Chapter I: Mention These Tricks (5)

You see that scrag over in the woods there? Crack! goes the lightning! The scrag has been hit again! Unfortunate! Now, perhaps you know somebody who is a scrag in society. When the thunder storms of life roll and rumble, tell him to look well to himself. He is very liable to another dose of disaster. Why is this? The reason is plain. There is some particular attraction for the bolt which hits him. There is a loadstone of reason in the earth at his roots for this constant attack of misfortune. However badly off he may be, something still worse will happen to him. If he have something profitable to do with his hands, he will get a felon on his finger. If he have walking to do, he will get a peeled heel. If he have only to sit and attend to a certain thing, he will get the brain fever. If he be expected at seven in the morning, his child will suffer an attack of croup at 6:45. The lightning is darting around him silently all the time, a good deal like the movements of a snake's tongue. After all, it is a scrag that has been struck, and everybody laughs and seems to think it a good joke. It is, indeed, close to the ridiculous to see the number of undoubted afflictions which will beset

"A REAL OLD FAILURE IN LIFE."

He is a good old fellow. He hates with a mortal hate only one thing, and that is hard work; that will make him deliriously ill inside of three days. The boils, and felons, and fevers, and chilblains, and fractures, and bereavements he has had are enough to fill an encyclopedia. He never has worked long at any one thing, and he never will. He can relate to you how the lightning broke off his biggest limb, knocked off his bark, broke him off half-way up, finally split him clear through the trunk, and never hit another tree in the whole piece of timber! This will bring tears to his eyes, for it seems so strange to him. But if you get tears in your eyes, also, hire him by the day for a while, and look into "the pulse of the machine," you will soon understand the wonderful workings of society, and the nicety of that order of things which separates the wheat from the tare. When the winds of adversity sweep down upon us,

IT IS THE CHAFF WHICH RISES ON THE GALE.

Many a man with a bilious attack coming upon his system goes to his work, sets his blood dancing, and, drives away the intruder before the reinforcements of the disease arrive. The failure goes out to the enemy, makes a weak parley, and opens his gates to the first squad that will enter.

WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THESE RANK FAILURES?

Nothing. We can take warning from them. "A failure establishes only this," says Bovee, "that our determination was not strong enough." This is very nearly the truth. We fail because we feel the game to be hardly worth the candle. We are not willing to pay the price and the value of success. We had rather slide down the hill than climb up higher. When you hit your head against a door in the dark, you are stunned. You are then twice as likely as before to hurt yourself. Bear that in mind. Stop. Move with the greatest of caution.

THIS IS WHY SHAKSPEARE SAYS

that when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. When you have failed, try and get a new start, clear of the consequences of the last disaster. You know exactly where you erred, and can guard against the weak places in your judgment, the cause of your defeat. Above all, study the "dead rank failure" in your community, and do everything precisely opposite to the way he invariably operates.

GAINS AND BRAINS.

Virtue without success
Is a fair picture shown by an ill light;
But lucky men are favorites of heaven:
All own the chief, when fortune owns the cause.--Dryden.

Lucky men are favorites of heaven, simply because they have been endowed with that charming blindness which keeps them from seeing when they are whipped in the battle of life. The man of success has usually a greater sense of the value of a ten-dollar note than his clerk who, like the braggart _Pistol_, has got the world for his oyster, and expects to open that tough old mollusk with his rusty sword. The man of success sees each young helper around him given better opportunities than he himself had to begin with. His astonishment that inexperienced young men should think they have no chance is always noticeable. He half-envies some stripling soldier in the battle who is yet a high private in the rear rank. The high private cannot understand how this envy can be possible, and will not believe it exists. If you will study the lucky man you will see that his "luck" is usually more of a matter of course than an extraordinary happening. Reverse the thing, and you can comprehend it. Here is a brakeman. He gets killed by the cars.

WAS IT NOT ASTONISHING?

Well, yes, it was; still, if anybody were going to be killed, the brakeman would be the most likely to be the victim. Go to the accident insurance office and observe how little anxious they are to take such a risk, and what an enormous premium they ask when they do take one! Here is a man running a powder-factory. The insurance men will not touch him at all! Now our man of success is like the brakeman, in a sense. He is always on the train, always between the cars, always standing in the frog. If any such thing as luck is out, it must hit him, or some other brakeman like him. Certainly, it will not touch the man asleep in his house

HALF A MILE FROM THE TRACK!

