Part 10

A young man is, in the true sense of the word, the architect of his own fortune. Rely upon your own strength of body and soul. Remember that the man who wills it can go almost anywhere or do almost any thing he determines to do. You must make yourself, or come to nothing. You must win by your own exertions, and not wait for some one to come to your assistance. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty, and industry. Keep at the helm, and, above all, remember that the great art of commanding is to do a fair share of the work yourself. The greater the difficulty the more the glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. The soul of every great achievement is energy; but enervation and indolence sap its life, and doom the man to obscurity and ill-success. Men of feeble action are accustomed to attribute their misfortune to what is termed _ill luck_. They envy the men who climb the ladder of eminence, and call them lucky men and men of peculiar opportunity. This is a vain and foolish imagination. Energy produces good fortune and success, while enervation breeds misfortune and ill luck.

Fortune, success, fame, position are never gained but by determinedly and bravely persevering in any course until the plans are finally accomplished. In short, you must carry a thing through if you want to be any body or any thing, no matter if it does cost you the pleasure of society, the thousand pearly gratifications of life. Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for the matter, and that no one else could do it. Put forth your whole energies. Be awake; electrify yourself; go forth to the task. Learn to carry it through, and you will be a hero. You will think better of yourself. Others will think better of you. The world in its very heart admires the stern, determined doer. It sees in him its best sights, its brightest objects, its richest treasures. Proceed with energy, then, in whatever you undertake. Consider yourself amply sufficient for the deed, and you will succeed.

Amongst the elements which conduce to success in life there is one of rare value, which, by some strange oversight, is classed as of little account. We refer to punctuality. We regard it as a virtue. To be punctual in all of your appointments is a duty resting upon you no less obligatory than the duty of common honesty. An appointment is a contract, and if you do not keep it you are dishonestly using other people's time, and, consequently, their money. "Punctuality," says Louis XIV, "is the politeness of kings." He need not have confined his remarks to blood royal; it is politeness in every body; and know that whenever you fail to meet an engagement promptly, which by exertion you might have done, you are guilty of a gross breach of etiquette.

It is certainly impolite to do a wrong to others and when you have made an appointment with another person you owe him punctuality, and you have no right to waste his time if you have your own. Success and happiness depend in a far higher degree on punctuality than many suppose. It is not sufficient to do the right thing, nor in the right way, but it must be done at the right time as well, if we would reap the rewards of our labor. But when so done its effect in the problem of success is great and efficacious. Lord Nelson attributed all his success in life to his habit of strict punctuality. Many of our most successful business men date their success from the time they commenced to practice this virtue. Thousands have failed in life from carelessness in this respect alone. Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than this quality; nor is there any habit which sooner saps his reputation as a good business man than that of being always behind time.

Lack of punctuality is not only a serious vice in itself, but it is also the parent of a large progeny of other vices. Hence he who becomes its victim is the more and more involved in toils from which it is almost impossible to escape. He who needlessly breaks his appointments shows that he is as reckless of the waste of other people's time as of his own. His acquaintances readily conclude that the man who is not conscientious about his appointments will be equally careless about his other engagements, and they will refuse to trust him with matters of importance. To the busy man time is money, and he who robs him of it does him as great an injury, as far as loss of property is concerned, as if he had picked his pockets or paid him with a forged or counterfeit bill.

It is a familiar truth that punctuality is the life of the universe. The planets keep exact time in their revolutions, each as it circles around the sun coming to its place yearly at the very moment it is due. So, in business, punctuality is the soul of industry, without which all its wheels come to a dead stand. If the time of a business man be properly occupied every hour will have its appropriate work. If the work of one hour be postponed to another it must encroach upon the time of some other duty, or remain undone, and thus the whole business of the day is thrown into disorder. If that which is first at hand be not instantly, steadily, and regularly dispatched other things accumulate behind, till affairs begin to accumulate all at once, and no human brain can stand the pressure.

Punctuality should be made not only a point of courtesy but a point of conscience. The beginner in business should make this virtue one of the first objects of professional acquisition. Let him not deceive himself with the idea that it is easy of attainment, or that he can practice it by and by, when the necessity of it shall be more cogent. If in youth it is not easy to be punctual, then in after life, when the character is fixed, when the mental and moral faculties have acquired a rigidity, to unlearn the habit of tardiness is almost an impossibility. It still holds a man enthralled, though the reason be fully convinced of its criminality and inconvenience.

