Jifornia 
 
 onal 
 
 !ity
 
 UNTV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 IT S A 
 GOOD OLD WORLD
 
 IT S A 
 GOOD OLD WORLD 
 
 BEING A COLLECTION OF LITTLE ESSAYS 
 ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS OF 
 HUMAN INTEREST 
 
 BY 
 
 BRUCE BARTON 
 
 Author of "More Power to You," "The 
 Making of George Groton," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1920
 
 Copyright, 1920, by 
 THE CENTURY Co.
 
 BETWEEN OURSELVES 
 
 Magazine editors are genial gentle 
 men. They pay us for the pieces we write 
 and allow us to gather them later into 
 books. To Karl Harriman, editor of the 
 " Red Book" ; George Martin, editor of 
 "Farm and Fireside"; Harford Powel, 
 editor of "Collier s Weekly"; W. W. 
 Hawkins, General Manager of the United 
 Press Associations, and Frank Ober, edi 
 tor of " Association Men," who have given 
 their cordial permission for the republica- 
 tion of the little essays that follow, I ex 
 press my gratitude and thanks. 
 
 The book is named in honor of our 
 common friend, this Good Old World. 
 I admire the quiet, patient fashion in 
 which he goes around about the same old 
 task, day after day and year after year. 
 I admire his magnificent tolerance toward 
 all sorts and conditions of men, many of 
 
 2126046
 
 Between Ourselves 
 
 whom must frequently prove very irritat 
 ing passengers. And I want him to un 
 derstand that if he has no objection I plan 
 to ride along with him for another sev 
 enty years at least. 
 
 B. B.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I EXPECT TO BE ENTIRELY CONSISTENT AFTER 
 
 NINETY 3 
 
 WATCHING THE PRINCE EARN His PAY .... 7 
 
 A GREAT LITTLE WORD Is " WHY " 12 
 
 DON T LAY IN A STOCK OF CAMOUFLAGE: IT HAS 
 
 DEPRECIATED BADLY IN VALUE SINCE THE WAR 17 
 WE RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT: AND CAN T GET 
 
 OUT 22 
 
 "WHAT! LITTLE JOHNNY DUGAN?" .... 27 
 
 FIRST HAVE A LOOK AT THE FIGURES 31 
 
 WHY NOT USE OUR ISLAND OF YAP? .... 35 
 
 THE SECOND MILE 39 
 
 " WHICH KNEW NOT JOSEPH " 43 
 
 HE CALLED THE PRESIDENT " CHARLEY "... 47 
 A COURSE OF READING FOR A YOUNG MAN ABOUT 
 
 TO RUN INTO DEBT 51 
 
 ON MEETING AN INSIGNIFICANT MAN .... 54 
 IT S A MOVING PICTURE WORLD, AND THE FILM 
 
 CHANGES EVERY FEW MINUTES 58 
 
 ARE You INDUSTRIOUS, OR MERELY BUSY? ... 63 
 IF You ARE NOT TOO CAREFUL WHO GETS THE 
 
 CREDIT 68 
 
 THE REFLECTIONS OF A GRIZZLED VOTER ... 73 
 
 " THEY SAY " HAS MADE MANY A GOOD MAN GOOD . 
 
 FOR NOTHING 78 
 
 You HAVE KNOWN ABOUT HIM ALL THESE YEARS, 
 
 BUT HAVE You REALLY KNOWN HIM ? . . . 83 
 
 BE SURE YOU RE RIGHT AND THEN DON T Do IT 87
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A SOFT SPOT IN MY HEART 
 FOR JOSEPH 91 
 
 "AND HE GOETH" 95 
 
 "!N A MANGER" 99 
 
 WHY YOUR EYES ARE IN THE FRONT OF YOUR 
 
 HEAD 103 
 
 WOULD You BE GREAT? THEN EXPECT SUFFER 
 ING: FOR IT Is THE STUFF GREATNESS Is 
 
 MADE OF 107 
 
 IF THERE WERE ONLY A TAX ON TALK . . . . in 
 
 THE GREAT GOD "MUST" 115 
 
 PUT GREAT MEN TO WORK FOR You: IT DOESN T 
 
 COST ANYTHING 119 
 
 HEZEKIAH Is DEAD: BUT His FORMULA STILL 
 
 HOLDS GOOD 123 
 
 THE FINE RARE HABIT OF LEARNING TO DO WITH 
 OUT 128 
 
 IT RUINED MICHELANGELO: AND IT CAN RUIN 
 
 You 133 
 
 DON T EXPECT ANYTHING VERY STARTLING FROM 
 
 AN ORACLE 136 
 
 ON HEARING FROM MANY UNHAPPY HVSBANDS AND 
 
 WIVES 140 
 
 WHAT MAKES MEDIUM-SIZED MEN GREAT? . . . 145 
 THE GREATEST SPORTING PROPOSITION IN THE 
 
 WORLD 149 
 
 To A CAN OF BEANS PLANTED AND CANNED BY 
 
 OURSELVES 153 
 
 LINCOLN PULLED THROUGH AND So SHALL WE . -157 
 "THEY WHO TARRY BY THE STUFF" . . . .162 
 THAT FINE OLD FAKE ABOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS . 166 
 
 EVERYBODY HAS SOMETHING 170 
 
 WORKING FOR IT AND MAKING IT WORK . . . 174 
 
 WHEN MEN COME UP TO THE END 178 
 
 IF You CAN T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR JOB, FOR 
 GOODNESS SAKE CHANGE IT 182
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE BUSINESS OF DISTRIBUTING MEDALS HAS 
 
 RATHER GOT INTO A RUT 186 
 
 THE FINEST INVESTMENT You CAN MAKE Is TO 
 HELP THE RIGHT YOUNG MAN FIND THE RIGHT 
 
 JOB 191 
 
 THE WORLD Is OWNED BY MEN WHO CROSS BRIDGES 
 
 BEFORE THEY COME TO THEM 195 
 
 WE SHALL WIN IF OUR SENSE OF HUMOR LASTS 199 
 LIVING IN A LIMOUSINE AND LIVING IN A TUB . . 203 
 DEMOCRACY Is A NEW SHOW, AND EVERY CITIZEN Is 
 THE STAGE-MANAGER 207 
 
 Is YOUR CONVERSATION A GOOD ADVERTISEMENT FOR 
 You? 212 
 
 AND A DOG RUNS OUT AND BARKS . 216
 
 IT S A GOOD OLD WORLD
 
 IT S A GOOD OLD WORLD 
 
 I EXPECT TO BE ENTIRELY 
 
 CONSISTENT AFTER 
 
 NINETY 
 
 A READER writes to reprove me be 
 cause a statement in a recent edi 
 torial apparently contradicts something 
 which I wrote a year ago. 
 
 " A writer ought at least to be consist 
 ent," he says. Which, of course, is the 
 last thing that any writer below the age 
 of ninety < ought to be too much con 
 cerned about. 
 
 For it is the business of men, whether 
 writers or not, to see truth and to express 
 it in their lives. That a man should see 
 more truth this year than he saw last, and 
 should hope to see even more in the year 
 to come, is a perfectly normal expectation. 
 And inevitably the larger vision of this 
 year will reveal the shortcomings of the 
 past. 
 
 3
 
 4 It s a Good Old World 
 
 I talked the other day with the president 
 of one of the nation s greatest businesses. 
 Said he: 
 
 " I go down to my office these days with 
 my mind absolutely open ; I am prepared at 
 a moment s notice to reverse our entire 
 business practice, if the conditions demand 
 it. With the world in tumult as it is to 
 day, the concern which says, We have al 
 ways done it this way, or Such and such 
 a course is not in line with our previous 
 policy, is riding for a fall. 
 
 " A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin 
 of little minds," Emerson exclaimed. 
 " With consistency a great soul has simply 
 nothing to do. He may as well concern 
 himself with his shadow on the wall. Out 
 upon your guarded lips! ... If you 
 would be a man, speak what you think to 
 day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and 
 to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks 
 in hard words again, though it contradict 
 everything you said to-day. Ah, then, 
 exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure 
 to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! 
 It is a fool s word. Is it so bad, then, to
 
 Consistent After Ninety 5 
 
 be misunderstood? Pythagoras was mis 
 understood, and Socrates, and Jesus and 
 Copernicus and Galileo and Newton and 
 every pure and wise spirit that ever took 
 flesh. To be great is to be misunder 
 stood." 
 
 The butterfly is not consistent with the 
 chrysalis: nobody expects a frog to con 
 form to the standards of the tadpole. 
 Nature is herself the great parent of con 
 tradictions; and nothing in her universe is. 
 perfectly consistent but the eternal hills, 
 and old dogs who lie all day in the sun 
 shine, and men whose brains have hardened 
 into shells. 
 
 A man owes this obligation to himself 
 that he should keep his vision high and his 
 footsteps fixed in the path that leads to 
 ward the stars. Sometimes that path will 
 lie straight and clear; sometimes it will 
 bend to the left or right; and sometimes he 
 may have to retrace his steps in order to 
 fix his feet firmly upon it. When that 
 necessity arises, there should be no hesita 
 tion. 
 
 I like to remember Dr. David Swing,
 
 6 It s a Good Old World 
 
 who was for many years pastor of the 
 Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Ave 
 nue. Through a long lifetime he ex 
 pounded the truth to his people as his spirit 
 revealed it to him. And at the very end of 
 his days new truth came to him, and he 
 rose in his pulpit and confessed frankly 
 that all of his previous preaching had been 
 in large measure mistaken. 
 
 St. Augustine, toward the end of his 
 career, published a good-sized book called 
 " Retractions." Only a big man could 
 have written such a book; for only a big 
 man continues to grow straight up to the 
 very last. 
 
 Be not too fearful of inconsistencies-; 
 for if you are growing as you should be 
 growing, consistency, which is the harden 
 ing of the mental and spiritual arteries, 
 ought not to set in 
 
 until you are ninety, at least.
 
 WATCHING THE PRINCE EARN 
 HIS PAY 
 
 THE Prince was to ride up the Avenue, 
 and we all put on our hats and went 
 out onto the side-walk to cheer. 
 
 As he came along smiling, with his hat 
 on the side of his head, I could not help 
 marvelling a little at the changes time can 
 work. 
 
 My first ancestor in this country, 
 William, spent several of the best years of 
 his life fighting the Prince s ancestor, 
 George. 
 
 For many, many years dislike and dis 
 trust of the English were fed to us from 
 the pages of our first readers. 
 
 Emerson s poem expressed the common 
 American judgment about the gentlemen 
 who sit on thrones: 
 
 God said " I am tired of Kings, 
 I suffer them no more. 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor." 
 7
 
 8 
 
 Yet here was I, the descendant of a 
 Revolutionary fighter, taking time away 
 from the office to cheer for the son of a 
 King, and an English King at that. 
 
 The explanation, of course, is simple. 
 It is not we who have changed, but the 
 kings. They have at last found a real job 
 for themselves, and we respect them, as 
 we respect any man who has work to do 
 and does it well. 
 
 They are now the travelling salesmen 
 of their countries. 
 
 Take the Belgians for example. Be 
 fore the war we looked on them as a rather 
 unattractive people inclined to squalidness 
 both physical and mental. 
 
 Along comes Albert, their sales man 
 ager, with his sample case and opens it be 
 fore us. He has a fine line of courtesy; 
 something very nice in the way of true 
 sportsmanship; a very superior article of 
 good looks; and an entirely modern and 
 up-to-date sense of humor. 
 
 After we have seen the samples it is no 
 great task for him to sell us quite a differ 
 ent idea of the Belgians. We will be
 
 Watching the Prince 9 
 
 much more inclined, in the future, to give 
 them what every people have the right to 
 demand the privilege of being judged 
 by their best rather than by their less at 
 tractive characteristics. 
 
 So with Edward of the firm of Great 
 Britain and Co. 
 
 He knows well enough that our dealings 
 with his House have not been altogether 
 satisfactory in the past. He comes with 
 the idea of straightening out all the old 
 complaints and convincing us that this 
 year s line is entirely unlike anything we 
 have previously bought. 
 
 Are we too much stocked-up with the 
 old style Englishman side whiskers 
 prejudices stodginess lack of humor 
 and all? 
 
 " That s our pre-war brand," says Ed 
 ward. " We Ve entirely discarded that. 
 The House is under new management and 
 we re putting out a very superior article. 
 
 " Here s a sample of our smiles you 
 never knew an Englishman could smile. 
 
 " Here s a choice bit of democracy 
 which we Ve recently added to the line.
 
 10 It s a Good Old World 
 
 " Notice this patent bit of openmind- 
 edness, an exclusive feature of this year s 
 model." 
 
 He s a good little salesman with a win 
 ning smile; and I for one am all prepared 
 to put the old prejudices aside and open a 
 good line of credit with his House. 
 
 I know a man who has a curious job. 
 He is paid just to visit conventions and 
 banquets of his company s customers and 
 tell funny stories. 
 
 No spasm of economy ever endangers 
 his weekly envelope. He is one of the 
 most valuable assets that the corporation 
 owns. 
 
 That s the proper kind of a job for a 
 king. Japan should send her Emperor 
 sales-manager over as soon as possible. 
 Alphonso of Spain would find this a very 
 profitable territory. Italy s Victor Em- 
 nanuel had better pack his bag and get 
 some expense account blanks printed. 
 
 And we, who have no kings, should elect 
 a half dozen good looking chaps with a 
 Roosevelt smile and a first class fund of 
 funny stories to show our customers across
 
 Watching the Prince II 
 
 the two oceans what a fine lot of folks we 
 really are. 
 
 The League of Nations will be success 
 ful just in proportion to the amount of in 
 telligent high-powered salesmanship that 
 is put behind it. 
 
 Every king should plan to live half the 
 time in a suit case; and every Prince, no 
 matter what his title, should consider that 
 he draws his salary for being a Prince of 
 Peace.
 
 A GREAT LITTLE WORD IS 
 " WHY " 
 
 A SUCCESSFUL man whom I know 
 recently changed from a business 
 with which he was thoroughly familiar to 
 a business that he knew absolutely nothing 
 about. 
 
 I watched to see what he would do. 
 
 For two solid weeks he did nothing but 
 ask questions. 
 
 He took a train to Washington to learn 
 what information the government had on 
 trade conditions in the new field. 
 
 He visited around among jobbers and 
 manufacturers: he even went to the com 
 pany s strongest competitors. 
 
 Everywhere asking questions. It was 
 simply amazing, the amount of useful data 
 that he was able to dig out. 
 
