Part 31

There are so many humiliations in this world! The secret is to rise above them, to throw off dissatisfaction, and to grasp some pleasing hope, grateful and beneficial to the mind. We are encompassed by illusions and delusions. We need the comforting promises of the heart—a steadfast faith in the good and true, and hopefulness in all things, especially of futurity. Hope is rich and glorious, and faithfully should it be cultivated. Let its inspiring influence grow in the heart; it will give strength and courage.

Let the cheerful word fall from the lips, and the smile play upon the countenance. The way of the world is dark enough even to the most favored ones among us. Why not, then, gather all the happiness out of life that you can? Why not strive to cultivate the cheerful, hopeful disposition that will enable you to see the silver lining to every cloud? By such a course you will do much to assuage the sorrows and to increase the joys and pleasures of life.

Prosperity is the great test of human character. Many are not able to endure prosperity. It is like the light of the sun to a weak eye—glorious, indeed, in itself, but not proportioned to such an instrument. Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man ever so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.

Moderate prosperity is not only to be hopefully expected as the proper reward of a life's exertion, but to bring the best human qualities to any thing like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or a moderate amount of it, is required, just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots. But prosperity, if it be good for the encouragement of humanity, is full of danger as well. There is ever a certain languor attending the fullness. When the heart has no more to wish, it yawns over its possession, and the energy of the soul goes out like a flame that has no more to devour. A smooth sea never made skillful mariners, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify men for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties and excite the invention, prudence, and skill of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a life-time of softness and security.

It seems as if man were like the earth. It can not bask forever in the sunshine. The snows of Winter and its frosts must come and work in the ground, and mellow it to make it fruitful. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August—he becomes parched, hard, and close-grained. To some men the Winter and Spring come when they are young. Others are born in Summer, and made fit to live only by a Winter of sorrow coming to them when they are middle-aged or old. But come it must, and under its softening influence the mind is fitted for the routine of life, and then the warm, shining sun of prosperity spreads abroad in the heart its vivifying influence, and the best powers of man are developed.

The way to prosperity is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words—industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them every thing. There is no other way to arrive at a true prosperity. It is gained only by diligent application to the business of life. The men who may be said to be prosperous are seldom men who have been rocked in the cradle of indulgence or caressed in the lap of luxury, but they are men whom necessity has called from the shade of retirement to contend under the scorching rays of the sun with the stern realities of life, with all of its vicissitudes.

Many make the mistake of supposing that prosperity and happiness are identical terms. The most prosperous are often the most miserable, while happiness may dwell with him whose every effort has failed, provided only that he hath done his best. There is, therefore, a true and a false prosperity, much resembling each other. But the similarity is in resemblance only, for they differ in constitution. The one is true and substantial, and is the result of a well-lived life. Its rewards are inward content and surroundings of comfort; the enjoyment of the real blessings of life and the unfolding of all the better nature of man. Its imitation is the reward gained by unjust or dishonest means. It may have the luster, but it lacketh the ring and weight of the true metal. It may have the outward adornment, but can not bring its possessor the inward peace of him who hath the former. Instead of unfolding and expanding the heart of man, it hardens it and dries up the better nature.

Engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it until you succeed, or until your experience shows that you should abandon it. A constant hammering will generally drive it home at last so that it can be clinched. When a man's undivided attention is centered on one object his mind will be constantly suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him were his brain occupied by a dozen different objects at once. Many a fortune has slipped through a man's fingers because of attention thus engaged; there is good sense in the old caution against having too many irons in the fire at once.

Adversity in early life often lays the foundation for future prosperity. The hand of adversity is cold, but it is the hand of a friend. It dispels from the youthful mind the pleasing, but vain, illusions of untaught fancy, and shows that the road to success and prosperity is always a road requiring energetic action to surmount its difficulties. There is something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of him who determines to rise superior to ill-fortune. "At thy first entrance upon thy estate," saith a wise man, "keep a low sail that thou mayest rise with honor; thou canst not decline without shame; he that begins where his father ends will generally end where his father began."

