HE CROWN OF 
 
 NDM WA\ Y
 
 William George Jordan's 
 
 TALKS 
 
 Little Problems of 
 Married Life 
 
 Decorated in Two Color* 
 
 12mo, cloth, net $1.15 
 
 The Crown of 
 Individuality 
 
 Decorated in Two Colors 
 
 12mo, cloth, net $1.15 
 
 Self Control 
 
 Its Kingship and Majesty 
 Decorated in Two Colors 
 
 12mo, cloth, net $1.15 
 
 The Power of 
 Purpose 
 
 Decorated Boards 
 Ink and Gold Stamping, net 3Sc. 
 
 The Kingship of 
 Self Control 
 
 12mo, Decorated Boards, 25c. 
 12mo, Old English Boards, net 35c. 
 
 The Majesty of 
 Calmness 
 
 12mo, Decorated Boards, 25c. 
 12mo, Old English Boards, net 35c.
 
 THE CROWN OF 
 INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 CHICAGO 
 TORONTC 
 
 FLEMING H. 
 
 REVELL 
 COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 LONDON 
 BURGH
 
 copyright, 1909, by 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London : 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 /. The Crown of Individuality . 7 
 
 /I. No Room for Them in the Inn . 24 
 
 III. Facing the Mistakes of Life . 35 
 
 /F. The Sculptured Figures of Society 50 
 
 V. The Hungers of Life . . . 63 
 
 VI. Throwing Away Our Happiness . 76 
 
 VII. At the Turn of the Road . . 89 
 
 VIII. Sitting in the Seat of Judgment . 99 
 
 IX. The Inspiration of Possibilities . 112 
 
 X. Forgetting as a Fine Art . . 122 
 
 XI. The Victoria Cross of Happiness 135 
 
 XII. The Crimes of Respectability . 149 
 
 XIII. Optimism that Really Counts . 162 
 
 XIV. Power of Individual Purpose . 175 
 
 XV. When We Forget the Equity . 186 
 X VI. Running Away from Life . . 200 
 XVII. The Dark Valley of Prosperity . 211
 
 The Crown of Individuality 
 
 HE supreme courage of 
 life is the courage of 
 the soul. It is living, 
 day by day, sincerely, 
 steadfastly, serenely, 
 despite all opinions, all obstacles, all 
 opposition. It means the wine of in- 
 spiration for ourselves and others that 
 comes from the crushed grapes of our 
 sorrows. This courage makes the sim- 
 plest life, great ; it makes the greatest 
 life sublime. It means the royal dig- 
 nity of fine individual living. 
 
 Every man reigns a king over the 
 
 kingdom of self. He wears the crown 
 7
 
 8 The Crown of Individuality 
 
 of individuality that no hands but his 
 own can ever remove. He should not 
 only reign, but rule. His individu- 
 ality is his true self, his best self, his 
 highest self, his self victorious. His 
 thoughts, his words, his acts, his feel- 
 ings, his aims and his powers are his 
 subjects. With gentle, firm strength 
 he must command them or, they will 
 finally take from his feeble fingers the 
 reins of government and rule in his 
 stead. Man must first be true to him- 
 self or he will be false to all the world. 
 Man reigns over this miniature king- 
 dom of self alone. He is as much 
 an autocrat as is God in ruling the 
 universe. No one can make him good 
 or evil but he, himself. No one else 
 in all the world has his work or his 
 influence. Each of us can carry a 
 balm of joy, and strength, and light,
 
 The Crown of Individuality 9 
 
 and love to some hearts that will re- 
 spond to no other. Each can add the 
 last bitter drop in the cup of life to 
 some one dependent on us through 
 love or friendship. No other in all 
 the world can live our life, loyally 
 fulfill our duties, or wear the crown of 
 our individuality. It is a wondrous 
 joy and inspiration to us if we see this 
 in its true light, for never again would 
 we ask : " What use am I in the 
 world?" 
 
 When God " created man in His own 
 image " His first gift to him was do- 
 minion. The greatest dominion is over 
 self. Our lives should be vital to 
 those around us. Each of us can be 
 the sun of life in the sky of some one 
 perhaps many. Were we suddenly 
 to have made luminant to us in every 
 vivid detail our daily influence we
 
 io The Crown of Individuality 
 
 should stand stunned by the revela- 
 tion as was Moses in reverent expect- 
 ancy before the burning bush. 
 
 The realization of the glory of the 
 crown of our individuality would sweep 
 the pettiness of selfish living and the 
 wonder of the unanswerable eternal 
 problems alike into nothingness. 
 
 The world needs more individuality 
 in its men and women. It needs them 
 with the joy of individual freedom in 
 their minds, the fresh blood of honest 
 purpose in their hearts, and the cour- 
 age of truth in their souls. It needs 
 more people daring to think their own 
 highest thoughts and strong vibrant 
 voices to speak them, not human phono- 
 graphs mechanically giving forth what 
 some one else has talked into them. 
 The world needs men and women led 
 by the light of truth alone, and as
 
 The Crown of Individuality 1 1 
 
 powerless to suppress their highest 
 convictions as Vesuvius to restrain its 
 living fire. 
 
 They have the glad inspiring con- 
 sciousness that they are not mere units 
 on the census list, not weak victims of 
 their own impulses, not human bricks 
 baked into deadly uniformity by con- 
 ventionality, but themselves individ- 
 uals. They are not faint carbon cop- 
 ies of others but strong, bold-print 
 originals, of themselves. They are 
 ever lights not reflections, voices not 
 echoes. To them the real things of 
 life are the only great ones, the only 
 objects worth a hard struggle. 
 
 In our darkest hours new strength 
 always comes to us, if we believe, as 
 the silent stars shine out in the sky 
 above us when it is dark enough. 
 The hardest battle for our highest self
 
 12 The Crown of Individuality 
 
 is, when hungry for love and compan- 
 ionship of the soul, we must fight on 
 alone. If we have one or two dear 
 loyal ones watching bravely by our 
 side, understanding us with a look, 
 heartening us with a smile or inspir- 
 ing us with a warm hand-pressure, we 
 should fairly tingle with courage and 
 confidence. 
 
 But if these leave us, slip away un- 
 der the strain, or even betray us, let us 
 face alone the seemingly empty life 
 that is left us, just as heroically as we 
 can. Let us still stand in silent 
 strength, like a lone sentry keeping 
 guard over a sleeping regiment, in the 
 grim shadows of night, forgetting for a 
 time the terror of the solitude, the 
 darkness, the loneliness, the isolation 
 and the phantom invasion of memories 
 that will not stay buried, in the cour-
 
 The Crown of Individuality 13 
 
 age that comes from facing an inevita- 
 ble duty with a sturdy soul. Of course 
 it is not easy to live on the uplands of 
 life. It was never intended to be easy, 
 but oh it is worth while. 
 
 Individuality is the only real life. 
 It is breathing the ozone of mental, 
 moral, spiritual freedom. Nature 
 made the countless thousands of 
 flowers, trees, birds and animals with- 
 out permitting two to be precisely 
 alike. She stamped them with indi- 
 viduality. She did it in a greater 
 way for man. Some people seem to 
 spend most of their time trying to 
 soak off the stamp. They follow in 
 the footsteps of the crowd, guided by 
 their advice. They wear a uniform of 
 opinion ; suffer in the strait-jacket of 
 silly convention, seek ever to keep 
 in step with the line, and march in
 
 14 The Crown of Individuality 
 
 solid sameness along the comfortably 
 paved road of other people's thinking, 
 not their own. 
 
 Individuality means stimulating all 
 the flowers of our best nature and 
 banishing one by one the weeds of our 
 lower self. It means kingship over 
 self and kinship with all humanity. 
 It means self-knowledge, self-confi- 
 dence, self-reliance, self-poise, self-con- 
 trol, self-conquest. It is the fullest 
 expression of our highest self, as the 
 most perfect rose most truly represents 
 the bush from which it blossoms. 
 
 Individuality is the complete self- 
 acting union and unity of man's 
 whole mind, nature, heart and life. It 
 is moved ever from within, not from 
 without. The automobile is a type of 
 individuality it is neither pushed, 
 pulled nor propelled by outside forces.
 
 The Crown of Individuality 15 
 
 The automobile is self-inspired, self- 
 directed, self-moving. 
 
 Eccentricity is not individuality it 
 is a warped, unnatural distortion, like 
 a reflection from a concave or convex 
 mirror. Hypocrisy is not individual- 
 ity a mask is never a face and no 
 matter how close it be held to the skin 
 it never becomes a real face. Conven- 
 tionality is not individuality it is the 
 molding of all that is vital and original 
 in us to conform to an average type. 
 Affectation is not individuality it is 
 only pretentious display of qualities 
 one has not in stock. Individuality 
 permeates every thought, word and 
 act of ours as a half grain of aniline 
 will tinge a hogshead of water so 
 that the microscope will detect the 
 colouring matter in ev^ry drop. Indi- 
 viduality crowns every expression of
 
 1 6 The Crown of Individuality 
 
 itself, in every day of living, with the 
 crown of its own kingship. 
 
 He who is swerved from a course he 
 knows is right, through fear of ridi- 
 cule, taunts, sneers or sarcasm of those 
 around him, is not a man self-directed 
 by right. He is only a weak puppet 
 pulled by the strings of manipulation 
 in the hands of others. He is a figure 
 in a moral Punch and Judy show 
 without its entertaining quality. 
 
 The man who knows he is doing 
 wrong, may realize it coolly, calmly, 
 considerately, and even confess it with a 
 sort of bravado, while he is too cowardly 
 and selfish to do the imperative right 
 is not a king over his higher self but a 
 weak slave of his lower self. That he 
 knows the right and sees it without 
 illusion merely emphasizes the depth 
 
 ^5r 
 
 of the abyss into which he has fallen.
 
 The Crown of Individuality 17 
 
 The woman who lets bitterness grow 
 in her heart until it poisons judgment, 
 kills the love that was dear to her, 
 deadens all her finer emotions and lets 
 petrified prejudice usurp the throne of 
 her justice while she shuts her ears to 
 all pleas for understanding, commits 
 one of those little tragedies in every- 
 day life that may scar for years the 
 soul of the one so cruelly misjudged. 
 She may recklessly throw the golden 
 crown of her individuality, with all its 
 dear, sweet love and tenderness, into 
 the weary loneliness of the years. 
 
 He who, from sheer lack of purpose, 
 drifts through life, letting the golden 
 years of his highest hopes glide empty 
 back into the perspective of his past 
 while he fills his ears with the lorelei 
 song of procrastination is working 
 overtime in accumulating remorse to
 
 
 1 8 The Crown of Individuality 
 
 darken his future. He is idly per- 
 mitting the crown of his individual- 
 ity to remain an irritating symbol 
 of what might be rather than a joyous 
 emblem of what is. This man is reign- 
 ing, for reign he must, but he is not 
 ruling. 
 
 Individuality does not mean merely 
 being our self, but our highest self. 
 It never means living for self alone. 
 The world, in every phase, must be 
 saved by individuals. You cannot 
 take humanity in mass up in moral ele- 
 vators ; they must receive and accept 
 good as individuals. The united work 
 of individuals makes up the action of 
 society. It is easier to stimulate the 
 individual to action than it is to gal- 
 vanize society, as it is easier to lift one 
 stone than a cathedral. As we in- 
 tensify true individuality we at the
 
 The Crown of Individuality 19 
 
 same instant begin a fine cooperation 
 with the best work of all humanity. 
 
 Individuality is the link ; coopera- 
 tion is the chain. You can strengthen 
 the chain only as you strengthen the 
 link. Christ, the great individualist, 
 knew no shadow of selfishness. He 
 sought to make better, stronger links 
 in the living chain of humanity. His 
 influence was ever an inspiration. He 
 represented perfected individuality and 
 individual perfection. 
 
 Let us reign a king over our indi- 
 viduality by conquering every element 
 of weakness within us that keeps us 
 from our best and raising every ele- 
 ment of strength to its highest power 
 by living in simple harmony with our 
 ideals. We should begin it to-day. 
 To-day is the only real day of life for 
 us. To-day is the tomb of yesterday,
 
 2O The Crown of Individuality 
 
 the cradle of to-morrow. All our past 
 ends in to-day. All our future begins 
 in to-day. 
 
 Let us seek to reign nobly on the 
 throne of our highest self for just a 
 single day, filling every moment of 
 every hour with our finest, unselfish 
 best. Then there would come to us 
 such a vision of the golden glory of the 
 sunlit heights, such a glad, glowing 
 tonic of the higher levels of life, that 
 we could never dwell again in the 
 darkened valley of ordinary living 
 without feeling shut in, stifled, and 
 hungry for the freer air and the 
 broader outlook. 
 
 If at the close of day we can think 
 of even one human being whose sky 
 has been darkened by our selfishness, 
 one whose burden has been new- 
 weighted by our unkindness, one whose
 
 The Crown of Individuality 21 
 
 pillow will be wet with sobs for our 
 injustice, one whose faith in humanity 
 has been weakened at a crucial mo- 
 ment by our bitterness or cruelty, let 
 us make quick atonement. Let us 
 write the letter our heart impels us to 
 write, while foolish pride would stay 
 the hand ; let us speak the confession 
 that will glorify the lips we fear it may 
 humiliate ; let us stretch out the hand 
 of love in the darkness till it touches 
 and inspires the faithful one that pos- 
 sibly never caused us real pain. 
 
 Let us have that great pride in our 
 individuality that would scorn to let 
 petty pique or vanity keep us from 
 doing what we know is right. Wear 
 the robes of your royal pride in such 
 kingly fashion that it would seem no 
 sacrifice to stoop to brush off that 
 which might stain them.
 
 22 The Crown of Individuality 
 
 Let us make this life of ours a joy 
 to ourselves and a tower of strength to 
 others. Then shall we have made this 
 life a success, no matter what its re- 
 sults. We shall have made charac- 
 ter and character is real life. The 
 truest success is not the one the world 
 often holds highest that which is rung 
 up on a cash-register. The truest suc- 
 cess is a strong nature, living at a high 
 but steady moral pressure, and radia- 
 ting love, kindness, sympathy , strength, 
 tenderness and joy to others. 
 
 Let us live with our faces turned ever 
 courageously to the East for the faint- 
 est sunrise of new inspiration. Let us 
 realize that the four guardians of the 
 crown of individuality are Right, Jus- 
 tice, Truth, and Love. Let us make 
 Right our highest guide, Justice our 
 finest aim, Truth our final revelation,
 
 The Crown of Individuality 23 
 
 and Love the constant atmosphere of 
 our living. Then truly will we reign 
 and rule. It is not the extent of the 
 kingdom but the fine quality of the 
 kingship that really counts.
 
 II 
 
 No Room for Them in the Inn 
 
 HE world's attitude to- 
 wards the birth of 
 every great truth is 
 focused in a single 
 phrase in the simple 
 story of the first Christmas, the great- 
 est birthday since Time began. Mary 
 laid the infant Christ in a manger 
 " because there was no room for them 
 in the inn." 
 
 For worldly success, fame, social 
 prestige, laurel-crowned triumph, the 
 inn is illuminated ; welcoming music 
 fills the air; and the inn doors are 
 thrown wide open. But struggle to- 
 wards sublime attainment, heroic ef- 
 24
 
 No Room for Them in the Inn 25 
 
 fort to better the world, simple conse- 
 cration of soul to a noble ideal means 
 the manger and a lonely pathway lit 
 only by the torch of truth held high 
 in the hand of purpose. 
 
 Right must ever fight its way 
 against the world. Truth must ever 
 walk alone in its Gethsemane. Justice 
 must bravely face its Calvary if it 
 would still live in triumph after all 
 efforts to slay it. Love must ever, in 
 the end, burst forth in its splendour 
 from the dark clouds of hate and dis- 
 cord that seek to obscure it. These 
 great truths must be born in the 
 manger of poverty, or pain, or trial, or 
 suffering, finding no room at the inn 
 until at last by entering it in triumph 
 they honour the inn that never 
 honoured them in their hours of need, 
 of struggle or of darkness.
 
 26 No Room for Them in the Inn 
 
 It is so written in the story of the 
 world's leaders, it is the chorus of the 
 song of every great human effort, it is 
 the secret of the loneliest hours of 
 supreme aspiration, it epitomizes the 
 whole life of Christ. As a babe 
 there was no room for Him in the 
 inn ; as a boy there was no room for 
 Him in Israel ; as a man, condemned 
 by Pilate there was no room for Him 
 in all the world. His life seemed a 
 failure, the results poor and barren, 
 yet to-day the world has thousands of 
 churches, spiritual inns, built in His 
 memory. The glory of the end makes 
 trials along the way seem nothing. 
 
 It requires sterling courage to live 
 on the uplands of truth, battling 
 bravely for the right, undismayed by 
 coldness, undaunted by contempt, un- 
 moved by criticism, serenely confident,
 
 No Room for Them in the Inn 27 
 
 even in the darkest hours, that right, 
 justice and truth must win in the end. 
 
 We may see the inn welcome the 
 successful without auditing the ac- 
 counts of ways and means by which 
 that success was won ; pass in the 
 hypocrite without realizing that his 
 passport is forged, accept the swagger- 
 ing and assertive at their own estimate, 
 near-sightedly mistake the brass of 
 pretense for the gold of true worth, 
 give a fine suite of corner rooms to a 
 fad and have no room at all for a 
 philosophy. The world makes many 
 mistakes. Time corrects many mis- 
 takes. Time is always on the side of 
 right and truth. It is the silent ally 
 of all great work. 
 
 There comes a time in every indi- 
 vidual life when earnest, honest effort, 
 disheartened, dismayed, distressed,
 
 28 No Room for Them in the Inn 
 
 says: "What is the use of it all? 
 Why should I suffer poverty, sorrow, 
 loneliness and failure while I am try- 
 ing so hard to be good, kind, sympa- 
 thetic, helpful, and just ? Why should 
 I not have some of the good things I 
 long for? Is the struggle for moral 
 things really worth while after all ? " 
 
 These are big questions ; they are 
 the very sobs of the soul. They are 
 hard indeed to answer, but something 
 within us, deeper than reason, tells us 
 that it is worth while, that it must be 
 and that we must set our feet bravely 
 towards the future and do our best even 
 when the clouds hang lowest. The 
 seeming ease and prosperity of those 
 leading idle, selfish lives should never 
 divert us from the path of truth. 
 
 If we know we are right we should 
 care naught for the crowd at the inn.
 
 No Room for Them in the Inn 29 
 
 It must be that there is something 
 higher in life than the welcome at the 
 inn, the approval of the world, or 
 any accumulation of purely material 
 things. There is the consciousness of 
 work well done, of steadfast loyalty to 
 an ideal, of faithfulness in little things, 
 of lives made sweeter, truer, better by 
 our living, of a lovelight in eyes look- 
 ing into ours these may be part of the 
 glorious flowering of our days greater 
 far to our highest self than any mere 
 welcome at the inn. 
 
 Moral goodness or spiritual glow does 
 not bring worldly success. That it 
 does is a delusive yet popular system of 
 ethics. Daily exercise of all the higher 
 virtues and keeping one's moral muscles 
 in prime condition does not necessarily 
 bring wealth and prosperity. If it 
 were true the saints of the world would
 
 30 No Room for Them in the Inn 
 
 be the millionaires. Careful study of 
 our richest class does not show they are 
 conspicuous wearers of halos. If it 
 were true, it would be placing the ma- 
 terial side of life as the ideal, the goal, 
 the aim, and end of living. High 
 moral or spiritual life would be but a 
 means, morality would be but a shrewd 
 investment, prosperity a dividend. 
 
 He who speculates in morals for the 
 coupons and trading stamps of success 
 is not really moral, he is merely 
 hypocritic. Business success is the re- 
 sult of obeying, in some form, specific 
 laws that make that success. Some of 
 these laws are based on those of morals, 
 some run parallel, some cut across 
 morals on the bias, but they are not 
 identical. The angel Gabriel would 
 probably not be able to make day's 
 wages in Wall Street. Christ had not
 
 No Room for Them in the Inn 3 1 
 
 " where to lay His head." The only 
 reason for being right, doing right, and 
 living right is because it is right. 
 
 True living brings peace to the soul, 
 fibre to character, kingship over self, in- 
 spiration to others, but not necessarily 
 money and material prosperity. These 
 are surely pleasing to possess ; few 
 people are trying very energetically to 
 dodge them. They have their proper 
 place in the scheme of life but they are 
 not supreme. If they were highest, 
 candidates for the choicest seats in 
 heaven could be selected purely by 
 double " A " Bradstreet ratings ; they 
 would be taken ever from the crowded 
 inn not the lonely manger. At the 
 inn they inquire : " Will it pay? Is it 
 popular? Is it successful?" At the 
 manger they ask : " Is it right? Is it 
 true? Is it helpful?"
 
 32 No Room for Them in the Inn 
 
 True living consists of living at our 
 best without thought of reward doing 
 the highest right, as we see it, and 
 facing results, calmly, courageously 
 and unquestioning. It means living 
 to give not to get, thinking more of 
 what we can radiate than what we can 
 absorb, more of what we are than of 
 what we have. 
 