 Curiosity is a human characteristic that 
 has been much maligned. Men speak of 
 it slightingly, as if it were something to be 
 12
 
 A Great Word Is "Why" 13 
 
 ashamed of; a weakness to be repressed. 
 
 My own idea is that when a man gets 
 beyond the point of asking questions, he 
 might as well be dead. 
 
 Without curiosity there would be no 
 growth, no progress. 
 
 Theirs not to make reply, 
 Theirs not to reason why, 
 
 may be a good enough motto for men who 
 are on their way to be shot. But from 
 such men expect no empires to be builded, 
 no inventions made, no great discoveries 
 brought to light. 
 
 Curiosity [the " Scientific American " once 
 said] is the hand-maiden of Science. 
 
 No doubt many a man before the time of 
 Columbus had remarked the exotic fruits and 
 branches tossed up by the waves on the shores 
 of the Canary Islands. The natives had gath 
 ered them for generations without ever so much 
 as a thought. But to Columbus those strange 
 gifts of the sea were messages sent from a land 
 where no European ship had ever touched. Out 
 of his wonder about them came his voyage to 
 the New World.
 
 14 It s a Good Old World 
 
 Then we have Newton s apple. Things have 
 fallen ever since the universe was created. And 
 no man before Newton seems ever to have asked 
 himself, Why? 
 
 Robert Meyer, a ship s surgeon in the East 
 Indies, noticed that the venous blood of his pa 
 tients seemed redder than that of people living in 
 temperate climates. Doubtless other physicians 
 had also noticed that fact. Meyer, pondering 
 on it, reached the conclusion that the cause must 
 be the lesser degree of oxidation required to keep 
 up the body temperature in the torrid zone. 
 That thought led to the discovery of the me 
 chanical theory of heat, and to the first compre 
 hensive appreciation of the great law of the con 
 servation of energy. 
 
 If you have witnessed the gradual prog 
 ress of the mind of a little baby, you have 
 seen a miracle. 
 
 And what is the golden ladder on which 
 the baby climbs out of mere consciousness 
 into intelligence? 
 
 Curiosity nothing else. The con 
 stant reaching out for the untried (even 
 though the reaching involves much up 
 setting of flower vases, and many burned
 
 A Great Word Is "Why" 15 
 
 and bleeding fingers) , the eternal why: the 
 unquenchable how and what. 
 
 Some men climb a little way up that lad 
 der, and are satisfied. 
 
 They reach a point where the day s task 
 becomes more or less automatic; where 
 their feet follow easily along a familiar 
 path. And they are content. They 
 would not pay a nickel to see an earth 
 quake : they would not open a new book, 
 or stretch their minds in wonder at what 
 lies even beyond the next desk above them, 
 to say nothing of what lies beyond the 
 stars. 
 
 Ceasing to be curious, they cease to 
 grow. 
 
 For surely one secret of genius is this 
 the ability to remain interested in new 
 things, even into old age. 
 
 The curiosity of Bluebeard s wife proved 
 fatal, to be sure ; and Lot s wife, yielding 
 to her curiosity, reaped a bitter recom 
 pense. 
 
 One must use judgment in the exercise 
 of even the divinest gifts. 
 
 On the other hand,
 
 1 6 It s a Good Old World 
 
 Zacchaeus he 
 
 Did climb a tree, 
 
 His Lord to see. 
 
 And, braving the ridicule of the passing 
 crowd for the sake of his curiosity, he was 
 rewarded with the secret of happiness and 
 everlasting life.
 
 DON T LAY IN A STOCK OF CA 
 MOUFLAGE: IT HAS DEPRE 
 CIATED BADLY IN VALUE 
 SINCE THE WAR 
 
 THE future of Germany, I presume, is 
 no particular concern of mine. Yet 
 I keep thinking what a tragic position hers 
 must be for many years to come. 
 
 Some day, soon or late, Germany, with 
 the others, will send out her ambassadors 
 to the world. 
 
 He will come to Washington Herr 
 von Somebody, and, smiling graciously, 
 will tell us how eager his government is to 
 resume friendly relations with us. 
 
 And all the time he is talking it will be 
 running through the back of our minds: 
 Yes, that is what Von Bernstorff said, at 
 the same time when he was trying to blow 
 up our factories, and league Japan and 
 Mexico against us." 
 
 Another German ambassador will go to 
 Buenos Aires. " I present the compli-
 
 i8 It s a Good Old World 
 
 ments of the German government," he will 
 say. 
 
 And the President of Argentina will be 
 wondering to himself: " Is this the same 
 government whose envoy suggested that 
 our boats be sunk so as to leave no trace ? " 
 
 German salesmen will hurry out across 
 the world with their sample cases, protest 
 ing the value of their goods. 
 
 And men will wonder whether the state 
 ments behind those goods are like the state 
 ments made by the German government 
 to the United States when the Sussex was 
 sunk. 
 
 Bitter as the days are for Germany 
 now, the days to come will be more bit 
 ter. 
 
 For her government ruthlessly tor 
 pedoed the good ship Faith: it cut the 
 cables of mutual trust by means of which 
 men have been accustomed to communicate 
 with each other. And the rest of the 
 world stood aghast. 
 
 Few things in civilization are more in 
 spiring than the slow increase of men s 
 faith in one another.
 
 A Stock of Camouflage 19 
 
 When the Psalmist exclaimed, " I said 
 in my haste, All men are liars," he was not 
 far wrong. 
 
 To lie, to cheat, to get the better of a 
 competitor by any hook or crook, was the 
 standard practice of early business. 
 
 The Phoenicians and Greeks, trading 
 with the tribes along the Mediterranean, 
 used to land on the shore, pile up their 
 goods, and then put out a little way in their 
 boats again. 
 
 Out from their hiding place would come 
 the natives to pile up beside those goods 
 the articles which they offered in exchange, 
 and having done it they would hide them 
 selves. 
 
 Both sides wanted to do business, but 
 neither party trusted the members of the 
 other enough to appear beside them on the 
 shore. 
 
 In religion as well as business the rule of 
 fraud was the accepted rule. 
 
 " I will sacrifice ten heads to Zeus if I be 
 delivered from this sickness," the pious 
 Greek would exclaim. 
 
 And being delivered he would sacrifice
 
 20 It s a Good Old World 
 
 cabbage heads instead of heads of cattle, 
 and receive the congratulations of his 
 friends upon the cleverness of his ruse. 
 
 Little by little the world has grown 
 away from this kind of practice. 
 
 As the coral reef grows by the addition 
 of one tiny organism after another, so has 
 Faith grown in the world each genera 
 tion raising it a bit higher by the addition 
 of its honesty and trust, until all business 
 has come to be done on men s confidence in 
 each other s words. 
 
 That slow, painfully wrought creation, 
 Germany with wanton hand demolished. 
 
 We have heard much talk of camou 
 flage, which is a fancy name for lying. Be 
 not misled by that euphonious term. 
 
 You will live to see a penalty visited on 
 Germany for the slaughter of Truth such 
 as has never been borne by any people 
 before. 
 
 You will see men s word to each other 
 take on a new preciousness in the years to 
 come, because of the terrible price which 
 they will pay who have disregarded their 
 word.
 
 21 
 
 In our generation it will be true as it 
 never has been before that the highest 
 honors will be reserved for the sort of 
 man whom the Bible describes: 
 
 The man who " sweareth to his own 
 hurt, and changeth not."
 
 WE RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT: 
 AND CAN T GET OUT 
 
 AMERICA was founded by people 
 who wanted to get away from other 
 people. 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers decided that they 
 would rather run the risk of starving to 
 death in a new, clean, unpeopled land than 
 to live any longer with their neighbors. 
 
 After them came men of various sorts: 
 political offenders; Quakers who would 
 rather emigrate than fight; Irishmen 
 " ag in the government "; roving sons of 
 settled households. 
 
 All sorts of people, but driven by the 
 same common motive the desire to live 
 their own lives in their own way, free from 
 the restrictions of an older social order. 
 
 We are the descendants of those daring 
 pioneers: their vigorous individualism 
 flows through our veins. 
 
 If, before the war, you had put your
 
 We re All in the Same Boat 23 
 
 ambition into words, you would probably 
 have expressed the wish to be absolutely 
 independent. 
 
 I don t know what the war may have 
 done to you, but to me it has revealed this 
 one tremendous truth: that there is not, 
 and never will be again, any absolute in 
 dependence; that I, in my little home, am 
 absolutely dependent, to some degree or 
 other, on every other man and woman in 
 the world. 
 
 In the Balkans, an Austrian prince of 
 whom I never heard, and his wife, are mur 
 dered. A petty far-away event : what has 
 it to do with me? 
 
 Nothing, of course. Nothing ; except 
 to throw my life into disorder, and change 
 the whole thought and current of my days. 
 
 In Russia twenty million men are taken 
 from the farms; and, behold, the loaf of 
 bread in my little home feels their leaving 
 and fades away. Millions of shoes are 
 ordered for the men of Italy: and the 
 shoes I purchase for my baby cost four 
 dollars now instead of two. 
 
 Absolute independence ! What a fool-
 
 24 It s a Good Old World 
 
 ish phrase, indeed! The world has be 
 come a neighborhood, and the welfare of 
 every single house along the street is con 
 ditioned by the welfare of every other. 
 
 There is hardly an item in the newspa 
 pers that doesn t, somehow or other, come 
 straight home to me. 
 
 I read that the railroads are hard up 
 and their stocks and bonds decline. I 
 should worry: I own no stocks or bonds. 
 
 Ah, but don t I, though? The savings 
 bank where my few dollars lie has invested 
 them in railroad bonds; the life-insurance 
 company that must look after my wife and 
 family if I die has invested its funds in 
 railroad bonds. 
 
 Whether I like it or not, the railroads 
 can not be hurt without hurting me : for 
 better or for worse, my prosperity is bound 
 up with theirs. 
 
 When the Apostle Paul was being sent 
 to Rome, the ship on which he sailed was 
 tossed by storms. 
 
 At the moment of greatest danger Paul 
 caught the sailors taking to the boats.
 
 We re All in the Same Boat $ 
 
 "Stop ! "he cried; and to the Centurion 
 he shouted: 
 
 " Except these abide in the ship, ye can 
 not be saved." 
 
 To-day the good ship World is being 
 tossed about by the greatest storm of its 
 existence. 
 
 And now, in the time of greatest dan 
 ger, I see some signs that are not good. 
 I see some capitalists taking to the boats 
 and saying to themselves: "We ll pull 
 out and play safe, no matter what may 
 happen to the ship." 
 
 I see some groups of labor taking to the 
 boats and saying to themselves: " When 
 the ship is sinking is a good time to strike 
 for higher pay." 
 
 And if the lesson of the war means any 
 thing, it seems to me to mean just this : 
 
 That the time has passed in the world 
 when any single group of men can ad 
 vance its interests permanently at the ex 
 pense of the common good. 
 
 Unless all of us, rich and poor, stick to 
 gether in the ship, then all of us are lost.
 
 26 It s a Good Old World 
 
 Individualism, as we used to understand 
 it, is dead. 
 
 " God hath made of one blood all na 
 tions." The same great life-giving cur 
 rent flows through the veins of every class 
 and race and people everywhere. And 
 the only way to advance the interests of 
 any class permanently is to purify and 
 strengthen the stream of life that ministers 
 to all. 
 
 That, it seems to me, is one great lesson 
 of this war.
 
 "WHAT! LITTLE JOHNNY 
 DUGAN?" 
 
 I VISITED once the boyhood home of 
 a great man. 
 
 His name will not go down in the his 
 tories, but he has made a high place for 
 himself in his profession; and in every 
 city important people are glad to be 
 counted among his friends. 
 
 I spoke of this to one of the residents 
 of the village who occupied a reserved seat 
 in front of the livery stable. 
 
 " It must be a matter of great pride to 
 your town to have produced a man like 
 that," I said. 
 
 " You mean Joe Hinkle? " he answered. 
 
 I nodded, and he uttered a scornful lit 
 tle laugh. 
 
 " Folks hereabouts don t think so much 
 of Joe Hinkle," he commented. " We 
 never supposed he d amount to anything. 
 Why, gosh, I knew him when he was run- 
 
 27
 
 28 It s a Good Old World 
 
 nin around with his pants held up by one 
 suspender." 
 
 I found more than one man in that com 
 munity to echo the sentiment. They could 
 not quit6 reconcile themselves to the 
 thought that a boy who had been one of 
 themselves should have travelled so far 
 beyond them. 
 
 Some years ago a song was popular in 
 the vaudeville houses. It recounted the 
 achievement of a certain John Dugan; and 
 after each stanza the chorus broke in with 
 an incredulous exclamation, " What! Lit 
 tle Johnny Dugan?" 
 
 " Little Johnny Dugan that little fel 
 low who used to be around here you don t 
 mean to tell me that he has been nominated 
 for Governor; or elected President of a 
 Bank or called to the Pastorate of a great 
 church. Not our little Johnny Dugan. 
 It can t be. Why we knew him when - 
 
 The song reflected accurately the atti 
 tude of too many home towns toward their 
 boys. Many great men have suffered 
 from that attitude: Jesus of Nazareth suf 
 fered, perhaps, most keenly of all.
 
 " Little Johnny Dugan? 29 
 
 After He had begun His ministry; after 
 He had performed a few miracles in the 
 cities near at hand and gained a consider 
 able reputation, " He went back to Naz 
 areth where He had been brought up." 
 
 One can picture the anticipation with 
 which He turned His face in that direction. 
 He could imagine the warmth of His old 
 neighbors greeting; the pride they would 
 feel in His success which had brought 
 credit to the town. 
 
 But there was no warmth. Only skep 
 ticism and jealousy and scorn. It was as 
 if their faces cried: 
 
 " We know you. Why you re only the 
 son of the carpenter, Joseph. You may 
 have fooled them in Capernaum, but you 
 can t fool us." 
 
 And there were those among them 
 whose envy and bitterness would have led 
 them to hurl Him to death. 
 
 There are two ways to look at the folks 
 around us, and particularly the younger 
 folks. 
 
 One way is to get into the habit of re 
 garding them as just common people,
 
 30 It s a Good Old World 
 
 destined to failure or to only mediocre 
 things; and to be surprised when they ex 
 ceed our expectations. 
 
 The other way is to form the habit of 
 thinking of them in the biggest and best 
 possible terms; of holding up the vision of 
 large achievement before them and letting 
 them understand that we expect them to 
 climb high. 
 
 Whichever attitude we adopt we re 
 bound to suffer certain disappointments; 
 but personally I prefer to be disappointed 
 by news of failure rather than by news of 
 success. 
 
 When I hear that Johnny Dugan has 
 been sent to jail for forgery I expect to ex 
 claim "What! Little Johnny Dugan?" 
 