You have a very small chance to draw money in a lottery, and it is a very foolish thing to throw away earnings buying tickets--yet of two fools who expected to draw the grand prize, that one would be the greatest who had no ticket in the lottery! The man of success wants something to strike around his premises. He, therefore, has got conductors of the celestial fluid on his house, and on his barns. His chicken-coops, his corn-cribs point to heaven, and even the stumps in his back yard

BRISTLE WITH LIGHTNING-RODS.

Clap! comes the bolt; the man of success is the one who has been hit, and those persons who do not understand it are astonished at his luck! The man of success is a stone; there are a number of eggs who are bent on dancing in the same cotillon with him; they think he has great luck to last through to such music! The man of success is a thoroughbred; his sire won a Derby; all the drayhorses believe that, when this lucky thoroughbred runs,

THE EARTH MOVES BACKWARD

beneath his feet, to help him in overcoming distance! The man of success is a lightning calculator; the spectators all think he is a lucky fellow to guess at the sum of a great block of figures so quickly and always guess right; they never could do it!

"LUCK" SAYS RICHARD COBDEN,

"is ever waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance. Labor on character." The man of success who owns a mill is seen in the water up to his waist, dragging a log behind him. "Is he not lucky to get his dam fixed so soon after the flood!" say the neighbors. The man of success who owns a grocery has got ten barrels of flour on the sidewalk, two casks of petroleum in the alley, and twelve barrels of sugar on his trucks. At night the barrels are all in their places, and, so far as I have ever seen,--in the retail business, at least,--it was not the clerks of the man of success who did

THE HEAVY END OF THE LIFTING.

"I never" says Addison, "knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who complained of bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all the ill-luck that fools ever dreamed of." "Strong men believe in cause and effect," says Emerson. "There are no chances so unlucky," says Rochefoucauld, "that people are not able to reap some advantage from them, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage."

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LUCK,

we never mean that a man is lucky to be endowed with successful qualities. So long as we do not go back to the real matter of fortune, which lies in the character, let us, at least, be intelligent, and stop talking about one man having any more good things happen to him than another. There is only one sure thing about events, and that is the law of chance. If men take to chance, they will come out even, if it be a fair chance.

THIS IS CERTAIN.

If you try to match the penny some one has covered, and fail ten times in succession, it is a certainty that you will succeed often enough, ere long, to make your failures and your successes balance. Everything which depends entirely on chance is exactly even. If the man you envy to-day on account of some piece of unquestionably good luck, were to be as closely watched to-morrow, he would be seen to suffer some piece of as unquestionably bad luck. You cannot help noticing his good fortune, and he never howls about his disasters.

FORTUNE TELLERS

thrive on this principle--taking even guesses, and trusting to the victim's remembrance of all that comes true and his forgetfulness of all that does not.

Put up your lightning-rods, get between the cars, begin making powder--increase your probabilities of getting blown up, of having something out of the ordinary run happen to you. If you are food for big fish, go where the big fish are, and you will not be left over for lunch. If you can be useful to a great railroad man, a great statesman, or, even, a great nation, they are going to thrive on you. They will take a taste of you almost before you know it. If you are smart, sober, and were not born tired, there is no bad luck that can get even a shade the best of you.

DISCIPLINE.

"Tarry a while," says Slow.--Mother Goose.

Our generation is formed largely of men who went to war and experienced the trials and the combats of one of the greatest commotions of all history. Upon those men was imposed the glorious rod of discipline. "Thus far and no farther!" is written upon their broad foreheads as plainly as the God of the great sea marks it on the rocks with which he has hemmed the shores, and I would not wonder if the vast prosperity of the present day were largely attributable to that stern fondness with which the true man passes into the action of daily life, and obeys orders under fire. Young man, carve yourself down to that rugged line that will make you a fitting part of the structure in which you are an element.

BE RATHER THE GIRDER

holding the building than the creaking clapboard flapping in the wind. When you get an order from your employer, school yourself to move mechanically to the action implied. Glory in it. Be sure, only, that you are carrying out the wishes of your superior. Make it your pleasure. It will become an intense delight. Suppose that you are allowed a holiday. You return to your home and find a command to appear at your place of business. A delay in finding you has happened. You can reach your employer just at the end of business hours. You say "I will not mind this; there is not time enough." Alas! You have done yourself

A CRUEL WRONG.