 Humanity dreams golden dreams of 
 the wondrous things it would do if it 
 only had money the happiness, cheer, 
 comfort, joy and peace it could bring 
 to thousands. But wealth could not 
 buy the very things the world hungers 
 for most love, kindness, calmness, in- 
 spiration, peace, trust, truth and justice. 
 The greatest gift the individual can 
 give the world is personal service. 
 The manger typified personal service, 
 consecrated freely to humanity.
 
 No Room for Them in the Inn 33 
 
 Every great truth in all the ages 
 has had to battle for recognition. If 
 it be real it is worth the struggle. 
 Out of the struggle comes new strength 
 for the victor. Trampled grass grows 
 the greenest. Hardship and trial and 
 restriction and opposition mean new 
 vitality to character. In potting plants 
 it is well not to have the pot too large, 
 for the more crowded the roots the 
 more the plant will bloom. It is true, 
 in a larger sense, of life. The world 
 has ever misunderstood and battled 
 against its thinkers, its leaders, its 
 reformers, its heroes. 
 
 We must all fight for our ideals, foi 
 truth, for individuality, never counting 
 the cost, never keeping our ears close to 
 the ground to hear the faint murmurs 
 of approval or condemnation from the 
 self-absorbed crowd at the inn.
 
 34 No Room for Them in the Inn 
 
 If confident that we are right, ac- 
 cording to our highest light, if we are 
 sailing by our chart, guided by our 
 compass, freighted with a true cargo 
 and headed for our harbour let us care 
 naught for what the world says. What 
 matters it if the world thinks our econ- 
 omy for some unselfish purpose known 
 to us alone is meanness, our loyalty 
 to an ideal is folly, our decision of a 
 right is the climax of error and the joy 
 that is nearest and dearest but an 
 empty dream ? 
 
 The world ever comes round at last 
 to the point of view of the man who is 
 right. The inn finally finds room for 
 truth and right when they have 
 proved themselves. The manger and 
 the lonely path are ever finally 
 vindicated. It is the final surrender 
 to the crown of individuality.
 
 Ill 
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 
 
 HERE are only two 
 classes of people who 
 never make mistakes, 
 they are the dead and 
 the unborn. Mistakes 
 are the inevitable accompaniment of 
 the greatest gift given to man, indi- 
 vidual freedom of action. If he were 
 only a pawn in the fingers of Omnip- 
 otence, with no self-moving power, man 
 would never make a mistake, but his 
 very immunity would degrade him to 
 the ranks of the lower animals and 
 the plants. An oyster never makes a 
 mistake, it has not the mind that 
 
 would permit it to forsake an instinct. 
 35
 
 36 Facing the Mistakes of Life 
 
 Let us be glad of the dignity of our 
 privilege to make mistakes, glad of the 
 wisdom that enables us to recognize 
 them, glad of the power that permits 
 us to turn their light as a glowing 
 illumination along the pathway of our 
 future. 
 
 Mistakes are the growing pains of 
 wisdom, the assessments we pay on our 
 stock of experience, the raw material 
 of error to be transformed into higher 
 living. Without them there would be 
 no individual growth, no progress, no 
 conquest. Mistakes are the knots, the 
 tangles, the broken threads, the 
 dropped stitches in the web of our liv- 
 ing. They are the misdeals in judg- 
 ment, our unwise investments in 
 morals, the profit and loss account of 
 wisdom. They are the misleading by- 
 paths from the straight road of truth
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 37 
 
 and truth in our highest living is but 
 the accuracy of the soul. 
 
 Human fallibility, weakness, petti- 
 ness, folly and sin are all mistakes. 
 They are to be accepted as mortgages of 
 error, to be redeemed by wiser living. 
 They should never weakly be taken as 
 justifying bankruptcy of effort. Even 
 a great mistake is only an episode 
 never a whole life. 
 
 Life is simply time given to man to 
 learn how to live. Mistakes are always 
 part of learning. The real dignity of 
 life consists in cultivating a fine atti- 
 tude towards our own mistakes and 
 those of others. It is the fine toler- 
 ance of a fine soul. Man becomes 
 great, not through never making mis- 
 takes, but by profiting by those he 
 does make ; by being satisfied with a 
 single rendition of a mistake, not en- 
 
 MMtfOTB
 
 38 Facing the Mistakes of Life 
 
 coring it into a continuous perform- 
 ance ; by getting from it the honey of 
 new, regenerating inspiration with no 
 irritating sting of morbid regret ; by 
 building better to-day because of his 
 poor yesterday ; and by rising with re- 
 newed strength, finer purpose and 
 freshened courage every time he falls. 
 
 In great chain factories, power ma- 
 chines are specially built to test chains 
 to make them fail, to show their 
 weakness, to reveal the mistakes of 
 workmanship. Let us thank God 
 when a mistake shows us the weak 
 link in the chain of our living. It is 
 a new revelation of how to live. It 
 means the rich red blood of a new in- 
 spiration. 
 
 If we have made an error, done a 
 wrong, been unjust to another or to 
 ourselves, or, like the Pharisee, passed
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 39 
 
 by some opportunity for good, we 
 should have the courage to face our 
 mistake squarely, to call it boldly by 
 its right name, to acknowledge it 
 frankly and to put in no flimsy alibis 
 of excuse to" protect an anemic self- 
 esteem. 
 
 If we have been selfish, unselfishness 
 should atone ; if we have wronged, we 
 should right ; if we have hurt, we should 
 heal ; if we have taken unjustly, we 
 should restore ; if we have been unfair, 
 we should become just. Regret with- 
 out regeneration is an emotional 
 gold- brick. Every possible reparation 
 should be made. If confession of re- 
 gret for the wrong and for our inability 
 to set it right be the maximum of our 
 power let us at least do that. A quick 
 atonement sometimes almost effaces the 
 memory. If foolish pride stands in
 
 40 Facing the Mistakes of Life 
 
 our way we are aggravating the first 
 mistake by a new one. Some people's 
 mistakes are never born singly they 
 come in litters. 
 
 Those who waken to the realization 
 of their wrong act, weeks, months or 
 years later, sometimes feel it is better to 
 let confession or reparation lapse, that 
 it is too late to reopen a closed account ; 
 but men rarely feel deeply wounded if 
 asked to accept payment on an old 
 promissory note outlawed for years. 
 
 Some people like to wander in the 
 cemetery of their past errors, to reread 
 the old epitaphs and to spend hours in 
 mourning over the grave of a wrong. 
 This new mistake does not antidote 
 the old one. The remorse that para- 
 lyzes hope, corrodes purpose, and dead- 
 ens energy is not moral health, it is 
 an indigestion of the soul that cannot
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 41 
 
 assimilate an act. It is selfish, cow- 
 ardly surrender to the dominance of 
 the past. It is lost motion in morals ; 
 it does no good to the individual, to 
 the injured, to others, or to the world. 
 If the past be unworthy live it down ; 
 if it be worthy live up to it and 
 surpass it. 
 
 Omnipotence cannot change the past, 
 so why should we try ? Our duty is to 
 compel that past to vitalize our future 
 with new courage and purpose, making 
 it a larger, greater future than would 
 have been possible without the past 
 that has so grieved us. If we can get 
 real, fine, appetizing dividends from 
 our mistakes they prove themselves not 
 losses but wise investments. They 
 seem like old mining shares, laid aside 
 in the lavender of memory of our 
 optimism and now, by some sudden
 
 42 Facing the Mistakes of Life 
 
 change in the market of speculation, 
 proved to be of real value. 
 
 Realizing mistakes is good ; realiz- 
 ing on them is better. When a cap- 
 tain finds his vessel is out of the right 
 channel, carried, by negligence, by ad- 
 verse winds or by blundering through 
 a fog, from the true course, he wastes 
 no time in bemoaning his mistake but 
 at the first sunburst takes new bear- 
 ings, changes his course, steers bravely 
 towards his harbour with renewed cour- 
 age to make up the time he has lost. 
 The mistake means increased care and 
 greater speed. 
 
 Musing over the dreams of youth, 
 the golden hopes that have not blos- 
 somed into deeds, is a dangerous men- 
 tal dissipation. In very small doses it 
 may stimulate ; in large ones it weak- 
 ens effort. It over-emphasizes the past
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 43 
 
 at the expense of the present ; it adds 
 weights, not wings, to purpose. " It 
 might have been " is the lullaby of 
 regret with which man often puts to 
 sleep the mighty courage and confi- 
 dence that should inspire him. We 
 do not need narcotics in life so much 
 as we need tonics. We may try some- 
 times, sadly and speculatively, to re- 
 construct our life from some date in 
 the past when we might have taken a 
 different course. We build on a dead 
 " if." This is the most unwise brand 
 of air-castle. 
 
 We go back in memory to some fork 
 of the road in life and think what 
 would have happened and how won- 
 drously better it would have been had 
 we taken the other turning of the 
 road. " If we had learned some other 
 business ; " " If we had gone West in
 
 44 Facing tJie Mistakes of Life 
 
 1884 ; " " If we had married the other 
 one ; " " If we had bought telephone 
 stock when it was at 35 ; " " If we had 
 taken a different course in education ; " 
 " If we had only spent certain money in 
 some other way," and so we run use- 
 lessly our empty train of thought over 
 these slippery " ifs." 
 
 Even if these courses might have 
 been wiser, and we do not really know, 
 it is now as impossible to change back 
 to them as for the human race to go 
 back to the original bit of protoplasm 
 from which science declares we are 
 evolved. The past does not belong to 
 us to change or to modify ; it is only 
 the golden present that is ours to make 
 as we would wish. The present is raw 
 material ; the past is finished product, 
 finished forever for good or ill. No 
 regret will ever enable us to relive it.
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 45 
 
 The other road always looks attract- 
 ive. Distant sails are always white ; 
 far-off hills always green. It may per- 
 haps have been the poorer road after 
 all, could our imagination, through 
 some magic, see with perfect vision the 
 finality of its possibility. The other 
 road might have meant wealth but less 
 happiness ; fame might have charmed 
 our ears with the sweet music of praise, 
 but the little hand of love that rests so 
 trustingly in ours might have been 
 denied us. Death itself might have 
 come earlier to us or his touch stilled 
 the beatings of a heart we hold dearer 
 than our own. What the other road 
 might have meant no eternity of con- 
 jecture could ever reveal ; no omnipo- 
 tence could enable us now to walk 
 therein even if we wished. 
 
 We cannot relive our old mistakes,
 
 46 Facing the Mistakes of Life 
 
 but we can make them the means of 
 future immunity from the folly that 
 caused them. If we were impatient 
 yesterday, it should inspire us to be 
 patient to-day. Yesterday's anger may 
 be the seed of to-day's sweetness. To- 
 day's kindness should be the form as- 
 sumed by our regret at yesterday's 
 cruelty. Our unfairness to one may 
 open our eyes to the possibility of 
 greater fairness to hundreds. Injustice 
 to one that may seem to have cost us 
 much may really have cost us little if 
 it make us more kind, tender and 
 thoughtful for long years. 
 
 It is a greater mistake to err in pur- 
 pose, in aim, in principle, than in our 
 method of attaining them. The method 
 may readily be modified ; to change 
 the purpose may upset the whole plan 
 of our life. It is easier in mid-ocean to
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 47 
 
 vary the course of the ship than to 
 change the cargo. 
 
 Right principles are vital and pri- 
 mary. They bring the maximum of 
 profit from mistakes, reduce the loss to 
 a minimum. False pride perpetuates 
 our mistakes, deters us from confessing 
 them, debars us from repairing them 
 and ceasing them. 
 
 Man's attitude towards his mistakes is 
 various and peculiar ; some do not see 
 them ; some will not see them ; some 
 see without changing ; some see and 
 deplore, but keep on ; some make the 
 same mistakes over and over again, in 
 principle not in form ; some blame 
 others for their own mistakes ; some 
 condemn others for mistakes seemingly 
 unconscious that they themselves are 
 committing similar ones ; some excuse 
 their mistakes by saying that others do
 
 48 Facing the Mistakes of Life 
 
 the same things, as though a disease 
 were less dangerous when it becomes 
 epidemic in a community. 
 
 Failure does not necessarily imply a 
 mistake. If we have held our standard 
 high, bravely fought a good fight for the 
 right, held our part courageously against 
 heavy opposition and have finally seen 
 the citadel of our great hope taken by 
 superior force, by overwhelming condi- 
 tions, or sapped and undermined by 
 jealousy, envy or treachery we have 
 met with failure, it is true, but we 
 have not made a mistake. 
 
 The world may condemn us for this 
 non-success. What does the silly, bab- 
 bling, unthinking world, that has not 
 seen our heroic efforts, know about it? 
 What does it matter what the world 
 thinks, or says, if we know we have 
 done our best? Sometimes men fail
 
 Facing the Mistakes of Life 49 
 
 nobly because they have the courage to 
 forego triumph at the cost of character, 
 honour, truth and justice. 
 
 Let us never accept mistakes as final ; 
 let us organize victory out of the 
 broken ranks of failure and, despite all 
 odds, fight on calmly, courageously, 
 unflinchingly, serenely confident that, 
 in the end, right living and right doing 
 - -must triumph.
 
 IV 
 
 The Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 VER the great doorway of 
 one of New York's sky- 
 scraping office buildings 
 three colossal sculptured 
 figures are posed in 
 crouching attitudes. With their great 
 bowed heads, grimly tense features, and 
 muscles strained like whip-cords they 
 seem to hold on their broad shoulders 
 the terrific weight of twenty or more 
 stories of solid masonry. They are 
 really only pompous shams. Theirs 
 is only a Herculean pose. Theirs is 
 only the pretense of the strenuous not 
 its reality. They were put in after the 
 building was completed ; they could be 
 
 removed without endangering the safety 
 50
 
 Sculptured Figures of Society 51 
 
 of the edifice in the slightest. They 
 have no more real responsibility than a 
 wandering fly, tarrying for a moment 
 on the flag-pole on the roof. 
 
 There are thousands of such sculp- 
 tured figures in the world of society to- 
 day. They are men whose powers are 
 evidenced in ounces, whose pretense is 
 proclaimed in tons. They are those 
 whose promises out-soar the eagles, 
 whose performance is lower than the 
 flight of the mud-lark. They are con- 
 stantly posing physically, mentally, 
 morally, socially, or spiritually. By 
 juggling with excuses of their vanity 
 and selfishness they may mislead them- 
 selves and others for a time but usually 
 they deceive only themselves. They 
 are most often like the village fool who 
 thought he played the organ when he 
 only pumped the bellows.
 
 52 Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 Certain fairly harmless sculptured 
 figures have the pose of being " ex- 
 tremely busy." They constantly seek 
 to raise themselves to a conspicuous 
 ledge by the derrick of their own con- 
 ceit. They seem to have so much to ac- 
 complish that you might infer that were 
 each day two weeks long and three 
 weeks wide, it would be absurdly in- 
 adequate for their diurnal duties. 
 Their tasks are so " terrifically many " 
 that, if you were optimistic enough to 
 accept their statements as net, without 
 asking for discount, you would realize 
 that these tasks could never be accom- 
 plished by any individual it would 
 surely require a syndicate. 
 
 They belong to a class who, if they 
 receive three letters in a day, tell you 
 that they are "just deluged with corre- 
 spondence." Their social engagements
 
 Sculptured Figures of Society 53 
 
 are " positively tiresome " and as you 
 listen to the list of their society friends 
 your commercial instinct makes you 
 picture what a splendid elite directory it 
 would be were it only put into print. 
 Their troubles with their servants seem 
 so great that you wonder why they do 
 not discharge nine or so of them and 
 worry along with the remainder. They 
 use a seventy horse-power vocabulary 
 for a bicycle set of thoughts. They go 
 round polishing their own halos. 
 
 Another of these sculptured figures 
 poses as an intellectual Atlas holding 
 up the whole firmament of thought 
 merely one world is too easy. His 
 ignorance and his impudence ever col- 
 laborate with his iconoclasm. He 
 demolishes literary reputation with the 
 ease of a sharp-shooter hitting glass 
 balls. He confides to you that Shake-
 
 54 Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 speare is greatly overrated, Thackeray 
 was only a cynic, Scott a garrulous old 
 novelist, George Eliot a sawdust doll, 
 Dickens a tedious reporter. All the 
 world's greatest dramatists, novelists, 
 poets, philosophers and thinkers, are, 
 one by one, inevitably bowled into 
 nothingness. 
 
 There is a sculptured figure who 
 speaks as though pronouncing the last 
 word of finality on science and higher 
 thought. The problems that have baf- 
 fled the sages for ages seem to him as 
 luminant as an electric sign on a dark 
 street. Though he has read, perhaps, 
 partially through one volume of Spen- 
 cer, Tyndall, Huxley, or Darwin, he 
 erupts, like a pretensive Vesuvius of 
 knowledge on evolution. There are 
 thick clouds of the smoke of mere 
 words, and sputterings of confused
 
 Sculptured Figures of Society 55 
 
 light. Every weak spot in theology 
 is known to him and where he cannot 
 find a puncture he makes one. He 
 seems to believe he could handle all 
 cannon-ball problems as lightly as 
 though they were rubber balls. Igno- 
 rance of many of these great questions 
 is justifiable and natural to us who are 
 not omniscient. It needs no apology, 
 because one may be thinking honestly 
 on other subjects nearer and dearer to 
 one's life. The wrong and folly lie 
 only in the pose and the pretense. 
 
 There are other sculptured figures 
 more sad to think of, more serious to 
 contemplate, more blighting on the 
 lives of others. They are those who 
 peril the crown of their individuality 
 by a moral or a religious pose a com- 
 bination of pharisaism, pride, policy 
 and pretense. They may occupy high
 
 56 Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 places but, like statues in cathedrals, 
 despite the religious atmosphere and 
 the environment in which they exist, 
 they remain only stone. 
 
 Religion to be worth aught must 
 transform and sweeten and better lives 
 or it is only a self-deceiving formula. 
 It must be a living impetus making 
 them bear bravely their own burdens ; 
 it must broaden their shoulders to 
 stand the strain of others' needs ; it 
 must make them active, virile, aggres- 
 sive, inspiring powers in the world. 
 Religion, to be really worth while, 
 should, by their living, fill men's hearts 
 with love, truth, right, justice, sweet- 
 ness, honesty, faith, charity, trust and 
 peace. These virtues can no more be 
 kept hid from the world around them 
 than can the blazing sun, riding royally 
 in the zenith at noonday.
 
 Sculptured Figures of Society 57 
 
 There are religious sculptured figures 
 from sheer hypocrisy, consciously trad- 
 ing on their church rating these may 
 deceive the world without blindfolding 
 their own eyes for a moment. There is 
 a more subtle form where the individual 
 himself does not realize that he is only 
 an eye-servant or an ear-servant, that 
 his is lip service only. He has no 
 realization that he is not transforming 
 what he believes is true into a dynamic 
 moral force affecting his own life and 
 the lives of others. 
 
 There are sculptured figures of friend- 
 ship that may deceive us for a time. 
 Discovery may take from us, for a long 
 period, all that is best in us, shrivel 
 our faith in humanity, and leave us 
 lonely until we bury the dead body 
 of the friendship and learn to forget. 
 
 There are friendships upon the cer-
 
 58 Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 tainty of which we have staked our 
 life. We have felt that though the 
 winds of adversity might blow bleakly 
 about us ; the ships of our highest 
 hopes wreck at the moment we believed 
 they were almost in their haven of 
 return ; the night of our great mis- 
 fortune settle down on us, without a 
 star ; the cup of sorrow, shame and 
 suffering be close-pressed to our lips, yet 
 despite all that might possibly come 
 to us, there would ever be this true 
 friend by our side. 
 
 We may have shared his crust of 
 trial and disappointment, heart-glad- 
 dened, in a way, that we were privi- 
 leged thus to be of service to him. We 
 may have listened untiringly to his 
 endless repetition of the litany of some 
 sorrow of his soothing him, sweetly 
 consoling, silently and sympathetically
 
 Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 comforting with no thought of self. 
 We may have secretly left the death- 
 bed of some great hope of our own, 
 stifled our sobs bravely that he might 
 not know, and sat down with serene 
 patience to watch and nurse with him 
 at the sick-bed of some grief of his or 
 to help him towards the resurrection 
 of some hope of his from the grave of 
 his sorrow or his failure. 
 
 All that was ours, all the resources 
 of our whole life were more truly his 
 than ours because his need would stim- 
 ulate us to higher effort in his behalf 
 than we would make in our own. He 
 may have protested undying gratitude, 
 told us freely, over and over again, 
 that no demand or need of ours would 
 seem even a drop to the ever-flowing 
 spring of his gratitude. 
 
 Then when the finger of time had
 
 60 Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 moved from days to weeks, and to 
 months, the angel of a great grief may 
 have knocked at the door of our heart, 
 and perforce we have to open and let 
 the angel of sorrow come in. In the aw- 
 ful desolation arid loneliness that numb 
 our very soul we may turn round con- 
 fident of meeting responsive eyes look- 
 ing inspiration into ours ; we involun- 
 tarily bend the ear to hear words of 
 courage from the lips of the only one 
 in all the world that could comfort or 
 console. We reach out, by some subtle 
 instinct, the hand of our pain, expect- 
 ing it to be warmly covered but instead, 
 we touch only the cold, hard, chis- 
 elled outlines of a sculptured figure. 
 