 But when they tell me that the Repub 
 licans have nominated him for Governor 
 they need n t expect me to express surprise, 
 even though he has red hair and never 
 owned two suits of clothes as a boy. 
 
 Governor Johnny Dugan " Of course : 
 I always said you could n t keep that boy 
 down."
 
 FIRST HAVE A LOOK AT THE 
 FIGURES 
 
 AT the very beginning of the war Lord 
 Kitchener announced to his people 
 that it would last for at least three years. 
 
 I can remember now the editorial that 
 appeared in one of the most sedate and 
 respected of our newspapers, taking him to 
 task for his foolish statement. It was the 
 one-sided view of a purely military man, 
 said the editor. A three-years war was 
 unthinkable : the common sense of the 
 world would not permit it. 
 
 Kitchener is dead; but Kitchener was 
 right. 
 
 He was not a very brainy man. On the 
 contrary, his teachers found him rather 
 dull and listless: men who conversed with 
 him were embarrassed by his mental slow 
 ness. I will venture to say that the editor 
 who wrote that article criticizing him was 
 far more than his equal in all-round intelli 
 gence. But Kitchener s teachers noted 
 31
 
 32 It s a Good Old World 
 
 one bright spot in his otherwise indifferent 
 school-record : he was very good at mathe 
 matics. 
 
 I sometimes think there should have 
 been another Beatitude: Blessed are the 
 mathematicians, for they shall inherit the 
 earth. 
 
 It is the nature of us common folks to 
 live on hope instead of facts. The eyes 
 that we turn to the future are fitted with 
 rose-tinted glasses. We see coming events 
 shaping themselves as we would like to 
 have them shape themselves. The thing 
 that should be is the thing that will be, in 
 all our prophecies. 
 
 Those cynical gentlemen who make their 
 living on the stock-exchange recognize 
 that quality in us and trade upon it. The 
 public is always " bullish," in their par 
 lance by which they mean that every 
 common man of us believes that the shares 
 of stock which he has bought are sure some 
 day to sell higher. We hold on to our 
 shares, disregarding danger-signals, and 
 long after the professional has begun to 
 sell, we are buying still.
 
 First Look at the Figures 33 
 
 One reason why the prophet is never 
 honored in his own country is that the 
 true prophet must so often foretell unpleas 
 ant things ; and the world does not like to 
 face unpleasant things. 
 
 Hope springs eternal in the human breast; 
 Man never is, but always to be blest. 
 
 No man among us would want to see 
 that divine spark of hopefulness lost out 
 of human character. Nevertheless in our 
 optimism we would do well to remember 
 this that hope based on hard facts, on 
 a willingness to face the truth, is a thou 
 sand times more useful than hope based on 
 nothing but other hopes. 
 
 "Read Luke xiv:3i," wired Cecil 
 Rhodes to Dr. Jameson before the latter 
 set out on his celebrated raid. 
 
 And Jameson, calling for a Bible, turned 
 to that verse and read: 
 
 Or what king, going to make war against an 
 other king, sitteth not down first and consulteth 
 whether he be able with ten thousand to meet 
 him that cometh against him with twenty thou 
 sand?
 
 34 It s a Good Old World 
 
 It is a good verse to read occasionally in 
 days like these. 
 
 Apply it to your own affairs. Have 
 you had occasion lately to take account of 
 stock? Do you know in black and white 
 just what the chances for you and against 
 you are? 
 
 Suppose to-day you figure them up care 
 fully and courageously, giving the odds 
 against you full credit for their strength. 
 If you are the man you ought to be, you 
 will not be dismayed, no matter how strong 
 the adverse figures may appear. 
 
 Indeed, you will find fresh courage in 
 the fact that you have taken the full meas 
 ure of your enemies that the power 
 which you present against them is made 
 up not merely of hope, but of hope rein 
 forced and made vital by fact.
 
 WHY NOT USE OUR ISLAND 
 OF YAP? 
 
 OVER at Ellis Island they are holding 
 a big catch of anarchists and Bolshe 
 viks, waiting for a boat to Russia whose 
 owners don t care what kind of cargo it 
 carries. 
 
 They are not an attractive looking 
 crowd. 
 
 Most of them were poor, oppressed ref 
 ugees fleeing from government or hunger 
 when they came to us. We took them in, 
 warmed them, fed them, gave them more 
 money than they had ever had before; 
 and while we were busy in the front yard, 
 beating off a mob of Germans, they stayed 
 behind in our home and plotted to destroy 
 the furniture, turn out the members of the 
 family and keep the house and all our pos 
 sessions for themselves. 
 
 That sort of ingratitude the utter 
 
 35
 
 36 It s a Good Old World 
 
 lack of any moral sense is peculiarly ir 
 ritating. So our government thinks it 
 wise to send them back where they came 
 from lest we might some day lose our 
 self-control and be tempted to do them 
 bodily injury. 
 
 It" is one solution of the situation, but 
 not a very satisfactory one. They will be 
 just as bad neighbors in any other country 
 and there is always the chance that they 
 may escape and appear in our midst again. 
 
 A far better way would be to deal with 
 them as Milton tells us the first Bolshe 
 viks were dealt with. 
 
 Things in Heaven were going pretty 
 well when a crowd of ungrateful spirits, 
 headed by a gentleman named Satan, de 
 cided to overthrow the government and 
 seize the kingdom for themselves. 
 
 They were defeated but no attempt was 
 made to imprison them. 
 
 Instead they were given a secluded 
 place all their own and allowed to do with 
 it as they would. 
 
 It, was an absolutely free place. No 
 one had to work; all authority was re-
 
 Our Island of Yap 37 
 
 moved; there were none of the improve 
 ments that had existed in Heaven. 
 
 Of course they made a very distressing 
 discovery: they found that the worst pun 
 ishment that could be visited upon them 
 was the necessity of living with themselves. 
 
 "Which way I fly is Hell; myself am 
 Hell," Satan exclaimed. He would gladly 
 have made any surrender to get back to 
 the Heaven whose government he had 
 sought to overthrow. But the gate was 
 closed. 
 
 I understand we received a prize at the 
 Paris peace conference named the Island 
 of Yap. I have never seen it; I do not 
 know exactly where it is. But it sounds 
 like a fine place to send Bolsheviks. 
 
 Why not buy out the present inhabitants 
 and turn the Island over to the folks who 
 don t like the way we run things here and 
 are sure they could do it so much better? 
 
 Let them organize to suit themselves. 
 Have no house-rules except the rule that 
 no member may leave the island. 
 
 That seems to have been the divine plan 
 of dealing with their forebears. When
 
 38 It s a Good Old World 
 
 they rebelled against the Heaven God was 
 conducting, He gave them a Heaven of 
 their own. 
 
 And they promptly made it Hell.
 
 THE SECOND MILE 
 
 THERE is a strange fact about busi 
 ness that I have noticed many times. 
 
 It may be expressed in this apparently 
 senseless phrase: 
 
 A little too much is just enough. 
 
 A young man came to me yesterday to 
 tell me his boss had been fired. 
 
 I was sorry for the boss; glad for the 
 young man; and glad for myself. It 
 proved me, for once, a good prophet. 
 
 For the same young man had met me 
 three months ago and complained of his 
 lot. His boss was loafing on the job, he 
 said, leaving all the work of the depart 
 ment to him. " He gets the money, and 
 I do the work," the young man exclaimed. 
 "What shall I do?" 
 
 I told him to do more work. 
 
 " But I m doing too much already! " he 
 cried. 
 
 " I know it," I said. " Do more. Do 
 so much more that everybody in the office 
 
 39
 
 40 
 
 will notice it. Then see what happens." 
 
 Well, it happened. The boss is fired: 
 and he has the boss s job. 
 
 I read a great deal of biography: it is 
 my favorite kind of reading. And noth 
 ing impresses me so much as to see how 
 hard the great men of the world have 
 worked. 
 
 Almost without exception, they have 
 done more work than they needed to do: 
 more work that the average man would 
 have been willing to do : more than 
 enough. 
 
 Take this extract from a book recently- 
 published the life of Delane, the great 
 editor of the London " Times." 
 
 He read and edited himself everything that 
 was to appear in the paper next morning 
 telegrams, correspondents letters, the reports of 
 Parliament. He selected the letters addressed to 
 the " Times " that were to be published: he chose 
 the books that were to be reviewed : he was 
 scrupulous as to the way in which even small 
 matters of social interest were announced and 
 handled. This method of editing was infinitely 
 laborious. Even when the " Times " was much
 
 The Second Mile 41 
 
 less than its present size, the task of reading, cor 
 recting, and controlling from forty to fifty col 
 umns of new matter every night was immense. 
 But Delane never shrank from it. 
 
 I know editors getting fifty dollars a 
 week who would consider themselves 
 abused beyond endurance if any one sug 
 gested a day s work like Delane s. 
 
 Doubtless there were plenty of editors 
 in London in Delane s own day who 
 thought him a fool to work so hard. // 
 there were, we do not know their names. 
 
 Posterity seldom does know the names 
 of the men who are careful not to work too 
 hard. 
 
 Dickens began life as a stenographer. 
 
 How hard I worked at that tremendous short 
 hand and all the improvements pertaining to it! 
 [he exclaimed]. I will only add to what I have 
 already written of my perseverance at that time 
 of my life and the patient, continuous energy 
 which then began to be matured in me, and which 
 I know to be the strong point of my character, if 
 I have any strength at all, that there, on looking 
 back, I find the source of my success. 
 
 Bishop Butler worked twenty years on
 
 42 It s a Good Old World 
 
 his " Analogy," and then wanted to burn 
 it because he thought it not good enough. 
 George Eliot read more than a thousand 
 volumes before she began to write " Dan 
 iel Deronda." 
 
 Patient, continuous, ceaseless work. 
 What the ordinary writer would have 
 called too much the extraordinary writer 
 thought hardly enough. 
 
 There is a verse in that great text-book 
 on modern business, the Bible, which 
 sums it all up : 
 
 " And whosoever shall compel thee to 
 go a mile, go with him twain." 
 
 Whosoever hires you to work eight 
 hours, take advantage of him by working 
 a little longer: whosoever compels you to 
 do a certain task, do more than you con 
 tract to do. 
 
 It s the second mile that counts. All 
 biography is a record of that truth: all 
 business experience attests it. 
 
 The work that no man compels you to 
 do is the work for which the world pays 
 most. 
 
 A little too much is just enough.
 
 " WHICH KNEW NOT JOSEPH " 
 
 IT S a very old, old story; but it never 
 needed retelling so much as in this 
 present hour. 
 
 His name was Joseph, and he was car 
 ried away from home, and found himself 
 in Egypt, a strange new land. 
 
 Because he was good-looking, and intel 
 ligent, and a hard worker, he rose rapidly 
 until he became prime minister. Except 
 the king there was no other man in Egypt 
 more influential or more celebrated. 
 
 His relatives learned of his rise with 
 interest. They followed into Egypt, and 
 with his help they, too, prospered and were 
 likewise influential. 
 
 It looked as though they were perma 
 nently provided for; as though nothing 
 could happen to dislodge them. 
 
 But in a single generation ; yes, in a little 
 fraction of a generation, the unbelievable 
 occurred. The people who were so con 
 tented, so free from all concern, were 
 
 43
 
 44 It s a Good Old World 
 
 hurled from their high position into the 
 bitterness of slavery. 
 
 The thing that had happened to them 
 is recorded in a single sentence. Joseph 
 died. 
 
 " And there arose a new king in Egypt, 
 which knew not Joseph." 
 
 Only a few years since Joseph s death 
 and the new King knew nothing about him 
 and cared less. His name had been a by 
 word in the ancient world : but a few peo 
 ple passed away, some new ones were born, 
 and presto, he was as much forgotten as 
 though he had never lived. 
 
 I would print that story large upon the 
 office walls of thousands of men in these 
 changing days. 
 
 On the walls of business men, for ex 
 ample. 
 
 Only last week I talked with a man 
 who told me that his company controlled 
 seventy-five percent of the business in its 
 line a quarter of a century ago. 
 
 Today the company controls less than 
 twenty percent. The men who owned it 
 had grown self-satisfied; and almost over
 
 " Which Knew Not Joseph " 45 
 
 night a new, virile competitor arose, and 
 with advertising pushed the older company 
 from its place of power. 
 
 Our fathers knew that older company 
 well; but you and I have hardly heard its 
 name. 
 
 A new generation has arisen, a new king, 
 which knows not Joseph. 
 
 I would print it on the walls of writers, 
 and of preachers, and of law-makers, and 
 of every man who wants to see the race 
 progress. 
 
 You think that you have told your story 
 to the world, and that therefore your task 
 is done. I tell you that over night a new 
 world has been born that has never heard 
 your story. 
 
 You think because the Gospel has been 
 preached for 1,900 years that by that 
 preaching the race must automatically be 
 saved. 
 
 Every sermon preached as long ago 
 as yesterday is already dead. 
 
 A little slackening of the effort; a little 
 moment of self-satisfaction, and all the 
 momentum gained by years of work is lost.
 
 46 // s a Good Old World 
 
 For the world moves swifter today than 
 ever before in its history. And even in 
 the very instant of your self-content, the 
 silence is shattered by the trampling of 
 new feet. 
 
 Behold another generation has come, a 
 new king who knows no precedents, in 
 whose experience nothing is fixed: 
 
 A king in whose sight yesterday has been 
 cold a thousand years; a king which knows 
 not Joseph.
 
 HE CALLED THE PRESIDENT 
 " CHARLEY " 
 
 SOME weeks ago I left New York, 
 where the talk was all of labor 
 troubles and industrial unrest. Employ 
 ers were locking the doors against their 
 workmen; and labor leaders were calling 
 out their followers on strike. 
 
 I went up into the middle of the State to 
 an industrial city of twenty-two thousand 
 people. 
 
 The vice-president of one of the large 
 plants there took me around in his auto 
 mobile. 
 
 " Any labor trouble? " I asked. 
 
 " Not a bit." 
 
 " Ever had a strike? " 
 
 " Not in seventy-five years. Why, if 
 we did n t read the newspapers, we would 
 hardly know what the word means." 
 
 Later in the afternoon I sat in the office 
 of the president of another factory in the 
 
 47
 
 48 // s a Good Old World 
 
 same city. It is no small plant ; the owners 
 are just breaking ground for an addition 
 that will cost more than a million dollars. 
 Only one other company in its line does a 
 larger annual business. 
 
 As I sat talking with the president, the 
 door opened and the shipping-clerk came 
 In. 
 