As full ears load and lay corn so does too much fortune bend and break the mind. It deserves to be considered, too, as another advantage, that affliction moves pity and reconciles our enemies; but prosperity provokes envy and loses us even our friends. Again, adversity is a desolate and abandoned state, and, as rats and mice forsake a tottering house, so do the generality of men forsake him who is cast down by adversity. As a consequence, he who has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others or with himself, and can not be expected to put forth full measure of his powers.

The patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and enterprise is not only essential in securing the ultimate prosperity which you seek, but it is requisite to prepare your mind for enjoying your prosperity. Every-where in human experience, as frequently as in nature, hardship is essential to ultimate success. That magnificent oak was detained twenty years in its upward growth while its roots took a great turn around a bowlder, by which the tree was anchored to withstand the storms of centuries. They who are eminently prosperous, or who achieve greatness or even notoriety in any pursuit, must expect to make enemies. Whoever becomes distinguished is sure to be a mark for the malicious spite of those who, not deserving success themselves, are galled by the merited triumph of the more worthy. Moreover, the opposition which originates in such despicable motives is sure to be of the most unscrupulous character, hesitating at no iniquity, descending to the shabbiest littleness. Opposition, if it is honest and manly, is not in itself undesirable. It is the whetstone by which a highly tempered nature is polished and sharpened. Uninterrupted prosperity shows us but one side of the world. For, as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

It is to the contempt of details that many men may trace the cause of their present misfortune. The world is full of those who languish, not from a lack of talents, but because, in spite of their many brilliant parts, they lack the power of properly estimating the value of trifles. Their souls fire with lofty conceptions of some work to be achieved, their minds warm with enthusiasm as they contemplate the objects already attained; but when they begin to put the scheme into execution they turn away in disgust from the dry minutiæ and vulgar drudgery which are requisite for its accomplishment. Such men bewail their fate. Failing to do the small tasks of life, they have no calls to higher ones, and so complain of neglect.

As the universe itself is composed of minute atoms, so it is little details, mere trifles, which go to make success in any calling. Attention to details is an element of effectiveness which no reach of plan, no loftiness of design, no enthusiasm of purpose can dispense with. It is this which makes the difference between the practical man, who pushes his thoughts to a useful result, and the mere dreamer. If we would do much good in the world we must be willing to do good in little things, in little acts of benevolence one after another; speaking a timely and good word here, doing an act of kindness there, and setting a good example always. We must do the first good thing we can, and then the next. This is the only way to accomplish much in one's lifetime. He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do any thing.

The disposition of mankind is to despise the little incidents of every-day life. This is a lamentable mistake, since nothing in this life is really small. In the complicated and marvelous machinery of circumstances it is absolutely impossible to decide what would have happened as to some event if the smallest deviation had taken place in the march of those that preceded them. In a factory we may observe the revolving wheel in one room and in another, many yards distant, the silk issuing from the loom, rivaling in its tints the colors of the rainbow. There are many events in our lives, the distance between which was much greater than that between the wheel and ribbon, yet the connection was much closer. It is, indeed, strange on what petty trifles the crises of life are decided. A chance meeting with some friend, an unexpected delay in some business venture, may be the source from which you date the rise of good or ill fortune.

There are properly no trifles in the biography of life. The little things in youth accumulate into character in age and destiny in eternity. Little sums make up the grand total of life. Each day is brightened or clouded by trifles. Great things come but seldom, and are often unrecognized until they are passed. It has been said that if a man conceives the idea of becoming eminent in learning, and can not toil through the many little drudgeries necessary to carry him on, his learning will soon be told. Or if one undertakes to become rich, but despises the small and gradual advances by which wealth is ordinarily acquired, his expectations will be the sum of his riches.

The difference between first and second class work in every department of labor lies chiefly in the degree of care with which the minutiæ are executed. No matter whether born king or peasant, our inevitable accompaniment through life is a succession of small duties, which must be met and overcome, or else they will defeat our plans. When we reflect that no matter what profession or business we may follow, it demands the closest attention to a mass of little and apparently insignificant details, then we comprehend why it is that the patient plodder, the slow but sure man, so universally surpasses the genius who had such a brilliant career in college. It is all very well to form vast schemes. It is, however, the homely details of their execution that furnish the crucial tests of character. The successful business man at home, surrounded by articles of luxury, is a spectacle calculated to spur on the toiler. But the merchant at his office has had to work with trifles, to toil over columns of figures to post his ledger; and while you were carelessly spending a dollar, he has ransacked his books to discover what has become of a stray shilling.