 Then we realize the fullness of one of 
 the most pathetic- cries in all the 
 world's history, when Christ in the 
 garden of Gethsemane, in sublime
 
 Sculptured Figures of Society 6 1 
 
 hunger of heart, in divine protest of 
 soul, broke in on the slumber of Peter, 
 with the words : " Could ye not watch 
 with Me one hour ? " We have faced 
 a new tragedy of the soul alone. The 
 sculptured figure may never realize 
 what he has done. 
 
 Real, honest effort, no matter how 
 slight seem results, no matter how 
 weak seem the progress, has no time 
 for mere parade. Their high motives 
 that inspire are : love, honour, truth, 
 justice or those others that lead the 
 ranks of their high purpose. The 
 glowing realization that their work 
 is serious inspires them. Their conse- 
 crated effort to rise to the heights of 
 their highest nature gives a royal 
 importance that banishes trivialities. 
 
 True importance is always simple. 
 The large duties, cares, and responsi-
 
 62 Sculptured Figures of Society 
 
 bilities of those seeking to do great 
 things give them natural dignity and 
 ease. They have the simple grace of 
 the burden-bearers of India, who carry 
 heavy loads on their heads and, in the 
 carrying learn how to carry them, erect 
 with fearless step. There is in them 
 no trace of the pose of the strenuous. 
 Men of serious effort think too much 
 of their work to think much of them- 
 selves. Their great interest, enthusi- 
 asm, and absorption in their world of 
 fine accomplishment eclipse all little- 
 ness. They are living their life, not 
 playing a part. They are burning in- 
 cense at the shrine of a great purpose, 
 not to their own vanity. They ever 
 have poise, not pose.
 
 The Hungers of Life 
 
 UNGER is the voice of a 
 void. It is Nature de- 
 manding her rights. It 
 is the restless insistent 
 cry of an instinct, clam- 
 ouring to be satisfied. There are four 
 great hungers of life, body-hunger, 
 mind-hunger, heart-hunger and soul- 
 hunger. They are all real ; all need 
 recognition ; all need feeding. 
 
 The claim of a hungry body has 
 right of way over all other needs. It 
 requires no credentials, no argument, 
 no advocate. It holds a first mortgage 
 on the sympathy and aid of humanity. 
 
 But the hunger for food while being 
 63
 
 64 The Hungers of Life 
 
 most irrepressible, most immediately 
 compelling, has no monopoly on the 
 hungers of life. In the world to-day 
 there are in reality more people starv- 
 ing for love than for bread. There is 
 more heart-hunger than body-hunger 
 more unsatisfied yearning for sym- 
 pathy, affection, companionship, kind- 
 ness, and appreciation than for food. 
 
 These hungers are not a modern 
 invention. They are as old as history. 
 They began in the Garden of Eden. 
 When Adam's bodily hunger was 
 recognized and great stores of growing 
 food insured him against starvation, 
 the hunger of his heart was appeased 
 by a wife. Then the mind-hunger of 
 this first married couple was appealed 
 to under the pretense that they should 
 know the difference between good and 
 evil. There was a soul-hunger still to
 
 The Hungers of Life 65 
 
 be met. They had the promise that 
 they would "be as gods." There was 
 no evil in the four hungers but merely 
 that two of these were appealed to by 
 lying and treachery. The wrong goods 
 were delivered that is all. 
 
 We have all these four hungers be- 
 cause we are human because we are 
 higher than the animals. These hun- 
 gers are aspirations and were meant to 
 be satisfied. They mean man's true 
 expression not false repression. Life 
 is a continuous battle for our hungers. 
 
 True living means realizing the real 
 hungers of ourselves and others and 
 seeking to satisfy them. False living 
 means vainly humouring morbid ac- 
 quired appetites. At Thanksgiving- 
 tide and at the Christmas season the 
 cup of our gratitude and kindness 
 specially overflows to others. Let us
 
 The Hungers of Life 
 
 at this time, and at all others, realize 
 that feeding the body-hungry is simply 
 an initial duty. It is a first privilege 
 of human brotherhood, good enough as 
 a beginning but not as a full story. 
 
 Let us give others not merely what 
 we have but what we are. Let us feed 
 their higher hungers, not on set days 
 and occasions, but in unbroken years 
 of such days. Let us make this spirit 
 like a persistent, pervading perfume 
 of inspiration ever sweeten our own 
 lives and those of others. 
 
 Mind-hunger is a craving for intel- 
 lectual food. It may be an insatiable 
 desire for education. It may reveal it- 
 self in a passion for books, in securing 
 a few shelves of certain books for one's 
 very own. It may mean the joy of 
 possession of not mere books but of 
 just those selected volumes that mean
 
 The Hungers of Life 67 
 
 silent friends talking ever inspiration 
 to one's eyes instead of to one's ears. 
 This is what makes a package of old 
 magazines or old books a treasure in 
 some lonely home after they have out- 
 lived their usefulness elsewhere. 
 
 This mind-hunger may be keen and 
 on edge for fine music, the hearing of 
 which would be a stimulus at the time 
 and later a golden memory ; while to 
 many of the box-holders it is merely a 
 social duty, a bit of a pose and some- 
 thing to talk about. The mind-hungry 
 may long to have the privilege of hear- 
 ing a certain great lecturer, or, some- 
 times, there is a rushing wave of desire 
 to speak freely, fully, frankly to some 
 one who seems to live on the intel- 
 lectual heights, and to feed on his 
 words that if actually given personally, 
 in quickening advice or inspiration,
 
 The Hungers of Life 
 
 would bring real joy. These are but 
 suggestions of the mind's hunger for 
 that which it needs and craves. 
 
 The great heart-hunger of humanity 
 is loneliness. Loneliness is the heart's 
 realization that no one is self-sufficient, 
 no one is complete alone. It is always 
 the restless yearning, in some form, for 
 God's greatest gift to man love. We 
 seek it ever, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, as the great gnarled roots of 
 trees, guided by some divine instinct, 
 ever reach out in their constant search 
 for the water that means life to them. 
 The hungers for friends, sympathy, ap- 
 preciation, confidence, companionship 
 are simply phases, degrees, or tenden- 
 cies of hunger for the finest human 
 love love of one alone for us alone. 
 
 In a great city there are countless 
 thousands of men and women leading
 
 The Hungers of Life 69 
 
 lives of loneliness ; they are just heart- 
 hungry for the affection they feel is 
 their due and their right. It is not the 
 burden of daily toil, the smallness of 
 the reward, the dull round of daily 
 duties that make them heart-weary, 
 but that benumbing sense of loneliness 
 that sometimes sweeps over the soul 
 like a mighty tide and submerges every 
 thought but of hunger for affection. 
 
 They just feel hungry for some one to 
 whom they can tell the little incidents 
 that make up their days, some one to 
 be genuinely interested, some one to 
 share their little joys and sorrows, some 
 one to smooth away the lines of care 
 and worry, some one whose eyes will 
 brighten at their approach, some one to 
 whom they will be necessary, some one 
 who will fill their sky with the sun- 
 shine of love and the glow of trust and
 
 jo The Hungers of Life 
 
 confidence. They want some one to 
 live for, some one to work for, some 
 one to need them. 
 
 It is not always clearly formulated or 
 even clearly understood, for the heart's 
 feeling is often beyond its power to ex- 
 press. It may be only a vague, rest- 
 less unsatisfiedness, but all the energies 
 and emotions of the heart silently 
 sweep themselves in one direction, as 
 rivers, unknowing why, seek the ocean. 
 And, with this heart-hunger satisfied, 
 the magic hand of Time seems to have 
 changed suddenly the whole perspec- 
 tive of life. The harsh outlines of 
 cares and troubles seem softened and 
 transformed, as the moon throws a 
 glorifying silver light of interpretation 
 over even the most prosaic of scenes. 
 
 When this heart-hunger is unap- 
 we may take cocaines of dis-
 
 The Hungers of Life 71 
 
 traction that dull the pain they do not 
 remove. We do a thousand little 
 things to kill the time that hangs 
 heavy on our hands, but this is not 
 true living. It is the dullness of 
 drugged emotion that keeps us from 
 our best selves. It does not bring true 
 peace ; it is only numbness. Real 
 peace comes from finding oneself tem- 
 porary oblivion from losing oneself. 
 
 This heart-hunger is so real that it is 
 not limited to those leading lives of real 
 loneliness. It finds itself in homes 
 where there is the semblance of real 
 companionship, but not its actuality, 
 its cold, bare anatomy, not its living, 
 pulsing, vitalizing soul. 
 
 There is a divine paradox in feeding 
 the heart-hungry. As we seek to ap- 
 pease the heart-hunger of another our 
 own grows less. The food increases in
 
 72 The Hungers of Life 
 
 the using, as at the miraculous feeding 
 of the four thousand at the sermon in 
 the wilderness what remained after all 
 were fed was more than the original 
 supply. Let us make others forget 
 their heart-hunger in the kindness, 
 thoughtfulness, consideration, sym- 
 pathy, companionship, and affection we 
 can give them. Let us forget our own 
 heart-hunger in feeding others, even 
 though we can silence ours in no other 
 way. No one occupies so humble a 
 position that he cannot thus help. 
 
 There are times in the life of all 
 when, weak and worn with the struggle, 
 the ebb-tide of hope seems to carry out 
 with it all inspiration, all impulse, all 
 incentive. In the darkest night of a 
 great loss, a paralyzing pain, or a voice- 
 less grief we seem to lose our very bear- 
 ings on life, and weak, trembling hands
 
 The Hungers of Life 73 
 
 hold the useless compass of our pur- 
 pose. We see nothing to live for, and 
 life does not then seem worth liv- 
 ing. At such an hour gentle words of 
 comfort and courage and companion- 
 ship words that come glowing from 
 the very soul of another, not empty, 
 cheap commonplaces that roll flippantly 
 from the tongue come as living food 
 to the hungry heart. 
 
 When the trials of the individual 
 life seem hard to bear and the failures of 
 our best efforts tempt us to overthrow 
 the altars of our ideals, and all that we 
 have held high and best seems empty 
 delusion, we feel this hunger for a lov- 
 ing friend, a counsellor, a guide. We 
 want fresh, kindly eyes of those who 
 really care to look at our problems, to 
 help us to regain our faith in hu- 
 manity, our belief in ourselves, our trust
 
 74 The Hungers of Life 
 
 in the certainty of the final triumph 
 of right, love, justice and truth. 
 
 To feed the heart-hungry we must 
 give the positives of our life, not the 
 negations. We must give our strength, 
 not our weakness ; our certainties, not 
 our fears ; our radiant finalities of de- 
 cision, not our unsettled dilemmas. 
 
 If we were to transform " feed the 
 hungry " from a mere phrase into a 
 vital impulse finding expression in 
 every day of our living, we would 
 bring the very spirit of the millennium 
 into the expanding circle of our indi- 
 vidual life and influence. We would 
 realize that these hungers are real and 
 were given to man that they might be 
 satisfied. They are not to be confused 
 with mere morbid appetites, counterfeit 
 hungers man-made out of the idle 
 hours of his folly. These must be
 
 The Hungers of Life 75 
 
 killed starved into submission, domi- 
 nated, mastered, vanquished by the 
 individual who would be true to his 
 kingship over himself. 
 
 Soul-hunger has its infinite phases 
 as well as heart-hunger. Soul-hunger 
 is man's insatiate desire to know the 
 truth of the life now and the life here- 
 after. Soul-hunger has existed in man 
 since the beginning of time. All the 
 religions of the world are simply sys- 
 tems to feed this spiritual hunger. 
 Hunger is the consciousness of incom- 
 pleteness. The belief in immortality, 
 another world, a new life, is simply the 
 last great hunger of the soul.
 
 VI 
 
 Throwing Away Our Happiness 
 
 F in the desert, a lone 
 traveller, in angry pro- 
 test against the hard- 
 ships of his journey, 
 were to slash with his 
 knife his goatskin water-bag, letting 
 the hot sand drink up the water that 
 means health, strength, life itself, it 
 would seem supreme folly. 
 
 If a shipwrecked sailor were to slip 
 voluntarily from his rude raft of spars 
 in mid-ocean, thrust it far from him in 
 disgust that it were not a finely up- 
 holstered boat, and, forsaking it, trust 
 himself alone to the powers of winds 
 and waves and darkness, it would seem 
 
 contempt for the mercies left him. 
 76
 
 Throwing Away Our Happiness 77 
 
 If we were to see a man idly roll 
 a hundred-dollar bill into a splint, 
 hold a lighted match to it and watch 
 the charred fragments fall to the floor 
 as a dead memorial of uselessness, we 
 would remember it for a lifetime. We 
 would tell the story many times in the 
 years to come. We would dilate on 
 the waste, the folly, the great possibili- 
 ties for good and helpfulness wantonly 
 sacrificed to vanity and vandalism. 
 
 In our every-day life there are count- 
 less instances of happiness thrown 
 away just as foolishly for a trifle, 
 perhaps but the puny gratification of a 
 moment. It seems more' hopelessly 
 inexcusable than to cast aside a pearl 
 and save the empty useless oyster shell 
 that enclosed the treasure. 
 
 Our happiness rarely dies a natural 
 death. We slay it with our own hand
 
 78 Throwing Away Our Happiness 
 
 or others kill it for us. The veriest 
 trifle may keep it alive, the veriest 
 trifle may kill it, and yet selfishly, 
 blindly, we still the heart of our 
 own happiness or that of others. We 
 may even irreverently throw the blame 
 on the scheme of the universe when 
 we alone are at fault. 
 
 Happiness dqes_not consist of what 
 we have but_what we are; not_jn 
 our possessions but in our attitude 
 towards them. It is the serenity of the 
 soul in the presence of a present joy. 
 It is not absolute, requiring certain 
 fixed conditions ; it is relative. What 
 would be a fast for one might prove a 
 royal feast for another. Happiness 
 does not always require success, pros- 
 perity or attainment. It is often the 
 joy of hopeful struggle, consecration 
 of purpose and energy to some good
 
 Throwing Away Our Happiness 79 
 
 end. Real happiness ever has its root 
 in unselfishness its blossom in love of 
 some kind. We make or mar our own 
 happiness and that of others to a larger 
 degree than we are willing to admit. 
 It is easier to pose as victim of con- 
 ditions than to prove oneself victor. 
 
 The soul of our happiness may be 
 love. This love may be so fine and 
 great and simple and it so fills our life 
 that it leaves no room for pain, as light 
 crowds out darkness. It may, with its 
 Midas touch, turn even our trials and 
 troubles into the gold of sweetness, 
 strength and consolation. It may stand 
 ever between us and the world as a 
 bulwark keeps back the sea. It may 
 become to us an angel of hope holding 
 our hand with gentle pressure when 
 p^ the clouds hang low, sustaining us 
 when the way of life seems hard.
 
 80 Throwing Away Our Happiness 
 
 This honest love may ever trust us ; 
 forgiving and forgetting may be its at- 
 mosphere. It may inspire us, recreate 
 us, give wings to us when downcast, a 
 new shield to faith and new heart to 
 energy. We may have this great hap- 
 piness all our own, firm in our grasp, 
 yet for a mere trifle we may throw it 
 away, or let it fall gradually from us 
 like pearls dropping, one by one, silent 
 and unnoted, from a broken necklace. 
 
 We let some petty, mean trait of 
 ours, some weakness we should master 
 through self-control, cheat us of our 
 Iiappiness. We have held some penny 
 of momentary satisfaction so close to 
 our eyes that it eclipses the sun of our 
 happiness. A foolish jealousy that 
 deadened our ears to explanation, that 
 shut our eyes to the truth and that 
 stilled our tongue when it would speak
 
 Throwing Away Our Happiness 8 1 
 
 the words of faith we could hardly 
 keep back we have let this jealousy, 
 this snap judgment, expressive not of 
 real love but of wounded pride, swal- 
 low up our happiness as the ocean 
 engulfs a treasure-ship. 
 
 We may let idle gossip, false sym- 
 pathy, imbecile advice from those who 
 know absolutely nothing about our 
 real condition, shut us from love and 
 faith, breed doubt and suspicion, and 
 choke trust as by the fumes of some 
 noxious gas. We may let some other 
 folly which comes from our false inter- 
 pretation cheat us of our happiness like 
 one ignorant of the meaning of a deed 
 signing away a fortune. 
 
 And when it is all over we may not 
 have the moral courage to go back, as 
 we should. When later, conscience 
 holds in a bitter hour of realization
 
 82 Throwing Away Our Happiness 
 
 and loneliness its sad post-mortem over 
 the dead happiness, it may be a very 
 poor satisfaction to know that we killed 
 a love that we needed and that needed 
 us for such a trifle. 
 
 Friendship that meant much in our 
 happiness, that was rest, refuge and 
 joy, may be thrown away for a trifle. 
 Friends, real friends, are rare in the 
 individual life. We cannot have many 
 of them. They do not come in bunches 
 like bananas. They are never found 
 ready-made at all. They are formed 
 by weathering the same gales of fate 
 together, by standing the heat of con- 
 flict together, by kinship of mind and 
 heart, by common interest in a com- 
 mon ideal, by basic understanding, 
 mutual dependence, thorough respect 
 and loyalty that grows stronger as need 
 grows greater. Acquaintances we may
 
 Throwing Away Our Happiness 83 
 
 have many, but acquaintanceship is \ 
 merely the grapes of possibility from <. 
 which the rich wine of friendship is * 
 aged and mellowed. 
 
 Friends are usually necessary to 
 happiness. Robinson Crusoe could 
 hardly have been genuinely happy 
 in his isolation, no matter how he 
 kept his optimism breathing by fre- 
 quent applications of oxygen from the 
 tank of his philosophy. Even love 
 does not long satisfy unless there is 
 in it real friendship and companion- 
 ship. Love is, in reality, only a 
 supreme, unique brand of perfected 
 friendship. But we may throw this 
 element in happiness away in a mood 
 of selfishness or blindness. 
 
 For the empty pleasure of a clever, 
 cutting taunt we may give a stab- 
 thrust that may kill a friendship. We
 
 84 Throwing Away Our Happiness 
 
 may take the kindly expressions of our 
 friend as a matter of course, demand- 
 ing as a right what belongs to us as a 
 courtesy. You cannot force a spon- 
 taneity any more than you can make 
 the bud a full-blown rose by forcibly 
 opening its petals. The bud becomes 
 a rose by natural expansion from 
 within. A friend's need is our op- 
 portunity. A momentary neglect or 
 coolness at a psychologic moment, 
 when the tired heart needs sympathy, 
 encouragement or help to the utmost, 
 may begin the death of a friendship. 
 
 Some people like the dividends on 
 friendship, but not its assessments. 
 They really do not need a friend, they 
 want a bank. When there is not 
 mutual helpfulness not necessarily 
 the same in kind or in degree, but the 
 helpfulness in which each gives freely
 
 Throwing Away Our Happiness 85 
 
 his best to the other as naturally as a 
 flower exhales perfume the friendship 
 is like a patent that is nearing its time 
 of expiration. 
 
 Ingratitude kills friendship or 
 rapidly attenuates it to a point where 
 it must die of anaemia. If we value 
 our happiness or our friend, let us 
 gladly expend the time, energy and 
 thought required to keep the relation- 
 ship free, clear, fresh-running as a 
 mountain brook. An idle flippant 
 breach of confidence, at a moment 
 when it seemed almost calculated 
 treachery, may kill a friendship or a 
 happiness growing for years. 
 
 A hasty surrender to temper, a sud- 
 den heat of anger may be followed by 
 a drop of sixty degrees in the tempera- 
 ture of a relation between two people. 
 It may destroy a real happiness as a
 
 186 Throwing Away Our Happiness 
 
 blizzard may, in a single night, ruin a 
 fruit field. There may be an unkind 
 letter, a cruel fling of cynicism or an 
 unjust slur or sneer that meant only 
 venting our own sad disappointment, 
 chagrin, or deferred hope, on an inno- 
 cent friend. We may have been con- 
 scious of the injustice before the words 
 were cold on our lips but some mean 
 streak in our nature may have kept us 
 from calling them back. 
 
 We are often happy in our hopes, 
 our plans, our purposes or our posses- 
 sions and let the envy of another poison 
 the well-spring of our happiness. 
 Envy is a drug that stupefies energy. 
 It does not give us what seems so 
 beautiful to us merely because it be- 
 longs to another. The very thing we 
 desire might not fit us nor agree with 
 us even if we could get it. Have you
 
 Throwing Away Our Happiness 87 
 
 ever noticed how much more interest- 
 ing your neighbour's paper looks than 
 your own, as you let your eye wander 
 to what your seat-mate is reading? 
 Have you ever felt that the meal some 
 one else has ordered looks much more 
 appetizing than yours, even though 
 you could have had precisely the same 
 if you had desired ? 
 
 Happiness does not come from com- 
 parison of our lives with others ; we 
 have our own life to live at its best, 
 not the lives of others. Let us get 
 what we can from our own paper, our 
 own meal, our own life. Let us live 
 so intently, so bounteously that the 
 joy from our life will overflow into 
 others, will make us better able to help 
 others, will transform us into castles 
 of refuge to those who need us. 
 
