How to Succeed

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"Bishop Fenelon is a delicious man," said Lord Peterborough; "I had to
run away from him to prevent his making me a Christian."

Hume, the historian, never said anything truer than--"To be happy, the
person must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity
to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty."

Dr. Johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom of
looking on the bright side of every event was better than having a
thousand pounds a year income. But Hume rated the value in dollars and
cents of cheerfulness still higher. He said he would rather have a
cheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side of
things than to be master of an estate with 10,000 pounds a year.

"We have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that of
being pleasant."

"If a word or two will render a man happy," said a Frenchman, "he must
be a wretch indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting another
man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what
the other gains."

The sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one who
will be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, one
who will of all things meet life's experiences with a sweet temper. It
is impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother or
sister, as its presiding genius. And it is a rule, with exceptions, that
good appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. If, with these
advantages, a girl or woman, boy or man, is still snappish or surly, why
it must be due to her or his total depravity.

Some things she should not do; she shouldn't dose herself, or study up
her case, or plunge suddenly into vigorous exercise. Moderation is a
safe rule to begin with, and, indeed, to keep on with--moderation in
study, in work, in exercise, in everything except fresh air, good,
simple food, and sleep. Few people have too much of these. The average
girl at home can find no more sanitary gymnastics than in doing part of
the lighter housework. This sort of exercise has object, and interest,
and use, which raises it above mere drill. Add to this a merry romp with
younger brothers and sisters, a brisk daily walk, the use for a few
moments twice a day of dumb bells in a cool, airy room, and it is safe
to predict a steady advance toward that ideal state of being in which we
forget our bodies and just enjoy ourselves.

"It is not work that kills men," says Beecher; "it is worry. Work is
healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is
rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but
friction."

Helen Hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by
everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations
of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, as
speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do
not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, and
we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets--that is, makes
more or less complaint of something or other, which probably every one
in the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which most
probably nobody can help. Why say anything about it? It is cold, it is
hot, it is wet, it is dry, somebody has broken an appointment,
ill-cooked a meal; stupidity or bad faith somewhere has resulted in
discomfort. There are plenty of things to fret about. It is simply
astonishing, how much annoyance and discomfort may be found in the
course of every-day living, even of the simplest, if one only keeps a
sharp eye out on that side of things. Some people seem to be always
hunting for deformities, discords and shadows, instead of beauty,
harmony and light. We are born to trouble, as sparks fly upward. But
even to the sparks flying upward, in the blackest of smoke, there is a
blue sky above, and the less time they waste on the road, the sooner
they will reach it. Fretting is all time wasted on the road.

About two things we should never fret, that which we cannot help, and
that which we can help. Better find one of your own faults than ten of
your neighbor's.

It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week
and next year, that whiten our heads and wrinkle our faces.

"Every man we meet looks as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with
plenty of it on hand," said a French lady driving in New York.

The pendulum of a certain clock began to calculate how often it would
have to swing backward and forward in the week and in the month to come;
then looking further into the future, it made a calculation for a year,
etc. The pendulum got frightened and stopped. Do one day's work at a
time. Do not worry about the trouble of to-morrow. Most of the trouble
in life is borrowed trouble, which never actually comes.

"As all healthy action, physical, intellectual and moral, depends
primarily on cheerfulness," says E. P. Whipple, "and as every duty,
whether it be to follow a plow or to die at the stake, should be done in
a cheerful spirit, the exploration of the sources and conditions of this
most vigorous, exhilarating and creative of the virtues may be as useful
as the exposition of any topic of science or system of prudential art."

Christ, the great teacher, did not shut Himself up with monks, away from
temptation of the great world outside. He taught no long-faced, gloomy
theology. He taught the gospel of gladness and good cheer. His doctrines
are touched with the sunlight, and flavored with the flowers of the
fields. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and happy,
romping children are in them. True piety is cheerful as the day.

Cranmer cheers his brother martyrs, and Latimer walks with a face
shining with cheerfulness to the stake, upholds his fellow's spirits,
and seasons all his sermons with pleasant anecdotes.

"Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches," said Emerson,
"and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of
wisdom."

In answer to the question, "How shall we overcome temptation," a noted
writer said, "Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the
second, and cheerfulness is the third." A habit of cheerfulness,
enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a
fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of
active life. He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happy
side of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in the
flowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a great
advantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. His
habitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner
with grace.

We often forget that the priceless charm which will secure to us all
these desirable gifts is within our reach. It is the charm of a sunny
temper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold,
more to be desired than fine rubies. It is an aroma, whose fragrance
fills the air with the odors of Paradise.

"It is from these enthusiastic fellows," says an admirer, "that you
hear--what they fully believe, bless them!--that all countries are
beautiful, all dinners grand, all pictures superb, all mountains high,
all women beautiful. When such a one has come back from his country
trip, after a hard year's work, he has always found the cosiest of
nooks, the cheapest houses, the best of landladies, the finest views,
and the best dinners. But with the other the case is indeed altered. He
has always been robbed; he has positively seen nothing; his landlady was
a harpy, his bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was so tough that he
could not get his teeth through it."

"He goes on to talk of the sun in his glory," says Izaak Walton, "the
fields, the meadows, the streams which they have seen, the birds which
they have heard; he asks what would the blind and deaf give to see and
hear what they have seen."

Of Lord Holland's sunshiny face, Rogers said: "He always comes to
breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen."

But oh, for the glorious spectacles worn by the good-natured man!--oh,
for those wondrous glasses, finer than the Claude Lorraine glass, which
throw a sunlit view over everything, and make the heart glad with little
things, and thankful for small mercies! Such glasses had honest Izaak
Walton, who, coming in from a fishing expedition on the river Lea, burst
out into such grateful little talks as this: "Let us, as we walk home
under the cool shade of this honeysuckle hedge, mention some of the
thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met. And that
our present happiness may appear the greater, and we more thankful for
it, I beg you to consider with me, how many do at this very time lie
under the torment of the gout or the toothache, and this we have been
free from; and let me tell you, that every misery I miss is a new
blessing."

The hypochondriac who nurses his spleen never looks forward cheerfully,
but lounges in his invalid chair, and croaks like a raven, foreboding
woe. "Ah," says he, "you will never succeed; these things always fail."

The Thug of India, whose prayer is a homicide, and whose offering is the
body of a victim, is melancholy.

The Fijiian, waiting to smash the skull of a victim, and to prepare a
bakola for his gods, is gloomy as fear and death.

The melancholy of the Eastern Jews after their black fast, and the
ill-temper of monks and nuns after their Fridays and Wednesdays, is very
observable; it is the recompense which a proud nature takes out of the
world for its selfish sacrifice. Melancholia is the black bile which the
Greeks presumed overran and pervaded the bodies of such persons; and
fasting does undoubtedly produce this.

"I once talked with a Rosicrucian about the Great Secret," said Addison.
"He talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and converted
everything that was near it to the highest perfection. 'It gives lustre
to the sun,' said he, 'and water to the diamond. It irradiates every
metal, and enriches lead with the property of gold. It brightens smoke
into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. A single ray
dissipates pain and care from the person on whom it falls.' Then I found
his great secret was Content."

My crown is in my heart, not on my head:
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:
A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
--SHAKESPEARE.

Yet, with a heart that's ever kind,
A gentle spirit gay,
You've spring perennial in your mind,
And round you make a May.
--THACKERAY.

CHAPTER XXIII.

HOLD UP YOUR HEAD.

Thoroughly to believe in one's own self, so one's self were
thorough, were to do great things.
--TENNYSON.

If there be a faith that can remove mountains, it is faith in
one's own power.
--MARIE EBNER-ESCHENBACH.

Let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest,
the greatest quality of true manliness.
--KOSSUTH.

It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. * * * Trust
thyself; every breast vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
place that divine Providence has found for you, the society of
your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have
always done so. * * * Nothing is at last sacred but the
integrity of our own mind.
--EMERSON.

This above all,--to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
--SHAKESPEARE.