In short, success in any pursuit can not be obtained unless the trifling details of the business are attended to. No one need hope to rise above his present situation who suffers small things to pass unimproved, or who, metaphorically speaking, neglects to pick up a cent because it is not a shilling. All successful men have been remarkable, not only for general scope and vigor, but for their attention to minute details. Like the steam hammer, they can forge ponderous bolts or fashion a pin. It is singular that in view of these facts men will neglect details. Many even consider them beneath their notice, and when they hear of the success of a business man who is, perhaps, more "solid" than brilliant, sneeringly remark that he is "great in little things." But with character, fortune, and the concerns of life, it is the littles combined that form the great whole. If we look well to the disposition of these, the sum total will be cared for. It is the pennies neglected that squander the dollars. It is the minutes wasted that wound the hours, and mar the day.

Much of the unhappiness of life is caused by trifles. It is not the great bowlders, but the small pebbles on the road, that bring the traveling horse on his knees; and it is the petty annoyances of life, to be met and conquered afresh each day, that try most severely the metal of which we are made. Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they lack in weight they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets. The great sorrows of life are mercifully few, but the innumerable petty ones of every day occurrence cause many to grow weary of the burden of life.

Those acts which go to form a person's influence are little things, but they are potential for good or evil in the lives of others. From the little rivulets we trace the onward flowing of majestic rivers, constantly widening until lost in the ocean; and so the little things of an individual life, in their ever-widening influence for good or evil, diffusing misery or happiness around them, are borne onward to swell the joys or sorrows of the boundless ocean of eternity, and should be noted and guarded the more carefully from their infinitely higher importance. Words may seem to us but little things, but they possess a power beyond calculation. They swiftly fly from us to others, and though we scarcely give them a passing thought, their spirit lives. Though they are as fleeting as the breath that gave them, their influence is as enduring as the heart they reach. Ah, well may we guard our lips so that none grieve in silence over words we have carelessly dropped. Well may we strive to scatter loving, cheering, encouraging words, to soothe the weary, and awaken the nobler, finer feelings of those with whom we daily come in contact.

The happiness, also, of life is largely composed of trifles. The occasions of great joys, like those of great sorrows, are few and far between, but every day brings us much of good if we will but gather it. "One principal reason," says Jeremy Bentham, "why our existence has so much less of happiness crowded into it than is accessible to us, is that we neglect to gather up those minute particles of pleasure which every moment offers for our acceptance. In striving after a sum total, we forget the ciphers of which it is composed; struggling against inevitable results which he can not control, too often man is heedless of those accessible pleasures whose amount is by no means inconsiderable when collected together; stretching out his hands to catch the stars, man forgets the flowers at his feet, so beautiful, so fragrant, so multitudinous, so various."

"Time _was_ is past—thou canst not it recall; Time _is_ thou hast—employ the portion small; Time _future_ is not, and may never be; Time _present_ is the only time for thee."

Spare moments are the gold-dust of time—the portion of life most fruitful in good or evil. When gathered up and pressed into use important results flow from thence; when neglected they are gaps through which temptation finds a ready entrance. They are a treasure when rightly used, but a terrible curse when abused. There are three obligations resting upon us in regard to the use and application of time. There is the duty to ourselves, in the care of our happiness, our improvement, and providing for our necessities; the duty to those dependent upon ourselves, and to society; and, lastly, our accountability to God, who bestows upon us this valuable gift, not without its being accompanied with the greatest inducements and the strongest and most cogent motives to improve it to advantage in these different respects.

A celebrated Italian was wont to call his time his estate; and it is true of this, as of other estates of which the young come into possession, that it is rarely prized till it is nearly squandered, and then, when life is fast waning, they begin to think of spending the hours wisely, and even of husbanding the moments. But habits of idleness, listlessness, and procrastination once firmly fixed can not be suddenly thrown off, and the man who has wasted the precious hours of life's seed-time finds that he can not reap a harvest in life's Autumn. The value of time is not realized. It is the most precious thing in all the world; the only thing of which it is a virtue to be covetous, and yet the only thing of which all men are prodigal. Time is so precious that there is never but one moment in the world at once, and that is always taken away before another is given.