 Nursing a grievance does not bring
 
 8 Throwing Away Our Happiness 
 
 happiness. Being hypersensitive to 
 the opinions others have of us puts us 
 into the false position of making their 
 approval our court of appeals instead 
 of our own conscience and self-respect. 
 False pride too often betrays us into 
 surrendering the realities of life for the 
 poor satisfaction of an hour. Some 
 persons are so busy putting poultices 
 on their wounded vanity that they let 
 their happiness die of inanition. Liv- 
 ing each day at our best, simply, sin- 
 cerely, sweetly, is the surest way to win 
 happiness and to hold it.
 
 N walking along a moun- 
 tain road there is some- 
 times a sudden sharp 
 turn where, by seeming 
 magic, the narrow path 
 is transformed into the entrance of a 
 vast panorama of Nature. We seem 
 stunned as we involuntarily stop short, 
 rest and surrender to its majesty. The 
 view exalts us, glorifies us, inspires 
 us. We have a new high restful 
 ground of contemplation. We have a 
 new test of values, a new base of inter- 
 pretation, a new relation to life. 
 
 The hamlets and villages in the val- 
 ley bear a new strange dignity they 
 89
 
 90 At the Turn of the Road 
 
 have become integral parts of a great 
 picture. The colours of trees and 
 flowers blend from mere single effects 
 into a wondrous harmony. We are 
 seeing the birth, life and death of a 
 river as an eagle might watch it from 
 his nest on the crags. The fields of a 
 hundred farmers become one great farm. 
 And far beyond, we can see the great 
 ocean whitening the shore with its 
 billows leagues away. 
 
 The complex has become simple 
 absolute has now become relative ; 
 isolated has become associated ; 
 trifling great, and the great greater 
 detail losing none of its individuality 
 has an added value like a jewel set in 
 a crown. There is a finer sense of jus- 
 tice in our judgment, the ozone of the 
 higher levels seems tonic to our soul, a 
 sweet peace fills our heart.
 
 At the Turn of the Road 91 
 
 As we look backward the narrow 
 path, doled out to us in installments as 
 our weary feet toiled up the long as- 
 cent, now stands out clear for its en- 
 tire length. We begin to see it as a 
 type of our whole life, as the angels 
 must view it with greater charity from 
 the higher wisdom of their truer per- 
 spective. Rest, retrospection, reflection, 
 realization, and revelation are giving 
 us a fine new view-point, a new chance 
 to get our moral bearings, to tune our 
 life to bring out its highest, purest 
 notes at the turn of the road. 
 
 Humanity tends to take narrow 
 views of life and its problems instead 
 of occasional great, broad sweeps. It 
 is near-sightedness of the soul that per- 
 mits the unworthy to throw the really 
 big things into the shadow. We hold 
 some trifle of care or worry close to our
 
 92 At the Turn of the Road 
 
 vision asajeweler with an awning over 
 his eye peers into a watch. We let one 
 sorrow be the grave of many joys, one 
 ingratitude smother many of our kind- 
 nesses struggling for expression, one 
 weakness within us sap the strength 
 from many virtues. We need the brac- 
 ing inspiration, the revealing illumina- 
 tion of the larger vision. The turn of 
 the road, in its highest sense, is not a 
 place to stay we have to fight the 
 battle of life. It is only an arsenal of 
 supply not a battle-field of action. 
 
 The beginning of the new year is a 
 natural, sharp turn in the road of time. 
 Here we may wisely rest a while, and 
 in the peace and quiet and calm of self- 
 communion see the long stretch of the 
 road of a single twelvemonth. It is 
 built imperishably of short steps of 
 living from moment to moment.
 
 At the Turn of the Road 93 
 
 Many of the purposes for which we 
 laboured and struggled, in our narrow, 
 close, selfish absorption, seem poor, 
 petty and puny when seen from the 
 turn of the road. The structure of 
 some effort we thought marble now is 
 shown in its sickening sham as a hasty 
 affair of show and pretense, made of 
 staff, that could not stand the wear and 
 tear and test of time. It was not built 
 on square lines of character, of the best 
 that was in us. It lacked strength, 
 sincerity, simplicity. The material 
 was made up of policy and selfishness 
 put together on hurried plans. It was 
 a failure ; it cannot be rebuilt ; but it is 
 worth only a passing regret and a 
 realization of the lesson of its non-suc- 
 cess at the turn of the road. 
 
 We now see how many times the 
 paralyzing hand of procrastination
 
 94 At the Turn of the Road 
 
 touched the good deeds we meant to 
 do, the roseate dreams we longed to 
 transform into actualities. We wished 
 to do and we wanted to do but we did 
 not will to do. The fault was not in 
 conditions but in us. We were not 
 equal to opportunities. It is a false 
 philosophy that teaches that opportu- 
 nity calls only once at any man's 
 house. It comes with the persistency 
 of an importunate creditor, always in a 
 new guise, and clamours for admission, 
 but we may be too busy to answer 
 the bell. 
 
 Habits that we had determined to 
 master, to bring into sweet harmony 
 with our highest self, may still stalk 
 large and insolent before us. They 
 may seem to taunt us that they are 
 stronger than we. They were never 
 made in a day and cannot be mastered
 
 At the Turn of the Road 95 
 
 in a day. An hour may begin the 
 making of a habit ; an hour may be- 
 gin its breaking. Time, with heart 
 and mind united in determination, can 
 conquer any evil habit or create and 
 confirm any good one. 
 
 The look backward from the turn of 
 the road should inspire us by making 
 vivid to us how much of what we 
 feared never came to pass. The tyr- 
 anny of worry, that dominated us and 
 held us for months trembling slaves to 
 a weak fear, that dissipated our energy, 
 dulled our thinking, and darkened our 
 mental vision, at the very hours that 
 should have given us fullest control of 
 our best, is now seen as an enemy to 
 true individual growth. It means a 
 harder fight in the unending battle 
 against worry and grief. 
 
 The broader view of life reveals that
 
 96 At the Turn of the Road 
 
 the only great things in life are trifles ; 
 that what pained us most, saddened 
 our hearts, and turned our hopes to 
 ashes were only trifles cumulating 
 into overwhelming importance. A 
 cruel word, an unkindness, a little 
 misunderstanding may darken a day 
 and separate us from one we love or 
 may petrify us into a mood of doubt 
 and despair. The most joyous mo- 
 ments of life, the high lights in the 
 pictures of memory, may too be only 
 trifles of kindness, fine expressions of 
 love, simple tributes of confidence and 
 trust that make the very heart smile 
 as we remember. 
 
 Knowing the right is useless unless 
 we practice it. Realizing our weak- 
 ness is profitless unless we seek to 
 change. We may even grow so com- 
 fortably reconciled to faults and fail-
 
 At the Turn of the Road 97 
 
 ings as to accept them as finalities, to 
 confess them and even boast about 
 them. It is unjust to ourselves and 
 unjust to others. Some people treat 
 their faults as though they were flaws 
 in the Portland vase of a noble nature 
 and as if pointing them out were 
 practically banishing them forever. 
 
 Nature is constantly giving us new 
 turns of the road. It may be a 
 birthday or some general anniversary 
 in the cycle of the year. It may be 
 some red-letter day in the private cal- 
 endar of our emotions or some date 
 eloquent to us as telling of some joy- 
 ous " first " or some pathetic " last " 
 time in the sacred diary of the heart. 
 It may be a supreme sorrow, an ago- 
 nizing sense of loss, the coming of a 
 great joy, the closing of some epoch in 
 our lives, the proving of the actuality
 
 At the Turn of the Road 
 
 of something too awful for us even to 
 have feared, some exultant half-hour 
 that changes irrevocably all our living. 
 These and numberless other days, hours 
 or single moments may bring us alone 
 to the turn of the road. 
 
 Then may come one of those rare 
 moments of life, of fine spiritual dis- 
 cernment, of luminous revelation, of 
 coming to one's highest self, when the 
 sordid, the mean, the temporary, the 
 selfish are stripped in an instant of 
 their garish shams and tinsel. Then 
 the real, the true, the eternal stand out 
 in their majesty, bathed in the splen- 
 dour and glow of the revealing of truth. 
 In such a spirit the very tingle of the 
 inspiration of the infinite fills us. We 
 seem born again to new, better, and 
 greater things, for we have seen the 
 divine vision at the turn of the road.
 
 VIII 
 
 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 
 
 tice. 
 
 LINDFOLDED ; holding 
 in her left hand a bal- 
 ance ; in her right a 
 sword thus they pic- 
 ture the goddess of Jus- 
 This is satire in symbolism. It 
 seems the work of some cunning cynic 
 concentrating in a single figure the 
 worst elements of human injustice and 
 grimly labelling it " Justice." It is 
 worse than a label it is a libel. This 
 goddess of Justice has her eyes deliber- 
 ately closed to the facts. She holds 
 ostentatiously on high the scales of 
 justice but never sees their movement. 
 
 She has her hand tight-pressed on the 
 99
 
 Iioo Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 
 sword of punishment before even hear- 
 ing the testimony. She is excluding 
 all evidence but one hearsay. 
 
 This is /the goddess of Justice that 
 dominates society to-day. The true 
 Justice should be open-minded, open- 
 eyed, open-eared, open-lipped, open- 
 handed. Serene, free, unhampered by 
 bonds without or by prejudice within, 
 she should have one object to discover 
 the truth. Nothing should escape her 
 searching vision ; no faintest whisper 
 elude her eager ears ; with finest honest 
 wisdom should she question, and with 
 free unencumbered hands investigate, 
 test, prove. The lamp of truth should 
 throw its dazzling glow of illumination 
 on every trifle of evidence. The bal- 
 ance of judgment should be held rigidly 
 on a support before her, not suspended 
 from a trembling arm. This seems a
 
 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 101 
 
 higher and truer symbol than a blind 
 woman, sporting her regalia. 
 
 Character is not a simple, uniform 
 product. It cannot be judged as dress- 
 goods by a yard or so of sample un- 
 rolled from a bolt on the counter. It 
 is complex, confused, uncertain, chang- 
 ing, subject to moods that contradict 
 our conclusions. While knowing all 
 this we dare to construct the whole life 
 and character of one we may have 
 never even met. We build it from a 
 few hints, slurs, idle comments, or the 
 vague rumours or absolute lies of news- 
 paper reports as scientists reconstruct 
 an unknown prehistoric animal from a 
 few bones. One judges a painting by 
 the full view of the whole canvas ; sep- 
 arate isolated square inches of colour 
 are meaningless. Yet we dare to judge 
 our fellow man by single acts and
 
 
 IO2 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 
 
 words, misleading glimpses, and decep- 
 tive moments of special strain. From 
 these we magnify a mood into a char- 
 acter and an episode into a life. 
 
 There is entirely too much human 
 judging, too much flippant criticism of 
 the acts of others. Suspicion is per- 
 mitted to displace evidence, cheap 
 shrewdness to banish charity, prejudice 
 to masquerade as judgment. We im- 
 agine, we guess, we speculate then 
 pass on through the medium of indis- 
 creet speech and idle gossip what may 
 bring bitterness, sorrow, heartache, and 
 injustice to others. The very ones we 
 condemn may be battling nobly under 
 a hail of trial and temptation where 
 we might fall faint in the trenches or, 
 lowering our colours, drop back in 
 hopeless surrender. 
 
 We have a right to our preferences,
 
 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 103 
 
 our likes and dislikes, our impressions, 
 our opinions, but we should withhold 
 final judgment as an honest unpreju- 
 diced juryman keeps his verdict in sus- 
 pense until he has heard and tested all 
 of the evidence. We have no right to 
 let prejudice tyrannize over judgment 
 and kill the justice of the soul. We 
 may see an act but have no luminous 
 revelation of the motive behind it. 
 
 We idly condemn the gaiety of some 
 man who has suffered a terrible loss, and 
 term him heartless. Perhaps he laughs 
 only to keep back tears that would 
 gush like a torrent from his heart were 
 he less brave. We criticise the parsi- 
 mony of some one when it really means 
 consecrated generosity to some one 
 else. Over-generous forgiving may 
 seem weakness when it is the " ninety 
 times nine " of a great nature. Love
 
 104 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 
 
 at its height may seem indifference. 
 What appears conceit may be only 
 some one's attempt to recover a lost 
 self-confidence he hungers to regain. 
 
 Some one's fretfulness, or occasional 
 outbursts of temper, may be but sparks 
 of protest from the hidden fires of a 
 sad life-story or some bravely borne 
 illness unknown but to a chosen few. 
 Meanness may in reality be poverty too 
 proud to confess itself. We hear one 
 side of many a story and judge by that 
 alone. We judge often along the line 
 of our least mental resistance. Igno- 
 rantly we condemn a man for vanity be- 
 cause we would be vain had we accom- 
 plished his work. There is wide dif- 
 ference between putting yourself in an- 
 other's place and putting him in yours. 
 The one is an attempt at wisdom ; the 
 other a speculation in prejudice. We
 
 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 105 
 
 misinterpret motives, do not know 
 facts, and judge from wrong standards. 
 
 In the individual life we realize that 
 there are times when everything we 
 do or say misrepresents us. We mean 
 kindness but somehow the words 
 sound cross, cruel or misleading. 
 Without intending it we hurt those 
 who are dearest ; we regret it, know 
 the sad effect we are creating, yet we 
 blunder on into deeper pitfalls. We 
 may be even too falsely proud to ex- 
 plain. We are all out of key. We are 
 tobogganing down the incline of a mood. 
 We may not understand ourselves and 
 in a spirit of heart-hunger may long 
 for some one sweetly and gently to 
 comprehend us, to see us truly, despite 
 ourselves and our acts. 
 
 Knowing this labyrinthic quality in 
 us and even in human nature at its
 
 106 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 
 
 best, let us throw the golden mantle of 
 love and kindness and justice over 
 every thought of condemnation. How 
 can we judge others harshly when we 
 do not know ourselves and while we 
 suffer so much from the misjudging 
 from others ? Let us live in the open 
 sunlight of love, shutting our eyes 
 in charity from adverse judging just 
 forgetting much, forgiving much. 
 
 Let us sweetly, sincerely, sympathet- 
 ically seek in the best side of some 
 one we know his real, fine, true 
 self. Let us think of the fine flowers 
 and ignore the weeds as temporary in- 
 vaders. This may prove an inspi- 
 ration to some one near and dear to us 
 to live up to our ideal of him, to be 
 worthy of the higher levels to which 
 our faith has raised him. 
 
 Sometime* situations arise between 
 
 fft 
 
 itween 
 
 J 
 
 M^
 
 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 1 07 
 
 friends that demand rapid judgment 
 and action. Then should we check off 
 the items carefully, considering truly 
 both sides of the ledger of our experi- 
 ence. Before pronouncing sentence let 
 us see if in our heart of hearts we 
 honestly believe our verdict fair, just 
 and true. Let us be assured it is 
 justice not prejudice, pique, temper, 
 disappointment, distorted gossip, or 
 aught else that is eclipsing the justice 
 of our judgment. Our injustice, if 
 such there be, may change bitterly the 
 life of both. 
 
 One of the hardest lessons of life is 
 to learn not to judge. Perhaps ninety 
 per cent, of the adverse criticism, com- 
 ment, and judging of humanity is un- 
 necessary and serves no useful purpose. 
 It is not our business. It is simply 
 our mere impertinent meddling in the
 
 io8 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 
 
 affairs of others, without even a hope 
 of being helpful or useful. It is often 
 what we would most quickly resent 
 were the situations reversed. 
 
 There are times in every life when 
 we must judge, when we should judge, 
 and when it is vitally important that 
 we should judge wisely and justly. 
 There are those closely associated with 
 us in love, friendship or business 
 where it may be important for us to 
 understand their words, their acts, 
 their motives, and their emotions in so 
 far as they affect ours. The very atti- 
 tude of not judging until it becomes 
 necessary gives ever dignity, calmness, 
 poise, and fineness to these enforced 
 judgments. The judgment that has 
 been dulled by constant misuse, like a 
 razor that has been used to sharpen 
 pencils, is of little value in real need.
 
 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 109 
 
 The wisest judgment means the best 
 head cooperating with the best heart. 
 It is kind, honest, charitable seeking 
 truth, not the verifying of a prejudice. 
 It says ever, in prefacing its conclu- 
 sions on the evidence : " As it seems 
 to me," " If I understand it aright," 
 " So far as I have been able to reason 
 it," " Unless I am mistaken," or simi- 
 lar phrases. These represent the sus- 
 pended judgment with no tone of ab- 
 solute finality. They show a willing- 
 ness to modify the verdict, to soften 
 the sentence, or to order a new trial if 
 new evidence, new illumination, or 
 new interpretation can be produced. 
 
 Only through sympathy can charac- 
 ter be rightly understood. Intolerance 
 and prejudice poison judgment. Even 
 our worst enemies are not as bad as we 
 think them. When Apelles, the Greek
 
 no Sitting in the Seat of Judgment 
 
 painter, made a portrait of Alexander, 
 King of Macedon, he painted the mon- 
 arch with his finger on a scar received 
 in battle so that the disfigurement was 
 not evident. Let us not point out the 
 scars on the lives and characters of 
 those around us but let the kindly 
 finger of charity gently obscure them. 
 To kill the judgment habit where it 
 is unnecessary, we must silence expres- 
 sion, but we must do more we must 
 learn not to think severe judgment 
 even if not spoken. If we do judge 
 severely in our thought it colours our 
 acts and our attitude. When tempted 
 to judge let us ask " Is it necessary ? " 
 When hearing gossip let us ask 
 " What are your proofs ? " We should 
 stifle our own criticisms and silence 
 those of others. In judging others let 
 us have courage to say, not coldly and
 
 Sitting in the Seat of Judgment in 
 
 uncaring but from the depths of hu- 
 man love and sympathy " I really 
 cannot tell. I do not know." 
 
 There is an Oriental legend that one 
 day, Christ, wandering through the 
 streets of Jerusalem, came suddenly on 
 an idle crowd of jeerers over the dead 
 body of a dog. Each spoke contemp- 
 tuously, each condemning some phase, 
 each contributing some meanness to 
 add to the cruel merriment. Christ 
 stood silent for a moment, and then, 
 pointing to the open mouth of the dead 
 dog, said " Ah, but no pearls are 
 whiter than his teeth." This spirit of 
 seeking ever the best side in our daily 
 living would absolutely transform it.
 
 IX 
 
 The Inspiration of Possibilities 
 
 HE world needs the clar- 
 ion call of a great in- 
 spiration on the un- 
 measured possibilities 
 of the individual. No 
 man that ever lived exhausted his pos- 
 sibilities. The greatest that ever shed 
 the glory of their presence on this 
 earth of ours have given but at most 
 a few-sided showing of the lines upon 
 which they concentrated. None ever 
 lived the full, rounded, perfect flower- 
 ing of his whole nature the vastness 
 of his possibility remained in the 
 silence and secrecy of the unexpressed. 
 
 Life is too short for the full story. 
 112
 
 The Inspiration of Possibilities 113 
 
 The feeling of the incompleteness of 
 this life, its unsatisfiedness, is a strong 
 base of belief in immortality. 
 
 Let us throw overboard that be- 
 numbing philosophy of the words " Re- 
 member your limitations " and preach 
 ever : " Remember your limitless pos- 
 sibilities." With the new dignity 
 added to the individual life comes a 
 finer realization of the power of maxi- 
 mum living from day to day, a large, 
 firmer grip on individual problems. 
 There will be a revelation that must 
 tend to kill shams and pretense. There 
 will be a truer attunement with the 
 highest real things in life. There will 
 not be the folly the disheartening 
 " limitation " adage so fears of people 
 attempting to succeed at once in lines 
 where only genius or years of conse- 
 crated effort can hope to achieve.
 
 114 The Inspiration of Possibilities 
 
 Man is not put into the world as a 
 music-box mechanically set with a cer- 
 tain fixed number of tunes, but as a 
 violin with infinite possibilities. This 
 music no one can bring forth but the 
 individual himself. He is placed into 
 life not a finality, but a beginning ; 
 not a manufactured article, but raw 
 material ; not a statue, but an unhewn 
 stone ready alike for the firm chisel of 
 defined purpose or the subtle attrition 
 of circumstances and conditions. 
 
 It is only what a man makes of him- 
 self that really counts. He must dis- 
 infect his mind from that weakening 
 thought that he has an absolutely pre- 
 determined capacity like a freight-car 
 with its weight and tonnage painted 
 on the side. He is growing, expansive, 
 unlimited, self-adjusting to increased 
 responsibility, progressively able for
 
 The Inspiration of Possibilities 115 
 
 large duties and higher possibilities as 
 he realizes them and lives up to them. 
 
 Man should feel this sense of the 
 limitless physically, mentally, mor- 
 ally, spiritually. Newspaper and mag- 
 azine stories of men who came to this 
 country with seventy-six cents and 
 now own thirty million dollars and 
 head a trust tell the financial side of 
 possibility. It is here deemed unneces- 
 sary to give new appetizers for a na- 
 tional hunger so well developed. 
 
 From the physical side man may re- 
 alize as a removed " limitation " that 
 some of the strongest, most healthy and 
 athletic men were weaklings in child- 
 hood and even young manhood. They 
 made themselves anew by exercise, out- 
 door life, sunshine, simple food and 
 adherence to the laws of health which 
 constitute the common sense of Nature.
 