"Yes," said a half-drunken man in a cellar to a parish visitor, a young
girl, "I am a tough and a drunkard, and am just out of jail, and my wife
is starving; but that doesn't give you the right to come into my house
without knocking to ask questions."

Another zealous girl declared in a reform club in New York City that she
always went to visit the poor in her carriage, with the crest on the
door and liveried servants. "It gives me authority," she said. "They
listen to my words with more respect."

The Fraeulein Barbara, who founded the home for degraded and drunken
sailors in London, used other means to gain influence over them. "I
too," she would say, taking the poor applicant by the hand when he came
to her door, "I, too, as well as you, am one of those for whom Christ
died. We are brother and sister, and will help each other."

An English artist, engaged in painting a scene in the London slums,
applied to the Board of Guardians of the poor in Chelsea for leave to
sketch into it, as types of want and wretchedness, certain picturesque
paupers then in the almshouse. The board refused permission on the
ground that "a man does not cease to have self-respect and rights
because he is a pauper, and that his misfortunes should not be paraded
before the world."

The incident helps to throw light on the vexed problem of the
intercourse of the rich with the poor. Kind but thoughtless people, who
take up the work of "slumming," intent upon elevating and reforming the
needy classes, are apt to forget that these unfortunates have
self-respect and rights and sensitive feelings.

"But I am not derided," said Diogenes, when some one told him he was
derided. "Only those are ridiculed who feel the ridicule and are
discomposed by it."

Dr. Franklin used to say that if a man makes a sheep of himself the
wolves will eat him. Not less true is it that if a man is supposed to be
a sheep, wolves will very likely try to eat him.

"O God, assist our side," prayed the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, a general
in the Prussian service, before going into battle. "At least, avoid
assisting the enemy, and leave the result to me."

"If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is," said Schelling,
"he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoretical
respect for himself, and a practical will soon follow." A person under
the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.
"Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men," said
Kossuth; "but let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the
rest, the greatest quality of true manliness." Froude wrote: "A tree
must be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. A man
must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be
independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any
superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be
built."

"I think he is a most extraordinary man," said John J. Ingalls,
speaking of Grover Cleveland. "While the Senate was in session to induct
Hendricks into office, I had an opportunity to study Cleveland, as he
sat there like a sphinx. He occupied a seat immediately in front of the
vice-president's stand, and from where I sat, I had an unobstructed view
of him.

"I wanted to fathom, if possible, what manner of a man it was who had
defeated us and taken the patronage of the government over to the
democracy. We had a new master, so to speak, and a democrat at that, and
I looked him over with a good deal of curiosity.

"There sat a man, the president of the United States, beginning his rule
over the destinies of sixty millions of people, who less than three
years before was an obscure lawyer, scarcely known outside of Erie
County, shut up in a dingy office over a livery stable. He had been
mayor of the city of Buffalo at a time when a crisis in its affairs
demanded a courageous head and a firm hand and he supplied them. The
little prestige thus gained made him the democratic nominee for
governor, and at a time (his luck still following him) when the
Republican party of the State was rent with dissensions. He was elected,
and (still more luck) by the unprecedented and unheard of majority of
nearly 200,000 votes. Two years later his party nominated him for
president and he was elected.

"There sat this man before me, wholly undisturbed by the pageantry of
the occasion, calmly waiting to perform his part in the drama, just as
an actor awaits his cue to appear on a stage. It was his first visit to
Washington. He had never before seen the Capitol and knew absolutely
nothing of the machinery of government. All was a mystery to him, but a
stranger not understanding the circumstances would have imagined that
the proceedings going on before him were a part of his daily life.

"The man positively did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle
during the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betray
the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thought
of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he
struck me as a remarkable illustration of the possibilities of American
citizenship.

"But the most marvelous exhibition of the man's nerve and of the
absolute confidence he has in himself was yet to come. After the
proceedings in the Senate chamber Cleveland was conducted to the east
end of the Capitol to take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural
address. He wore a close buttoned Prince Albert coat, and between the
buttons he thrust his right hand, while his left he carried behind him.
In this position he stood until the applause which greeted him had
subsided, when he began his address.