You have given an entrance to a wedge that will rend you in pieces. On the other hand, you do not stop to look twice at the dial. You go. Good! You have strengthened your character. You can depend on yourself. You admire yourself. "I received your directions at 5.30. I have obeyed orders." Drill of this sort will soon hew your mind down to the solid heart of oak. You will know what you mean when you say a thing. "I will get up at 6 o'clock." When 6 o'clock arrives, and you are aroused, your mind is not

A MESS OF PULP,

ready to take the impression of the first lazy wish that comes over you. No, your brain says resolutely, "I will arise," and lo! a victory!--and no small one either. In this way, true firmness is made. It is a growth. Beware of the insects which beset the lordly tree, withering its leaves and driving its sap into the earth.

"Let us put a cable under the ocean," says Cyrus Field. "Tarry a while," says Slow. "Let us put the cities within actual speaking distance!" say Bell, and Gray and Edison. "Tarry a while," says Slow. "Let us print thirty thousand newspapers in an hour, and give them out of the press folded, and pasted, and cut!" say Potter, and Hoe, and Kahler. "Tarry a while" says Slow. And yet, in spite of Slow and Sleepyhead, wonders have accumulated upon wonders, until the Arabian Nights and Gulliver's Travels are only the creations of a poor fancy, while the intimations which the future affords us stagger the understanding and make us almost idolatrous in our admiration of the quiet, keen-acting men who have dared out into fairy-land and returned laden like the spies coming from Canaan.

Our whole history is one of discipline. And what has it made of us? A nation that has sung

THE DEATH-KNELL OF THE KINGS OF THE EARTH.

I think a good deal of these lines of James Russell Lowell:

This land o' ourn, I tell ye's gut to be
A better country than man ever see;
I feel my sperit swellin with a cry
That seems to say: "Break forth and prophesy."
O strange New World, that yet wast never young,
Whose youth from thee by gripin' want was wrung,
Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby bed
Was prowled round by the Injun's cracklin' tread,
An' who grewst strong thru' shifts, and wants, an' pains.
Nursed by stern men, with empires in their brains!

Another sweet poet has sung:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.

There can be no question that wealth is fast accumulating. Let fathers, and mothers, and preceptors spur the rising generation to that love of accuracy, of "right dress," as the soldiers say, which puts each man in his place, certain to stay there as long as he has agreed to, and certain to act when the fitting time arrives.

THE ORGAN AND ITS PIPES AND REEDS.

Perhaps I can impress the true necessity of discipline no more forcibly than by comparing society to a grand organ upon which the Creator sounds his mighty fugue of years. We are the pipes--some the colossal columns which shake the world, and others the tiny tubes which make a feeble cry, almost unheard. No one of us must sound his note save in that proper place and at that proper time which Duty indicates. We mar a perfect harmony by ill-tempered silence, and perhaps ruin the labors of our associates by a continuous sounding of our own ridiculous reed.

WHEREVER WE ARE

In the factory, the counting house, the workshops of the grand industries,--or on the broad acres which watch so fondly for the sun, let us be careful, when there is a troubling jar, a fatal discord, that our key is not the guilty one.

BOOKS.

--Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.--Wordsworth.

By the aid of books we multiply our sensations a million-fold. Often the reader actually feels what he reads. Such impressions would perhaps never have fallen to his lot in the ordinary way of getting experience. Our indebtedness, then, to the art of printing, is perhaps greater than to any other of the remarkable discoveries which have lent enduring charms to human life. And yet, with all its progress, the book-reading world is still in its infancy. The people do not read half enough, they do not discriminate wisely between good reading and indifferent reading, and they read too much matter of an ephemeral nature, little calculated to be of the slightest benefit to them a week after its perusal. If a man lived on the banks of a beautiful lake, and went down to its shore each pleasant day to take a ride, and, after an excursion upon the peaceful waters, stove his boat in, or cast it adrift, he would be actually following the practice of our people of the present day. The man who owns a library in these times, is considered either a book-worm or an opulent citizen. And yet what treasures are within everyone's reach! Suppose you buy and read a volume. You are

FILLED WITH IDEAS NEW TO YOU,

and you derive great pleasure. Keep that book a year and read it over. It is safe to say you will gain more benefit and reap greater enjoyment from the second perusal than from the first. A library of books, every one of which you have read, is a mine without "walls." It is a merry assembly of old friends ever faithful. Grief cannot drive them away. Slander cannot alienate them. They cannot have rival interests. They cannot want anything you have got, and you can take all they have got,

AND NOT ROB THEM AT ALL.