 " Shall we prepay that shipment to 
 Louisville, Charley?" the shipping-clerk 
 asked. 
 
 " We will this time, Al," the president 
 replied. 
 
 I gasped. A concern whose goods are 
 sold from coast to coast, a concern whose 
 owners can build a million-dollar addition 
 without asking any outside help ! And 
 the shipping-clerk calls the president 
 "Charley!" 
 
 In that instant a big light dawned for 
 me. I got a picture of a social organiza 
 tion far different from anything we resi 
 dents of the big cities know. 
 
 Charley, the president, owns his own 
 home; so does Al, the shipping-clerk. 
 Charley raises vegetables in the back-yard,
 
 He Called the President 49 
 
 to cut down his cost of living. So also 
 does Al. 
 
 Charley s children go to the same school 
 with Al s. Al s wife rides out occasion 
 ally with Charley s in the automobile. 
 And Charley s wife calls on Al s when 
 there is a new baby, or one of the older 
 children is sick. 
 
 No jealousy, no suspicion. No profi 
 teering on one side, or holding back on the 
 other. The company is our company, not 
 the company, to every man and woman 
 in it. 
 
 From our present social troubles we are 
 bound to reap some very large rewards. 
 The troubles look black enough at times. 
 It seems to have been decreed by Provi 
 dence that the process of birth should never 
 take place without the accompaniment of 
 suffering and pain and tears. And it is a 
 process of birth, not of death, that we are 
 passing through in this reconstruction 
 period. Out of it is going to come a new 
 world a world in which things will be 
 better for the average man than they ever 
 were before.
 
 50 It s a Good Old World 
 
 One of the developments, in my judg 
 ment, will be the removal of a good many 
 industries from the smoke-laden air of the 
 cities to the pure air of the country. 
 
 Where every family can have a home 
 and a garden, and a man is a personality to 
 his employer, not a number. 
 
 Where it is harder to forget that the 
 business of industry is to create human 
 happiness as well as to multiply wealth. 
 
 Where men stand side by side in mutual 
 appreciation and respect 
 
 And even a shipping-clerk named " Al " 
 can call the president " Charley."
 
 RECENTLY a young man wrote to 
 ask me how he could borrow a sum 
 of money for a certain purpose. 
 
 And I suggested that before he sought 
 to borrow any money, he should read the 
 biographies of Benjamin Disraeli and Bal 
 zac. 
 
 I would advise any young man who con 
 templates running in debt to read these two 
 books. 
 
 Here is a note from Disraeli s diary, De 
 cember 5, 1836. What a tragic vision it 
 presents one of the most brilliant men 
 in England hesitating to accept a dinner- 
 invitation for fear of being arrested for 
 debt! He writes: 
 
 "Our county Conservative Dinner, which 
 
 will be the most important assembly of 
 
 its kind yet held, takes place on the 9th 
 
 inst. I have been requested to move the 
 
 Si
 
 52 It s a Good Old World 
 
 principal toast The House of Lords. I 
 trust there is no danger of my being 
 nabbed, . . . inasmuch as, in all proba 
 bility, I am addressing my future constit 
 uents." 
 
 In his later years Disraeli wrote these 
 words: 
 
 If youth but knew the fatal misery 
 they are entailing on themselves the mo 
 ment they accept a pecuniary credit to 
 which they are not entitled, how they 
 would start in their career! How pale 
 they would turn ! How they would trem 
 ble and clasp their hands in agony at the 
 precipice on which they are disporting! 
 Debt . . . hath a small beginning but a 
 giant s growth and strength. When we 
 make the monster, we make our master, 
 who haunts us at all hours and shakes his 
 whip of scorpions forever in our sight. 
 Faustus, when he signed the bond with 
 blood, did not secure a doom more terrific." 
 
 How many hours of bitter agony and 
 regret are mirrored in that paragraph! 
 
 Balzac s life is even more pitiable. I 
 know of no more pathetic picture in all
 
 A Course of Reading 53 
 
 history than that of this great genius, toil 
 ing relentlessly at his desk from two 
 o clock in the morning, adding story to 
 story and novel to novel afraid to pause 
 for even a single hour lest his creditors 
 close in upon him. 
 
 There are, of course, exceptional cir 
 cumstances under which a young man is 
 justified in running into debt. His debt 
 may secure an education, for example, and 
 so add greatly to his earning power. But 
 be very slow to assume that your circum 
 stances are exceptional. 
 
 Before you decide that you are justified 
 in running into debt, read the lives of these 
 two men, and the lives of Cicero, William 
 IV, Bret Harte, Eugene Field and Mark 
 Twain. They spent the best years of their 
 lives in paying for dead horses. Each 
 managed to be great in spite of constant, 
 irritating financial worry. 
 
 But the world will never know how much 
 greater they might have been had their 
 minds been wholly freed for constructive 
 work instead of burdened with the misery 
 of debt.
 
 ON MEETING AN INSIG 
 NIFICANT MAN 
 
 WE had invited some friends to spend 
 the evening with us ; and when they 
 arrived, he was with them. Rather short, 
 and almost bald he was, and his hand, 
 when he offered it, was soft and ladylike. 
 Altogether, he seemed to me about as in 
 significant a bit of humanity as I had re 
 cently encountered. 
 
 I rather resented the fact that he had 
 come along to destroy the balance of the 
 party; and for some time we quite ignored 
 him in the conversation. Then, out of 
 common politeness, we addressed some 
 question to him about the war. And an 
 amazing thing took place. The little man 
 spoke up with an amount of information 
 and a calm confidence that were astonish 
 ing. 
 
 We led him on from point to point; and 
 always he answered modestly, but with 
 
 54
 
 An Insignificant Man 55 
 
 facts that gripped our interest. From that 
 moment the conversation of the evening 
 centered about him. 
 
 " Who is he? " I asked my friend in a 
 whisper as he prepared to go. 
 
 And he answered: "Why, don t you 
 know? That is Jones, one of the greatest 
 chemists in this country. The Govern 
 ment sent for him when war was declared, 
 and he probably knows as much about the 
 real inside history of the past two years 
 as any man in the United States." 
 
 I only hoped, as I bade him good night, 
 that he had not guessed, from my earlier 
 attitude, how very insignificant and un 
 worthy of attention I had considered him. 
 
 Once upon a time an efficiency expert 
 boasted to me that a single glance was 
 enough to form his judgment of a man. 
 No matter what the circumstances of the 
 meeting, he said, he could rely upon his 
 first impression. 
 
 Perhaps he was right; but I doubt it. 
 Would he, I wonder, have recognized in 
 the shabby little lieutenant named Bona 
 parte, wandering the streets of Paris, the
 
 56 It s a Good Old World 
 
 man of destiny who was to conquer 
 Europe? 
 
 If he had stood on the sidewalk of Phila 
 delphia when a crude lad walked by with 
 a loaf of bread under each arm, would he 
 have seen beneath that rough attire the 
 philosopher and statesman Franklin? 
 
 What about U. S. Grant, the middle- 
 aged failure, delivering wood in St. Louis 
 unkempt, unshaven, regarded by his 
 neighbors as a ne er-do-well? 
 
 God sends great souls into the world 
 clothed oftentimes in curious attire. And 
 one misses much good-fellowship who 
 thinks that from what men seem to be he 
 can determine offhand what they are. 
 
 Along a country road in Palestine a 
 group of tired men walked one afternoon 
 toward sundown. 
 
 " Go ahead to the next village," said 
 their Leader, " and see if there we may find 
 a place to sleep." 
 
 After a little time they returned to say 
 that the village would not receive them. 
 
 It was a busy day in the village; the in 
 habitants were preoccupied and proud :
 
 An Insignificant Man 57 
 
 what were a few travel-stained pilgrims to 
 them! They trusted their first impres 
 sion; it was a group of weary fishermen 
 whom they supposed they had refused. 
 
 And so they lost for themselves and 
 their village forever the opportunity to en 
 tertain His disciples and their Lord.
 
 IT S A MOVING PICTURE WORLD, 
 
 AND THE FILM CHANGES 
 
 EVERY FEW MINUTES 
 
 IF some one had asked me on a certain 
 day in 1915 to name three permanent 
 human institutions, I might have answered: 
 
 The Papacy: the Bank of England: the 
 Czar of Russia. 
 
 Maybe, on consideration, I could have 
 given a better answer; but offhand that 
 sounds fairly reasonable. 
 
 At nine o clock that morning, so far as 
 we knew, the Czar of all the Russias was 
 as firm on his throne as Gibraltar. In my 
 morning paper at least, there was no hint 
 to the contrary. 
 
 And at six o clock we opened our eve 
 ning papers to discover him a prisoner, and 
 Russia on the threshold of immediate de 
 mocracy. 
 
 It was the kind of mental shock that is 
 good for us: the war was full of such 
 shocks. 
 
 58
 
 A Moving Picture World 59 
 
 We learned from it, in more dramatic 
 fashion than ever before, this very neces 
 sary truth that nothing is fixed, nothing 
 is sure, nothing is changeless, in this whole 
 wide world. 
 
 A man told me the other day about a 
 conversation he once held with Jay Gould. 
 
 Gould got up from his desk, walked over 
 to the wall, and pointing to a map of the 
 United States, put his finger on the Mis 
 souri Pacific Railroad. 
 
 " There," he said, " is the finest railroad 
 property in the United States." 
 
 That conversation took place only about 
 a quarter of a century ago. A few months 
 ago the common stock of the Missouri Pa 
 cific sold down to something like four dol 
 lars, and the holders of it paid an assess 
 ment of fifty dollars a share to rehabilitate 
 the road. 
 
 So confident were the shrewd investors 
 of New England in the everlasting pros 
 perity of the New York, New Haven & 
 Hartford that they invested the funds of 
 widows and orphans and institutions in its 
 stock. Ten years ago there was not a
 
 60 It s a Good Old World 
 
 banker in the United States who would 
 have believed that stock could ever crum 
 ble away. 
 
 But the impossible happened : the 
 change came. 
 
 Suppose a man graduating from college 
 at any time in the past twenty-five years 
 had wanted to pick out an absolutely safe 
 profession, one into which no unexpected 
 change could possibly enter, what pro 
 fession would he have chosen? 
 
 Teaching in a college or university, prob 
 ably. 
 
 University professors are almost never 
 discharged: they are sure of work as long 
 as children continue to be born into the 
 world; and in old age they are taken care 
 of by Carnegie pensions. 
 
 So he might have argued to himself. 
 
 But, behold, there comes a world war, 
 taking away from a quarter to two-thirds 
 of the students of our colleges with their 
 tuition fees. The war ends; the students 
 return; but the dollar has so shrunk in pur 
 chasing power that every college professor
 
 A Moving Picture World 61 
 
 in the land finds his secure living made 
 suddenly precarious. 
 
 When Darwin was making his studies 
 in evolution, working out the law by which 
 lower forms changed through the ages into 
 higher, he came across certain forms of 
 life that, for some reason or other, had 
 been incapable of change. 
 
 Their environment had shifted, but they 
 failed to adapt themselves to the new en 
 vironment. 
 
 So the tide of progress moved on and 
 left them, stranded wrecks on the shore. 
 
 The business world is full of men of that 
 sort. They say to themselves: " I know 
 this job well enough to hold it the rest of 
 my life. I can afford to take things a lit 
 tle easier. Nothing can happen now to 
 change my life." 
 
 So, gradually, they lose the power of 
 adaptation, which is the power of growth. 
 
 They are perfectly typified by the man 
 described in the Bible, who said to his soul : 
 
 " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up 
 for many years : take thine ease."
 
 62 It j 
 
 That night he died. 
 
 The one change which he had not fore 
 seen came to him and found him un 
 prepared.
 
 ARE YOU INDUSTRIOUS, OR 
 MERELY BUSY? 
 
 1 PRESUME the stage is partly re 
 sponsible for it. Or perhaps the ear 
 nest young novelists who live in small 
 towns and write novels about American 
 business. 
 
 Anyway, some one or something has 
 given us a portrait of the Successful Ameri 
 can Business Man that is unlike any suc 
 cessful American business man whom I 
 have ever happened to meet. 
 
 Our portrait represents him as snapping 
 orders through a telephone while he 
 munches his breakfast, stopping his auto 
 mobile half way downtown to get off a 
 couple of telegrams, rushing through a 
 breathless day at the office, and dictating 
 letters in his limousine all the way home. 
 
 As a matter of fact, nothing has im 
 pressed me as more characteristic of really 
 big men than a certain suggestion of 
 leisure, a kind of elevation above the lit- 
 63
 
 64 
 
 tie maelstrom of detail in which the aver 
 age man is caught up and whirled through 
 the day. 
 
 He does big business without appearing 
 too busy. You know, from the record of 
 his achievements, that he must get through 
 an enormous amount of work in a day: yet 
 there seems to be nothing on his mind, 
 when you meet him, but the subject you 
 have come to discuss: and he apparently 
 has all the time that is needed to discuss it. 
 
 I talked one day with President Wilson. 
 His desk was piled with commissions and 
 bills waiting to be signed; it was a time of 
 great perplexity in foreign relations. I 
 had rather expected to be warned by his 
 secretary that I must leave in ten minutes, 
 and to have those ten minutes frequently 
 interrupted. 
 
 But the President talked for forty min 
 utes. He pushed back from his desk and 
 spoke of this thing and that, with no evi 
 dence of preoccupation, no more sign of 
 being rushed or ridden by his job, than as 
 if we were out fishing together, with the 
 whole day before us.
 
 Are You Industrious? 65 
 
 Lincoln, of course, is the supreme exam 
 ple of the really great man s ability to 
 carry his burden easily, with no suggestion 
 of desperate haste. 
 
 The members of his Cabinet never grew 
 fully reconciled to his habit of stopping on 
 his way to Cabinet meetings to play a mo 
 ment with Tad and his goat. 
 
 They were so terribly busy themselves 
 they could not understand a man who 
 could carry a greater load, and yet have 
 plenty of time to be friendly and good- 
 natured and sympathetic. 
 
 Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vi 
 tality [says Stevenson] ; while a faculty for idle 
 ness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense 
 of personal identity. There are dead-alive, hack 
 neyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of 
 living except in the exercise of some conventional 
 occupation. Bring those fellows into the coun 
 try, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how 
 they pine for their desk or their study. They 
 can not be idle. Their nature is not generous 
 enough, and they pass in a sort of coma those 
 hours which are not dedicated to furious moiling 
 in the gold mill. When they do not require to
 
 66 It s a Good Old World 
 
 go to the office, they are not hungry and have no 
 mind to drink; the whole breathing world is a 
 blank to them. This does not appear to me as 
 being Success in Life. 
 