 1 1 6 The Inspiration of Possibilities 
 
 There is no loss of any of the senses 
 nor of limbs that has proved a handi- 
 cap fatal to success of those great ones 
 who had cultivated a fine contempt for 
 obstacles that dared to daunt them. 
 
 The possibilities of mental develop- 
 ment stand vindicated in the splendid 
 roster of the great ones of the world 
 who with smallest opportunities of 
 education, fought their way to the 
 ranks of great thinkers, men of rare 
 individuality, and real leaders in the 
 world's advance guard to the higher 
 things. Never were books so cheap 
 or so accessible as to-day and but a 
 trifle of time consecrated daily to this 
 development would work wonders for 
 him who not merely wishes and wants 
 but wills to realize possibilities. 
 
 No one in life occupies a position so 
 humble, be it in the smallest hamlet
 
 The Inspiration of Possibilities 117 
 
 or the largest city, that he cannot mani- 
 fest his moral strength and exercise it. 
 There is none so obscure that he can- 
 not make the lives of those around 
 him marvellously changed, brightened 
 and inspired if he would merely pro- 
 gressively live up to his expanding 
 possibilities in the way of kindness, 
 thoughtfulness, cheer, good-will, in- 
 fluence and optimism. 
 
 Better far is it for the individual 
 to be a live coal, radiating light and 
 heat for a day, than to be an icicle for 
 a century. It is better to be an oasis 
 of freshness and inspiration, if the 
 oasis be no larger even than a table- 
 cloth, than a desert of dreariness 
 larger than the Sahara. We can all be 
 intensive, even if we cannot yet be ex- 
 tensive ; deep, if we cannot be wide ; 
 concentrated, if we cannot be diffused
 
 1 1 8 The Inspiration of Possibilities 
 
 The smallest pool of water can mirror 
 the sun ; it does not require an ocean. 
 Let us live up to our possibilities for a 
 single day, and we will not have to die 
 to get to heaven ; we will be making 
 heaven for ourselves and for others 
 right here to-day on this little spin- 
 ning globe we call the earth. 
 
 What a man is at any moment of 
 life does not fix what he may become. 
 It is not necessarily a destination ; it 
 may be merely a station ; a chapter, 
 not the complete story. Progress is 
 but the continuous revelation of pos- 
 sibilities transformed into realities. 
 We see the running, but not the goal. 
 It is not results that are the true test 
 of living, for they may lie outside the 
 individual's power to control, but it is 
 ever the moral and mental qualities he 
 puts into the struggle. The world's
 
 The Inspiration of Possibilities 119 
 
 standard of judging is not in accord 
 with the higher ethics of the soul. 
 It is not getting the best, but proving 
 worthy of the best, that is the revela- 
 tion of true character. 
 
 The man who talks airily of the 
 things he would do if only he had 
 time, unconscious of the golden hours 
 of wasted opportunity frittering idly 
 through his fingers, had better wake 
 up. He often envies those who have 
 performed some marvel in self-educa- 
 tion, when but a small section of the 
 time he squanders in a year with the 
 lavish recklessness of a Monte Cristo 
 would enable him to learn a new lan- 
 guage. Every hour is a new chariot 
 of time's possibilities that might be 
 laden with rich treasure, but if man 
 tacks up the sign " no freight," he 
 should not complain of the subsequent
 
 1 20 The Inspiration of Possibilities 
 
 barrenness of result. The roll of the 
 great leaders in human thought and 
 effort have not been those who had the 
 best opportunities, but those who made 
 the best use of them. 
 
 There are men battling with the soil 
 on poor, anemic farms, that yield but a 
 bare living, while underneath those 
 acres may be rich veins of coal, wells 
 of oil, that need but the revealing, or 
 beds of other minerals that mean libera- 
 tion from the slavery of poverty. It is 
 not easy to make them manifest, but 
 the greater treasures of the individual's 
 possibilities within his own heart, mind 
 and life he can bring out if he only 
 will. Self-confidence is a virtue that 
 should never lead a single life; it 
 should be wedded to tireless energy. 
 
 There come high-tide moments in all 
 lives when contemplating some heroic
 
 The Inspiration of Possibilities 121 
 
 deed, when our ears are filled with the 
 triumphal music of a great thought, 
 when the vitalizing words of some great 
 thinker or teacher reach our soul 
 through our eyes with a message of 
 illumination. We then see our life in 
 new perspective. The meanness and 
 emptiness of living on low levels shame 
 the soul out of self-complacency, and 
 we seem to see wondrous visions of our 
 possibilities, glimpses of what we might 
 become. It is a coming face to face 
 with our higher self that may re-create 
 our lives for all the years if we only 
 will. Let us realize our progressive 
 possibilities, make them real, vital, 
 growing, not uselessly held as a warm 
 living seed may rest for years in the 
 dead hand of a mummy. Realizing 
 possibilities is the soul of optimism, 
 and optimism is the soul of living.
 
 Forgetting as a Fine Art 
 
 ORGETTING is one of 
 the fine arts of living at 
 our best. It is not that 
 phase of non-remember- 
 ing, where a name or a 
 date or a fact has not strength enough 
 to keep itself from sinking deep into 
 memory's sea of oblivion. Fine forget- 
 ting means character asserting itself 
 not mind losing itself. It is the blue 
 pencil of wisdom cutting out unneces- 
 sary words from the text of our living. 
 It is individual kingship determining 
 what thoughts it will permit to reside 
 in its kingdom. It is the exclusion act 
 
 of the soul ejecting the unworthy and 
 122
 
 Forgetting as a Fine Art 123 
 
 the undesirable. A great editor once 
 said : " The true secret of editing is to 
 know what to put into the waste- 
 basket." Forgetting is the soul's place 
 for losing discarded thoughts, depress- 
 ing memories, mean ambitions, false 
 standards, and low ideals. 
 
 All the virtues, vices, and qualities 
 of mental and moral life may be defined 
 in terms of forgetting or of remem- 
 bering. Selfishness is forgetting others 
 in over-remembering self. Worry is 
 the inability to forget the troubles that 
 may never happen. Honour is remem- 
 bered high standards made evident in 
 acts. Anger is the explosion of an over- 
 heated memory. Forgiveness is the 
 heart's forgetfulness of an injury. In- 
 gratitude is the heart's forgetfulness of 
 a favour. Habit is the memory of acts 
 making repetition easier. Mercy is the
 
 124 Forgetting as a Fine Art 
 
 memory of human weakness tempering 
 justice. Envy is forgetting one's own 
 possessions in over-remembering those 
 of others. Influence is the remembered 
 acts of one inspiring the acts of others. 
 Patience is forgetting petty troubles 
 along the way in concentrating thought 
 on the goal. Love is the heart's sweet- 
 est memories shrined in another. 
 
 Forgetting as a fine art has two dis- 
 tinct phases : learning how to forget 
 and what to forget. Forgetting is the 
 heart's eclipse of a memory. It is so 
 easy to say lightly to some one suffer- 
 ing from a memory, " Oh, just forget it 
 all." Those of us who have sought 
 honestly and bravely to fight it out on 
 the silent battle-field of the soul know 
 that forgetting is never easy. If it were 
 easy there would be neither credit, 
 courage nor strength in mastering it.
 
 Forgetting as a Fine Art 125 
 
 Those people who tell you moral bat- 
 tles are easy, really know nothing 
 about it, care nothing or they are get- 
 ting ready to tell you they have just 
 remembered an appointment and must 
 say " good-bye." It is a real fight but 
 we can win in the end if we are not 
 afraid of a quick, hard fight. It is 
 better than a long siege of remember- 
 ing that lasts for years. 
 
 Keeping the world from knowing 
 our pain or struggle by veiling our 
 sorrow with a smile, seeming to forget, 
 is fairly easy ; but this is not real 
 forgetting. The biggest souls find it 
 hardest to forget. Trained forgetting 
 is paradoxic. We cannot forget by 
 trying intensely to forget this merely 
 deepens and gives new vitality to the 
 memory. True forgetting really means 
 finer memory ; it is displacing one
 
 126 Forgetting as a Fine Art 
 
 memorj' by another, by a stronger one, 
 an antidotal one. It means concen- 
 trating on the second phase so that the 
 first is weakened, neutralized, and 
 faded out like a well-treated ink-stain. 
 It is removing a weed from the garden 
 of thought and then planting a live, 
 sturdy flower in its stead. It is culti- 
 vating new interests, new relations, 
 new activities. Time helps wonder- 
 fully, but especially when we go into 
 partnership with her. 
 
 If we learn to forget wisely and un- 
 selfishly in the trifles of our daily liv- 
 ing with others, we shall silently accu- 
 mulate higher pressure reserve power 
 for our own later needs. Let us forget 
 thorns of daily living in remembering 
 roses of its possibility ; forget things 
 that pain in remembering unnoted 
 reasons for thankfulness ; forget the
 
 Forgetting a s a Fine Art 1 27 
 
 weakness of those around us in seek- 
 ing to discover wherein they are strong. 
 Let us forget the disappointments in 
 the courage of new determination ; for- 
 get the little wrong we have suffered 
 from our friend, in living again in 
 the memory of his many kindnesses ; 
 forget the things that depress in con- 
 centrating on those that exalt. Fine 
 forgetting is an attempt at finer jus- 
 tice. It means aggressive living on 
 the uplands of truth and light. 
 
 The man who lets the really great 
 things of life, love, honour, duty, trust, 
 friendship, loyalty, justice, selfishly 
 slip away from him for the mere grati- 
 fications of a moment or a mood, has 
 no right at first to forget. His first 
 duty is to see that he has not been 
 keeping his conscience under the ether 
 of self-apology. He must realize the
 
 Forgetting as a Fine Art 
 
 wrong and do all in his power to right 
 it. Then in his new strength the 
 petty things will lose their treacherous 
 charm. They will fade into the dim 
 recesses of forgetfulness where they be- 
 long, and the real things will stand 
 out again strong, luminant, inspiring. 
 
 There are moments when a man re- 
 joices that he is living, that he is yet 
 able to do the right thing he dis- 
 dained to fill some one's life with 
 roses, clear some one's path of sorrow. 
 He has the new opportunity of doing 
 a big man's work in a great simple 
 self-forgetful way. 
 
 He who listens gleefully to scandal, 
 turns it over meltingly on the tongue 
 of appreciation, and then syndicates it 
 with supplementary chapters of his own 
 guessing, repeats it until it becomes a 
 stained tattoo in memory. His ears
 
 Forgetting as a Fine Art 129 
 
 should be debarred from listening and 
 his mind taught to forget by thinking 
 deeply of the pain such scandal would 
 give to him, were he or some one dear 
 to him the victim, innocent or guilty. 
 
 He whose success has made him hard, 
 selfish, intolerant, and critical, who has 
 no patience with those who have not 
 succeeded, should rest for a little from 
 his work of pinning new medals on the 
 chest of his self-approval. He should 
 forget his unworthy vanity by recall- 
 ing his own hard struggles and the 
 part that chance, patronage, favour, or 
 even questionable cleverness, has had 
 in incubating his prosperity. He may 
 then gladly extend the helping hand 
 he now withholds. 
 
 We often let an act of the long ago 
 poison our present living : we remem- 
 ber when we should forget. There are
 
 1 30 Forgetting as a Fine Art 
 
 things done in the inexperience of 
 youth, in moments of unreason, acts of 
 many years ago, that have left livid 
 scars in thought, that sting and canker, 
 that discourage and deaden purpose, de- 
 press our moral vitality, dim our men- 
 tal vision, and dull our energy. We 
 should let the dead past bury its dead. 
 We should put them forever out of life 
 and thinking. If we have made all 
 reparation possible, let us consider 
 them as the acts of some one else a 
 weaker self that is now dead, not the 
 self that lives to-day, the one we are 
 seeking to make finer and better. Let 
 us make our new self more than a 
 monument to a dead past. Let it be to 
 us a prophetic tablet to the greater self 
 we are preparing. 
 
 Remember and think of past e folly, 
 mistakes, sin and sorrow only long
 
 Forgetting as a Fine Art 131 
 
 enough to repair, to atone, and to 
 avoid. Then forget the yesterdays of 
 sadness, shame, wrong, and failure in 
 the soul's concentration on the new, 
 fresh, clean days for higher, truer liv- 
 ing, making each new to-day but the 
 prelude to a new, better to-morrow. 
 
 It was this fine forgetting Saint Paul 
 meant when he said, " Forgetting the 
 things which are behind, I press for- 
 ward to the mark of my high calling." 
 Forgetting of this type is simply for- 
 giving ourselves for past errors. We 
 forgive others for wrongs where there 
 is true regret, realization, and the 
 promise, direct or implied, of non-repe- 
 tition. If we are honest in our deter- 
 mination, if we really have acquired 
 new wisdom, why should we not thus 
 forgive ourselves ? 
 
 Forgetting is the hardest lesson of
 
 132 Forgetting as a Fine Art 
 
 life, and it is never so hard as with the 
 memories of the emotions. Our bit- 
 terest moments of living are when we 
 drape our sweetest memories in black 
 because they belong to a past that is 
 dead forever. There are high-lights of 
 remembered joy that overcome us with 
 maddening pain, harder to bear than 
 any actual sorrow, past or present. 
 There are memory cells that we long 
 to identify, to individualize and to 
 isolate from the millions of their fel- 
 lows in the brain and to kill as the 
 electric needle deadens the life of an 
 individual hair-cell. 
 
 " Sorrow's crown of sorrows," says 
 Tennyson, " is remembering happier 
 things." Long, hard sorrow is a 
 sickness of the soul, from which in 
 time we may gradually emerge. 
 Nature gently leads us back to health
 
 Forgetting as a Fine Art 133 
 
 in our days of emotional convalescence 
 by helping us to forget and by giving 
 us new memories to remember. Mem- 
 ory is a mental force we cannot kill ; 
 but we can direct, we can give it new 
 subjects to act upon, new right engines 
 of purpose to move, new channels into 
 which to run. 
 
 There are sometimes petty fractures 
 of our pride, irritating incidents that 
 hurt perhaps because we are nervous. 
 They loom large before us. For the 
 time each seems as big as a real sorrow 
 or loss. If we cannot master it may 
 be as well to surrender to it just for a 
 little, to think it out, to talk it out, to 
 get it out as much as possible from the 
 emotional system. Then we should 
 cease to think and to talk ; we should 
 learn to forget, avoiding situations and 
 conditions that revive the pain, seeking
 
 134 Forgetting as a Fine Art 
 
 right work and association that lead 
 from it. Then even a great cankering 
 sorrow will be conquered. If found 
 unworthy we shall find it silenced for- 
 ever in our hearts and dead in our 
 memory. 
 
 Let us seek to begin each new day 
 in the consciousness of our crown of in- 
 dividuality as serene and calm as 
 though it was a new life, with nothing 
 of the old remaining but its wisdom, 
 its sweet memories, its duties, its re- 
 sponsibilities, and the hope, joys, privi- 
 leges, love, and possessions the old life 
 has bequeathed to us.
 
 XI 
 
 The Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 APPINESS does not 
 come from folding our 
 hands serenely, filling 
 our hearts with the 
 minor music of resigna- 
 tion, and gazing heavenward as though 
 posing for a spiritual photograph. 
 Happiness is activity, not torpor ; do- 
 ing, not dreaming ; finding oneself, not 
 losing oneself; illumination, not illu- 
 sion ; reality, not imagination. Hap- 
 piness does not fool itself by believing 
 that whatever is is best ; it seeks con- 
 stantly to find whatever is best in what 
 is and tries to make it better. 
 
 Making ourselves believe we are 
 135
 
 136 Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 happy by thinking that we are, is a 
 poor brand of self-hypnotism. It does 
 not bring happiness, any more than 
 imagining we are dining sets before us 
 a table with a real, eatable dinner of nine 
 courses. Constantly declaring loudly 
 we are happy when, in the deep indigo of 
 a mood, we feel that happiness is for 
 us forever as extinct as the dodo, is not 
 brave ; it is dishonest. It is playing a 
 confidence game on the credulity of 
 our friends. It is false optimism the 
 voice of the pessimist lying about his 
 troubles. True happiness does not 
 brag it radiates. 
 
 If the trials and sorrows of life de- 
 press, one should not deny but realize 
 them and then instantly seek to 
 change conditions, as the engineer stops 
 his train at a danger signal and aids in 
 removing the obstacle on the track. If
 
 Victoria Cross of Happiness 137 
 
 our sorrows be real, we should then 
 bear them as bravely as we can by con- 
 centrating the thought on brighter 
 things. We often accentuate our pains 
 by hot poultices of self-sympathy that 
 we constantly apply to our wounds. 
 We do not let Nature gently heal them ; 
 we do not seek to forget ours in help- 
 ing others to forget theirs. Delusion 
 never gives reality. Reality comes only 
 from truth right thinking followed 
 by right living. 
 
 The Infinite gives to no man happi- 
 ness ; but only the raw material from 
 which it can be made. He provides 
 iron ore but never plowshares, clay but 
 not bricks, wheat but not loaves. The 
 material from which one man forms 
 only an abode of misery, another trans- 
 forms into a temple of joy. Happiness 
 is a manufactured article ; it cannot be
 
 138 Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 bought or sold, it must be home-made 
 by the individual himself. The 
 only man for whom a ready-made 
 Paradise was provided was Adam 
 and he spoiled it all and was evicted. 
 All the other people have had to make 
 their own paradises or go without. 
 
 Life is not a summer holiday, or a 
 personally conducted tour through joy- 
 land, or a dream we must accept just 
 as it comes it is a struggle, a battle. 
 We must do our part ; we must fight, 
 fight, too, with no war maps of the 
 full campaign spread out before us for 
 our consultation and inspiration. We 
 must fight the enemy that is nearest, 
 vanquish the duty that stands in our 
 way, help the faint and fallen, win 
 every point of higher, better, clearer 
 vision, be ready for whatever comes 
 with a true soldier's defiance of the
 
 Victoria Cross of Happiness 139 
 
 odds against him. Whatever is worth 
 while is worth the fight to attain it. 
 If you want happiness, fight for it like 
 a man. Fight to be worthy of it, fight 
 to win it, fight to keep it, fight to share 
 it, fight to help others get theirs. 
 
 Fighting for happiness is paradoxic. 
 We must battle for something higher 
 than happiness or we will not win it. 
 He who aims at it directly always misses 
 it. He gets a poor, weak, adulterated 
 brand of selfishness that proves that 
 his satisfaction, pleasure or joy is only 
 a flavoured cheap substitute. Nature's 
 pure food brand, the real article, never 
 has a bad after-taste, it never palls. He 
 who is living on the higher levels, bat- 
 tling bravely to be at his best, placing 
 happiness secondary to love, right, 
 honour, ideals, truth, unselfishness and 
 justice is the one to whom it comes.
 
 140 Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 Happiness is the moral Victoria Cross 
 of life. It is an extra award given for 
 kingship over self, a fine victory on 
 the battle-field of self, " for valour," 
 for the good of others. 
 
 More than fifty years ago England 
 established the Victoria Cross that 
 simple Maltese cross of bronze with 
 a decoration and the words " For 
 Valour," the whole suspended from a 
 ribbon. It was given to soldiers, sail- 
 ors, and to all others who proved 
 worthy by special acts of unselfish 
 bravery in imperative need. 
 
 Of the thousands awarded this most 
 highly-prized honour few, if any, ever 
 thought of it for an instant at the 
 very hour they proved supremely 
 worthy of it. Thrilled with sublime 
 courage in the heat of battle they over- 
 rode mere duty by a higher inspira-
 
 Victoria Cross of Happiness 141 
 
 tion. Love for humanity made some 
 rise to supreme heights of daring to 
 save the lives of others. Some stood, 
 brave and undaunted, fearless, almost 
 blind to every danger in the hour of 
 supreme need of a nation, an army or 
 an individual. 
 
 Forgetting self, forgetting the fearful 
 hazard, forgetting the spellbound spec- 
 tators, forgetting all but the imperative 
 call for instant action, their plan was 
 hardly conceived before its accomplish- 
 ment was begun. They responded to 
 some divine impulse that so filled the 
 human that it left no room for thought 
 of the Cross. They forgot it but they 
 proved worthy of it and later it was 
 pinned on their breast. Let Happiness 
 be our Victoria Cross given because 
 of our proving worthy. 
 
 The battle-field in our fight for hap-
 
 142 Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 pi ness is not the world but self. 
 Mere attainment of wealth, fame, suc- 
 cess, position, power, or possession does 
 not necessarily bring happiness. The 
 history of the ages proves this. Hap- 
 piness comes ever from within. It is 
 the atmosphere of an inner calm and 
 peace. We must battle not for hap- 
 piness directly but against the ele- 
 ments within us that keep happiness 
 from us and valiantly on the side of 
 those that will help us win it. There 
 are traits within us that often poison 
 the cup of happiness when it is safe 
 within our hand, jealousy, malice, 
 stubbornness, envy, pride, selfishness, 
 idleness, fear, worry, suspicion, and a 
 host of others. Let us realize the ele- 
 ments that keep us from happiness, 
 keep the need of mastering them before 
 us, and we start bravely on the road.
 
