How to Get on in the World

M >> Major A.R. Calhoon >> How to Get on in the World

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The Duke of Wellington's natural temper, like that of Napoleon, was
strong in the extreme and it was only by watchful self-control that
he was enabled to restrain it. He studied calmness and coolness in
the midst of danger, like any Indian chief. At Waterloo, and
elsewhere, he gave his orders in the most critical moments without
the slightest excitement, and in a tone of voice almost more than
usually subdued.

Abraham Lincoln in his early manhood was quick tempered and
combative, but he soon learned self-control and, as all know, became
as patient as he was forceful and sympathetic. "I got into the habit
of controlling my temper in the Black Hawk war," he said to Colonel
Forney, "and the good habit stuck to me as bad habits do to so
many."

Patience is a habit that pays for its own cultivation and the
biographies of earth's greatest men, prove that it was one of their
most conspicuous characteristics.

One who loves right can not be indifferent to wrong, or wrong-doing.
If he feels warmly, he will speak warmly, out of the fullness of his
heart. We have, however, to be on our guard against impatient scorn.
The best people are apt to have their impatient side, and often the
very temper which makes men earnest, makes them also intolerant. "Of
all mental gifts, the rarest is intellectual patience; and the last
lesson of culture is to believe in difficulties which are invisible
to ourselves."

One of Burns' finest poems, written in his twenty-eighth year, is
entitled "A Bard's Epitaph." It is a description, by anticipation,
of his own life. Wordsworth has said of it:

"Here is a sincere and solemn avowal; a public declaration from his
own will; a confession at once devout, poetical, and human; a
history in the shape of a prophecy." It concludes with these lines:

"Reader, attend--whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole
In low pursuit;
Know--prudent, cautious self-control,
Is Wisdom's root."

Truthfulness is quite as much a habit and quite as amendable to
cultivation as falsehood. Deceit may meet with temporary success,
but he who avails himself of it can be sure that in the end his "sin
will find him out." The credit of the truthful, reliable man stands
when the cash of a trickster might be doubted. "His word is as good
as his bond," is one of the highest compliments that can be paid to
the business man.

Be truthful not only in great things, but in all things. The
slightest deviation from this habit may be the beginning of a career
of duplicity, ending in disgrace.

But truthfulness, like the other virtues, should not be regarded as a
trade mark, a means to success. It brings its own reward in the
nobility it gives the character. An exception might be made here as
to that form of military deceit known as "stratagem," but it is the
duty of the enemy to expect it, and so guard against it. The word of
a soldier involves his honor, and if he pledges that word, to even a
foeman, he will keep it with his life.

Like our own Washington, Wellington was a severe admirer of truth. An
illustration may be given. When afflicted by deafness, he consulted
a celebrated aurist, who, after trying all remedies in vain,
determined, as a last resource, to inject into the ear a strong
solution of caustic. It caused the most intense pain, but the
patient bore it with his usual equanimity. The family physician
accidentally calling one day, found the duke with flushed cheeks and
blood-shot eyes, and when he rose he staggered about like a drunken
man. The doctor asked to be permitted to look at his ear, and then
he found that a furious inflammation was going on, which, if not
immediately checked, must shortly reach the brain and kill him.
Vigorous remedies were at once applied, and the inflammation was
checked. But the hearing of that ear was completely destroyed. When
the aurist heard of the danger his patient had run, through the
violence of the remedy he had employed, he hastened to Apsley House
to express his grief and mortification; but the duke merely said:
"Do not say a word more about it--you did all for the best." The
aurist said it would be his ruin when it became known that he had
been the cause of so much suffering and danger to his grace. "But
nobody need know any thing about it: keep your own counsel, and,
depend upon it, I won't say a word to any one." "Then your grace
will allow me to attend you as usual, which will show the public
that you have not withdrawn your confidence from me?" "No," replied
the duke, kindly but firmly; "I can't do that, for that would be a
lie." He would not act a falsehood any more than he would speak one.

But lying assumes many forms--such as diplomacy, expediency, and
moral reservation; and, under one guise or another, it is found more
or less pervading all classes of society. Sometimes it assumes the
form of equivocation or moral dodging--twisting and so stating the
things said as to convey a false impression--a kind of lying which a
Frenchman once described as "walking round about the truth."

There are even men of narrow minds and dishonest natures, who pride
themselves upon their Jesuitical cleverness in equivocation, in
their serpent-wise shirking of the truth and getting out of moral
backdoors, in order to hide their real opinions and evade the
consequences of holding and openly professing them. Institutions or
systems based upon any such expedients must necessarily prove false
and hollow. "Though a lie be ever so well dressed," says George
Herbert, "it is ever overcome." Downright lying, though bolder and
more vicious, is even less contemptible than such kind of shuffling
and equivocation.

CHAPTER VII

AS TO MARRIAGE.

