Douglas Houghton Campbell - "Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany"

Jean Pierre Camus - "The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales"

Allan Pinkerton - "Bucholz and the Detectives"

David Starr Jordan - "The Call of the Twentieth Century"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

How to Succeed

O >> Orison Swett Marden >> How to Succeed




The man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay,
Provides a home from which to run away.
--YOUNG.

Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou
shalt sell thy necessaries.

For age and want save while you may:
No morning sun lasts a whole day.
--FRANKLIN.

Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never
speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need
as a provision against the workhouse.
--BULWER.


"What do you do with all these books?" "Oh, that library is my 'one
cigar a day,'" was the response. "What do you mean?" "Mean! Just this:
when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, I'd
just been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money that
others would have spent in smoke, and I thought I'd try and do the
same. You remember, I said I should allow myself one cigar a day."
"Yes." "Well, I never smoked. I just put by the price of a five-cent
cigar every day, and as the money accumulated I bought books--the books
you see there." "Do you mean to say that those books cost no more than
that? Why there are dollars' worth of them." "Yes, I know there are. I
had six years more of my apprenticeship to serve when you persuaded me
to 'be a man.' I put by the money I have told you of, which of course at
five cents a day amounted to $18.25 a year or $109.50 in six years. I
keep those books by themselves, as a result of my apprenticeship
cigar-money; and if you'd done as I did, you would by this time have
saved many, many more dollars than that, and been in business besides."

If a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents
every working day, investing at 7 per cent. compound interest, he will
have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. Twenty
cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty
years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. Even a saving
of one dollar a week from the date of one's majority would give him one
thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life.
"What maintains one vice would bring up two children."

Who does not feel honored by his relationship to Dr. Franklin, whether
as a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race?
Who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality of
his youth which laid the foundation for so much competence and
generosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of his
outlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy over
the pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of the
great art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into every
cottage in Christendom, and made his name immortal? And yet, how few
there are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn a
young man who should follow Franklin's example.

Washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when
President of the United States. He understood that without economy none
can be rich, and with it none need be poor.

Napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges and
errors.

Unfortunately Congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice of
living beyond one's means.

"We are ruined," says Colton, "not by what we really want, but by what
we think we do. Therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if
they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that
buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy."

"I hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed Horace Walpole,
"for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." A woman once
bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought it
might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don't need
because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined by
buying good pennyworths."

Barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife would
have a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousand
dollars. When the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to get
chairs "to match," then sideboards, carpets, and tables, "to correspond"
with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at last
it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned
for the furniture, and a new one was built "to correspond" with the sofa
and _et ceteras_: "thus," added my friend, "running up an outlay of
$30,000 caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape of
servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up a
fine 'establishment' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a
habit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity."

Cicero said: "Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue."
Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "Here's something
wonderfully cheap; let's buy it." "Have you any use for it?" "No, not at
present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time."

"Annual income," says Macawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure,
nineteen six, result--happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual
expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result--misery."

"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach,
are disagreeable," says Horace Greeley; "but debt is infinitely worse
than them all."

"If I had but fifty cents a week to live on," said Greeley, "I'd buy a
peck of corn and parch it before I'd owe any man a dollar."

To find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life
is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that
which will contribute most to their enrichment.

Economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all; it must be
done by management.

Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a
sacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simple
tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. Much of
the economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept out
of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl for my
dinner on Sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with one
apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene
and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the
lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for gods and
heroes.

Like many other boys P. T. Barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for his
father, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings in
knick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thus
increasing his pennies to dollars.

The eccentric John Randolph once sprang from his seat in the House of
Representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "Mr. Speaker, I
have found it." And then, in the stillness which followed this strange
outburst, he added, "I have found the Philosopher's stone: it is _Pay as
you go_."

In France, all classes, the men as well as the women, study the economy
of cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, the
people live at one-third the expense of Englishmen or Americans. There
they know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others would
throw away. There they cook no more for each day than is required for
that day. With them the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cook
is as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. The
consequence is, as ex-Secretary McCullough thinks, a French village of
1000 inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one of
our large American hotels, and he believes that the entire population of
France could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in the
United States. Professor Blot, who resided for some years in the United
States, remarks, pathetically, that here, "where the markets rival the
best markets of Europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live.
There are thousands of families in moderately good circumstances who
have never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cooked
steak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal."

There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese parings
and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill, and
doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness.
The misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economy
apply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully
economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence,
that they think they can afford to squander in other directions.
_Punch_, in speaking of this "one idea" class of people, says, "They are
like a man who bought a penny herring for his family's dinner, and then
hired a coach and four to take it home." I never knew a man to succeed
by practicing this kind of economy. True economy consists in always
making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little
longer, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live on
plainer food if need be. So that under all circumstances, unless some
unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the
income. A penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go on
accumulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained.