 Victoria Cross of Happiness 143 
 
 Worry is a common enemy to hap- 
 piness. It is restless surrender to 
 vague fears, not meeting them singly, 
 but multiplying them. It is the in- 
 sistent, irritating iteration of one dis- 
 turbing thought. Have you ever 
 struck repeatedly one key of a type- 
 writer when the ribbon does not move 
 and then found it worn through in a 
 few moments? There is no progress, 
 no writing produced, no result but use- 
 less wear. This is how worry acts on 
 the mind ; it eats through energy, pur- 
 pose, vitality, and produces nothing. 
 It is not the sunshine of clear think- 
 ing focused on a problem ; it is a dull, 
 distorting, blurring mental fog that 
 creates phantoms where none exist. 
 It is not easy to control ; but it 
 can be conquered, and it must be or 
 it will darken the whole life of the
 
 144 Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 individual. Taking shorter views of 
 our daily living helps greatly. 
 
 Living from day to day, making each 
 day a complete life in itself, doing each 
 day our best, and in the realization we 
 have done our best facing results 
 bravely, this is the magic formula 
 that somehow we must learn to trans- 
 form into real living. Worry has a 
 corner on most of the unhappiness in 
 this life of ours. 
 
 We must fight against selfishness if 
 we would win happiness. All the 
 sins, weaknesses, and follies of human 
 nature are simply selfishness appear- 
 ing and reappearing under a hundred 
 disguises or changes of garb. Selfish- 
 ness is treacherous because it produces 
 a temporary counterfeit of happiness 
 that cheats the individual. It gives 
 a semblance while destroying the
 
 Victoria Cross of Happiness 145 
 
 reality. It puts him out of touch 
 with humanity, kills his genuine in- 
 terest in others, isolates him, in- 
 tensifies his demands while diminish- 
 ing his real resources, destroys his true 
 perspective of life, builds up a false 
 self-sufficiency, a self-finality. Noth- 
 ing that lives in nature lives for itself 
 alone. The plant that absorbs what is 
 to it life-food, carbonic acid from the 
 air, must exhale oxygen or it will die. 
 Giving is as vital as getting. Fighting 
 for happiness means getting it in order 
 that we may give it, and by giving it 
 we get it again in new form. 
 
 Nothing outside man can make him 
 really happy. It must in some way 
 enter into the very fibers and substance 
 of our lives and thought and needs. 
 Happiness ultimately means self-con- 
 quest, self-harmony. It is the higher
 
 146 Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 self ruling in peace over a conquered 
 lower self, as a victorious general wisely 
 rules a city he has taken. Happiness 
 must not be confused with content, 
 satisfaction, comfort, pleasure, and joy. 
 These are but sparks, while happiness 
 is the electric atmosphere of the heart, 
 living, pulsing, glowing. It is the 
 gladness of the soul that inspires and 
 strengthens the individual to face con- 
 ditions he cannot change. 
 
 Happiness does not mean living un- 
 der skies of perpetual sunshine, where 
 pain, sorrow, sickness, longing, trial, 
 failure, and poverty are forever ban- 
 ished. They can never be banished 
 from the world. But the positive, 
 brave, aggressive spirit that .inspires 
 us in the fight for true happiness 
 is greater, deeper, stronger, and higher 
 than these. It dominates them when
 
 Victoria Cross of Happiness 147 
 
 they come, as a sturdy swimmer over- 
 comes the threatening surge. It re- 
 duces the frictions of life, transforms 
 their bitterness into sweetness, their 
 pangs into power. 
 
 The great invaders of human happi- 
 ness are not the great trials and sor- 
 rows, but the treason of petty day-by- 
 day unnecessary worries, wrongs, and 
 injustices manufactured by ourselves 
 or donated to us by those around us. 
 Fighting for happiness lessens these in 
 number and in force. Love gives us 
 that quick instinct for finer vision in 
 seeing wondrous possibilities for hap- 
 piness for ourselves and others that no 
 mere reason of the mind could dis- 
 cover. Love is the instinct of the 
 heart. Purpose, a concentrated, conse- 
 crated object in living, helps to hap- 
 piness for ourselves and for others.
 
 148 Victoria Cross of Happiness 
 
 There is only one minute a day, 
 when the sun is at its zenith, that it 
 casts no shadow. At every other mo- 
 ment the stronger the sunlight the 
 deeper the shadow. There are rare 
 fleeting moments when the sun of our 
 happiness is at its highest ; then there 
 are no shadows. Let us see the sun- 
 light in our life so strong and with so 
 concentrated a determination that the 
 shadows will hardly trouble us. Let 
 us not put off the expectation of hap- 
 piness to be realized in some great 
 future, but find it from day to day in 
 the trifles of life as the children of 
 Israel gathered, fresh every day, the 
 manna that fed them.
 
 XII 
 
 The Crimes of Respectability 
 
 ESPECTABILITY wears 
 white robes of superi- 
 ority and is vain of her 
 virtues. Respectability 
 keeps within the pale of 
 human and social law though breaking 
 the laws of the finer code of the soul. 
 With Pharisaic self-complacency she 
 withdraws her dainty skirts from con- 
 tact with crime. She sits serene and 
 self-appointed in the seat of judgment 
 and deals out hard condemnation on 
 the offenders of human law the 
 criminals, the outcasts of society. Let 
 respectability listen for a moment to 
 
 the charges to be brought against her 
 149
 
 150 The Crimes of Respectability 
 
 and then quietly, squarely and honestly 
 face the issue and see its justice. 
 
 We must realize as an absolute fact 
 that all the crimes of criminals in any 
 city or state, massed together and awful 
 as they may be, cause but a very small 
 part of the suffering of life and affect 
 but a small fraction of the people com- 
 pared with the crimes of respect- 
 ability. Let us realize that it is from 
 the regular army of respectability that 
 life's greatest sorrow comes not from 
 the scattered skirmishers of crime. If 
 we honestly accept and believe this 
 truth, we have a new illumination, a 
 high impulse, and a noble inspiration 
 towards higher, simpler living. 
 
 Were we to question a thousand or a 
 million men we would find that but a 
 small percentage have ever had their 
 lives darkened by deeds of crime, in
 
 The Crimes of Respectability 151 
 
 fact, by any acts punishable by human 
 law. But from the cruel, unnecessary, 
 unpunishable weakness and injustice 
 of every-day life none is ever long 
 immune. The crimes of respectability 
 are gossip, jealousy, envy, bitter words, 
 hypocrisy, scandal, malice, persistent 
 meannesses and injustice, lying, temper, 
 hard, uncharitable judgment, selfish- 
 ness, spite, ingratitude, treachery, and 
 a host of others. 
 
 Gossip is one of the popular crimes 
 that has caused infinitely more sorrow 
 in life than murder. It is drunken- 
 ness of the tongue ; it is assassination of 
 reputations. It runs the cowardly 
 gamut from mere ignorant, impertinent 
 intrusion into the lives of others to 
 malicious slander. If facts do not 
 exist it creates them. If the facts be 
 innocent it somehow juggles them into
 
 152 The Crimes of Respectability 
 
 evidence of black guilt. In interpreta- 
 tion it always chooses the worse of two 
 possible motives. It constitutes itself 
 a secret court of inquisition that 
 decides on the fate of the victim in his 
 absence when he has no chance to 
 speak in his own behalf. It is a con- 
 spiracy of wrong. 
 
 He who listens to this crime of re- 
 spectability without protest is as evil as 
 he who speaks. One strong, manly 
 voice of protest, of appeal to justice, of 
 calling halt in the name of charity 
 could fumigate a room from gossip as a 
 clear, sharp winter wind kills a pesti- 
 lence. Sometimes gossip does not deal 
 altogether in words ; there are simple 
 yet subtle tricks of silence and gesture 
 and in a moment the deed is accom- 
 plished. It seems like a whiff from 
 one of those diabolically poisoned roses
 
 The Crimes of Respectability 153 
 
 of the Borgias that kill and leave no 
 sign. Then a reputation lies dead in 
 the roadway. Some one's mighty faith 
 in some one has its pulse stilled for- 
 ever. Some one is walking his weary 
 way alone in the silence with the sun 
 of love blotted from his sky. 
 
 There is satanic ingenuity in quot- 
 ing part of a sentence and without tell- 
 ing why or how it was spoken. It 
 puts a man of honour in a position 
 where he cannot explain because he 
 knows not the treason. This seems 
 the master-stroke of gossip. It may 
 kill a great love in an instant and 
 leave no chance for explanation that 
 might drive out the poison of a lack 
 of faith unjustified were the truth 
 known. The happiness of two may be 
 killed by this lying silence. 
 
 Jealousy has a hundred masquerades
 
 154 The Crimes of Respectability 
 
 in which to do its deadly work. In 
 countless business enterprises alone it 
 transforms the joy of honest faithful 
 service into a grim inferno of hopeless 
 struggle. Inferiority, incompetency, 
 or selfish, impotent ambition is seeking 
 to undermine the best efforts of others. 
 By tale bearing, petty intrigue, trickery, 
 imposition and all those other small 
 implements of warfare that make up 
 the armoury of small minds they seek 
 to harm others. The venom of jealousy, 
 self-distilled, poisons not only others 
 but their own whole natures. They 
 envy but do not emulate. If the con- 
 stant energy expended in injuring 
 others were concentrated in heroic ef- 
 forts to better themselves the results 
 would be vastly different for them- 
 selves and the world. 
 There are men who wear the white
 
 The Crimes of Respectability 155 
 
 badge of respectability as jauntily as 
 though it were a fresh white pink in 
 their buttonhole. They like the favour 
 of the community as expressed to them 
 by smiles, cheery words, and pleasant 
 greetings on the morning walk to the 
 station. They may show a different 
 side to their families. They may have 
 irritability, impatience and a waspish, 
 mean temper that upsets a household 
 day after day. They leave a long trail 
 of bitter memories and of rankling in- 
 justice, that runs from the breakfast 
 table to even-tide. They vent their 
 temper on their family and on inferior 
 employees who cannot resent it never 
 on a business customer or associate. 
 Prudence, policy and politeness forbid. 
 They are thoroughly conscious of the 
 limit they rarely play it. 
 
 When the master returns the mem-
 
 
 156 The Crimes of Respectability 
 
 bers of the family look up question- 
 ingly to size up his mood as a farmer 
 surveys the clouds to determine what 
 the weather will be. The sorrow caused 
 by professionals who steal tangible 
 things is microscopic in comparison 
 with the misery caused by respectable 
 amateurs who rob their homes and 
 offices of happiness by temper alone. 
 
 There are women in some communi- 
 ties with reputations that are spotless, 
 as the world's standard goes. Their 
 uniform of respectability seems always 
 fresh from the laundry. Those who 
 know them best know they are narrow 
 and bigoted, hard and uncharitable in 
 their judgments, unforgiving, selfish 
 and bitter. Their very influence is 
 blighting ; they are daily transforming 
 some one's Eden into a desert. They 
 shrivel generous impulses of those
 
 The Crimes of Respectability 157 
 
 around them. They pass through life, 
 self-mesmerized by their selfishness, in 
 sublime unconsciousness that they are 
 doing more real harm in the world 
 than some whose acts they regard with 
 profound horror. Real human love 
 seems as dead in their hearts, as desti- 
 tute of the slightest light or warmth 
 or glow as the centuries-old ashes of 
 Pompeii. These women are not neces- 
 sarily hypocritic. They are only tak- 
 ing a Rip Van Winkle sleep of selfish 
 self-satisfaction. No one seems to have 
 the courage to waken them with a 
 strong dose of straight talk. 
 
 The daily evils that make life hard 
 are not the great sorrows from which 
 under the healing touch of time we 
 may rise sweetened, softened, strength- 
 ened, facing life bravely anew. They 
 are the infinity of irritating trifles, the
 
 158 The Crimes of Respectability 
 
 cruelly unnecessary injustice, the abso- 
 lutely man-made wrongs of life. It is 
 irreverent to refer to them as any part 
 of the divine plan. These wrongs are 
 as much man-made as a pair of shoes 
 or a watch or an automobile. 
 
 There is selfishness that overrides 
 the rights of others like a car of Jug- 
 gernaut. There is a bitterness of un- 
 forgiving condemnation that listens to 
 no reasons, explanations, or motives, 
 that believes because it has seen, that 
 credits the senses and accepts circum- 
 stantial evidence as final. There is 
 avarice that starves what it should 
 feed. There is ingratitude that, turn- 
 ing traitor to the kindness it has re- 
 ceived, dries for years some generous 
 fountain of giving. There is hypoc- 
 risy that, masquerading like the devil 
 in a surplice, poisons love and friend-
 
 The Crimes of Respectability 159 
 
 ship and leaves scars in memory and 
 sears and warps character. These are 
 a few of the crimes of respectability. 
 
 A large part of the evils in life is 
 preventible ; some by the individual 
 alone. Why do we not prevent them ? 
 Man longs to learn the secrets of the 
 Infinite in this universe of His, as 
 though it would change man's whole 
 life. If man be not true to what he 
 knows, he is not ready to know more. 
 With many people it is like a child 
 who, not yet having mastered his 
 primer, is hungry for Shakespeare. 
 
 Man is said to have been made in the 
 image of his Creator. Some men seem 
 to be trying to remove the labels and 
 other identifying brands. If we are 
 men, with the dignity of our powers 
 and privileges and possibilities, let us 
 just live like men. Life is not some-
 
 160 The Crimes of Respectability 
 
 thing to be lived through, it is to be 
 lived up to in all its highest mean- 
 ings and messages. There was in the 
 army of Alexander the Great a soldier, 
 who, although he bore the very name 
 of the great conqueror, was in his heart 
 a coward. Cowardice in any soldier of 
 that mighty army was the worst of all 
 crimes ; yet for this man to be a coward 
 was shame unspeakable. And Alex- 
 ander in great anger commanded the 
 craven : " Either give up my name or 
 follow my example." Living up to 
 our privileges means living up to our 
 name anything less means failure. 
 
 If for a single week in any city each 
 individual were to say each morning : 
 " To-day no one in the world shall 
 have even one second darkened by any 
 act of mine," and live it that city 
 would be transformed and glorified.
 
 The Crimes of Respectability 1 6 1 
 
 It would, after all, mean only negative 
 goodness. It would mean only the 
 avoidance of evil, not real, aggressive, 
 positive, high-keyed living at our best, 
 but the burden of life would be lifted, 
 the heavens would almost open and be 
 visible. Then in an atmosphere warm 
 with the radiant glow of love and 
 brotherhood we eould almost hear the 
 faint rustle of the angels' wings the 
 angels of peace ushering in the mil- 
 lennium on this world of ours.
 
 XIII 
 
 The Optimism that Really Counts 
 
 PTIMISM is the sun- 
 shine of the soul radi- 
 ated in action. It is 
 true religion as a living, 
 compelling fact not a 
 mere theory. It is sturdy confidence 
 that right must triumph united to 
 tireless courage to make it triumph. 
 Optimism is the finest weapon in the 
 armoury of the individual. It uni- 
 fies all the aggressive undaunted vir- 
 tues of his strength into a force and an 
 inspiration. It means fighting for, or 
 with, the battalions of right, love, jus- 
 tice and truth with determination to 
 
 win. True optimism is som 
 162 
 
 tion to 
 iething
 
 Optimism that Really Counts 163 
 
 more than a continuous performance of 
 hope. It is the joy of living made an 
 actual fact. It means seeking the best, 
 living the best, doing the best. It 
 means focusing all that is highest in 
 our character to meet conditions. 
 
 Merely thinking, hoping and trust- 
 ing that somehow, somewhere, some- 
 when, things will come out right while 
 we do nothing to make them come out 
 right is sunstruck folly not optimism. 
 It is a hammock philosophy for a sul- 
 try day when you are too drowsy to 
 think and really do not care what 
 whimsey of non-thinking plays games 
 in your mind. No farmer outside of the 
 pages of " The Arabian Nights " would 
 expect nature alone to seed and fertilize 
 and plow his fields and then to harvest 
 his crops and put them in his barns 
 without any human help whatever but
 
 164 Optimism that Really Counts 
 
 his thinking. The exaggerated belief 
 in the superhuman effect of thought as 
 a direct power, is the folly of many. 
 
 This truly comfortable restfulness is 
 merely a perfumed hot-air sentimental- 
 ity. It dulls moral energy and dead- 
 ens purpose. It is opiatism not op- 
 timism. It is only mental or moral 
 laziness wearing a rainbow robe of 
 beautiful confidence. It may give a 
 temporary fictitious strength to charac- 
 ter but is ever revealed as weakness in 
 a crisis. It is only a papier-mache" 
 shield punctured in the first battle 
 with the stern realities of life. 
 
 There is a light, jaunty, bubbling, 
 care-free humour that takes the low 
 fences of petty worries neatly, grace- 
 fully. It smiles nonchalantly because 
 it has never seen real trouble. This 
 light-weight philosophy usually wilts
 
 Optimism that Really Counts 165 
 
 at the first touch of real sorrow, grief 
 and loss, like a straw hat meeting a sud- 
 den rain-storm. This is a sort of kin- 
 dergarten optimism that sees only the 
 sun untouched by clouds. Real opti- 
 mism knows the sun is ever shining 
 despite the dark, heavy clouds that 
 may obscure it. It knows that dark- 
 ness is ever the herald and messenger 
 of dawn the new illumination and in- 
 spiration that must come. True op- 
 timism seeks to live in the broad 
 sunlight when it can. It seeks to rest 
 serene and confident of the outcome 
 when all seems dark. 
 
 Verestchagin, the great Russian 
 painter, had a glass studio constructed 
 at his home near Paris. It revolved on 
 wheels, moved by a windlass placed near 
 his easel, and he was thus enabled to 
 paint all day with the sunlight falling
 
 1 66 Optimism that Really Counts 
 
 in one direction on his models and 
 drapery. He who has cultivated op- 
 timism to be part of the real equipment 
 of character thus turns constantly to 
 the light of truth, love and kindness 
 and to the growing brightness of the 
 real things of our living. 
 
 Cheerfulness has done much good ; 
 it has been stimulating, kindly and 
 helpful. It causes a cheery message. 
 It often prevents sorrow, worry, deep 
 grief from becoming contagious. This 
 cheerfulness is sweet when natural ; 
 brave, strong, and sturdy when as- 
 sumed. Cheerfulness is a sort of germi- 
 cide of the emotions ; it deadens their 
 power to injure others and soothes the 
 individual. But cheerfulness at its 
 very best and highest is not optimism. 
 It has never the full, free completeness, 
 finality, depth of optimism.
 
 Optimism that Really Counts 167 
 
 Cheerfulness may be a blossom of 
 which optimism is the plant. Cheer- 
 fulness may be refreshing rills of which 
 optimism is the fountain. Cheerful- 
 ness may be a smile on the face ; op- 
 timism is the smile in the heart when 
 one is fighting hardest. Cheerfulness 
 may be the gentle, bubbling voice of a 
 hopeful temperament or a sunny dispo- 
 sition ; optimism is the clear convin- 
 cing, individual tone of the finest 
 depths of our character. 
 
 Optimism seeks to discover the good 
 points in the acts of those around us, 
 to let their little weaknesses and fail- 
 ings fade into nothingness in the 
 shadow of our charity. It seeks to em- 
 phasize their best, to recognize it, to 
 appeal to it, to call it forth and to de- 
 velop it. A smile, a word of sympathy, 
 a touch of human kindness, a hand-
 
 1 68 Optimism that Really Counts 
 
 clasp of fellowship, an unexpected bit 
 of tenderness, courtesy or consideration 
 will accomplish wonders. It is syndi- 
 cating sunlight and that is what real 
 optimism is. It has a cheering magic 
 healthful power that no amount of crit- 
 icism or reproof could accomplish in 
 changing others. True optimism must 
 begin in the thought. It must be real 
 and living in word, act, and atmos- 
 phere. It cannot be put on as a veneer 
 from the outside ; this is a grand-stand 
 play, not a private performance. 
 
 Optimism cannot foresee the suffer- 
 ing that may come to us, but we can 
 sturdily determine the effect we will 
 let it have on us. Sorrow comes in so 
 many guises but we must all " drink 
 our cup." The hardest of all our cups 
 of sorrow comes from the hand that 
 should never be the one to force it to
 
 Optimism that Really Counts 169 
 
 our lips, or it is some cup that gives 
 agony to us because we cannot save 
 another from it. There is the stirrup- 
 cup of parting, when we turn our 
 horse's head away from the inn of our 
 hope never to return. The quassia 
 cup made bitter by that from which it 
 is cut and more bitter in memory. 
 
 The loving-cup, when moistened by 
 unmeaning lips and passed to us, may 
 later seem to carry a note of treachery 
 we may not understand aright till 
 too late. There is the cup of consola- 
 tion that kindly hands gently press to 
 fevered lips. There is that greatest 
 cup of a final supreme grief like that 
 given to the great Optimist of Calvary 
 that " could not pass." These are but 
 types of the cups of life. We should 
 drink them if drink we must as 
 Socrates bravely drank his poisoned
 
 170 Optimism that Really Counts 
 
 hemlock, valiantly quitting a world 
 unworthy his noble life with them. 
 
 The man of optimism should be 
 kindest in criticizing others and never 
 put the hand of harsh judgment on 
 the unhealed wound of another's sor- 
 row. Keenly, vividly, personally con- 
 scious of the trials, cares, sorrow, hun- 
 ger, loneliness and suffering of life, he 
 knows how often he failed and still 
 fought on till at last he found his way 
 back to the sunlight. The optimist 
 believes courageously that there is a 
 reserve strength in man that brings 
 sudden new inspiration to bear or to 
 conquer, like the unexpected arrival 
 of new food or troops in a siege. 
 
