Part 9

Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth. It is thought that many of them may have human beings who think and reason like we do. Multiply the 1,600,000,000 population on this earth by any portion of the 1,600,000,000 stars that may have thinking creatures on them; multiply that total by the millions of years and millions of generations that have passed out of existence.

Think of these numbers and limitless boundaries, and then tell me, if you can, that one little man on one little star we call Earth has a strangle-hold on truth, and that his viewpoint, his ism, his little dogma, his narrow creed, is all-sufficient, all-right, all-inclusive.

Verily, little protoplasm, you have another guess. We can, by experience and tests, prove two and two make four. We can by practice and experience prove that love, kindness, help, gentleness, sympathy, cheer and courage bring happiness.

[Sidenote: The Sense of Proportion.]

These are tangible things that fall within the province of human experience. But when one wee Willie with sober face tells you and me and others that he has the truth about the definite, full workings of God's plans and purposes, I think of the greatness of 1,600,000,000 stars, each with 1,600,000,000 humans, and of the unnumbered generations gone by, and say that verily, we must live TO-DAY and do the best we can to-day in act and thought and word.

Yesterday is dead; to-morrow is unknown. Where we have been, where we will be, we know not. Where we are to-day, we know, and only God in His omniscience knows the final answer as to our future estate.

He will take us and hold us and place us in His keeping and according to His purpose, even though we do not or cannot follow or believe any one of the little man-formed creeds, isms or cults as the measure and rule for our beliefs.

Those stars testify to the certainty of God, and I believe in Him.

51.

[Sidenote: Success and Envy.]

When a man by his brains, or by a fortunate combination of circumstances, rises to a position of prominence, he becomes a target for the envious and a pattern for the imitator. Emulation and envy are ever alert in trying to steal the fruits of the leader or the doer of things.

The man who makes a name gets both reward and punishment. The reward is his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told about him.

When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the envious many.

If he does a mediocre thing, he is unnoticed; if his work is a masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting.

Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was pronounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced mutiny on his ship on the very eve of his discovery of land. Millet starved in his attic. Time has passed, and the backbiters are all in unmarked graves. The world, until the end of time, will enjoy Wagner's music. Whistler and Millet's paintings attract artists from all over the world, and inventors reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.

[Sidenote: The Price of Greatness.]

The leader is assailed because he has done a thing worth while; the slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to prove his greatness. Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader, they seek to belittle him. But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and he remains a leader. He has made his genius count, and has given the creature of his brain and imagination to the world.

Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him, his masterpiece and his fame endure.

And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to the noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers.

In his own heart he knows he has done a thing worth while; his own conscience is clear, and he cares not for the estimate of the world.

His own character is his chief concern, and he is content in the knowledge that time will bring its reward.

If you have high ideals in business, if you achieve success on a big scale, mark well, you will be a subject of attacks, of lies, of malice, of envy, of disreputable competition. There is no way out of it.

[Sidenote: Compensation.]

But you will be repaid. The lover of fair play, the grateful, true, honest, worth-while people will flock to your standard; the riff-raff will skulk behind bushes and throw rocks and mud, but their acts will prove to the great mass of the people that your purposes, practices and policies are right.

Therefore, courage is to be your chief asset; patience, pride, perseverance, your lieutenants.

Be not weary, grow not discouraged when your progress is hampered by obstacles. Every truly great man of the past has had his backbiters and detractors.

52.

There are three periods in our lives: the youthful, or prospective period, the adult, or introspective period, and the old age, or retrospective period.

[Sidenote: Growing Old.]

Too many there are who look forward to old age with fear or dread. But old age has its joys and pleasures as well as middle age and youth, and these pleasures are the keener if the first and second periods of life were lived sanely, worthily and properly. Numerous are the great men of the past who have extolled the old-age period of human life with its wisdom and wealth of worldly experience.

If the middle period is spent in getting dollars only, then old age will be days of empty nothingness.

Youth is the planning time--the time for ideals and ambitions; middle age the building time, and old age the dividend time.

