybody else whom you know; nevertheless her tongue is an advertisement. If you can gain her good will, even comparatively, as weighed by her estimate of other clerks, it is better than a column advertisement in the local papers. When Zachariah Fox, a great merchant of Liverpool, was asked by what means he contrived to amass so large a fortune as he possessed, his reply was: "Friend, by one article alone, and in which thou mayest deal too, if thou pleasest,--it is civility." "Hail! ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in."

"We must be as courteous," says

RALPH WALDO EMERSON,

"to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light." There is more natural courtesy in the country than in the city, just as there are more privileges where three clerks are at work than where there are a hundred. And then, again, civility seems to be lacking in the city as well naturally as out of necessity. Milton has put this forcibly by saying "courtesy oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, with smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls and courts of princes, where it first was named." The small courtesies sweeten life. The great ones ennoble it. The extent to which a man can make himself agreeable, as seen in the lives of Swift, Thomas Moore, Chesterfield, Coleridge, Sydney Smith, Aaron Burr, Edgar Poe, and those odd creatures called

"BEAUX," SUCH AS BRUMMEL, NASH, ETC.,

goes to show the immense importance of the art, and its influence in determining the success of any man in business. Good-breeding shows itself the most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. Says Chesterfield: "How often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, and even rejected; while flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired." You have seen beautiful swords of auroral flame dart into the zenith; you have seen marvelous flights of meteors, which were gone ere your admiration had given rise to a cry of pleasure. So it is with manners. They irradiate our presence, giving to our associates

MOMENTARY VIEWS

of those qualities which are universally loved and respected--gentleness, unselfishness, gladness and peace. Your clothes, while under twenty-five years of age, should be very neat. Your shirt should be clean. This does not imply that you are to break extra backs to keep fresh shirts ready for you, but that you are to make extra efforts to keep the one you have on unsoiled for a decent length of time. If your clothes are dark, get in the habit of wearing a black silk or satin neck-tie and wear it some one way all your life. It helps people to "place" you. Generally a sack coat makes a very tall man look shorter, and a frock-coat looks all the better for a change. The clothes should be loose, so that they will

OCCUPY AS LITTLE OF THE MIND AS POSSIBLE.