"I wish I could write all across the sky in letters of gold," says Rev.
William Marsh, "the one word, savings bank."

Boston savings banks have $130,000,000 on deposit, mostly saved in
driblets. Josiah Quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of
the palaces on Beacon street.

"Nature uses a grinding economy," says Emerson, "working up all that is
wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; not a superfluous grain of sand
for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. She flung
us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail
but instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to her
general stock. Last summer's flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only
to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. Nature will
not even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. The
moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces,
that the parts may be used again for other creations."

"So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says Bulwer.
"With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man's help; I may at least
have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' But with L5000 a year I may dread
a ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whose
wages I cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first
long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that
lies nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales and
whetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no
man is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage, that with L5000 a
year I purchase the worst evils of poverty--terror and shame; I may so
well manage my money, that with L100 a year I purchase the best
blessings of wealth: safety and respect."




CHAPTER XIX.

LIVE UPWARD.

"Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,
And this thy last deed ere the judgment day."

If you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest.
--PUBLIUS SYRUS.


What is a man,
If his chief good, and market of his time,
Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure He, that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before, and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike Reason
To rust in us unused.
--SHAKESPEARE.

Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. It
is heaven's own incentive to make purpose great and achievement
greater.
--ANONYMOUS.

"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."

"Endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever it
may be; neither let anyone go before thee in well
doing."

O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.
--GEORGE ELIOT.


"Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires," said
Napoleon to Montholon at St. Helena; "but upon what did we rest the
creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his
empire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for Him. I
die before my time and my body will be given back to worms. Such is the
fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss
between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is
proclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the whole
earth. Call you this dying? Is it not rather living? The death of Christ
is the death of a God."

"No true man can live a half life," says Phillips Brooks, "when he has
genuinely learned that it is a half life. The other half, the higher
half, must haunt him."

"Ideality," says Horace Mann, "is only the _avant courier_ of the mind;
and where that in a healthy and normal state goes I hold it to be a
prophecy that realization can follow."

"If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through his
blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon," writes Bulwer, "what
stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved
mankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?--who has
not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?--who has braved the
present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon
glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something
more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his
hopes?"

"If I live," wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, "all
blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know
and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business."

I have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which man
turns his eye upward, though I am not anatomist enough to be sure of the
fact.

"Show me a contented slave," says Burke, "and I will show you a degraded
man."

"They truly are faithful," says one writer, "who devote their entire
lives to amendment."

General Grant said of the Chinese Wall: "I believe that the labor
expended on this wall could have built every railroad in the United
States, every canal and highway, and most, if not all, our cities."

"The real benefactors of mankind," says Emerson, "are the men and women
who can raise their fellow beings out of the world of corn and money,
who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in their
higher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectual
realm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness by
dollars and cents; who can make men forget their stomachs and feast on
being's banquet."

"Men are not so much mistaken in desiring to advance themselves," said
Beecher, "as in judging what will be an advance, and what the right
method of obtaining it. An ambition which has conscience in it will
always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road and
bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most
faithful and minute performances of duty. The liberty to go higher than
we are is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty of our
present sphere. Thus men are to rise upon their performances and not
upon their discontent. And this is the secret and golden meaning of the
command to be _content_ in whatever sphere we are placed. It is not to
be the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity,
but the content of industrious fidelity. When men are building the
foundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below the
surface, and in disagreeable conditions. But every course of stone which
they lay raises them higher; and at length, when they reach the surface,
they have laid such solid work under them that they need not fear now to
carry up their walls, through towering stories, till they overlook the
whole neighborhood. A man proves himself fit to go higher who shows that
he is faithful where he is. A man that will not do well in his present
place, because he longs to be higher, is fit neither to be where he is
nor yet above it; he is already too high and should be put lower."

Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much, or dare
too much. What a man does, that he has. In himself is his might. Don't
waste life on doubts and fears. Spend yourself on the work before you,
well assured that the performance of this hour's duties will be the best
preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.

Tradition says that when Solomon received the gift of an emerald vase
from the Queen of Sheba he filled it with an elixir which he only knew
how to prepare, one drop of which would prolong life indefinitely. A
dying criminal begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but Solomon
refused to prolong a wicked life. When good men asked for it they were
refused, or failed to obtain it when promised, as the king would forget
or prefer not to open the vase to get but a single drop. When at last
the king became ill, and bade his servants bring the vase, he found that
the contents had all evaporated. So it is often with our hope, our
faith, our ambition, our aspiration.