With many, old age is spent in reading the book of the past--with sadness as the reader recognizes that the ideals, plans and hopes were shattered. As age turns the page in the book of the past, he reads one hope after another vanished in smoke.

Anticipation is seldom realized, and this is as it should be, for in time, men will learn to live each day for each day's good and each day's happiness.

Let us perform our duty to-day; let us lay away a kindly act, a smile, a word of cheer in the bank of good deeds.

Each of us has a share in this world's work. It matters little whether our actual share is what we had guessed or wished it to be.

[Sidenote: The Value of Ideals.]

Vicissitudes will cross our path here and there; so-called misfortune or bad luck will strike us when least expected. The failure of our dreams should not grieve us. We cannot reach up and grasp the stars, but like the pilot at the wheel at sea, we can steer by those stars that help us on our way.

Our ideal may not be realized, but the journey to it may still be a pleasant one.

Our ideals, plans and hopes had a real purpose, a real service; they gave us courage and made us work, and thus they were well worth while.

We must not, in the old age period, condemn ourselves because our plans failed or our castles were shattered.

There is no hard luck except incurable disease or death. It is not for us to mourn the past or weep for the flowers that are gone.

In our active days, we should realize that we are putting memories away in our brains that will come back to us in old age.

Only that which we put in our brains can we take out.

So then, Mr. Avarice, I warn you: If gold is your God, it's cold comfort you will get in your sunset days.

Build up loving ties, appreciation and the worth-while riches of good deeds, and in your evening of life, you will be welcome wherever you go.

[Sidenote: Put Not Your Faith in Gold.]

If your life was sold for gold, your evening of life will be short and miserable; legatees will grudge you your every breath; they will endure you simply because they are checking off the days from Time's calendar until the day of your passing, and the dollars you sold your soul and heart and life for, will be lavishly spent by cold-blooded heirs who cared nothing for you.

Leave a legacy of love, example and character, and if, with these, there are a few dollars, they simply prove your frugality, economy and independence.

A few dollars left to heirs will help. Many dollars will hurt. Dollars in old age will give you pleasure by helping in tight corners. They will enable you to help your loved ones over the bumps in the road.

Use the dollars to help those you love to help themselves, and your old age will be a busy, happy one, and you won't be in the way.

To prepare for that happy period of your life, the foundation must be built in the active to-day period.

Carry smiles into your old age; they will keep the heart young, the digestion good, and life will be worth while.

53.

I have traveled horseback over the great arid plains of the West, and have read the story of the ages gone before.

[Sidenote: The Remote Past.]

In Arizona and New Mexico there are ancient ruins of forts and cities built by people we know not of. Chalcedony Park with its petrified forest of mammoth trees silently testifies to a period when vegetation was rampant on what is now a desert.

In Wyoming there is coal enough to furnish fuel for the United States for several centuries.

Coal is carbon made from decayed trees and vegetation, which became covered with earth and rock, and was subjected to tremendous pressure throughout the thousands of years required to effect the transformation.

Oceans and floods gradually covered millions of acres of trees and plants with ooze and soil and sand. Ages turned some of these deposits to stone.

There in bleak Wyoming is testimony and evidence of changes that time only can bring about.

"A thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years." Thus wrote the scribe of old. So, then, we must consider this estimate of time in reading the first chapter of Genesis which describes the order of the world's creation.

First took place the dividing of light from darkness, thus bringing about the rotation of day and night.

Then, the separating of land and water; then, the birth of vegetation on the land, the creation of fish and reptiles in the sea, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and finally, the higher animal, man.

[Sidenote: The Measure of Time.]

The pages of the earth's surface carry in their stratification indelible records harmonizing with this scriptural account of the evolution of the earth from its chaotic misty past to its concrete definite present. Yes, this earth of ours is old, so old that mere man cannot contemplate or accurately estimate its wondrous age.

The fossils of the mammoth reptiles and beasts which lived before the appearance of man on this planet are numerous in the fascinating West I know so well.

In those arid desert hills are bones of the ancient rhinoceros--parent of our horse--and there are shells, and fossils of fish, and bones of animals imbedded in the strata of rock.