Mention has been made of the great influence on character of the
right kind of a home, in childhood and youth. The right kind of a
home depends almost entirely on the right kind of a wife or mother.

The old saying, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure," will never
lose its force. "Worse than the man whose selfishness keeps him a
bachelor till death, is the young man, who, under an impulse he
imagines to be an undying love, marries a girl as poor, weak, and
selfish as himself. There have been cases where marriage under such
circumstances has aroused the man to effort and made him,
particularly if his wife were of the same character, but these are
so exceptional as to form no guide for people of average common
sense.

Again, there have been men, good men, whose lives measured by the
ordinary standards were successful, who never married; but those who
hear or read of them, have the feeling that such careers were
incomplete.

The most important voluntary act of every man and woman's life, is
marriage, and God has so ordained it. Hence it is an act which
should be love-prompted on both sides, and only entered into after
the most careful and prayerful deliberation.

It is natural for young people of the opposite sex, who are much
thrown together, and so become in a way essential to each other's
happiness, to end by falling in love. It is said that "love is
blind," and the ancients so painted their mythological god, Cupid.
It is very certain that the fascination is not dependent on the
will; it is a divine, natural impulse, which has for its purpose the
continuance of the race.

Here, then, in all its force, we see the influence of association,
which has been already treated of. The young man whose associations
are of the right kind is sure to be brought into contact with the
good daughters of good mothers. With such association, love and
marriage should add to life's success and happiness, provided,
always, that the husband's circumstances warrant him in establishing
and maintaining a home.

Granting, then, the right kind of a wife, and the ability to make a
home, the young man, with the right kind of stuff in him, takes a
great stride in the direction of success when he marries.

No wise person will marry for beauty mainly. It may exercise a
powerful attraction in the first place, but it is found to be of
comparatively little consequence afterward. Not that beauty of
person is to be underestimated, for, other things being equal,
handsomeness of form and beauty of features are the outward
manifestations of health. But to marry a handsome figure without
character, fine features unbeautified by sentiment or good nature,
is the most deplorable of mistakes. As even the finest landscape,
seen daily, becomes monotonous, so does the most beautiful face,
unless a beautiful nature shines through it. The beauty of to-day
becomes commonplace to-morrow; whereas goodness, displayed through
the most ordinary features, is perennially lovely. Moreover, this
kind of beauty improves with age, and time ripens rather than
destroys it. After the first year, married people rarely think of
each other's features, whether they be classically beautiful or
otherwise. But they never fail to be cognizant of each other's
temper. "When I see a man," says Addison, "with a sour, riveted
face, I can not forbear pitying his wife; and when I meet with an
open, ingenuous countenance, I think of the happiness of his
friends, his family, and his relations."

Edmund Burke, the greatest of English statesmen, was especially happy
in his marriage. He never ceased to be a lover, and long years after
the wedding he thus describes his wife: "She is handsome; but it is
a beauty not arising from features, from complexion, or from shape.
She has all three in a high degree, but it is not by these she
touches the heart; it is all that sweetness of temper, benevolence,
innocence, and sensibility, which a face can express, that forms her
beauty. She has a face that just raises your attention at first
sight; it grows on you every moment, and you wonder it did no more
than raise your attention at first.

"Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe when she pleases; they
command, like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by
virtue.

"Her stature is not tall; she is not made to be the admiration of
everybody, but the happiness of one.

"She has all the firmness that does not exclude delicacy; she has all
the softness that does not imply weakness.

"Her voice is a soft, low music--not formed to rule in public
assemblies, but to charm those who can distinguish a company from a
crowd; it has this advantage--you must come close to her to hear it.

"To describe her body describes her mind--one is the transcript of
the other; her understanding is not shown in the variety of matters
it exerts itself on, but in the goodness of the choice she makes.

"She does not display it so much in saying or doing striking things,
as in avoiding such as she ought not to say or do.

"No person of so few years can know the world better; no person was
ever less corrupted by the knowledge of it."

A man's real character will always be more visible in his household
than anywhere else; and his practical wisdom will be better
exhibited by the manner in which he bears rule there than even in
the larger affairs of business or public life. His whole mind may be
in his business; but, if he would be happy, his whole heart must be
in his home. It is there that his genuine qualities most surely
display themselves--there that he shows his truthfulness, his love,
his sympathy, his consideration for others, his uprightness, his
manliness--in a word, his character. If affection be not the
governing principle in a household, domestic life may be the most
intolerable of despotisms. Without justice, also, there can be
neither love, confidence, nor respect, on which all true domestic
rule is founded.