 Life is a good deal like a journey on a 
 train. 
 
 Most of us go through with it huddled 
 in the same seat, our noses buried in our 
 work. 
 
 And once in a while we glance up rather 
 enviously at the big, genial-looking man 
 across the aisle. 
 
 He, too, works. But every time the 
 train stops to change engines, he seems to 
 find time to get out for a little stroll on 
 the platform. His work has not pre 
 vented him from having some fun with 
 his kid, and learning a good deal about the 
 country through which he is passing, and 
 making some good friends on the trip. 
 
 We ask who he is, and learn that he is a 
 Captain of Industry. 
 
 It is an appropriate title. He captains 
 his industry commands it: it does not 
 command him. He organizes it, and fits 
 it into its proper place in his scheme of
 
 Are You Industrious? 67 
 
 life. He does not let it interfere with 
 the important business of being sometimes 
 idle. 
 
 He has learned to be effective and still 
 unhurried. 
 
 To be industrious without being busy.
 
 IF YOU ARE NOT TOO CAREFUL 
 WHO GETS THE CREDIT 
 
 YESTERDAY a man travelled two 
 miles out of his way, and wasted two 
 hours of his time, in order to call on me 
 and make a complaint. 
 
 We had published a photograph taken 
 by him, and had failed to put his name as 
 the photographer in little type under 
 neath. 
 
 It was our mistake, and I told him I was 
 sorry about it: but as he left I thought to 
 myself, " My dear sir, I have your meas 
 ure to a quarter of an inch." 
 
 And I felt like warning him to be care 
 ful, in walking over the subway gratings, 
 lest he should drop through one of the 
 cracks. 
 
 For it is only little men, as I have ob 
 served, who are so tremendously concerned 
 about the precise allotment of credit in 
 this world. 
 
 68
 
 I can not imagine Lincoln walking two 
 miles out of his way to protest because 
 his name had not been printed in little 
 type. 
 
 He formed a Cabinet of men better 
 known nationally than himself: four of 
 them were sure that they were far greater 
 than he. 
 
 Seward wrote to his wife: " Only one 
 man can save the Union, and I am the 
 man." 
 
 Stanton said to a friend who asked him 
 what he was going to do in the Cabinet: 
 " I am going to make Abe Lincoln Presi 
 dent of the United States." 
 
 Chase from the Treasury Department 
 conducted an open campaign for Lincoln s 
 defeat and his own nomination to the Pres 
 idency. 
 
 Yet Lincoln aware of it all pur 
 sued his quiet way untroubled. He meant 
 to save the Union; and if he could do it 
 by submitting to Stanton s abuse, he would 
 submit gladly. 
 
 If he could do it by suffering some per 
 sonal humiliation at the hands of McClel-
 
 70 It s a Good Old World 
 
 Ian and Fremont, it was a price he was 
 glad to pay. 
 
 If Seward or Stanton or Chase were to 
 have the credit when the thing was done, 
 he did not care. The important thing was 
 to get it done, let the credit fall where it 
 might. 
 
 Have you read the story of Harriman s 
 fight to save the Imperial Valley, as told 
 by George Kennan? 
 
 In 1907 the Colorado River overflowed 
 its banks, and threatened to destroy the 
 valley. Though Harriman s railroads did 
 not own any of the land in the valley, Har- 
 riman jumped in and spent $1,500,000 to 
 stem the flood. 
 
 When it became evident that another 
 million or more would be required, he tele 
 graphed President Roosevelt, and the 
 President told him to go ahead, and prac 
 tically assured him that Congress would 
 reimburse him. 
 
 Harriman saved the valley; Roosevelt 
 recommended his reimbursement; but Con 
 gress never acted on the recommendation,
 
 and Harriman s roads have never to this 
 day been reimbursed. 
 
 Shortly before his death, Harriman re 
 visited the valley, and was met by a re 
 porter. 
 
 " Mr. Harriman, the Government 
 has n t paid you that money," said the re 
 porter, " and your work does not seem to 
 be duly appreciated; do you not, under 
 the circumstances, regret having made this 
 large expenditure?" 
 
 " No," replied Mr. Harriman. " The 
 valley was worth saving, was n t it? " 
 
 " Yes," said the reporter. 
 
 " Then we have the satisfaction of 
 knowing that we saved it, have n t we? " 
 
 Not much reward, you say, for the ex 
 penditure of two or three million dollars. 
 But it s the only kind of reward that big 
 men really value. 
 
 There is a wise old saying to this effect: 
 " A great deal of good can be done in 
 the world, if one is not too careful who 
 gets the credit." 
 
 If your object in life is to get credit,
 
 72 It s a Good Old World 
 
 you 11 probably get it, if you work hard 
 enough. 
 
 But don t be too much surprised and 
 disappointed when some chap who just 
 went ahead and did the thing, without 
 thinking of the credit, winds up with more 
 medals on his chest than you, with all 
 your striving, have collected on yours.
 
 THE REFLECTIONS OF A 
 GRIZZLED VOTER 
 
 1WENT down to the fire-house in my 
 precinct on the first Tuesday of No 
 vember, and voted for woman suffrage, as 
 has been my custom all these years. 
 
 And, to my astonishment, the next morn 
 ing I read in the newspaper that it had 
 carried. 
 
 I say astonishment, because almost noth 
 ing that I vote for ever does carry. On 
 the day after election I look over the pa 
 pers, and if a single Road Commissioner 
 or Supervisor of the Poor on my ticket has 
 pulled through, I consider that it has been 
 a successful election for me. 
 
 Like Truth, I have grown accustomed 
 to being crushed to earth. It doesn t 
 worry me as much as it used to. 
 
 For, having watched many elections and 
 listened to many campaign promises, I 
 have noticed this that the progress of 
 
 73
 
 74 It s a Good Old World 
 
 the world is n t permanently affected very 
 much by turning one set of politicians out 
 and putting another set in. 
 
 I continue to vote, as intelligently as I 
 can; but I have ceased to feel as enthus 
 iastic as I used to feel about the power of 
 votes to usher in the millennium. 
 
 Maybe it s old age creeping on me; 
 maybe I m just plain old-fashioned. But 
 I just can t believe that anything is finally 
 going to turn the trick of saving the world 
 but simple individual goodness. 
 
 It was Napoleon a very successful 
 politician who said: 
 
 Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself 
 founded empires. But on what did we rest the 
 creation of our genius? Upon sheer force. 
 Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love: 
 and at this hour millions of men will die for him. 
 
 The empires, with all their machinery 
 of election and of legislation, have passed 
 away, leaving hardly a trace behind. 
 
 The Carpenter held no elections : He 
 was president of nothing; secretary of 
 nothing; He formed no committees, made
 
 A Grizzled Voter 75 
 
 no stump speeches, cast no vote. Yet the 
 influence of His simple goodness has out 
 lived all the empires of the earth, and 
 stands to-day the most potent force for 
 righteousness and progress in the world. 
 
 I lunched the other day with a cele 
 brated war correspondent, just back from 
 Europe. 
 
 There s just one thing I m sure of," 
 he said. " Everything else about the war 
 and the future of the world is problemati 
 cal. But this I know the world must 
 be run by heart power after this. We Ve 
 tried brain power, and it does n t work. 
 The Germans developed it to its highest 
 point of efficiency, and we have the results 
 to-day. It s got to be heart power from 
 now on, or we re all in; that s all." 
 
 And the home is the dynamo out of 
 which heart power flows. 
 
 There were thousands of agitators and 
 reformers at work in the United States in 
 the days before the Civil War. They 
 doubtless did much good work. But all 
 their influence added together did not equal 
 that of the simple woman in a log cabin
 
 76 It s a Good Old World 
 
 / 
 who gave us Abraham Lincoln, with a 
 
 heart power great enough to reunite his 
 fellow countrymen. 
 
 I welcome my sisters to the ballot-box. 
 They will clog up the polling place a little 
 more, and make me a bit later in getting 
 down to the office on election day. But 
 I 11 forgive them all that, and I 11 vote 
 for all the reforms they think are going 
 to do any good, so long as they will con 
 tinue to give us sons like the Carpenter 
 and Lincoln. 
 
 Meantime, when their pet reforms and 
 candidates are defeated as often they 
 will be < let me commend to them Sam 
 Walter Foss: 
 
 Let me live in a house by the side of the road, 
 
 Where the race of men go by 
 
 The men who are good, and the men who are bad, 
 
 As good and as bad as I. 
 
 I would not sit in the scorner s seat, 
 
 Or hurl the cynic s ban; 
 
 Let me live in a house by the side of the road 
 
 And be a friend to man. 
 
 Reforms will come and go : Truth will
 
 A Grizzled Voter 77 
 
 keep right on being crushed and rising 
 again. Politicians will promise and fail 
 to make good. Movements will wax and 
 wane. But if enough of us build our 
 houses alongside of Sam s, we 11 gradually 
 turn this old alleyway of a world into a 
 nice, respectable street, no matter who car 
 ries our precinct for alderman.
 
 "THEY SAY" HAS MADE MANY 
 
 A GOOD MAN GOOD FOR 
 
 NOTHING 
 
 THE first steamboats built in America 
 looked like wooden boxes with 
 pointed ends. 
 
 Colonel John Stevens, their designer, 
 concentrated his attention on his engines. 
 
 One day his son Robert conceived the 
 notion that the boats would make better 
 time if their bows were longer and more 
 sloping. - He designed a false bow of this 
 sort, and built it on to a ship called the 
 New Philadelphia, which slipped through 
 the water so much more easily thereafter 
 that it attained the great speed of thirteen 
 and a half miles an hour. 
 
 Robert had to build his bow almost with 
 his own hands. 
 
 He took it to his ship-builders, Messrs. 
 Brown & Bell, and asked them to do it for 
 him. But Mr. Bell declined. 
 78
 
 " They Say " 79 
 
 " That bow will be called Bell s nose," he 
 said, " and I shall be a general laughing 
 stock. 9 
 
 So a man who might have played a 
 worthy part in the development of a great 
 industry in America lost one big chance be 
 cause he was afraid of the possible ridi 
 cule of people whose opinion, one way or 
 the other, was worthless. 
 
 How many utterly drab and uninterest 
 ing people are there in the world who 
 might have developed real personalities 
 if they had only had courage to do and be 
 something different from the crowd. 
 
 Every single forward step in history has 
 been taken over the bodies of empty- 
 headed fools who giggled and snickered. 
 
 Fulton, needing a paltry $1,000 to com 
 plete the building of his first steamboat, at 
 length managed to secure it. But the 
 friends who lent it asked that their names 
 be withheld from the public lest it should 
 be known that they had any connection 
 with so foolhardy an enterprise. 
 
 As I had occasion daily to pass to and from 
 the ship-yard where my boat was in progress [he
 
 8o It s a Good Old World 
 
 says], I often loitered near the groups of 
 strangers, and heard various inquiries as to the 
 object of this new vehicle. The language was 
 uniformly that of scorn, sneer, or ridicule. The 
 loud laugh often rose at my expense; the dry 
 jest ; the wise calculation of losses or expendi 
 tures; the dull but endless repetition of " Fulton s 
 Folly." Never did a single encouraging remark, 
 a bright hope, a warm wish cross my path. 
 
 Governor De Witt Clinton, pushing 
 through the construction of the Erie Canal, 
 which was so important a factor in the 
 early upbuilding of the country, was hooted 
 with cries of " Clinton s Big Ditch " and 
 " Clinton s Folly." 
 
 Alaska, which has paid for itself so many 
 hundred times over, was derisively referred 
 to as " Seward s Ice-Box " when that 
 courageous statesman negotiated for its 
 purchase from Russia. 
 
 Remember this if you would accomplish 
 anything worth while : The crowd is gen 
 erally good-natured, but its judgments are 
 seldom the judgments of history. 
 
 If you have anything really valuable to 
 contribute to the world, it will come
 
 "They Say" 81 
 
 through the expression of your own per 
 sonality^ that single spark of divinity 
 that sets you off and makes you different 
 from every other living creature. 
 
 A noted English schoolmaster used to 
 have as his motto : 
 
 Never explain, never retract, never 
 apologize. Get it> done and let them howl. 
 
 It is a motto not altogether to be com 
 mended. He who governs his life accord 
 ing to it will not be an agreeable companion 
 or accomplish the largest service under a 
 government where the will of the majority 
 must finally prevail. 
 
 But there is a rugged spirit of inde 
 pendence embedded in it that many men 
 would do well to adopt. 
 
 You can afford to have a decent regard 
 for public opinion : but you can never afford 
 to let yourself get into the pathetic condi 
 tion where what they say or may say will 
 keep you from doing what ought to be 
 done. 
 
 It s a hopeless condition to be in, be 
 cause what they say to-day is not what 
 they said yesterday or will say to-morrow.
 
 82 It s a Good Old World 
 
 " For John the Baptist came neither eat 
 ing bread nor drinking wine," said Jesus, 
 " and ye say, He hath a devil. 
 
 " The Son of Man is come eating and 
 drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous 
 man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publi 
 cans and sinners."
 
 YOU HAVE KNOWN ABOUT HIM 
 
 ALL THESE YEARS: BUT HAVE 
 
 YOU REALLY KNOWN HIM? 
 
 SINCE we stand upon the threshold of 
 His birthday, let me introduce you to 
 the most attractive, most delightful young 
 man in the world. 
 
 You have never known Him as he really 
 is: all the pictures ever drawn misrepre 
 sent Him. They have made Him out a 
 weakling, a woman s features with a beard 
 He who for years swung an adz and 
 drove a saw through heavy timbers, who 
 for long days tramped the borders of His 
 loved lake, and would not sleep indoors 
 if He could slip away into His garden. 
 
 An outdoor man He was, a man s man 
 who could stand watch when all His 
 friends deserted Him in sleep, and could 
 face the tempest in a little boat calm-eyed 
 and unafraid. 
 
 83
 
 84 It s a Good Old World 
 
 They have called Him a pacifist. How 
 could they forget that day, I wonder, when 
 in the midst of the hard-faced crowd He 
 stood, and braiding a little whip, drove 
 them out before Him? 
 
 Think you it was only the glance of 
 righteous anger in His eye that sent them 
 scurrying? I tell you that behind that lit 
 tle whip were muscles of iron, made strong 
 by many years of labor, and a spirit that 
 never once knew fear, not even in the pres 
 ence of the cross. 
 
 I have met men long-faced and sorrow 
 ful, wagging their heads bitterly over the 
 evil of the world, and by their very joy- 
 lessness adding to that evil. And in their 
 hearts they supposed that they were rep 
 resenting Him, 
 
 Think of it representing Him, to 
 whom little children flocked with joyous 
 laughter, and men, beseeching Him to have 
 dinner with them in their homes. 
 