Man reads these pages and he is lost in bewilderment, impoverished in thought, dumb for words, paralyzed by his inability to co-ordinate this evidence with any measure of time that will fall within the range of human comprehension.

[Sidenote: Age of the Earth.]

Historians say the world was 4,004 years old before the Christian era, and 1918 years have passed since then, making the age to date 5,922 years. It is not surprising that through the dark ages, dates and facts were lost. We have not a complete history in written language, but we have some very definite history in the rocks and hills and lands and seas.

The world certainly is more than 5,922 years old. Read the record of time so plainly visible at Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls eats away about two feet of rock in a century; the gorge is a good many miles long. At the present rate of erosion, it takes 2,640 years to eat away a mile. Multiply that by the distance between the falls and Lake Ontario and you have an idea of how many years Niagara Falls has been at work.

Before Niagara Falls was in existence, the country round about was under the sea; before that, under glaciers; before that, in the tropics, and I don't know how many times it has swung on its pendulum between Frigid, Temperate and Torrid Zones.

We are certain to become lost in a labyrinth of mystery when we take these known facts concerning the earth's age, and try to specify any particular number of millions of years as the old world's age.

54.

And now my pleasant occupation of writing this book draws to an end. I sincerely hope you have received some definite suggestions that will be helpful to you.

To get you to think--that has been my aim. To get you to analyze yourself--to take stock of yourself--to know yourself--that has been the task I set before me.

[Sidenote: How to Think.]

Think vital thoughts of courage, faith and hope. Then will your days pass joyfully, and your path be one of peace, happiness and contentment. If you fill your mind with gloom and sorrow thoughts, your surroundings will reflect your mental attitude and will accentuate your misery and dejection. Do not give way to this weak, gloomy, pernicious thinking. You can be strong, you will be strong if you learn to control your thought habits.

Can you face disagreeable facts without wavering? Can you meet adversity with courage in your heart and a smile on your lips? You can, if you have read this book carefully, calmly, thoughtfully, and put into practice the rules I have laid down.

Do not think that you can go through life without your share of pain, disillusion and disappointment. It can't be done. No man has ever done it. Clouds will come, but they can be dispelled. Obstacles will arise, but they can be surmounted. Troubles will visit you, but meet them boldly and courageously and do not show the white feather.

To the thinking man or woman, life is a great arena wherein good and bad, joy and sorrow, faith and disillusion, happiness and unhappiness, success and failure are inextricably intermingled. The joy and happiness, accept gratefully; the sorrow and disillusion, bear with fortitude. And remember, although it is not possible to enjoy an absolute and continued state of happiness, it always lies within your power to have serenity, poise, peace and contentment.

When you are in the dumps--when that feeling of the hopelessness and un-worth-whileness of life comes over you, then, more than ever, _think_. Do not give way to fear and despondency. Think cheerful thoughts; think of the good things that life has given you, not the least of them being life itself. Think of the ringing words that Milton put into the mouth of Lucifer, the fallen angel, in "Paradise Lost":

"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

[Sidenote: Life's Ever-Newness.]

To the person who thinks, life is ever-new, ever-interesting. If you have lost your grip on reality--if you have dwelt too long in the shadowland of doubt, fear and despondency--the thing to do is to correct your thinking. Let your mind soar in contemplation of the beautiful things of nature. Steel yourself against petty pull-backs and recognize them for what they really are--trifling annoyances that serve no purpose except to distract you from the pursuit of the great and glorious goal that lies ahead.

Only to the thinking man is it given to see life and see it whole. He only has the true sense of proportion. He keeps his eye on the main objective, secure in the realization that he is master of himself and captain of his own soul. He is self-sufficient, for he knows that no matter what befalls, he carries happiness and contentment within himself wherever he goes.

The practice of thinking is a tower of strength. If you are a thinker, life's little troubles serve but to reinforce your spirit of resistance and make you stronger.

So then, let this be my last word to you--_think!_--for it is by thinking that man has risen to his present high estate in the world. It is by thinking that the future joy and happiness and peace of the world must be increased.