It is by the regimen of domestic affection that the heart of man is
best composed and regulated. The home is the woman's kingdom, her
state, her world--where she governs by affection, by kindness, by
the power of gentleness. There is nothing which so settles the
turbulence of a man's nature as his union in life with a high-minded
woman. There he finds rest, contentment, and happiness--rest of
brain and peace of spirit. He will also often find in her his best
counselor, for her instinctive tact will usually lead him right when
his own unaided reason might be apt to go wrong. The true wife is a
staff to lean upon in times of trial and difficulty; and she is
never wanting in sympathy and solace when distress occurs or fortune
frowns. In the time of youth, she is a comfort and an ornament of
man's life; and she remains a faithful helpmate in maturer years,
when life has ceased to be an anticipation, and we live in its
realities.

Luther, a man full of human affection, speaking of his wife, said, "I
would not exchange my poverty with her for all the riches of Croesus
without her." Of marriage he observed: "The utmost blessing that God
can confer on a man is the possession of a good and pious wife, with
whom he may live in peace and tranquility--to whom he may confide
his whole possessions, even his life and welfare." And again he
said, "To rise betimes, and to marry young, are what no man ever
repents of doing."

Some persons are disappointed in marriage, because they expect too
much from it; but many more because they do not bring into the co-
partnership their fair share of cheerfulness, kindliness,
forbearance, and common sense. Their imagination has perhaps
pictured a condition never experienced on this side of heaven; and
when real life comes, with its troubles and cares, there is a sudden
waking-up as from a dream.

We have spoken of the influence of a wife upon a man's character.
There are few men strong enough to resist the influence of a lower
character in a wife. If she do not sustain and elevate what is
highest in his nature, she will speedily reduce him to her own
level. Thus a wife may be the making or the unmaking of the best of
men. An illustration of this power is furnished in the life of
Bunyan, the profligate tinker, who had the good fortune to marry, in
early life, a worthy young woman, of good parentage.

On hearing of the death of his wife, the great explorer, Dr.
Livingstone, wrote to a friend: "I must confess that this heavy
stroke quite takes the heart out of me. Every thing else that has
happened only made me more determined to overcome all difficulties;
but after this sad stroke I feel crushed and void of strength. Only
three short months of her society, after four years' separation! I
married her for love, and the longer I lived with her I loved her
the more. A good wife, and a good, brave, kind-hearted mother was
she, deserving all the praises you bestowed upon her at our parting
dinner, for teaching her own and the native children, too, at
Kolobeng. I try to bow to the blow as from our Heavenly Father, who
orders all things for us . . . I shall do my duty still, but it is
with a darkened horizon that I again set about it."

Besides being a helper, woman is emphatically a consoler. Her
sympathy is unfailing. She soothes, cheers, and comforts. Never was
this more true than in the case of the wife of Tom Hood, whose
tender devotion to him, during a life that was a prolonged illness,
is one of the most affecting things in biography. A woman of
excellent good sense, she appreciated her husband's genius, and, by
encouragement and sympathy, cheered and heartened him to renewed
effort in many a weary struggle for life. She created about him an
atmosphere of hope and cheerfulness, and nowhere did the sunshine of
her love seem so bright as when lighting up the couch of her invalid
husband.

Scott wrote beautifully and truthfully:

"Oh, woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light, quivering aspen made,
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou."

CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATION AS DISTINGUISHED FROM LEARNING.

Although not the same kind, there is as much difference between
education and learning, as there is between character and
reputation.

Learning may be regarded as mental capital, in the way of accumulated
facts. Education is the drawing out and development of the best that
is in the heart, the head, and the hand.

The civilized world has a score of very learned men, to the one who
may be said to be thoroughly educated. The learned man may be
familiar with many languages, and sciences, and have all the facts
of history and literature at his fingers' tip, and yet be as
helpless as an infant and as impractical as a fool. An educated man,
a man with his powers developed by training, may know no language
but his mother tongue, may be ignorant as to literature and art, and
yet be well--yes, even superbly educated.

The learned man's mind may be likened to a store house, or magazine,
in which there are a thousand wonderful things, some of which he can
make of use in the battle of life. He resembles the miser who fills
his coffers with gold and keeps it out of circulation. Beyond the
selfish joy of possession, his wealth is worthless, and its
acquisition has unfitted him for the struggle. The educated man, to
continue the illustration, may not be rich, but he knows how to use
every cent he owns, and he places it where, under his energy, it
will grow into dollars.

Far be it from us to underestimate the value of learning. Many of the
world's greatest men have been learned, but without exception such
men have also been educated. They have been trained to make their
knowledge available for the benefit of themselves and their fellow
men.

The athlete who develops his muscles to their greatest capacity of
strength and flexibility, and this can only be done by observing
strictly the laws of health, is physically an educated man. Every
mechanic whose hands and brain have been trained to the expertness
required by the master workman, is well-educated in his particular
calling. The man who is an expert accountant, or a trained civil
engineer, may know nothing of the higher mathematical principles,
but he is better educated than the scholar who has only a
theoretical knowledge of all the mathematics that have ever been
published.