 The optimist, with new courage in 
 his heart, new determination in his 
 mind, and rebel tears secretly gleaming 
 near his eyes, may rise superior to all
 
 Optimism that Really Counts 171 
 
 unjust assaults. He may accept need- 
 less pain without cynicism, may meet 
 betrayal without thought of revenge, 
 may have to battle face to face with 
 cruel disappointment without flinching 
 and yet be victorious in a bettered self 
 though vanquished in what was dear- 
 est the hope and heaven of his living. 
 Optimism realizes that life is bigger 
 than any single battle. The true soul 
 has no final Waterloo ; it has only its 
 latest defeat, with its golden message 
 of why it failed and how it may win in 
 the next conflict. There may be in a 
 very defeat an unnoted victory within 
 our own life a new revelation of 
 latent power, and a glow and tingle 
 of new courage. This may come to us 
 while the bugle notes of triumph of the 
 enemy still ring in our ears, their 
 flaunting shouts of victory yet telling
 
 Optimism that Really Counts 
 
 us of the prize we have lost and their 
 smiles of conquest hardly faded from 
 their eyes and lips. Many a seeming 
 defeat may force us to retreat to higher 
 grounds, where we may stand in 
 stronger array, reintrenched, rein- 
 spired to fight harder than ever. 
 
 With true optimism, we can face 
 poverty without permitting it to 
 harden us, we can meet trial and sor- 
 row and remain calm and unworried, 
 stand bravely when we do not see the 
 way to walk. We can let the glow of 
 optimism so warm our soul that we re- 
 main simple, strong, sincere, and un- 
 ruffled despite any environment. We 
 thus may conquer adverse conditions 
 by making them powerless to harm us 
 when we are unable to change them. 
 Optimism is the armour of brave souls 
 who fight conditions and never sur-
 
 Optimism that Really Counts 173 
 
 render to domination by the darker 
 side of life that dares to daunt them. 
 
 The optimism that counts does 
 not let the individual take whatever 
 thoughts may come. It is a power 
 that enables him to a degree to select 
 his own thoughts, to stimulate and en- 
 courage those that add to his strength, 
 that are wings to his purpose, that 
 thrill his energy with new conscious- 
 ness of power. He gains control over 
 those memories that take the smile 
 from his face, strength from his mind 
 and joy from his heart. Optimism in- 
 spires a man to reduce all depressing 
 effects to a minimum, to raise resistance 
 to a maximum, to cut off the friction 
 of worry and useless regret. They 
 magnify weakness, minify strength. 
 Optimism has no use for them. 
 
 We never make conditions easier by
 
 174 Optimism that Really Counts 
 
 telling ourselves how awful our troubles 
 are ; by feeding our griefs for fear they 
 may die a natural death ; by intensify- 
 ing every element of pain. The op- 
 timism that is worth anything makes 
 one person smile at troubles that would 
 put another out of the running alto- 
 gether. It finds joy because it is 
 trained to see the tiniest glint of it as a 
 miner's eyes are quick to recognize the 
 slightest speck of gold in his pan. 
 Optimism sees roses in life because it 
 is looking for them ; receives love be- 
 cause it is exhaling it. It forgets its 
 sorrows in counting anew its blessing. 
 It makes life truer, higher and liner 
 for self by making it sunnier for others. 
 This is the optimism that counts.
 
 XIV 
 
 Power of Individual Purpose 
 
 URPOSE gives a new 
 impulse, a new im- 
 petus, a new interpre- 
 tation to living. Pur- 
 pose is the backbone of 
 a life of courage. It shows that the 
 highest justification for living is love 
 in some form. It may be for a 
 cause, a country, an ideal, a family, or 
 an individual. Purpose at its best 
 means our kingship over conditions, 
 our mastery over self, our dedication to 
 something higher than self, fighting 
 for the right and fighting it to the end. 
 Were we able to follow even a great 
 purpose from its highest flights of 
 175
 
 176 Power of Individual Purpose 
 
 effort we might find its nest of in- 
 spiration in the heart of some one of 
 whom the world knew nothing. 
 
 Purpose makes man his own second 
 creator and by it he can make himself 
 largely what he will. He can choose 
 his own realm : he can live con- 
 tentedly in the mud of low desires like 
 a lizard or sweep boldly high in the 
 pure, inspiring, bracing air of noble 
 ideals like an eagle rightfully claiming 
 the mountain tops as its own. 
 
 If our aim be low, mean and selfish, 
 bringing out all that is weakness in 
 our nature, an ambition that betrays 
 its method in the despicable things 
 employed to attain it, it is unworthy 
 of our crown of individuality. 
 
 Low purpose makes us experts in 
 petty sophistries ; it kills natural sweet- 
 ness and kindness ; it raises the moral
 
 ^pte m <V uu 
 
 ffl Tom < 
 
 Power of Individual Purpose 177 
 
 temperature to a fever heat of " don't 
 care" and lowers the vitality of all 
 our higher living. This is not the 
 purpose of which we speak ; it is indi- 
 viduality at a discount, not at a 
 premium as we should hold it. 
 
 Purpose makes man a crusader for 
 something. He seems to grow greater 
 before our eyes in his efforts to reach 
 and grasp the cross of some ideal 
 though it may seem to us unattainable 
 when the inspiration and glow of the 
 struggle itself means more to him than 
 even a crown of victory. Purpose is 
 conscious, continuous concentration to 
 attain an end. Before it can be great- 
 est there must be union and unity 
 body, mind, heart and soul acting to- 
 gether, as the essence of many flowers 
 may be fused into a single perfume. 
 
 many of us the eagles of purpose
 
 178 Power of Individual Purpose 
 
 of the world's exalted great ones may 
 be impossible to us in our present con- 
 ditions. We may be bound by duties, 
 cares, burdens, the daily problem of 
 mere living that make great deeds 
 difficult. But we can all have purpose 
 and should have it and we should live 
 to it at its best. We must finally be 
 judged not by attainments but by the 
 ideals and motives that inspired them. 
 There is one purpose that no one is too 
 humble to live by. It is " faithful- 
 ness in little things." It may be only 
 a new impetus of loyalty, trustfulness 
 and watchfulness in our daily duties. 
 
 Employers find great difficulty in 
 getting this very faithfulness in little 
 things. Many of those paid for serv- 
 ice are only eye-servants. They are 
 listless, lazy, and irritably languid ex- 
 cept when off duty. They regard the
 
 Power of Individual Purpose 
 
 repeated instructions as to how certain 
 simple work should be done with an 
 airy nonchalance that is indifferent, im- 
 pudent and impertinent. They forget 
 every thing except some trifle of personal 
 interest ; this is tattooed into their mem- 
 ory. They collapse under the slightest 
 strain of responsibility like an intoxi- 
 cated man leaning against an imaginary 
 post. They are a bundle of excuses 
 where their own failures, foibles or 
 flaws are under discussion. 
 
 Workers such as these consider 
 merely getting a maximum pay-envel- 
 ope at a minimum expense of mental 
 or physical energy. They wonder why 
 some other worker is retained or pro- 
 moted while they are sure they have 
 worked just as long as she has each 
 day. They forget they have not 
 worked as wide or as deep they over-
 
 180 Power of Individual Purpose 
 
 look these two other dimensions. It is 
 the plus of purpose consecrated to doing 
 daily one's best with a constantly added 
 increase of ability that makes the real 
 difference. This simple phase of pur- 
 pose may change the life of an individ- 
 ual and inspire ever higher purpose. 
 
 The conquest of a weakness in char- 
 acter, the acquirement of a new lan- 
 guage, a concentrated attempt to be of 
 greater usefulness to others in some 
 way, to prove equal to our possibilities 
 as they progressively grow larger under 
 attainment these may be but purpose 
 in a small way. Purpose unites the 
 separate days of our living by the thread 
 of continuity as scattered beads form 
 a necklace by the golden strand run- 
 ning through them. A mother may 
 make even the care of her home and 
 her family a real purpose if she puts
 
 Power of Individual Purpose 181 
 
 into her labours the best that is in her, 
 ever realizing she has her crown of 
 individuality she must never forget. 
 
 Many men in this life, men of posi- 
 tion, power, wealth and opportunity, 
 are merely drifting. They are not 
 victors of their course but victims of 
 the current. They live but have no 
 definite purpose in living. In easy-go- 
 ing, careless, free way they are carried 
 along by the tides of life, with no self- 
 consciousness that they are drifters. 
 Some of them do no defined great evil 
 but no real good. If they were to do 
 some great evil or fall before some great 
 sorrow or trial it might be the means of 
 startling them into realization, shock- 
 ing them into vivid consciousness of 
 their lack of purpose. Man does not 
 drift into goodness, the chance port of 
 an aimless voyage. He must fight ever
 
 for his destination, ready to battle, with 
 calmness and constant courage, against 
 fog, darkness, adverse winds, and 
 dangers that should only inspire to 
 greater effort. 
 
 There is hardly any peril of the sea 
 more dreaded by mariners than a der- 
 elict. It carries no lights on bow or 
 stern, no passengers, no rudder, no pilot, 
 no crew. It is bound nowhere, carry- 
 ing no cargo, to no port. Helpless in 
 itself it is a menace to all others. Hu- 
 man derelicts are those ignored as hope- 
 less by others, but they were first de- 
 serted by themselves. Lack of definite 
 real purpose is the royal road to drift- 
 ing, desertion, and derelict. 
 
 In seeking material success it may be 
 necessary to grasp a low rung of the 
 ladder ; but on the ladder of purpose be- 
 gin with the highest rung your out-
 
 Power of Individual Purpose 183 
 
 stretched hand can clasp and hold on 
 till you reach the next. Purpose takes 
 man out of the orchestra of life and 
 puts him on the stage of real action. 
 It makes him part of the spectacle, not 
 a mere spectator. It gives him a real 
 part to play, one no other could play, 
 in the great drama of humanity. 
 
 The great thing in life is not in real- 
 izing a purpose, but in fighting for it. 
 If we feel the possibilities of a great 
 work looming large before us and im- 
 pelling us to action it is our duty to 
 consecrate ourselves to it. Failure in a 
 great work is nobler than success in a 
 petty one that is beneath our maximum 
 of possibility. We have nothing to 
 do with results they do not belong 
 to us, anyway. It is our duty to do 
 our best bravely and then to rest in the 
 comfort of this fact alone. But be our
 
 1 84 Power of Individual Purpose 
 
 work great or small let us have real 
 purpose in life and battle for it un- 
 daunted to the end. 
 
 Purpose at its best must be above and 
 beyond us like the polar star that guides 
 and inspires the compass of the mariner. 
 The world needs, more than talent, 
 genius, wealth, or power, men of simple, 
 earnest purpose, men consecrated to 
 daily living in the inspiring illumina- 
 tion of an ideal ; men who make each 
 day count directly for something real, 
 who face each day's sunset with new 
 harvests of good for those around them 
 and for the world. 
 
 Being good, merely good in a pale, 
 anemic, temperamental way is not 
 enough. If the world is not daily bet- 
 ter because we have lived, if the little 
 circle of those around is not brightened, 
 strengthened, heartened, helped, and
 
 Power of Individual Purpose 185 
 
 some way made happier by our direct 
 effort in our conscious living, we are 
 not true to purpose or possibilities. 
 We cannot all be Lincolns and save a 
 nation, but we can put the spirit of 
 Lincoln into every trifle of our living 
 his simplicity, courage, kindness, 
 love, consecration, justice. The greatest 
 good to the world is not the magnificent 
 power of a few great men manifesting 
 it on a colossal scale, but these same 
 qualities, in a smaller, humbler way, 
 manifested in millions of simple, un- 
 known lives throughout the world.
 
 XV 
 
 When We Forget the Equity 
 
 IFE simplifies wonder- 
 fully if we stand on a 
 truer base of interpre- 
 tation. We lose much 
 of the real joy of living 
 because of our one-sided view. We 
 accuse Nature of playing favourites. 
 We imagine she is giving us all the 
 hard benches, and to others, seem- 
 ingly, reserved seats of preferred posi- 
 tions with an unnecessary supply of 
 easy cushions. We may think Nature 
 strews the path of one with roses while 
 working overtime in collecting the 
 thorns for us. It seems she sends us 
 
 the great real sorrows and hands our 
 186
 
 When We Forget the Equity 187 
 
 neighbours across the street only an 
 occasional bon-bon trouble put up in a 
 perfumed, beribboned box. 
 
 We forget we know only part of 
 their trial or sorrow never all. We 
 forget while we know all our troubles, 
 we do not recognize all the good we 
 might enjoy if we would the un- 
 noted things dear in our lives that 
 should greatly lessen our pain. We 
 forget the equity. 
 
 In business the equity is the net 
 value of a house or other property 
 over all mortgages or claims against it. 
 There is an equity in your favour, on 
 a bookkeeping account, if what is 
 owed you is more than what you owe. 
 
 Two men may have all their posses- 
 sions in the separate ownership of two 
 houses. The one who has a three 
 thousand dollar house free from debt
 
 1 88 When We Forget the Equity 
 
 may envy the owner of the ten thou- 
 sand house next door, unknowing it is 
 covered by an eight thousand dollar 
 mortgage leaving this man's equity at 
 two thousand dollars. The owner of 
 the small house is the richer of the 
 two men. It is the equity that proves 
 it. The philosophy of the equity 
 illuminates many of life's greatest 
 problems. It may soften the pain and 
 sweeten our living by showing how 
 equity intensifies our optimism. Rec- 
 ognition of the equity helps us to 
 retain our crown of individuality. 
 
 Under the seeming injustice of life 
 Nature is constantly seeking equali- 
 zing, balance, justice. Nature keeps 
 books with the individual. Her jus- 
 tice consists neither in the debit nor in 
 the credit side of her ledger, but in the 
 difference, the net, the balance, the
 
 When We Forget the Equity 189 
 
 equity. What seems to us injustice is 
 often really only our concentration on 
 one side of the account to the ex- 
 clusion of the other. We exaggerate 
 our sorrows so that they eclipse our 
 joys. We are unjust to what we have 
 in hungering for what we have not ; 
 we make our unsatisfied desires, not 
 our possessions, the test of happiness. 
 
 Sometimes, with a sigh on our lips 
 and a sob creeping into our throat, we 
 face our life in numb rebellion. We 
 are so vividly conscious of what we 
 have to bear that we may forget our 
 reason for happiness. Our sorrows, 
 seen through the magnifying glass of 
 discouragement, loom large before us. 
 Our joys through the reducing glass of 
 unsatisfied desire minify into almost 
 nothingness. We permit what we lack 
 to poison the waters of what we have.
 
 190 When We Forget the Equity 
 
 We forget the equity. We forget the 
 big, clear, broad sweep of net happi- 
 ness still remaining to us. The mort- 
 gage of care, sorrow, and responsibility 
 blinds us to our real possessions. 
 
 There are times when some affliction, 
 some illness holds us in its close deadly 
 pressure. The pain seems beyond the 
 bearing. It seems so unjust, so cruelly 
 hard to suffer. It mars our life ; dis- 
 turbs the simple sweetness of the best 
 in our nature ; keeps us ever slaves 
 under the awful spell of its presence or 
 under the grim tyranny of fear of its 
 recurrence. It makes us sometimes 
 bitter and unjust in our poor mislead- 
 ing speech. But in our temporary 
 times of relief the tide of courage, love, 
 gentleness, tenderness runs just as 
 strong as ever, just as earnest, in the 
 high sea of our heart's desire.
 
 When We Forget the Equity 191 
 
 If we can remember the equity we 
 can make slightly easier this bed of 
 pain. We may find joys in thought 
 that lull the pang. We may find our 
 place in life a little softened from the 
 struggles of the past, some good fortune 
 may add to our equity ; the touch of 
 some inspiring friendship may hearten 
 us to new bravery. We may realize 
 that, because of our very illness, in the 
 windings of time, the craft of some great 
 joy has sailed to us, along the river of 
 sorrow, and anchored in our heart. 
 
 We may envy the fame, fortune, or 
 prosperity of another, unknowing the 
 mortgages of care, responsibility, oppo- 
 sition, and worry that reduce the real- 
 ness of what he has. We might be 
 unwilling to pay a small percentage of 
 the price it has cost him. His net hap- 
 piness may be really less than ours.
 
 192 When We Forget the Equity 
 
 A business man may pass through 
 fearful times of stress and storm, trying 
 hard to keep the flag of hope ever fly- 
 ing, watching carefully for rocks of 
 financial discredit, delayed payments 
 and heroic effort to bring his ship of 
 enterprise safe into harbour. The em- 
 ployees, leaving at the stroke of the bell, 
 may go home and drop all thought of 
 business. They look with envy, per- 
 haps, at his easy position, thinking and 
 knowing nothing of his constant coura- 
 geous battle. They like the property, 
 forget his mortgages of worry and re- 
 sponsibility and overlook the sympathy 
 and better work and loyalty they would 
 give if they realized the equity. 
 
 They who have no children feel they 
 are the one thing lacking for happiness. 
 Those who have them may concentrate 
 on the hardship of so many to feed and
 
 When We Forget the Equity 193 
 
 care for and educate. One may put 
 too much stress on the loss, the other 
 too much on the responsibility. Both 
 may forget the equity. 
 
 One great reason for much of our 
 manufactured sorrow and misery is 
 that we measure our lives by what we 
 judge of others, not by true estimate of 
 our own. Life in its highest sense is 
 not a competition with others but with 
 ourselves. Have you ever sat in the 
 local train and felt you were making 
 good time? Suddenly the express 
 whizzes by, with a rush and a roar, in 
 the same direction on a parallel track. 
 As you watch this train your own seems 
 not only making no progress whatever 
 but seems actually going rapidly back 
 on the track, nearer to its starting 
 point. When the express disappears 
 you become conscious that your train
 
 194 When We Forget the Equity 
 
 has really been cutting distance all the 
 time. Of course we realize it is only an 
 illusion. In our daily life we make 
 similar mistakes that vitalize our sor- 
 rows and put happiness into a moaning 
 restless sleep, with wet eyes at dawn, 
 because we forget the equity. 
 
 If we have really much to bear, our 
 attitude is making the bearing harder. 
 It is making our power over conditions 
 less, their power over us more. Let a 
 fresh, clear, bracing breeze of optimism 
 and new courage blow through the soul. 
 Let us forget our sorrows in remember- 
 ing our joys ; lessen our pain in real- 
 ization that our imagination is increas- 
 ing it. Let us remember the equity, 
 the great possibilities, powers, and pos- 
 sessions for good to ourselves and the 
 world still left to us. If even then it 
 seems little, throw in great handfuls
 
 When We Forget the Equity 195 
 
 of hope, purpose, confidence, determi- 
 nation, courage. Let us make it seem 
 greater until it really becomes greater. 
 
 We are inclined to regard all happi- 
 ness, success, and sunshine as our due, 
 which we have earned somehow by 
 merely coming into the world and con- 
 senting to live here, while trial, sorrow 
 and pain seem an unjust invasion of our 
 individual rights. The possession that 
 would be the crowning joy of one might 
 be the useless encumbrance or the last 
 stroke of despair to another. We forget 
 the equity in judging ourselves ; we for- 
 get it in judging others. 
 
 In our bookkeeping in business we 
 do not let some one's debit of one hun- 
 dred dollars wipe out his thousand-dol- 
 lar credit ; we realize that the man has 
 an equity of nine hundred dollars re- 
 maining ; that he has this amount still
 
 196 When We Forget the Equity 
 
 to his credit. Why do we not let such 
 justice apply to the acts of others? 
 
 The friend who has been kind and 
 generous to us for years, who has stood 
 bravely by us in hours of darkness, 
 whose hand has steadied us through a 
 crisis, who should have many golden 
 spots in memory to his credit, may 
 prove weak, may offend us, may even 
 desert us. In our hurt we may let the 
 act of a moment neutralize the years of 
 constancy, truth, and loyalty, one 
 debit cancel in an instant his long ac- 
 count of credits. We make it harder 
 for him, harder for ourselves, by forget- 
 ting the equity, by overlooking the mar- 
 gin still remaining to his credit. A lit- 
 tle patience, a little tolerance, a little 
 generous waiting and watching before 
 pronouncing final judgment, may do 
 wonders in this weary world.
 
 When We Forget the Equity 197 
 
 For years some man in public life 
 may have struggled by consecration to 
 purpose, by loyalty to principle, by 
 faithful adherence to duty, and at last 
 reached a pinnacle of fame. The 
 world honours him ; his life is held up 
 as a model, an inspiration to the young, 
 a source of pride to all. But that man 
 may do a wicked thing, and the world 
 is startled by the discovery. Society 
 says, " Now he is unmasked ; now we 
 know his real character I " One evil 
 act becomes typical of a whole life. 
 One evil act submerges all the good of 
 years of faithful service. 
 