You have a memory which is as treacherous as the most of the other attributes of human nature. You sit down and read two hours on an interesting topic. A friend opens the same subject to you, a day afterward, in conversation, and you fairly carry him by storm. That is unfair, for you should say you have been "posting up"--but it shows the value of a library. By frequent "posting" on whatever you have read, you become a learned man, which is

A TITLE OF GREAT CREDIT AND DIGNITY

in most men's eyes. The men who read once and "read everything" are never called "learned." _They_ are called "superficial." It is a little unjust, for they have been just as studious as the "learned men," but they have spread themselves out too thin. They have not bought and kept the books they have read, and they cannot remember the vital points. Suppose you recollect that Lord Bacon has said something very wise about riches. That is all you can call to mind. That carries no impression to anybody. If you had the book in which you saw the speech, you could repeat it accurately, and the probability is that the next time you referred to it you could give

THE GIST OF THE WHOLE THOUGHT,

and, by the next attempt, the language itself. You could say to your friend when you were talking about wealth, that you have admired that speech of Bacon where he says that he cannot call riches better than the "baggage" of virtue; that he thinks the Roman word "impedimenta" still better; that, as baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue; it cannot be spared or left behind, but, in his quaint expression, "it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory." Your friend would be gratified with so perfect a figure of speech, and he would never call you "superficial." That is real experience. It is not theory. A book has little value to a man until he has read it at least twice. He has then labeled and pigeon-holed it, and really needs to possess it.

A MAN OUGHT TO READ

his favorite portions of Shakspeare a thousand times--of the Bible a million times. Reading is much more like painting than we think. Go into a palace car. Do you think this polish was put on the wood with one application of the brush--with two, three, four? No; it would possibly be cheaper to cover it with silk plush than to go over it as the skilled workmen have done. Let us buy less ephemeral stuff, to be set adrift and stove in when we have skimmed over it. Let us season our reading, polish it, grain it, varnish it, repolish it and revarnish it, until we are just like it ourselves--clear, concise, intelligent. How enjoyable it is to meet an intelligent person!

WHAT A CHARM

there is about a comrade who can understand what you say, and who can swap ideas with you "even Steven!" It cannot be done without books.

Considering the vast importance of learning in saving labor and reducing the actual cost of existence, there has been little growth in the business of bookmaking compared with what there should have been. The trade in books in America is large, because the country is large. Everything is large here. Comparatively, however, it probably sinks below fishing for mackerel as an industry. As it is now, a shockingly large portion of the industry such as it is is given over to costly bindings. It does not seem that the people, even when they first had books, cared so much for the privilege of reading as they did for a gaudy covering to the volume, on which they could expend a barbaric love for ornament. The wise men of those times marveled, just as the wise men marvel nowadays. "Learning hath gained most by those books," says Old Fuller, "by which the printers have lost." Our follies in the way of "books that are all binding" are almost microscopically small when put beside those of the olden times, when, one would think the art of printing, being new, would have been best appreciated, for surely the grass looks the greenest to us in the spring! Let us do something more than

MAKE JEWELRY OUT OF THE ART OF GUTTENBERG.

"A book may be as great a thing as a battle," said Disraeli, and he meant by that a decisive battle. Now there are sometimes very decisive battles. A Turk once came up against the walls of Vienna and the walls of Tours, in France, and, if he had got through, you and I would to-day, so the scholars say, be "good Mussulmans," instead of Christians, living in freedom and decency. "When a book," says Bruyere, "raises your spirits, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the work by; it is good, and made by a good workman." The books you buy should have large clear type. They are to be

YOUR COMPANIONS THROUGH LIFE.

Your eyes will not be so bright in their old age. The volumes should not be bulky--that is, for true, practical use. "Great books," says Clulow, "like large skulls, have often the least brains." "Books," says Dr. Johnson, "that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful, after all." There is no objection to a costly and beautifully-bound Bible, out of which you may read each day with added veneration, but your sons and daughters should have pocket copies. From these modest little volumes, the marvels of language and thought may be gathered without seeming effort.

Do not be afraid you are spending too much money on reading. If you read each book as you buy it, you cannot buy too many--that is, if you are an honorable man, earning your living in the world, and not sponging it off some one else. Read your book slowly, above all things. Read it as you would ride in your boat on the waters, looking down at the pebbles, the fishes, the grasses, and the roots of the pond-lilies which, being of God's creation like yourself, send a responsive thrill of acquaintance through your heart as you float above them. You can, at best, but glide over a book. Even the writer has been but a passing observer of a few of its truths. It is

THE RECORD OF THE CENTURIES.