A man cannot aspire if he looks down. God has not created us with
aspirations and longings for heights to which we cannot climb. Live
upward. The unattained still beckons us toward the summit of life's
mountains, into the atmosphere where great souls live and breathe and
have their being. Even hope is but a promise of the possibility of its
own fulfillment. Life should be lived in earnest. It is no idle game, no
farce to amuse and be forgotten. It is a stern reality, fuller of duties
than the sky of stars. You cannot have too much of that yearning which
we call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, the
efforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails of
attaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-worm
of disappointed ambition. To all will come a time when the love of glory
will be seen to be but a splendid delusion, riches empty, rank vain,
power dependent, and all outward advantages without inward peace a mere
mockery of wretchedness. The wisest men have taken care to uproot
selfish ambition from their breasts. Shakespeare considered it so near a
vice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue.

Who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless,
lazy man? He becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic. Love brings
out the poetry in him. It is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet what
magic it has wrought. Nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he is
entirely transformed.

Not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a woman
thirsting for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint.
He despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes even
kingdoms to gratify his master passion. Mere ambition has impelled many
a man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation,
aspiration, has led him beyond the stars. If the aim be right the life
in its details cannot be far wrong. Your heart must inspire what your
hands execute, or the work will be poorly done. The hand cannot reach
higher than does the heart.

But do not strive to reach impossible goals. It is wholly in your
power to develop yourself, but not necessarily so to make yourself a
king. How many Presidents of the United States or Prime Ministers of
England are chosen within the working lifetime of a man? What if a
thousand young men resolve to become President or Prime Minister? While
such prizes are within your reach, remember that your will must be
tremendous and your qualifications of the highest order, or you cannot
hope to secure them. Too many are deluded by ambition beyond their power
of attainment, or tortured by aspirations totally disproportionate to
their capacity for execution. You may, indeed, confidently hope to
become eminent in usefulness and power, but only as you build upon a
broad foundation of self-culture; while, as a rule, specialists in
ambition as in science are apt to become narrow and one-sided. Darwin
was very fond of poetry and music when young, but after devoting his
life to science, he was surprised to find Shakespeare tedious. He said
that, if he were to live his life again, he would read poetry and hear
music every day, so as not to lose the power of appreciating such
things.

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You
_must_ take it. The only choice is _how_.

"When I found I was black," said Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I were
white, and so force men to look below my skin."

In the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society is a
prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves
of which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior," which he was evidently
evolving as he trudged from house to house.

"Disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth,"
said Plato, "I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can;
and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men to the utmost of
my power; and you, too, I invite to this contest, which, I affirm,
surpasses all contests here."

"Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and
singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it?" asked Thoreau.
"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try
heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no
advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor?"

"O if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is
to be a part forever," exclaimed Phillips Brooks, "what patience must
fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for
it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills."

Man never reaches heights above his habitual thought. It is not enough
now and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite. We must
habitually dwell there. The great man is he who abides easily on heights
to which others rise occasionally and with difficulty. Don't let the
maxims of a low prudence daily dinned into your ears lower the tone of
your high ambition or check your aspirations. Hope lifts us step by step
up the mysterious ladder, the top of which no eye hath ever seen. Though
we do not find what hope promised, yet we are stronger for the climbing,
and we get a broader outlook upon life which repays the effort. Indeed,
if we do not follow where hope beckons, we gradually slide down the
ladder in despair. Strive ever to be at the top of your condition. A
high standard is absolutely necessary.




CHAPTER XX.

"SAND."

I shall show the cinders of my spirits
Through the ashes of my chance.
--SHAKESPEARE.

Perseverance is a virtue
That wins each god-like act, and plucks success
E'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.
--WILLIAM HARVARD.

Never say "Fail" again.
--RICHELIEU.

It is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows the
blood; the one pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness
of the fellow," as Oxford men say; it is the one march more
that wins the campaign; the five minutes' more persistent
courage that wins the fight. Though your force be less than
another's, you equal and out-master your opponent if you
continue it longer and concentrate it more.
--SMILES.

"I know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign
mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes of
companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no
jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at
its port."


"Well done, Tommy Brooks!" exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprise
when the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a single
word. The other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a bad
failure. But when the rest of the class had tried, the teacher said
Tommy had done the best of all, and gave him the prize.

"And now tell me," said she, "how you learned the poem so well."

"Please, ma'am, it was the snail on the wall that taught me how to do
it," said Tommy. At this the other pupils laughed aloud, but the teacher
said: "You need not laugh, boys, for we may learn much from such things
as snails. How did the snail teach you, Tommy?"

"I saw it crawl up the wall little by little," replied the boy. "It did
not stop nor turn back, but went on, and on; and I thought I would do
the same with the poem. So I learned it little by little, and did not
give up. By the time the snail reached the top of the wall, I had
learned the whole poem."

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