 Does society ever make one good act 
 the expression of a character ? Does it 
 ever let one good act sweep like a 
 mighty tide over a wicked life and bury 
 it forever from sight and memory ? 
 That man's character may not have
 
 198 When We Forget the Equity 
 
 been hidden. There may have been a 
 sudden temptation, one that came when 
 mind was weary, hope weak, and body 
 worn, every sentinel against sin, for the 
 time, withdrawn and the victory was 
 an easy one. Under the compelling 
 power of an act once committed, mor- 
 ally dazed, he may have involved him- 
 self further doing what he could, not 
 what he should. The act was wrong. 
 It was a big black mortgage on a life ; 
 but the equity, the justice of the balance 
 of good, is his and we wrong him by 
 forgetting it. 
 
 Poets, preachers, teachers, delight to 
 say character is a mighty structure, put 
 together block by block, which may be 
 ruined in an instant, fall into dust and 
 chaos by one evil deed. It is not so 
 this is cruelly unjust, untrue. Charac- 
 ter cannot be killed in an instant it is
 
 When We Forget the Equity 199 
 
 only reputation that can be slain by one 
 act. Great single deeds do not make 
 character large single evil acts cannot 
 ruin it. Character is built of trifles. 
 The real test is the equity, the balance 
 of the good over the evil. 
 
 It may be the Infinite will finally so 
 judge us ; that He will regard no single 
 black act as being our whole life ; that 
 He will judge us by our equity, letting 
 good impulses, high motives, faithful- 
 ness in little things, true unselfishness, 
 brotherly love, kindness, and exalted 
 ideals, balance, offset, and neutralize 
 many of the acts of our human weak- 
 ness, as we in our poor human recog- 
 nition of justice permit a payment on 
 account to cancel part of a debt.
 
 nsriW 
 
 QQO vd iiiflle ed 
 eisifim Jon ob si 
 tormao aJoB 
 .Bsfiii' 
 
 XVI ijs j 
 Running Away /r^ Life 
 
 O fight life's battles one 
 must keep close to the 
 firing-line. Pain, sor- 
 row, anxiety or trouble 
 must be fought at close 
 cannot be evaded, ig- 
 We must van- 
 
 range. They 
 nored, nor deserted, 
 quish them or they will vanquish us. 
 We must look them squarely in the 
 face and fight them to a finish. Re- 
 treat means simply deferring the battle 
 until we are weaker not stronger. It 
 is running away from self running 
 away from life. It is as foolish as try- 
 ing to dodge the atmosphere. 
 
 Thousands in the world to-day are 
 200
 
 Running Away from Life 201 
 
 running away from life to escape some 
 mental or emotional pang. They are 
 seeking it by the road of amusement, 
 distraction, travel and change of scene. 
 They seek not new wisdom to cure a 
 wound nor new strength to bear it, but 
 merely some way to deaden the pain. 
 These are in quest not of peace but of 
 temporary oblivion not self-conquest 
 but self-forgetfulness. They are taking 
 emotional cocaine, which, like all pow- 
 erful drugs, has a dangerous reaction. 
 
 The swiftest engine in the world 
 cannot carry us away from a grief that 
 holds our very heart in its close deaden- 
 ing pressure. No matter how rapidly 
 the mile-stones are whizzed backward, 
 we cannot escape the pain. It is snug- 
 gling close by our side and is eclipsing 
 all the beauties of life and nature 
 around us by its dull insistent note.
 
 2O2 Running Away from Life 
 
 The magic spell of music may carry 
 us for a little out of ourselves, may 
 temporarily fill our hearts with rest, 
 calm and peace, may silence the voice 
 of a forsaken duty or an uncon- 
 quered pang of memory, but unless the 
 music inspires us with the wine of new 
 purpose, the vital impelling courage to 
 act as we should, it has been only 
 musical cocaine. And as we walk the 
 streets homeward, the pain starts afresh 
 as if the very respite had made it want 
 to revenge itself for our forgetting. 
 
 If we could pack our worries and 
 anxieties those restless imps that feed 
 on our happiness and starve our souls 
 in storage before we set out on a travel 
 tour, change of scene might be of real 
 value to us. It might be a physical 
 upbuilding, a mental refreshing and a 
 moral rebirth. But if our worries are
 
 Running Away from Life 203 
 
 going to camp out in our stateroom at 
 night and keep us awake to listen to 
 what they tell us and to walk the deck 
 with us by day they prove to us that 
 running away has been a vain flight 
 not a valorous fight. 
 
 If they loom so large before us that 
 they shut out the view of the Alps and 
 darken the skies of sunny Spain why, 
 we then realize we have not been fight- 
 ing at all, but merely taking the same 
 old play of our sorrows on a European 
 tour where only the scenery is changed 
 while the cast of emotions is the same. 
 
 We constantly tilt at windmills of 
 dis-raction, leaving the real battle on 
 the field of the soul unfought. Tir- 
 ing of the friends who have been near 
 to us and whom we disqualify either 
 because they will talk about our sorrow 
 or they will not, we hunt up acquaint-
 
 204 Running Away from Life 
 
 ances or semi-friends of the vintage of 
 five years ago and try Society. This is 
 only another brand of cocaine. 
 
 We imagine, self-deceptively, that six 
 nights a week in evening dress might of 
 itself banish our sorrow or stifle our 
 secret grief. But what ia the use of it 
 all if, when the evening clothes are re- 
 moved, we find ourselves still in the 
 unremoved strait-jacket of memories 
 we would give aught in the world to 
 escape forever? The intensified pain 
 seems even greater as we contrast our 
 misery with the happiness of others. 
 How do we know that they, too, are not 
 wearing strait-jackets ? 
 
 We become nervously, morbidly over- 
 sensitive. An innocent chance word 
 may, in an instant, fan into flame the 
 embers of an unconquered pain. Some 
 simple ordinary incident may cause the
 
 Running Away from Life 205 
 
 river of a sleeping emotion to rise sud- 
 denly and almost flood the soul. By 
 some subtle electric disturbance in the 
 brain's central office a thousand calls of 
 different new impressions may succes- 
 sively ring violently the bell of the one 
 dominating memory that haunts us. 
 Every road of our thought leads inevi- 
 tably to the Rome of our grief. 
 
 We must just drop our cocaine, stop 
 running away from life, and fight the 
 battle, alone if alone we must till we 
 rise, sanctified, sweetened and strength- 
 ened a victor on the field of seeming 
 defeat. Each of us has his own special 
 enemies that would take from him the 
 crown of his individuality. 
 
 These are the times when we must 
 stand still for a little, get our bearings 
 through the fumes and the smoke and 
 face and fight the life that is. Some
 
 206 Running Away from Life 
 
 say change of scene does lull, does soothe, 
 does cure. No, Nature may with time 
 help us to forget but it is usually only 
 putting our grief or trial to sleep if 
 unconquered. We are left too often 
 with scars of morbidness, dead ideals, 
 awful regret. We are not calmed but 
 paralyzed in certain emotions. We 
 are weakened ; we have lost the possible 
 strength of a victory that would make 
 all future pain easier to bear because of 
 finer character, confidence, and courage. 
 In assaying our trouble, let us first 
 see if it is really as great as it seems. 
 We often listen to trifles of worry 
 through a microphone of fear, where the 
 footfall of a few flies is exaggerated till 
 it sounds like the battling hoofs of a 
 cavalry charge across a wooden bridge. 
 There are petty cares that we should be 
 ashamed of noticing. Some of them are
 
 Running Away from Life 207 
 
 no larger than a dewdrop that the heat 
 of a few seconds' clear thinking should 
 dissipate into nothingness. These we 
 put under the microscope of our anx- 
 iety until a microbe seems as big as 
 a prehistoric monster. Treat these as 
 if they were mere mosquitoes of fate 
 trying to annoy the Sphinx. Learn to 
 look these troubles squarely in the eye, 
 smile bravely, be calm, and say to them 
 " You never even touched me." 
 
 There is one great sorrow in life that 
 carries with it a sacredness that no irrev- 
 erent hand can touch lightly. It is 
 the sacrifice we have to make on the 
 altar of our love. Love, in some form, 
 is the greatest thing in life the others 
 are understudies. The saddest hour is 
 the loss of one we hold dear. It is bit- 
 terly hard when the loved one still lives 
 but separated forever from us by mis-
 
 2o8 Running Away from Life 
 
 understanding, injustice, folly love 
 grown cold. There is that other loss 
 when the one most loved passes from 
 us into the eternal silence. 
 
 The death of love transmutes every 
 high light of past joys into agonies of 
 memory by comparison with present 
 deadness. The death of the loved one, 
 with love still strong, crowns their life 
 together and makes past joys sweet, 
 serene and soothing in the Holy of 
 Holies of memory. The first grad- 
 ually eclipses the memory of joys ; 
 the second the memories of sorrows 
 while intensifying the sweetness of re- 
 membered happiness. In either form, 
 it speaks our supreme sorrow, the taking 
 of the last fortress of our courages em 
 
 There is one form of distraction that 
 is not running away from life. It is 
 in seeking to be genuinely interested
 
 Running Away from Life 209 
 
 in the daily lives of others, in growing 
 more unselfish, in heartening others, 
 in standing strong by those in need, in 
 distributing as an administrator to all 
 humanity the estate of love that has 
 been ours in deeds of cheer, con- 
 stancy, helpfulness, consolation, kind- 
 ness and thoughtfulness. 
 
 Let us feel, in every sorrow, that 
 there is something within us, a divine 
 spirit that rises superior to all else in 
 life, something imperishable, unper- 
 turbed, impregnable something that 
 can no more be sullied than a ray of 
 sunlight from the heart of the sun. 
 
 Let us fight fight with the certainty 
 of winning a greater, bigger, finer self. 
 We cannot always evade the darker 
 side of life but we can dictate the 
 effect we will permit it to have on us. 
 Let us fight like Jacob of old wrestling
 
 210 Running Away from Life 
 
 with the angel and say, " I will not let 
 thee go unless thou bless me." And 
 the angel of grief always does bless us 
 if we battle aright. Somehow, some- 
 where, somewhen, the conquered sor- 
 row is transformed into finer strength, 
 broader sympathy, tested friendships, 
 gentler tolerance, greater charity, and 
 a truer vision of the realities of life. 
 
 If our sorrow be inevitable we must 
 bear it bravely so that we may bear it 
 easier. If we can get salvage of hope 
 from the wreck of failure we are less- 
 ening the loss. Often a sacrifice of 
 petty pride will bring back all the 
 old happiness. Fight must help ; 
 flight never. Our environment is so 
 largely the radiation of our individ- 
 uality that we can never truly desert 
 it. Running away from life is merely 
 a coward's useless alibi.
 
 XVII 
 
 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 
 HE great test of individ- 
 ual character is not 
 struggle but attain- 
 ment ; not failure but 
 success ; not adversity 
 but prosperity. When Nature wants 
 to put a man through the third degree, 
 she places near him hia laurel wreaths 
 of victory ; she megaphones to him the 
 world's plaudits of success ; she pa- 
 rades stacks of newspaper clippings 
 and magazine articles with his por- 
 traits ; she clinks his money-bags in 
 his ears, and she tells him confiden- 
 tially of the world-changing power of 
 
 his influence. She smiles on him 
 211
 
 212 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 
 kindly and murmurs, " Poor fellow, is 
 he able to stand it ? " Then she sends 
 him for his test through the dark 
 valley of prosperity. 
 
 Few pass through it immune ; few 
 acquire no perversion of mind, few es- 
 cape fractures of ideals or new dents in 
 character. But when one, through it 
 all, remains just as good and simple 
 and lovable as when he began the 
 trip, remains kindly, sincere, strong, 
 sympathetic, and unspoiled, Nature 
 is glad indeed to admit she has found 
 a real man, a big man, a great man. 
 
 It is called the dark valley of pros- 
 perity because it, so often, dims the 
 vision to the finer realities of life. In 
 the early stages, in the dimness, they 
 cannot see their old friends as they 
 pass. There comes a peculiarity of the 
 extensor muscles which prevents their
 
 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 213 
 
 extending the hand to some one no 
 longer necessary to them. They ac- 
 quire a form of memory impairment 
 which prevents them remembering 
 past favours and debts of gratitude due 
 to those who stood by them in their 
 hours of need. They do not notice 
 their sudden and increasing chest ex- 
 pansion. They find that their hats 
 are continuously growing too small for 
 them in a singular manner. 
 
 In the dark valley, their dearest 
 hopes and their high ideals often slip 
 away into the silence. For them are 
 substituted avarice and ambition, 
 dressed in a livery of gold, and the in- 
 dividual may near-sightedly mistake 
 them for higher good. In the shad- 
 ows, conscience, the eye of the soul, be- 
 comes, too often, dulled so that it can- 
 not see the distinctions between genu-
 
 214 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 
 ine honour and a dishonour their law- 
 yers inform them is technically legal. 
 They fail, often, in their morally fa- 
 ding vision, to see the difference be- 
 tween right and wrong, between justice 
 and the injustice of misused power. 
 These are but samples of dangers that 
 menace all, but which some overcome. 
 
 Sometimes they grope along the way, 
 unconscious of the great price that 
 they are paying. Suddenly they may 
 realize, under a burst of temporary 
 sunlight in the valley, that they have 
 somehow, somewhere lost love, sympa- 
 thy, trust, confidence, sweetness of 
 nature or something else that has been 
 dearest in the world to them. It has 
 dropped away in the darkness like a 
 locket from an unguarded chain, and 
 they may never find it again. 
 
 It is sheer cant that would throw
 
 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 215 
 
 wealth, fame, prosperity and success 
 into a moral dust-heap as vanities of 
 the world. We all want them. Those 
 who take a high moral pose against 
 them are either envious or are elbow- 
 ing their way to get front Pharisee 
 seats in the temple of virtue. These 
 things are not evil in themselves. 
 They are great powers for good but 
 they are not life's greatest. They are 
 less than the real joys, like love, that 
 no money can buy. Their wrong is 
 when acquired by a sacrifice of truth, 
 honour, justice or the real virtues of life, 
 or when they are misused or conse- 
 crated to the selfish side of living. 
 Their danger is in the corrupting effect 
 the individual can hardly ever keep 
 them from having on him. 
 
 Poverty, struggle, failure and adver- 
 sity are not in themselves passports to
 
 2 1 6 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 
 saintship though they have given 
 moral strength and sweetness to thou- 
 sands. They have their own hard, bit- 
 ter temptations to meet face to face. 
 Theirs is far from an easy fight the 
 daily hand-to-hand battle with fate. 
 But their temptations are usually di- 
 rect, bold, clearly defined and their 
 joys require so little. The tempting 
 tests of prosperity come in subtle 
 phases, gilded, perfumed, masking in 
 deceptive guise. 
 
 Poverty knows the word " stealing " ; 
 wealth may think it " financeering." 
 Poverty knows " envy of another's 
 possessions " ; wealth may assume tak- 
 ing a manufacturing plant as " a good 
 business deal." It may then even, by 
 some strange sophistry, justify itself 
 by declaring they will do better for the 
 people. Poverty knows hunger for
 
 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 217 
 
 bread ; wealth may hunger for the 
 money of the bread-earners. Poverty 
 usually sees evil in its aggressive, hard- 
 est phases. Prosperity may find it 
 hidden and unsuspected like Cleopa- 
 tra's asp in a bouquet of flowers. 
 " For one who can stand prosperity," 
 says Carlyle, " one hundred can stand 
 adversity." 
 
 A very slight drop of the acid of 
 prosperity will begin the revelation of 
 character of the man be he not big 
 enough to be simple. The slightest 
 elevation in position, the least new 
 good fortune, some temporary elation 
 may reveal it. Have you ever no- 
 ticed the man who has made a bit of a 
 success in the city and returns for a 
 week to his native village? He says 
 he has come back to see the folks but 
 it is really to have the folks see him.
 
 2 1 8 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 
 He enjoys the envy he excites in those 
 who have not, like him lived in the 
 city. He wants to get sunburned in 
 the warmth and fervour of their ad- 
 miration. He stretches at length in 
 his tilted chair, locks his thumbs be- 
 hind the armholes of his waistcoat, 
 and plays a flute solo of vanity on his 
 breast-bone, using the buttons as stops 
 manipulated by his fingers. 
 
 He occupies the centre of the stage 
 every minute with his monologue. 
 There is a touch of swagger in his 
 walk, an irritating undertone of toler- 
 ance and patronage in his speech, and 
 that loud voice we involuntarily use 
 with the deaf. He is his own Boswell 
 and his own Gabriel. It is, perhaps, 
 only a harmless brand of vanity, but 
 it shows he is getting near to the en- 
 trance of the dark valley. When a
 
 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 219 
 
 big, simple man of real fame comes 
 back, the story of what he has done 
 usually leaks out incidentally ; it is 
 not exploded like a bomb. 
 
 The author of a successful book may 
 have won his honours because he wrote 
 with serious purpose. His message was 
 supreme fee for delivery, secondary. 
 But he may be attacked by the vertigo 
 of money-making and forget every- 
 thing else. Inspired by his publisher, 
 he may galvanize an old earlier book 
 of his youth or rush through a hasty 
 new one to have it in print before the 
 wave of his sudden fame has died on 
 the shores of forgetfulness. He talks 
 less now of art and more of mart. The 
 new book may fail because he fell into 
 the pitfall of commercialism in the 
 dark valley of prosperity. 
 
 Successful artists and illustrators, in
 
 22O The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 
 many instances, do not follow up the 
 first successes that won them fame. 
 They slur over their work ; they stand 
 still or they degenerate. They accentu- 
 ate the superficial in their style and 
 care little for the strength that once 
 was vital. They repeat the same char- 
 acters, merely in slightly changed posi- 
 tions, like a cheap stock-company with 
 a small cast and a meagre wardrobe, 
 playing in repertoire. These men 
 often say if one ventures to speak that 
 kindly word of protest we should 
 always give to the needy : " Oh, what 
 difference does it make it pays all 
 right." They should find some good 
 Samaritan to drag them from the dark 
 valley of prosperity and put them back 
 again in the sunlight of struggle and 
 the inspiration of adversity. 
 
 The business man who began in a
 
 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 221 
 
 small way and suddenly finds fortune 
 emptying cornucopias of gold into his 
 lap may find it hard to keep his feet 
 and not to lose his head. The demon 
 of greed may transform him he wants 
 more. He is like the farmer who de- 
 sired only the land that adjoined his 
 farm each addition increased the field 
 of desire ; the more he had the more he 
 wanted. Then may come a million 
 owning a man, not the man a million. 
 To accumulate more, he may defy laws, 
 bribe legislatures and buy judges. Like 
 a modern Joshua, he seeks to command 
 the sun of justice to stand still. He 
 chloroforms his business conscience 
 until it sleeps so soundly that an earth- 
 quake would not jostle it. 
 
 Wealth often makes men who started 
 in bravely with high ideals, and normal 
 moral health, become cold, heartless,
 
 2 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 
 and uncharitable as they walk 
 through the dark valley of prosperity. 
 They often become arrogant and have a 
 tendency to expect argument to close 
 when they speak. They seem to have 
 a corner on judgment as if their eye 
 alone saw the sun of truth, their 
 wisdom alone plumbed the depth of 
 great questions. The abnormal pres- 
 sure of business often forces them into 
 pleasures of which they count not the 
 cost nor the character. They are often 
 too busy to take stock of the goods of 
 their soul. The culture of the higher 
 affections and sentiments is often killed. 
 The very intensity of their work or 
 their play produces a yawning, yearn- 
 ing ennui hard to overcome. 
 
 Trifles affect them strangely they 
 grow irritated, impatient, irrational, at 
 finding even a crumpled rose-leaf in
 
 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 223 
 
 the golden couch of their insomnia. 
 They become more and more suspicious, 
 and hardly know whom to trust. 
 They fear every one is paving the way 
 for some deal ; stealthily seeking to gain 
 their influence or to subtract something 
 from the useless pile of their surplus 
 wealth. They can have but few 
 trusted, genuine friends of the mind, 
 heart and soul. Great wealth, like 
 genius, isolates man from his fellows in 
 the closest harmonies of life. 
 
 Let us live so gladly and glowingly 
 in the sunlight of real simple love that 
 means our great all ; with faith in those 
 few around us that girdles our whole 
 world, realizing the sweetness of honest 
 true friendships that so inspire ; happy 
 in the noble round of loyalty, consecra- 
 ting to-day's duties to usher in a finer 
 to-morrow, so living in the joy of our
 
 ;24 The Dark Valley of Prosperity 
 imple life on the purer lines of un- 
 selfish realness that we shall be glad 
 the trials, tests and temptations of the 
 dark valley have actually snubbed us 
 as too unimportant to notice. 
 
 If called upon to the burdens of the 
 greater responsibility let us bear them 
 bravely at our best and let nothing rob 
 us of simplicity, sweetness, strength, 
 sympathy and all that is sterling. The 
 greatest men and women are ever the 
 simplest. There are thousands who 
 bear their great burdens of fame, suc- 
 cess, power, prosperity or wealth and 
 who remain happy as of old and little, 
 if any, spoiled by it all. They must 
 truly be rare characters, of fine re- 
 sources of thought, heart, nature and 
 soul who can retain the crown of their 
 individuality after a journey through 
 the dark valley of prosperity. 
 
 4
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 NON-RENEWABLE 
 
 DUE 2 WKS FROM OAT 
 
 E RECEIVED
 
 3 1158 01028 4C 
 
 A 000040485