The educated man is the man who can do something, and the quality of
his work marks the degree of his education. One might be learned in
law in a phenomenal way, and yet, unless he was educated, trained to
the practice, he would be beaten in the preparation of a case by a
lawyer's clerk.

There are men who can write and talk learnedly on political economy
and the laws of trade, and quote from memory all the statistics of
the census library, and yet be immeasurably surpassed in practical
business, by a young man whose college was the store, and whose
university was the counting room.

It should not be inferred from this that learning is not of the
greatest value, or that the facts obtained from the proper books are
to be ignored. The best investment a young man can make is in good
books, the study of which broadens the mind, and the facts of which
equip him the better for his life calling.

But books are not valuable only because of the available information
they give; when they do not instruct, they elevate and refine.

"Books," said Hazlitt, "wind into the heart; the poet's verse slides
into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember
them when old. We read there of what has happened to others; we feel
that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be had everywhere
cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books. We owe everything
to their authors, on this side barbarism."

A good book is often the best urn of a life, enshrining the best
thoughts of which that life was capable; for the world of a man's
life is, for the most part, but the world of his thoughts. Thus the
best books are treasuries of good words and golden thoughts, which,
remembered and cherished, become our abiding companions and
comforters. "They are never alone," said Sir Philip Sidney, "that
are accompanied by noble thoughts." The good and true thought may in
time of temptation be as an angel of mercy, purifying and guarding
the soul. It also enshrines the germs of action, for good words
almost invariably inspire to good works.

Thus Sir Henry Lawrence prized above all other compositions
Wordsworth's "Character of the Happy Warrior," which he endeavored
to embody in his own life. It was ever before him as an exemplar. He
thought of it continually, and often quoted it to others. His
biographer says, "He tried to conform his own life and to assimilate
his own character to it; and he succeeded, as all men succeed who
are truly in earnest."

Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most
lasting products of human effort. Temples crumble into ruin;
pictures and statues decay; but books survive. Time is of no account
with great thoughts, which are as fresh to-day as when they first
passed through their authors' minds, ages ago. What was then said
and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed
page. The only effect of time has been to sift and winnow out the
bad products; for nothing in literature can long survive but what is
really good.

To the young man, "thirsting for learning and hungering for
education," there are no books more helpful than the biographies of
those whom it is well to imitate. Longfellow wisely says:

"Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time--

Footprints which perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and ship-wrecked brother,
Seeing, may take heart again."

At the head of all biographies stands the Great Biography--the Book
of Books. And what is the Bible, the most sacred and impressive of
all books--the educator of youth, the guide of manhood, and the
consoler of age--but a series of biographies of great heroes and
patriarchs, prophets, kings and judges, culminating in the greatest
biography of all--the Life embodied in the New Testament? How much
have the great examples there set forth done for mankind! How many
have drawn from them their best strength, their highest wisdom,
their best nurture and admonition! Truly does a great and deeply
pious writer describe the Bible as a book whose words "live in the
ear like a music that never can be forgotten--like the sound of
church-bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its
felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It
is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national
seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent
traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of
all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. It is
the representative of his best moments; and all that has been about
him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to
him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which
doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. In the length
and breadth of the land there is not an individual with one spark of
religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his
Saxon Bible."

History itself is best studied in biography. Indeed, history is
biography--collective humanity as influenced and governed by
individual men. "What is all history," says Emerson, "but the work
of ideas, a record of the incomparable energy which his infinite
aspirations infuse into man? In its pages it is always persons we
see more than principles. Historical events are interesting to us
mainly in connection with the feelings, the sufferings, and
interests of those by whom they are accomplished. In history we are
surrounded by men long dead, but whose speech and whose deeds
survive. We almost catch the sound of their voices; and what they
did constitutes the interest of history. We never feel personally
interested in masses of men; but we feel and sympathize with the
individual actors, whose biographies afford the finest and most real
touches in all great historical dramas."

As in portraiture, so in biography--there must be light and shade.
The portrait-painter does not pose his sitter so as to bring out his
deformities; nor does the biographer give undue prominence to the
defects of the character he portrays. Not many men are so outspoken
as Cromwell was when he sat to Cooper for his miniature: "Paint me
as I am," said he, "wart and all." Yet, if we would have a faithful
likeness of faces and characters, they must be painted as they are.
"Biography," said Sir Walter Scott, "the most interesting of every
species of composition, loses all its interest with me when the
shades and lights of the principal characters are not accurately and
faithfully detailed. I can no more sympathize with a mere eulogist
than I can with a ranting hero on the stage."

It is to be regretted that in this day the country is flooded with
cheap, trashy fiction, the general tendency of which is not only not
educational, but is positively destructive. The desire to read this
stuff is as demoralizing as the opium habit.

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