A right estimate of the value of time is the best and surest foundation for habits of punctuality, for you are not likely to economize time, either for yourself or others, unless you fully realize how valuable it is, and when lost how utterly irreclaimable. The successful men in every calling have had a keen sense of the value of time—they have been misers of minutes. Hence you must try and realize the value of time. Each hour, as it passes swiftly away, is gone _forever_. Lost wealth may be replaced by toil and industry; lost friends may be regained by consideration and patience; lost health may be recovered by medical skill and care; even lost happiness and peace of mind may be restored; but lost time, never. Whilst you read these lines it is being numbered with the dead past and dying present. There is no recalling it; there is no regaining it; there is no restoring it. You must make the most of time as it flies. You have no right to waste your own, still less, then, that of others, by your lack of punctuality.

Not only should a person be thus punctual in all his express engagements and appointments, but in all his implied ones as well. If he has a regular hour for his shop or office, let it find him there, at his desk and at work. Punctuality in the performance of known duties other than the keeping of appointments is also one of the chief promoters of success in life. If a certain work or other duty is to be performed, we are too prone to put it off for a more convenient season. Such delays are often a fruitful source of after troubles. How many business men have been brought to bankruptcy and ruin by the failure of one man to meet his obligations promptly! How many times are we put to great work and expense because we neglected, or put off, the performance of admitted duties! It is easy to say, "Wait awhile;" so easy to let the burden of to-day's work and duties fall on to-morrow. But when to-morrow comes it has its own peculiar duties, and the result is, we simply have extra burdens to meet when the time finally comes that our work can no longer be delayed.

Punctuality is a virtue that can give force and power to an otherwise utterly insignificant character. Like charity, it covers a multitude of sins. It were easy to show by examples from the lives of great men that their success in life was owing in a large measure to their habits of punctuality. All great commanders have possessed this faculty in an eminent degree. The reason punctuality is such an invariable element of success is not hard to determine. The punctual person, one who always lives up to his engagements, and is prompt in fulfilling his implied duties as well, is just the person whose business is conducted after the most approved forms and methods. They are the ones who have time at their disposal to cast their eyes over the field of legitimate enterprise, and at once adopt whatever may seem to them to possess real excellence. Having met all their engagements promptly, their word is as good as their bond, their credit unshaken; in short, every avenue of success is open to them.

But with those persons who are habitually behind in the fulfillment of their duties, their business is generally in a very unsettled state. They have not that freshness and business vivacity and life which is always observable in the man who drives his business instead of allowing it to drive him. What wonder, then, that they sink beneath the load of accumulated cares, give up the great battle of life in despair, and are content to fill a subordinate place in the economy of the world? Would that young men thought more of what is involved in punctuality! It is not merely the "being on time," but it imports such a habit that, carried into life, it is one of the main instruments in making real youthful dreams of success. It is that which makes business a pleasure instead of a drudgery. It is that which goes so far in building up a reputation of sagacity, skill, and integrity.

No one can have a high opinion of a person who is so regardless of punctuality, even in small matters, as to be continually breaking his word, under the impression that "it is of no consequence," as so many often say, to excuse their habit of being false to their word. There are some persons who seldom, or never, do as they promised. We know persons, who in other respects are worthy people, who can scarcely command confidence, because they are so slack in fulfilling their engagements and meeting their obligations in small matters. We know young men of promise who are daily losing ground among their acquaintances for a similar reason. A man will soon ruin himself this way. In all business transactions, in all engagements, let all do exactly as they say,—be punctual to the minute; even a little beforehand is far preferable to being a little behind time. Such a habit secures a composure which is essential to happiness.

In this day, when so many things are clamoring for attention, the first law of success may be said to be concentration. It is impossible to be successful in every branch of business, or renowned in every department of a professional life. We must learn to bend our energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left. It has been said that a great deal of the wisdom of a man in this century is shown in leaving things unknown, and a great deal of his practical ability in leaving things undone. The day of universal scholarships is past. Life is short, and art is long. The range of human wisdom has increased so enormously that no human brain can grapple with it, and the man who would know one thing well must have the courage to be ignorant of a thousand other things, however attractive or interesting. As with knowledge, so with work. The man who would get along must single out his specialty, and into that must pour the whole stream of his activity—all the energies of his hand, eye, tongue, heart, and brain. Broad culture, many-sidedness, are beautiful things to contemplate; but it is the narrow-edged men—the men of one single and intense purpose—who steel the soul against all things else, that accomplish the hard work of the world.