"I looked for him to produce a manuscript, but he did not, and as he
progressed in clear and distinct tones, without hesitation, I was
amazed. With sixty millions of people, yes, with the entire civilized
world looking on, this man had the courage to deliver an inaugural
address making him President of the United States as coolly and as
unconcernedly as if he were addressing a ward meeting. It was the most
remarkable spectacle this or any other country has ever beheld."

Believe in yourself; you may succeed when others do not believe in you,
but never when you do not believe in yourself.

"Ah! John Hunter, still hard at work!" exclaimed a physician on finding
the old anatomist at the dissecting table. "Yes, doctor, and you'll find
it difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am gone."

"Heaven takes a hundred years to form a great genius for the
regeneration of an empire and afterward rests a hundred years," said
Kaunitz, who had administered the affairs of his country with great
success for half a century. "This makes me tremble for the Austrian
monarchy after my death."

"Isn't it beautiful that I can sing so?" asked Jenny Lind, naively, of a
friend.

"My Lord," said William Pitt in 1757 to the Duke of Devonshire, "I am
sure that I can save this country and that nobody else can." He did
save it.

What seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strong
expression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men have
usually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of his
place in history and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his own
fame. Kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read his
books or not. "I may well wait a century for a reader since God has
waited six thousand years for an observer like myself." "Fear not," said
Julius Caesar to his pilot frightened in a storm, "thou bearest Caesar and
his good fortunes."

When the Directory at Paris found that Napoleon had become in one month
the most famous man in Europe they determined to check his career, and
appointed Kellerman his associate in command. Napoleon promptly, but
respectfully, tendered his resignation, saying, "One bad general is
better than two good ones; war, like government, is mainly decided by
tact." This decision immediately brought the Directory to terms.

Emperor Francis was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descent
of his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the account
published, remarking, "I had rather be the descendant of an honest man
than of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence with
myself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolph
of Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates from the battle of
Montenotte."

When Napoleon was informed that the British Government had decreed that
he should be recognized only as general, he said, "They cannot prevent
me from being myself."

An Englishman asked Napoleon at Elba who was the greatest general of the
age, adding, "I think Wellington." To which the Emperor replied, "He has
not yet measured himself against me."

"Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market,"
said Washington Irving; "but it must not cower at home and expect to be
sought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of
forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over
with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that
valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a
mere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more useful than a
sleeping lion."

"Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears."

"You may deceive all the people some of the time," said Lincoln, "some
of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time." We
cannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our
own respect is to deserve it. What would you think of a man who would
neglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect?

"Self-reliance is a grand element of character," says Michael Reynolds.
"It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with
men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's
memory."

CHAPTER XXIV.

BOOKS AND SUCCESS.

Ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
--SHAKESPEARE.

Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the
other perpetual.
--SOCRATES.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it
away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best
interest.
--FRANKLIN.

My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange
for the treasures of India.
--GIBBON.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down
at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I
would spurn them all.
--FENELON.

Who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought,--
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
--BULWER.

When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes
into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the
unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that
true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
--WASHINGTON IRVING.

"Do you want to know," asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to you
in this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a
boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were my
delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at
last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to
me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I
seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I took
to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was
doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature.
There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I had
to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * From the days when we
used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a
devouring hunger to read books. It made small matter what they were, so
they were books. Half a volume of an old encyclopaedia came along--the
first I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot even
guess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Society
with the greatest delight.

"There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it is
in reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin
to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are
of a wholesome nature. And I remember this because it touches this
beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of
1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; and
sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: 'I notice thou's
fond of reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was Irving's
'Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'as
them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old days of
Crusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into
my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him,
thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I
was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with the
wind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger to
read never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the
fire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one
place to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The world
centred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to come
out of it; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being a
minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that I
should be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a passion
like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming,
mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world,
and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. There were two
or three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave the
roughs a wide berth. The books did their work, too, about that drink,
and fought the devil with a finer fire."

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