It is astonishing what can be done in any department of life when once the will is fired with a determination to use the leisure time rightly. Only take care to gather up your fragments of leisure time, and employ them judiciously, and you will find time for the accomplishment of almost any desired purpose. Men who have the highest ambition to accomplish something of importance in this life frequently complain of a lack of leisure. But the truth is, there is no condition in which the chances of accomplishing great results are less than in that of leisure. Life is composed of an elastic material, and wherever a solid piece of business is removed the surrounding atmosphere of trifles rushes in as certainly as the air into a bottle when you pour out its contents. If you would not have your hours of leisure frittered away on trifles you must guard it by barriers of resolution and precaution as strong as are needed for hours of study and business.

The people who, in any community, have done the most for their own and the general good are not the wealthy, leisurely people who have nothing to do, but are almost uniformly the overworked class, who seem well-nigh swamped with cares, and are in a paroxysm of activity from January to December. Persons of this class have learned how to economize time, and, however crowded with business, are always found capable of doing a little more; and you may rely upon them in their busiest season with far more assurance than upon the idle man. It is much easier for one who is always exerting himself to exert himself a little more for an extra purpose than for him who does nothing to get up steam for the same end. Give a busy man ten minutes in which to write a letter, and he will dash it off at once; give an idle man a day, and he will put it off till to-morrow or next week. There is a momentum in an active man which of itself almost carries him to the mark, just as a very light stroke will keep a hoop going when a smart one was required to set it in motion.

The men who do the greatest things achieved on this globe do them not so much by fitful efforts as by steady, unremitting toil—by turning even the moments to account. They have the genius of hard work—the most desirable kind of genius. The time men often waste in needless slumber, in lounging, or in idle visits, would enable them, were it employed, to execute undertakings which seem to their hurried and worried life to be impossible. Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which, nevertheless, will make, at the end of life, no small deduction from the sum total.

Time, like life, can never be recalled. It is the material out of which all great workers have secured a rich inheritance of thoughts and deeds for their successors. It has been written, "The hours perish, and are laid to our charge." How many of these there are upon the records of the past! How many hours wasted, worse than wasted in frivolous conversation, useless employment—hours of which we can give no account, and in which we benefited neither ourselves nor others! There are few such hours in the busiest lives, but they make up the whole sum in the lives of many. Many live without accomplishing any good; squander their time away in petty, trifling things, as if the only object in life were to kill time, as if the earth were not a place for probation, but our abiding residence. We do not value time as we should, but let many golden hours pass by unimproved. We loiter during the day-time of life, and ere we know it the night draws near "when no man can work." Oh, hours misspent and wasted! How we wish we could live them over again!

It requires no small degree of effort to resolutely employ one's time so as to allow none of it to go to waste. There are a thousand causes tending to the loss of time, and any one who imagines that they would do great things if they only had leisure are mistaken. They can find time if they only set about doing it. Complain not, then, of your want of leisure. Rather thank God that you are not cursed with leisure, for a curse it is in nine cases out of ten. What, if to achieve some good work which you have deeply at heart, you can never command an entire month, a week, or even a day? Shall you, therefore, bid it an eternal adieu, and fold your arms in despair? The thought should only the more keenly spur you on to do what you can in this swiftly passing life of yours. Endeavor to compass its solution by gathering up the broken fragments of your time, rendered more precious by their brevity.

Where they work much in gold the very dust of the room is carefully gathered up for the few grains of gold that may thus be saved. Learn from this the nobler economy of time. Glean up its golden dust, economize with tenfold care those raspings and parings of existence, those leavings of days and bits of hours, so valueless singly, so inestimable in the aggregate, and you will be rich in leisure. Rely upon it, if you are a miser of moments, if you hoard up and turn to account odd minutes and half-hours and unexpected holidays, the five-minute gaps while the table is spreading, your careful gleanings at the end of life will have formed a colossal and solid block of time, and you will die wealthier in good deeds harvested than thousands whose time is all their own.