 You remember the first of His miracles 
 or perhaps you do not. Too often 
 those who claim His name have preferred 
 to forget that miracle. It does not fit in
 
 You Have Known About Him 85 
 
 with the picture of Him that they have 
 wrought. 
 
 He was at a wedding party with His 
 mother and some friends where the merri 
 ment ran high. In the midst of it they 
 came to Him in consternation. The wine 
 had given out. 
 
 So He performed His first miracle. 
 Just to save a hostess from embarrassment 
 and He thought it worth a miracle. 
 Just to save a group of simple folk from 
 having their hour of joy cut short it 
 was for such a cause, He thought, that His 
 divine power had been intrusted to Him. 
 
 No one ever felt His goodness a cloud 
 upon the company. No one ever laughed 
 less heartily because He had joined the 
 group. His was the gospel of joyfulness; 
 His the message that the God of men 
 would have them travel happily with Him, 
 as children by a Father s side, not as 
 servants shuffling behind. 
 
 They killed Him, of course, in the end, 
 and sometimes I am almost glad glad 
 that He died at thirty-three, with youth 
 still athrob in His veins, and never an
 
 86 It s a Good Old World 
 
 illusion lost or an ideal dimmed by age. 
 
 Claim Him, you who are young and 
 love life; let no man dispute your claim. 
 
 For He too was young and is; He too 
 loved laughter and life. 
 
 Old age and the creeds have had Him 
 too long: I offer Him now to you not in 
 creed but in truth Jesus of Nazareth, 
 the joyous companion, the young man 
 whom young men can love.
 
 BE SURE YOU RE RIGHT AND 
 THEN DON T DO IT 
 
 IN Washington the other day I called on 
 a high official of the Government, 
 whose department has come in for a great 
 deal of praise in the last few months. 
 
 I found him in his office, well and happy. 
 And I said to him: 
 
 When I called on you three years ago, 
 you had just made a move that everybody 
 thought was absolutely indefensible. In 
 the Senate and House they were calling 
 for your resignation. Various cities sent 
 resolutions to the President demanding 
 that a fit man be substituted in your stead. 
 
 That was three years ago and now 
 you seem to be in danger of becoming a 
 really popular character." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " One thing a man has to learn in public 
 office," he said, " is that criticism is inevi 
 table. The man who lets his judgment be 
 87
 
 88 It s a Good Old World 
 
 deflected from day to day by what the peo 
 ple think or say, will go on the rocks as 
 sure as shooting. 
 
 " A man must trust his own judgment 
 and conscience, and go ahead. Some day, 
 if he has been true, the facts will come to 
 light and justify him." 
 
 Coming back on the train, I picked up 
 Ida Tarbell s "Life of Lincoln," and read 
 again the story of those bitter years of 
 Civil War. 
 
 In the West was Fremont, brilliant, im 
 petuous, conceited the popular idol. 
 Without consultation or authority from the 
 President, he issued in his own name an 
 Emancipation Proclamation. It was im 
 mensely popular in the North. Newspa 
 pers and public speakers hailed it as a 
 stroke of statesmanship, and its author as 
 the man of vision who dared while the 
 President weakly hesitated. 
 
 The country did not know the full facts : 
 Lincoln did. He knew that such a procla 
 mation, issued at that hour, would do far 
 greater harm than good. It would not 
 help to save the Union; and it might throw
 
 Be Sure You re Right 89 
 
 into the arms of the Confederacy those 
 border States which had it in their power 
 to win the war. 
 
 So he modified the proclamation. 
 
 When his order was made public, says 
 Miss Tarbell, " a perfect storm of denun 
 ciation broke over the President. The 
 whole North felt outraged. There was 
 talk of impeaching Lincoln and replacing 
 him with Fremont. Great newspapers 
 criticized him, warning him to learn where 
 he was tending. Influential men in all pro 
 fessions spoke bitterly of his action. 
 
 " How many times, wrote James Rus 
 sell Lowell, are we to save Kentucky and 
 lose our self-respect? 
 
 And all the time Lincoln, knowing better 
 than any of his critics, having in his own 
 mind his own plan for an Emancipation 
 Proclamation, held his peace, enduring the 
 criticism, waiting for the proper hour. 
 
 Passages like that make me feel very 
 reticent about exercising my divine right, 
 as an American citizen, to denounce the 
 Government. 
 
 So often, in our history, the events have
 
 90 
 
 proved that those who were criticized had 
 all the facts, and the critics only part. 
 
 So often men have slain the prophets 
 and then erected mausoleums to them aft 
 erwards. 
 
 Criticism is an intelligent service in a 
 democracy: but it is a very specialized job; 
 and I, for one, am willing that it should be 
 somebody s else job. 
 
 Generally speaking, there is safety in 
 this rule, and a lot of solid sense : 
 
 Don t criticize until you re sure you re 
 right. 
 
 Then don t. 
 
 Usually by the time you re absolutely 
 sure, it will be too late, anyway.
 
 I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A SOFT 
 
 SPOT IN MY HEART FOR 
 
 JOSEPH 
 
 I HAVE always had a soft spot in my 
 heart for Joseph, the true-hearted car 
 penter of Nazareth. 
 
 To Mary, his wife, the mother of Jesus, 
 the world pays generous homage, and well 
 it may. 
 
 Her faith was firm at the end; she was 
 one of those who stood brave and trusting 
 even at the foot of the cross. 
 
 The world remembers that; and gener 
 ously forgets that there were times when 
 her Son was too great a mystery for her. 
 Times when she and His brethren would 
 have locked Him up as mad, and when He 
 spoke of them almost as though they were 
 hardly worthy of Him. 
 
 We forget all this, and remember her 
 at her best, and she deserves to be remem 
 bered. 
 
 91
 
 92 It s a Good Old World 
 
 But Joseph we remember hardly at all. 
 Yet he must have been a wonderful man. 
 
 " Suffer the little children to come unto 
 me " Jesus said, holding out his tired 
 arms, and smiling; even as His patient car 
 penter-father had opened his arms to his 
 own children at the close of the wearying 
 day. 
 
 Remembering such a scene as that I 
 stand reverently before the memory of 
 Joseph. This is his distinction he so 
 represented fatherhood to his own Son, 
 that the Son could conceive of no more 
 splendid title for God than the single title, 
 " Father." 
 
 There is no reward of riches for suc 
 cessful fathers; no distinguished service 
 medal; no Victoria Cross. 
 
 We reverence Washington and Lincoln, 
 Luther and Phillips Brooks; but the men 
 who gave them birth and training have 
 disappeared from our remembrance. 
 
 Yet I know of no business of greater 
 compensations than the business of success 
 ful fatherhood. 
 
 Recently I was a visitor at two homes.
 
 A Soft Spot for Joseph 93 
 
 The first was a home of abundance; we 
 ate on rich china, and sat afterwards amid 
 expensive surroundings. I wondered that 
 a man who had so much should seem to 
 find so little satisfaction in it. 
 
 Late in the evening I discovered the 
 truth. 
 
 " Men call me fortunate," he said to 
 me, " but they do not know what they 
 say. I have made a failure of the only 
 thing in life that counts. My son is 
 worthless and I let him drift into 
 worthlessness." 
 
 The other home was modest. The man 
 who dwells in it will never be heard of 
 beyond the limits of his own small town. 
 But he has put humanity in his debt. The 
 lives that he has brought into the world 
 will shed glory on his name long after he 
 has passed beyond. 
 
 He has paid the price, of course; he 
 might perhaps have gone farther in busi 
 ness if he had been content to sacrifice 
 everything to business. 
 
 But for years he has made it a rule to 
 take some regular time each day to be a
 
 94 It s a Good Old World 
 
 comrade to his boys. Their reading, their 
 sports, their problems are a first considera 
 tion on his calendar. In business he 
 makes only his living; at home he is guid 
 ing and molding lives. 
 
 " Do not be concerned at my death," 
 murmured Samuel Wesley on his dying bed. 
 " God will then begin to manifest himself 
 in my family." 
 
 The world has erected no monument 
 above Samuel Wesley: he has been for 
 gotten as completely forgotten as 
 though he had been a king of England or 
 a millionaire. 
 
 But the influence of his character will 
 not perish. His is the proud heritage of 
 the friends of Joseph the unobtrusive, 
 unremembered fellowship of men who lose 
 their lives in fatherhood 
 
 and losing them, find an immortality 
 in the undying influence of their sons.
 
 SEVERAL years ago when I had just 
 been promoted to my first real job, I 
 called on a business friend of mine. He 
 is a wise and experienced handler of men; 
 I asked him what suggestions he could 
 make about executive responsibility. 
 
 u You are about to make the great dis 
 covery," he said. " Within a week or two 
 you will know why it is that executives 
 grow gray and die before their time. You 
 will have learned the bitter truth that 
 there are no efficient people in the world." 
 
 I am still very far from admitting that 
 he was right, but I know well enough what 
 he meant. Every man knows who has 
 ever been responsible for a piece of work, 
 or had to meet a pay-roll. 
 
 Recently another friend of mine built 
 a house. The money to build it repre 
 sented a difficult period of saving on the 
 part of himself and his wife; it meant ov 
 ertime work and self-denial, and extra ef- 
 
 95
 
 96 It s a Good Old World 
 
 fort in behalf of a long-cherished dream. 
 
 One day when the work was well along, 
 he visited it, and saw a workman climbing 
 a ladder to the roof with a little bunch of 
 shingles in his hands. 
 
 " Look here," the foreman cried, " can t 
 you carry a whole bundle of shingles? " 
 
 The workman regarded him sullenly. 
 
 " I suppose I could," he answered, " if I 
 wanted to bull the job." 
 
 By " bull the job " he meant " do an 
 honest day s work." 
 
 At ten o clock one morning I met still 
 another man in his office in New York. 
 He was munching a sandwich and gulping 
 a cup of coffee which his secretary had 
 brought in to him. 
 
 " I had to work late last night," he said, 
 " and meet a very early appointment this 
 morning. My wife asked our maid to 
 have breakfast a half hour early so that I 
 might have a bite and still be here in 
 time." 
 
 " When I came down to breakfast, the 
 maid was still in bed." 
 
 She lives in his home, and eats, and is
 
 "And Re Goeth" 97 
 
 clothed by means of money which his brain 
 provides; but she has no interest in his 
 success, no care whatever except to do the 
 minimum of work. 
 
 " The real trouble with the world to 
 day is a moral trouble," said a thoughtful 
 man recently. " A large proportion of its 
 people have lost all conception of what it 
 means to render an adequate service in re 
 turn for the wages they are paid." 
 
 He is a generous man. On almost any 
 sort of question his sympathies are likely 
 to be with labor, and so are mine. I am 
 glad that men work shorter hours than 
 they used to, and in certain instances I 
 think the hours should be even shorter. 
 I am glad they are paid higher wages, and 
 hope they may earn still more. 
 
 But there are times when my sympathy 
 goes out to those in whose behalf no voice 
 is ever raised to the executives of the 
 world, whose hours are limited only by the 
 limit of their physical and mental endur 
 ance, who carry not merely the load of 
 their own work, but the heartbreaking 
 load of carelessness and stolid indifference
 
 98 It s a Good Old World 
 
 in so many of the folks whom they employ. 
 
 Perhaps the most successful executive 
 in history was that centurion of the Bible. 
 
 " For I am a man under authority, hav 
 ing soldiers under me," he said. " And 
 I say to this man go, and he goeth; and to 
 another, come, and he cometh; and to my 
 servant, do this, and he doeth it." 
 
 Marvelous man! 
 
 The modern executive also says " Go," 
 and too often the man who should have 
 gone will appear a day or two later and 
 explain, " I didn t understand what you 
 meant." He says " Come," and at the 
 appointed time his telephone rings and a 
 voice speaks saying: " I overslept and 
 will be there in about three quarters of an 
 hour "
 
 " IN A MANGER " 
 
 JUST a group of simple shepherds they 
 were: going about their jobs as usual, 
 with no suspicion that this night would be 
 different from any other. 
 
 And to them, of all men in the world, 
 the heavenly vision came. 
 
 In their ears, mingled with the noises of 
 their daily toil, the angel voices sounded. 
 
 Thousands of men were looking eagerly 
 for the appearance of the Messiah that 
 night as they had looked for His ap 
 pearance every night for years. 
 
 Surely with great acclaim He would 
 come: in a King s palace, with signs and 
 wonders to restore His chosen people. 
 
 And while their eyes were fixed on high 
 to see the great event, lo, the great event 
 took place at their very feet; and they 
 never saw it. 
 
 He came to the world out of the depths, 
 not on the heights. They found Him " ly 
 ing in a manger." 
 
 99
 
 It often happens so in life. 
 
 There is in the world to-day a man who 
 has toiled terribly that he might achieve a 
 vast success. 
 
 He has piled dollar upon dollar and 
 business upon business. Mounting to the 
 top of the great pile which he has made, 
 he has looked longingly for a glimpse of 
 the thing worth while; and he has not 
 found it. 
 
 While, only one short block from his 
 home, in a little cottage, surrounded by his 
 red-cheeked children, a man who will never 
 have ten thousand dollars to his name 
 looks out on life through reverent eyes, and 
 finds it wonderful. 
 
 Not in the palace on that street will one 
 find the Kingdom of Happiness : but in the 
 little cottage. 
 
 Even as they found Him, years ago, 
 lying in a manger. 
 
 There is another man who cherishes in 
 his heart the vision of a reconstructed 
 social order. 
 
 He hopes by laws and ordinances, and 
 by this and that, to hedge the people in and
 
 "In a Manger" 101 
 
 mold them so that they must be good in 
 spite of themselves. 
 
 His mind is full of social betterment: 
 and in his heart is no appreciation what 
 ever of the people whom he seeks to better. 
 
 He has no confidence in them. 
 
 He forgets that it was from them Lin 
 coln sprang. 
 
 He forgets that it was the French Revo 
 lution, in spite of its violence, and not the 
 thought and plan of statesmen, that started 
 the modern world on its great roll toward 
 democracy. 
 
 Almost every great movement has 
 grown up from below. Yet he does not 
 understand it. He thinks to hand im 
 provement down, like old clothes, from 
 above. 
 
 He seeks the millennium from on high : 
 and behold, at his very feet, the millennium 
 is slowly working itself into being. 
 
 Even as the great beginning of the mil 
 lennium came, not in a king s palace, but in 
 a manger. 
 
 It is an easy thing to fix one s eyes on the 
 distant splendor, and, pressing toward it,
 
 lose the nearer splendor that lies every 
 where about. 
 