The great men of every age who have had the arduous task to shape human destiny have been men of one idea impelled by resolute energy. Take those names that are historic, and, with the exception of a few great creative minds, you find them to be men who are identified with some one achievement upon which their life force was spent. The great majority of men must concentrate their energies upon the complete mastery of some one profession, trade, or calling, or they will experience the disappointment of those whose empire has been lost in the ambition of universal conquest. A man may have the most dazzling talents, but if they are scattered upon many objects he will accomplish nothing. Strength is like gunpowder: to be effective it needs concentration and aim. The marksman who aims at the whole target will seldom hit the center. The literary man or philosopher may revel among the sweetest and most beautiful flowers of thought, but unless he gathers or condenses these in the honeycomb of some great thought or work, his finest conceptions will be lost or useless.

The world has few universal geniuses who are capable of mastering a dozen languages, arts, or sciences, or driving a dozen callings abreast. Beginners in life are perpetually complaining of the disadvantages under which they labor; but it is an indisputable fact that more persons fail from a multiplicity of pursuits and pretensions than from a poverty of resources. "The one prudence in life," says a shrewd American essayist, "is concentration, the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine, property and its cares, friends and a social habit, politics, music, or feasting. Every thing is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work." The gardener does not suffer the sap to be driven into a thousand channels merely to develop a myriad of profitless twigs. He prunes the branches, and leaves the vital juices to be absorbed by a few vigorous, fruit-bearing branches.

While the highest ability accomplishes but little if scattered on a multiplicity of objects, on the other hand, if one has but a thimbleful of brains, and concentrates them upon the thing he has in hand, he may achieve miracles. Momentum in physics, if properly directed, will drive a tallow candle through an inch board. Just so will oneness of aim and the direction of the energies to a single pursuit, while all others are waived, enable the veriest weakling to make his mark where he strikes. The general who scatters his soldiers all about the country insures defeat; so does he whose attention is diffused through innumerable channels, so that it can not gather in force on any one point. The human mind, in short, resembles a burning-glass, whose rays are intense only as they are concentrated. As the glass burns only when its rays are converged to a focal point, so the former illumes the world of science, literature, or business only when it is directed to a solitary object. What is more powerless than the scattered clouds of steam as they rise to the sky? They are as impotent as the dew-drop that falls nightly upon the earth; but concentrated and condensed in a steam boiler they are able to cut through solid rock, to hurl mountains into the sea, and to bring the antipodes to our doors.

It is the lack of concentration and wholeness which distinguishes the shabby, half-hearted, and blundering—the men who make the mob of life—from those who win victories. In slower times success might have been won by the man who gave but a corner of his brain to the work in hand, but in these days of keen competition it demands the intensest application of the thinking faculty. Exclusive dealings in worldly pursuits is a principle of hundred-headed power. By dividing his time among too many objects, a man of genius often becomes diamond dust instead of diamond. The time spent by many persons in profitless, desultory reading would, if concentrated upon a single line of study, have made them masters of an entire branch of literature or science. Distraction of pursuits is the rock upon which most unsuccessful persons split in early life. In law, in medicine, in trade, in the mechanical professions the most successful persons have been those who have stuck to one thing. Nine out of ten men lay out their plans on too vast a scale, and they who are competent to do almost any thing do nothing, because they never make up their minds distinctly as to what they want or what they intend to be.

We are often compelled to a choice of acquisitions, for there are some things the possession of which is incompatible with the possession of others, and the sooner this truth is known and recognized the better the chances of success and happiness. Much material good must be resigned if we would attain the highest degree of moral excellence, and many spiritual joys must be foregone if we resolve at all risks to win great material advantages. To strive for a high personal position, and yet expect to have all the delights of leisure; to labor for vast riches, and yet to ask for freedom from anxiety and care, and all the happiness which flows from a contented mind; to indulge in sensual gratifications, and yet demand health, strength, and vigor; to live for self, and yet to look for the joys that spring from a virtuous and self-denying life—is to ask for impossibilities.