Respect it. "My latest passion will be for books," said Frederick the Great, in his old age. He had hardly looked down into the waters until he got nearly to the other shore. Gibbon declared that a taste for books was the pleasure and glory of his life; and Carlyle, who, it is supposed, was better acquainted with books than any man who has yet lived, declared that of all man could do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy were the things we call books.

HELP OTHERS.

If any members of your family have the love of books, aid them in satisfying it. Such are the salt of the earth. They are the blazed trees in the dark forests of the present generations, to mark out that course which shall, in future ages, be the highway of the whole world.

FRIENDSHIP.

The friend thou hast, and his adoption tried,
Grapple him to thy soul with hooks of steel.--Shakspeare.

I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd,
"How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude!"
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper "Solitude is sweet!"--Cowper.

"Whatever the number of a man's friends" says Lord Lytton, "there are times in his life when he has one too few." "Life," says Sydney Smith, "is to be fortified by many friendships." Says Bishop Hare: "Friendship is love without its flowers or veil." "A faithful friend is the true image of the Deity," said Napoleon, who never believed he had a true friend not a born fool. "A friend loveth at all times," says the Bible. Says Herr Gotthold: "with a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty, but let fortune frown and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove

LIKE THE STRINGS OF THE LUTE,

of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch." "What an argument in favor of social connections," says Lord Greville, "is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasures we have more." Horace Walpole has given clear expression to one of the chief pleasures of friendship:

"OLD FRIENDS

are the great blessings of one's latter years. Half a word conveys one's meaning. They have memory of the same events, and have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old friends? My age forbids that. Still less can they grow companions. Is it friendship to explain half one says? One must relate the history of one's memory and ideas; and what is that to the young but old stories?" "Fast won, fast lost," says Shakspeare. Says Dr. Johnson: "If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair!"

ALL THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF THE SAGES

on this subject there is a tinge of melancholy. "There are no friends!" says Aristotle. "There have been fewer friends on earth than Kings," says the poet Cowley. Why is this? Let us peer into the solemn question. The ideal of true manhood is easily formulated. Alas! what an abyss separates a man's daily life, as it is, from that high quality he has pictured in his imagination. We are all the time reaching for

THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND,

and could not assimilate with if they were placed at our disposal. In this way a weary, well-read novel-reader, worn out in all lines of light letters, enters a circulating library, and queruously asks: "Have you any new books?" She expects a negative answer, and in that case would suffer a keen disappointment. The man says "Yes," and brings out several new books. Every one of these is new in every sense. It may be the most trivial set of pages yet printed in this era of scribblers, or, yet, it may be a great work, worthy of the attention of the thoughtful, and the commendation of the pure in heart. Nobody can tell. Then, illogically, she asks: "Is this good?" or "Is that good?" and upon being reminded that she wanted something new or nothing, she asks for something by May Agnes Fleming, or Mary Jane Holmes, and goes off happy, to re-read those expressions which have so well pleased her in the past.

I think I espy in this exhibition of the working of the mind in a rude and unsatisfactory state

A GENERAL PRINCIPLE,

just as potent in the mighty brain of Sir Isaac Newton or of Louis Agassiz. Man idealizes the affair of friendship. He forgets whether he really wants it or not, and then persistently inquires for it. It is not in the library of possibilities. He therefore goes off angry and disappointed. Could he get a glimpse at it, I am afraid he would walk away satisfied with something more nearly en rapport with his nature and his habits. Let us view this golden word friendship as man idealizes it: Being a changeable thing, he views friendship (of which he knows nothing), entirely by comparison with something of which in its turn he knows but little. This something is always a mother's love for her son, notorious as the strongest affection shown by our species. He therefore doubles up this marvelous fact of a mother's love, and creates in his imagination a reciprocatory agency co-respondent to this mother's love. Now, with this magnificent product of invention, he goes forth into the world, seeking for some man upon whom he may bestow a mother's love (of which the "bestower" is entirely incapable), and who will, in payment, respond with a mother's love (of which that man would, of course, be also incapable). In the jargon of electricity a positive and a negative are absolutely necessary to electric energy.

A MOTHER'S LOVE

is a deplorably one-sided action, but it is the highest and noblest of the faculties of affection. Anything beyond it is ideal, made up of two positives, and a thousand years ahead of us. Is it any wonder that when man makes his experiments with the mother's love which he supposes himself capable of bestowing that a universal wail arises, or that Shakspeare, the greatest of mortal minds, brought in those awful verdicts against mankind--"Lear" and "Timon of Athens"?