 It is a temptation to say, "I am so busy 
 with the great work I am doing, my activi 
 ties are so important, that I can not be 
 bothered about little things." 
 
 He who was born in a manger was never 
 busy. With the burden of the world on 
 His shoulders, he was not too preoccupied 
 to hear the cry of a single blind man. 
 
 Wearied by anxious hours of toil, He 
 was not too weary to open his arms to little 
 children. 
 
 " Take time to live each day in simple 
 friendliness " this would be His message 
 to you. 
 
 " The Kingdom of Happiness lies, not 
 far off, but close about you." 
 
 It was thus that the shepherds dis 
 covered it. 
 
 In the midst of their daily job the heav 
 enly light broke around them: with the 
 noises of their regular, routine labor in 
 their ears, the voice of the angel sounded: 
 
 " Ye shall find Him . . . lying in a 
 manger."
 
 WHY YOUR EYES ARE IN THE 
 FRONT OF YOUR HEAD 
 
 IN 1833 a clerk in the patent office at 
 Washington handed in his resignation. 
 
 It was an interesting document, touched 
 with pathos. He had found the work con 
 genial, he said; he was sorry to leave it. 
 But his conscience would not allow him to 
 continue to draw pay under false pretenses. 
 There was no more need for a job like his. 
 Every possible invention had been con 
 ceived and patented; there was nothing 
 left to invent. 
 
 In 1833 and nothing left to invent! 
 Before the railroads had spanned the con 
 tinent! Before electricity lighted our 
 streets and moved our cars ! Before the 
 telephone, or the wireless, or the steam- 
 shovel, or the dynamo ! At the very 
 threshold of the greatest period of me 
 chanical advance that the world has ever 
 known, this young man threw up his hands. 
 
 A large section of the human race, in 
 103
 
 104 I^ 5 a Good Old World 
 
 any age, belongs to the class of that mis 
 taken young man. You find men at every 
 period, their eyes gripped by the past, 
 looking forward, when they look at all, 
 only to shudder and to fear. 
 
 They were the people who criticized Jef 
 ferson bitterly because he paid the enor 
 mous sum of 60,000,000 francs for the 
 worthless tract of land beyond the Alle- 
 ghenies. Fortunately he withstood their 
 criticism and persisted in his extravagant, 
 high-handed course, and the richest agri 
 cultural empire in the world was added to 
 our territory at a cost of less than four 
 cents an acre. 
 
 They sneered at Fulton when his steam 
 ship lay building in the dry-dock. The 
 idea of a fool supposing that he could run 
 a boat without the aid of wind or tide ! 
 
 And the children of these men of little 
 faith stand to-day aghast at the prospect 
 of what may happen to the world in the 
 months that are before us. 
 
 I met a few days ago a rich man who 
 shook his head lugubriously. " I am turn 
 ing everything I can into gold or Govern-
 
 Your Eyes 105 
 
 ment bonds," he said, " and I am not so 
 sure about the bonds. We are going to 
 have terrible times; mark my words." 
 
 The same day a laborer spoke to me, 
 nodding sagely. " I tell you we have no 
 idea of the troubles that are coming to us," 
 he said. " Europe is bankrupt, and we 
 are on the way." 
 
 They did not need to tell me that we 
 are to have some trying times : I know it 
 as well as the next man. You cannot 
 shake the earth from its very foundations, 
 and expect to set it back in place again 
 without a jar. 
 
 But I know this which they do not 
 know, or do not believe, at least that 
 the world, with all its times of trouble, 
 still moves ahead. No man can play a 
 big part in the world who does not be 
 lieve in the future of the world. 
 
 There is a thrill in the thought of the 
 days ahead with the rising of peoples 
 long oppressed, and the overturn of cus 
 toms long outgrown. Suppose it does 
 cost us part of the money we have saved; 
 we re young and can make some more.
 
 io6 It s a Good Old World 
 
 Suppose it does throw some of us into new 
 jobs; there s joy in a job that is new. 
 
 It is pleasant to read the history of the 
 past but the wise man does his histor 
 ical reading at night when the day s work 
 is done. During the working hours he 
 keeps his eyes on the great and glorious 
 and thrilling future. 
 
 For eyes were made to look forward; 
 that s why they re placed in the front of 
 the head.
 
 WOULD YOU BE GREAT? THEN 
 EXPECT SUFFERING: FOR IT IS 
 THE STUFF GREATNESS IS 
 MADE OF 
 
 I HAVE been reading the tragic, inspir 
 ing story of a great man. 
 
 His work has enriched the life of every 
 generation since his own : but his life was 
 a long, dark day of suffering. 
 
 This man was Ludwig von Beethoven. 
 
 He was born in a humble cottage in 
 Bonn in the year 1770. His parents were 
 poor, but that is a minor matter. The 
 parents of most great men have been poor. 
 
 Tragedy entered Beethoven s life not by 
 reason of his parents poverty, but because 
 they were utterly incapable of appreciat 
 ing the fine spiritual gift that was in the 
 boy. 
 
 His father had no thought but to ex 
 ploit the son s musical talent. At the age 
 of eleven he was playing in theater or- 
 107
 
 io8 It s a Good Old World 
 
 chestras and carrying burdens far too 
 heavy for his young shoulders to bear. 
 
 His health was poor: there were none 
 to appreciate his genius: and in the glory 
 of his young manhood, when he was just 
 beginning to feel his power, his life was 
 clouded by an irremediable calamity. He 
 began to lose his hearing. 
 
 Think of it! 
 
 A musician, dependent on the fine har 
 mony of sounds for his success and deaf 
 at twenty-six. 
 
 Poverty-stricken, unloved, betrayed and 
 flouted by the nephew for whom he had 
 sacrificed everything, this unconquerable 
 spirit yet gave to the world music that has 
 gladdened the hearts of millions of men 
 and women in every land. 
 
 I have no friend; I must live alone [he said]. 
 But I know that in my heart God is nearer to 
 me than to others. I approach him without fear; 
 I have always known him. Neither am I anx 
 ious about my music, which no adverse fate will 
 overtake, and which will free him who under 
 stands it from the misery which afflicts others. 
 
 And at another time :
 
 Would You Be Great? 109 
 
 I want to prove that whoever acts rightly and 
 nobly can by that alone bear misfortune. 
 
 No man can read these words, remem 
 bering Beethoven s life, without feeling 
 his own soul enriched and strengthened. 
 
 It is a significant thing that a large pro 
 portion of the great lives of history have 
 been conceived in suffering and nurtured 
 on disappointment and pain. 
 
 We think of Lincoln as the great story 
 teller. But if you would know the real 
 Lincoln, look at the deep lines in his face. 
 
 Napoleon conquered the world; yet he 
 almost never laughed. He was never 
 really well; never rose from his bed feel 
 ing rested; he was so depressed as a young 
 man that he seriously contemplated end 
 ing his life. 
 
 It was a famous writer who said: 
 " What has been well written has been well 
 suffered." 
 
 " The lives of the great heroes were 
 lives of long martyrdom," says Remain 
 Holland in the "Life of Beethoven" from 
 which I have quoted. " A tragic destiny 
 willed their souls to be forged on the anvil
 
 no It s a Good Old World 
 
 of physical and moral grief, of misery and 
 ill health." 
 
 There is this consolation to you in your 
 hours of disappointment and distress 
 that suffering is the stuff out of which true 
 greatness grows. 
 
 Yield to it weakly, and it will destroy 
 you. Rise a conqueror of it, and by that 
 act you become a finer spirit, a greater 
 man or woman. 
 
 " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
 unto me," said Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 By " lifted up " He meant " lifted up 
 on the cross" crucified. Only by His 
 suffering and death could He become the 
 Cure and Saviour of the world. 
 
 There was no short cut, no easier way, 
 to greatness and glory for Him : and there 
 seldom is for any man.
 
 IF THERE WERE ONLY A TAX 
 ON TALK 
 
 AT a public dinner some weeks ago five 
 speakers were scheduled. It was 
 agreed that each would speak for twenty 
 minutes a hundred minutes of oratory, 
 all that any patient audience ought to be 
 called upon to stand. 
 
 The first man spoke twenty-two minutes. 
 
 The second man spoke twenty-five. 
 
 The third man stood on his feet and 
 rambled along for an hour and forty-four 
 minutes ! 
 
 The other two speakers, with an amount 
 of Christian charity and common sense not 
 often found among platform habitues, had 
 meanwhile folded their tents and gone 
 home. 
 
 The speaker has an unfair advantage 
 over a writer. 
 
 Any reader of this piece can, at any mo 
 ment, decide that it is not worth reading, 
 and move on (as doubtless many do), 
 in
 
 112 It s a Good Old World 
 
 But no man rises in the middle of a pub 
 lic address, jams on his hat and stamps 
 down the aisle. 
 
 We are held by a certain convention of 
 courtesy: and nine speakers out of ten pre 
 sume upon that fact. 
 
 Only once in a blue moon does a man 
 arise and, without palaver, drive right to 
 the point, making his statement in a few 
 crisp words, and sitting down before we 
 are ready to have him stop. 
 
 Such a one leaves us gasping with re 
 lief and admiration : we would with the 
 slightest encouragement, shout for him for 
 President. He glistens in our memory; 
 and we mention his name with a certain 
 awe when the names of speakers are told. 
 
 Brevity is so popular a virtue that I can 
 not understand why more speakers do not 
 cultivate it. 
 
 It is one of the keys to immortality. 
 
 Two men spoke at Gettysburg on the 
 same afternoon during the Civil War. 
 One man was named Everett, the leading 
 orator of his day; and he made a typically 
 " great " oration.
 
 A Tax on Talk 113 
 
 What reader of this page has ever heard 
 it referred to; or could repeat a single 
 line? 
 
 The other speaker read from a slip of 
 paper less than 300 words. His speech 
 Lincoln s Gettysburg Address will 
 live forever. 
 
 Greeley used to say that the way to 
 write a good editorial was to write it to 
 the best of your ability, then cut it in two 
 in the middle and print the last half. 
 
 When a reporter complained to Dana 
 that he could not possibly cover a certain 
 story in six hundred words, Dana sent him 
 to the Bible : 
 
 " The whole story of the creation of the 
 world is told in less than six hundred," he 
 exclaimed. 
 
 Everything is taxed these days except 
 talk: and no tax could be more popular 
 from the standpoint of the patient con 
 sumer. 
 
 The tax should be graded, like the in 
 come tax. Let speeches of five minutes or 
 under be exempt; from five to ten minute 
 speeches, ten per cent; ten to fifteen min-
 
 H4 It s a Good Old World 
 
 utes, fifteen per cent. Over thirty min 
 utes, sixty per cent; and over an hour 100 
 per cent, with double taxes on all speeches 
 in Congress. 
 
 Only by some such rigorous treatment 
 will the spoken word regain a position of 
 respect; and silence receive the honor that 
 is its due. 
 
 There is one historical character who 
 has fascinated me. His name was Enoch : 
 the honor conferred upon him has been en 
 joyed by no other; yet his whole biography 
 is written in less than twenty words. 
 
 " And Enoch walked with God: and he 
 was not: for God took him." 
 
 So far as we know he was the only man 
 ever selected by the Almighty as a walking 
 companion. 
 
 And there is every indication that he was 
 a man of very few words.
 
 THE GREAT GOD " MUST 
 
 A FEW days ago a successful man sat 
 in my office discussing his business. 
 
 "Our organization is all right; we re 
 showing good profits," he said. " The 
 only thing we lack is a boss that can make 
 things hum as they used to in the old days 
 when we were poor and struggling. 
 
 " The best thing that could happen to 
 the business would be for me to lose all 
 my money. I don t have to worry any 
 more; I don t have to work and try as 
 he may, the man who does n t have to work 
 can t put the same fire into it as he did 
 when his living and his future were at 
 stake." 
 
 The next afternoon at the club I ran 
 into a college mate whose father left him 
 plenty of money. He had as much ability 
 as any man in his class; and he has worked 
 at one job and another after a fashion. 
 No one could accuse him of being shiftless.
 
 ii6 It s a Good Old World 
 
 But always in the back of his mind was 
 the consciousness that he did not need to 
 work. If he lost the job, if it proved un 
 pleasant and he quit, nothing vital was 
 sacrificed. He still could live and wait to 
 look around for something more according 
 to his fancy. So while some other men, 
 who have had to hustle from commence 
 ment day, have made real places for them 
 selves, he still is holding jobs none of 
 which seem to him quite worth holding. 
 
 There is something in all this worth re 
 membering in days when the air is so full 
 of schemes for reorganizing the world on 
 an easier basis. All the socialistic systems 
 I have ever heard of, all the plans for sub 
 stituting governmental ownership for pri 
 vate ownership, break down when you ask 
 this impertinent question : 
 
 " But how are you going to get men to 
 work?" 
 
 William James, the psychologist, 
 pointed out long ago that even the most 
 ambitious of us live at about half our 
 actual capacity. It s only when we are 
 stirred by a great demand, an insistent ne-
 
 The Great God "Must" 117 
 
 cessity, that we accomplish the sort of 
 things that make us proud of our humanity. 
 
 The war proved that to millions of men. 
 
 We subscribed for Liberty Bonds away 
 beyond our capacity to pay; we didn t see 
 how we could possibly work our way out. 
 Yet we did work our way out. We did 
 because we had to. 
 
 I have seen writers become so well fixed 
 financially that they could take things easy. 
 
 " Now I can do really fine work," they 
 say. " I have leisure, and can wait until I 
 am fully rested and then produce a master 
 piece which will show no trace of pressure 
 or necessity." 
 
 And usually they produce nothing at all. 
 
 Most of the great works of art have 
 been the creation of men who needed food 
 and drink and room-rent. Old Mother 
 Hubbard when she went to the cupboard 
 and found not even a single bone, was 
 then in perfect condition to sit down and 
 write a first-class novel, or carve an im 
 mortal statue or start a beauty parlor that 
 would have made her rich. 
 
 We need a little more clear-thinking
 
 ii8 It s a Good Old World 
 
 these days a new gospel of work, and a 
 new definition of independence. We have 
 talked about independence as though it 
 meant leisure, freedom from responsibility, 
 the opportunity to loaf. 
 
 But real independence is mastery the 
 proud consciousness of being able to do a 
 task a little better than the average, and 
 the assurance that the task itself will pro 
 vide the reward of every legitimate desire. 
 
 We want the world to be every year an 
 easier and happier and more comfortable 
 place. But our progress toward that end 
 will be mightily diminished if we ever in 
 stitute a social system that banishes the iron 
 mastery of the great god " Must."
 