If you start for success you must expect to pay its price. It can not be won by feeble, half-way efforts, neither is it to be acquired because sought for in a dozen different directions. It demands that you bring to your chosen profession or calling energy, industry, and, above all, that singleness of purpose which is willing to devote the energies of a life-time to its accomplishment. Mere wishing and sighing brings it not. Many little calls of society on your time must pass unheeded. You can not expect to live tranquilly and at your ease, but to be up and doing, with all your energies devoted to the one point kept constantly in view. Cultivate this habit of concentration if you would succeed in business; make it a second nature. Have a work for every moment, and mind the moment's work. Whatever your calling, master all its bearings and details, all its principles, instruments, and applications. We have so much work ahead of us that must be done if we would reach the point desired that we must save our strength as much as possible. Concentration affords a great safe-guard against exhaustion. He who scatters himself on many objects soon loses his energy, and with his energy his enthusiasm—and how is success possible without enthusiasm?

It becomes, then, of importance to be sure we have started right in the race for distinction. Every beginner in life should strive early to ascertain the strong faculty of his mind or body fitting him for some special pursuit, and direct his utmost energies to bring it to perfection. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in man; but each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men is in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall need oftenest to be practiced.

Though one must be wholly absorbed to win success, still singleness of aim by no means implies monotony of action; but if we would be felt on this stirring planet, if we would strike the world with lasting force, we must be men of one thing. Having found the thing we have to do we must throw into it all the energies of our being, seeking its accomplishment at whatever hazard or sacrifice. But that does not prevent us from participating in the enjoyments of life. If you are sent on business to some foreign land, though bent on business, still you can admire, as you hurry along, the beautiful scenery from the car windows; you can note the strange places through which you pass; you can observe the wondrous sublimity of the ocean without being distracted from the main objects of your travels. So it is not to be inferred from what has been said that concentration means isolation or self-absorption. There may be a hundred accessories in life, provided they contribute to one result.

In urging the importance of concentration, and of sticking to one thing, we do not mean that any man should be a mere lawyer, a mere doctor, or a mere merchant or mechanic, and nothing more. These are cases of one-sidedness pushed too far. There is no more pitiable wreck than the man whose one giant faculty has drowned the rest. Man dwarfs himself if he pushes too far the doctrine of the subdivision of labor. Success is purchased too dear if to attain it one has subordinated all his faculties and tastes to one master passion, and become transformed into a head, a hand, or an arm, instead of a man. Every man ought to be something more than a factor in some grand formula of social or economical science, a cog or pulley in some grand machine.

Let every one take care, first of all, to be a man, cultivating and developing, as far as possible, all of his powers on a symmetrical plan; and then let him expend his chief labors on the one faculty, which nature, by making it prominent, has given a hint should be especially cultivated. There is, indeed, no profession upon which a high degree of knowledge will not continually bear. Things which, at first glance, seem most remote from it will often be brought into close approximation to it, and acquisitions which the narrow-minded might deem a hindrance will sooner or later yield something serviceable. Nothing is more beautiful than to see a man hold his art, trade, or calling in an easy, disengaged way, wearing it as the soldier does his sword, which, once laid aside, the accomplished soldier gives you no hint that he has ever worn. Too often this is not the case, and the shop-keeper irresistibly reminds you of the shop, and the scholar, who should remind you that he has been on Parnassus only by the odors of the flowers he has crushed, which cling to his feet, affronts you with a huge nosegay stuck in his bosom.

One can make all his energies bear on one important point and yet show himself a man among men by his interest in matters of public concern. He can endear himself to the community by kindly acts to the distressed, as well as completely mastering, in all its bearings, the one great work which he has taken upon himself as his life's work. Then take up your task. Remember that you must marshall all your forces at one point, and move in one direction, if you would accomplish what your desires have painted; but also remember that you are a human being, and not a machine, and that as you pass on the journey of life you should, as far as possible, without insuring defeat, take note of the wonders which nature has spread before you, should ponder on what history says of the past, should muse over the solemn import of life, and thus, while winning laurels for your brow, and achieving your heart's desire, develop in you the faculties which go to make, in its complete meaning, a man or woman.