 PUT GREAT MEN TO WORK FOR 
 
 YOU: IT DOESN T COST 
 
 ANYTHING 
 
 CONSIDERING that it costs nothing, 
 I am surprised that so few people 
 have the great men of the world working 
 for them. 
 
 Personally I should hardly know how 
 to get through a week without their help. 
 
 I am in a business that has no office 
 hours : there is no one except myself to as 
 sign my work and see that it gets done. 
 And frequently there are days when I 
 kick against my boss and do not feel like 
 doing any work at all. 
 
 For such days I have discovered a rem 
 edy. I go to my desk a little early, and 
 instead of starting at once to work, I pick 
 up the biography of some great man and 
 read a chapter out of the most interesting 
 portion of his life. 
 
 After half an hour or so, I am con 
 scious of a new feeling. My spiritual 
 119
 
 shoulders are straighter, my reluctance has 
 disappeared. I say to myself: "How 
 trivial is my task compared with the mar 
 vels he achieved." I am on fire with his 
 example, eager to make the day count. 
 
 The discovery that great men can be 
 drafted for help in even the humblest of 
 fice is not original with me. Many an 
 other has profited by it; Emerson, for ex 
 ample : 
 
 " I cannot even hear of personal vigor of any 
 kind, great power of performance, without fresh 
 resolution," he says. " We are emulous of all 
 that men do. Cecil s saying of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, I know that he can toil terribly, is an 
 electric touch. So are Clarendon s portraits of 
 Hampden ; who was of an industry and vigil 
 ance not to be tired out or wearied by the most 
 laborious, and of parts not to be imposed upon by 
 the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal cour 
 age equal to his best parts ; and of Falkland: 
 who was so severe an adorer of truth that he 
 could as easily have given himself leave to steal 
 as to dissemble. We cannot read Plutarch with 
 out a tingling of the blood ; and I accept the say 
 ing of the Chinese Mercius : A sage is the in 
 structor of a hundred ages. When the manners
 
 Put Great Men to Work 121 
 
 of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, 
 and the wavering, determined. " 
 
 There is in biography an antidote for 
 almost every mood. 
 
 Are we discouraged ? A half hour with 
 Lincoln, carrying patiently his great load, 
 never once losing faith, makes me properly 
 ashamed of myself. 
 
 Are we inclined to be afraid? It stirs 
 new depths of courage in us to read of 
 Stonewall Jackson, whose motto was : 
 " Never take counsel of your fears." 
 
 Do we vacillate between two courses of 
 action? There is in all literature no such 
 warning against vacillation as the pitiful 
 uncertainties of poor Cicero. 
 
 I would commend these willing helpers 
 to every man who finds his task sometimes 
 heavy beyond his individual strength. 
 
 There is no limit to their service. The 
 fact that I employ them does not keep 
 them from working with equal efficiency 
 for you. They answer at a moment s no 
 tice, and may be dismissed peremptorily 
 without the slightest hurt upon their feel 
 ings.
 
 122 It s a Good Old World 
 
 In their companionship is the secret of 
 mental and spiritual growth. It is fairly 
 easy to be as great as our contemporaries. 
 It is hard to lift ourselves by our own boot 
 straps to distinguished effort and achieve 
 ment. 
 
 But these great men, any one of us may 
 make his own contemporaries and com 
 panions if he will; and there is no danger 
 that we will outgrow them. 
 
 They are a daily stimulation to that 
 which is best and most effective in us 
 they stand out like golden peaks of 
 achievement along which even the least 
 of us may climb a little nearer to his best 
 ideals.
 
 HEZEKIAH IS DEAD: BUT HIS 
 FORMULA STILL HOLDS GOOD 
 
 THERE is a certain man among my 
 acquaintances who, with a little less 
 ability, would have made a splendid suc 
 cess. 
 
 That sounds strange; but employers of 
 men will understand it: they will have a 
 picture right away of the kind of man he is. 
 
 In his boyhood he mowed lawns, like the 
 other boys: also he ran a lemonade stand, 
 and managed a newspaper route, and was 
 forever figuring out a new scheme. 
 
 He graduated from high school and 
 entered business with great promise. But 
 he had not been at work three months be 
 fore he was running a couple of little pri 
 vate businesses on the side. 
 
 So he has continued through life 
 cursed with the unhappy gift of being able 
 to do three or four things at once. 
 
 He ekes out a very fair income to-day,. 
 123
 
 124 ft * a Good Old World 
 
 drawing it in little bits from half a dozen 
 different sources. 
 
 But he is getting along in life, and there 
 is no one single business of which he can 
 say: " I made it." He has scattered 
 himself so widely that there is not one spot 
 in the world s life that bears the permanent 
 imprint of his effort. 
 
 Twice he has almost broken down from 
 overwork. And four of the men who 
 were his boyhood play-mates men who 
 were satisfied to mow lawns and attempt 
 nothing else have plugged along, each in 
 a single business, and with far less ability 
 than he, have reached a higher place in the 
 world. 
 
 I was reminded of him last night, in run 
 ning across a reference to Lord Mount 
 Stephen, in the new biography of James J. 
 Hill. 
 
 George Stephen he became Lord 
 Mount Stephen afterward was the son 
 of a carpenter in Dufftown, Scotland. He 
 worked for a time in a shop in Aberdeen, 
 but was brought to America at an early 
 age, and became one of the makers of
 
 Hezeklah Is Dead 
 
 Canada, and a power in the British 
 Empire. 
 
 In 1901, visiting Scotland, the carpen 
 ter s son was presented with the freedom 
 of the city of Aberdeen; and this is what 
 he said: 
 
 Any success I may have had in life is due in 
 great measure to the somewhat Spartan training 
 I received during my Aberdeen apprenticeship, 
 on which I entered as a boy of fifteen. To that 
 training, coupled with the fact that / seem to have 
 been born utterly without the faculty of doing 
 more than one thing at a time, is due that I am 
 here before you to-day. I had but few wants and 
 no distractions to draw me away from the work 
 I had in hand. It was impressed upon me from 
 my earliest years, by one of the best mothers that 
 ever lived, that I must aim at being a thorough 
 master of the work by which I got my living ; and 
 to be that I must concentrate my whole energies 
 on my work, whatever that might be, to the ex 
 clusion of every other thing. 
 
 Concentration with the exception of 
 honesty, it covers a larger measure of the 
 secret of success than any other word. 
 
 I once asked a very successful man how
 
 ia6 It s a Good Old World 
 
 he was able to get so much done and still 
 have leisure time. 
 
 " I pick up only one paper from my 
 desk at a time," he said, " and I make it a 
 point not to lay that paper down until I 
 have settled the business that it involves." 
 
 I was present in his office when a friend 
 came to offer him a participation in an en 
 terprise that promised to be very profit 
 able. He answered: 
 
 " I can t do it, Jim. I don t need the 
 money. And no amount of money could 
 possibly compensate me for the nuisance 
 and inefficiency of having to carry two 
 things on my mind at the same time." 
 
 If you want a very good example of 
 how big things are done, read the descrip 
 tion of the creation of the world as re 
 corded in the first chapter of Genesis. 
 
 It is a fine little treatise on efficiency. 
 
 An enormous job, but no hurry, no rush, 
 no confusion. 
 
 One day the creation of light nothing 
 else. The next day, the firmament. The 
 third day, the creation of land and its. 
 division from the waters.
 
 Hezekiah Is Dead 127 
 
 One thing each day, followed by a good 
 night s sleep, and a full day s rest at the 
 end of the week. 
 
 The world has never improved on that 
 formula for success. 
 
 It was the formula of Hezekiah, who re 
 fused to dally with side-lines or attempt 
 more than one thing at a time. 
 
 " And in every work that he began he 
 did it with all his heart and prospered.
 
 THE FINE RARE HABIT OF 
 
 LEARNING TO DO 
 
 WITHOUT 
 
 CURIOUS things come to light when 
 men are dead and the lawyers are 
 busy with their estates. 
 
 Some months ago, in New York, a bank 
 president died. I had never seen him, but 
 his name was familiar enough, and I sup 
 posed that of course he must have left a 
 considerable fortune. 
 
 Apparently every one else was of the 
 same opinion, including even the business 
 associates who knew him best. 
 
 Imagine, then, their surprise when it 
 was discovered that, instead of an estate, 
 he had left debts of thousands of dollars. 
 
 Had he lost heavily in the market? 
 No; apparently, he never speculated at all. 
 Foolish investments? No. Women and 
 wine? No. 
 
 Incredible as it seemed, this man whose 
 income was more than a hundred thousand 
 128
 
 Learning to Do Without 129 
 
 dollars a year got rid of it all, not in 
 gambling or dissipation, but in the every 
 day expenses of living. 
 
 He had come up through the various 
 stages of bank employment to the presi 
 dency of a great institution; and at every 
 point in his career his expenses were in ex 
 cess of his income. 
 
 Even when the income crossed the hun 
 dred-thousand-dollar mark, it was still a 
 few steps behind. Never for one moment 
 had he been the master of his life. At a 
 hundred thousand a year he was as much 
 the slave of circumstance as any twelve- 
 dollar-a-week clerk whose expenses are 
 fourteen dollars. 
 
 An extraordinary case, you exclaim. 
 Yes but extraordinary only in the size 
 of the figures involved. In all other re 
 spects the gentleman was typical of a large 
 percentage of his fellow countrymen. 
 
 A general, he was, in the unfortunate 
 army of those who take orders of their 
 fears, and march day after day to the 
 music of a piper whom they can not afford 
 to pay.
 
 130 It s a Good Old World 
 
 What a curious phenomenon it is that 
 you can get men to die for the liberty of 
 the world who will not make the little 
 sacrifice that is needed to free themselves 
 from their own individual bondage. 
 
 All of us are born into the world free : 
 and immediately we begin to get ourselves 
 into slavery to things. 
 
 We let the number of things that are 
 necessary for our daily life multiply to 
 such an extent that we have neither time 
 nor money for the things that really count. 
 
 I stood the other night in a big store, 
 looking around at the shelves. And it 
 came over me with a sudden shock that, of 
 all the hundreds of articles displayed on 
 the shelves around me, hardly a single one 
 was considered a necessity by my grand 
 father. 
 
 None of them were included in the lives 
 of the ancient Greeks, who gave birth to 
 more great men than any similar period of 
 history has been able to produce since. 
 
 Once a year at least I like to get down 
 Thoreau s " Walden " and read it over 
 again: and I pass on that good tonic to
 
 Learning to Do Without 131 
 
 any of you who may not have discovered 
 it. 
 
 Thoreau was a Harvard graduate who 
 built a hut for himself on the shores of a 
 little lake near Concord, Massachusetts, 
 and lived in it for two years and two 
 months. 
 
 For eight months of the period he kept 
 careful financial records; and in that time 
 his total expenses, including the cost of his 
 house, were $61.99, f which he earned by 
 raising vegetables and by occasional day 
 labor more than half. 
 
 He threw worry out of the window; re 
 duced his living expenses to a point where 
 he could provide them with the labor of a 
 very small part of his days; and so freed 
 the remainder of his life for reading and 
 writing and tramps through the woods 
 and useful thought. 
 
 We can not all do what Thoreau did; 
 but, at least, the war helped us to learn 
 the lesson of his example. 
 
 It set us to questioning of each ele 
 ment in our lives, Is this worth what I have 
 been paying for it?
 
 132 It s a Good Old World 
 
 And to pondering on the important 
 truth that no man is so independent as 
 he who has learned to do without.
 
 IT RUINED MICHELANGELO: 
 AND IT CAN RUIN YOU 
 
 LINCOLN said a wonderfully wise 
 thing one day. 
 
 " I have talked with great men," he 
 said, " and I cannot see wherein they differ 
 from others." 
 
 Too many of us have a distorted notion 
 of great men : we see them only on their 
 successful side, and imagine that they have 
 no other. As a matter of fact, the great 
 man is precisely like ourselves, a mixture 
 of success and failure, of joy and deep de 
 pression. And very often if we would 
 study him upon the side of his failures, we 
 might learn more useful lessons than those 
 that his successes teach. 
 
 No greater genius existed in his genera 
 tion than Michelangelo. With such mag 
 nificent abilities he should have been a 
 happy man : yet he was of all men most 
 miserable. His letters abound in melan 
 choly laments. 
 
 133
 
 134 It s a Good Old World 
 
 What was the secret of his misery? 
 Failure to apply himself? From boyhood 
 into old age he worked incessantly. 
 
 Extravagance? He denied himself 
 even the ordinary comforts, to say nothing 
 of the luxuries of life. 
 
 No, his tragedy lay within himself 
 partly in a pessimistic temperament in 
 herited from his father, but chiefly in this 
 fatal weakness : he never had the spiritual 
 courage to say "No!" 
 
 Before he had well begun one work, he 
 allowed his patrons to force other com 
 missions upon him. He undertook too 
 many things. And as a result, in agony 
 of spirit over promises unfulfilled, over 
 work begun and left half done, he passed 
 his miserable days. 
 
 Modern society is in a conspiracy to ruin 
 men as Michelangelo was ruined. It 
 comes with a thousand conflicting claims. 
 
 " Be chairman of this," it asks; or " Go 
 on this committee "; or " Leave what you 
 are doing and tackle this new job." 
 
 And no man accomplishes anything 
 really worth while unless he learns early
 
 It Ruined Michelangelo 135 
 
 to harden his will and to utter that little 
 word no. 
 
 " How did you come to discover the law 
 of gravitation?" a pretty woman asked 
 Sir Isaac Newton. 
 
 " By constantly thinking about it, 
 madam," the great man replied. 
 
 Newton might have served on a hun 
 dred committees; he might have invented 
 a patent churn; he might have made some 
 money in the stock-market in those years 
 when he was " constantly thinking " about 
 gravitation. But he held himself firm to 
 his single purpose, and did the great thing, 
 resolutely refusing the thousand tempting 
 diversions. 
 
 It s a curious fact that most children 
 learning to talk can say " no " long before 
 they can utter the syllable " yes." Yet 
 men find it so easy to say yes and almost 
 impossible to say no. 
 
 In that fact lies the secret of many fail 
 ures. It ruined Michelangelo that fa 
 tal inability to say " No! " And it will 
 ruin any man who does not set himself 
 resolutely on guard against it.
 
 DON T EXPECT ANYTHING 
 
 VERY STARTLING FROM 
 
 AN ORACLE 
 
 IN his home one evening I talked with a 
 successful business man; and he said to 
 me something like this : 
 
 " Each year in business I learn a few 
 new things; and each year I discover that 
 a few of the things I learned the year be 
 fore are not so very true, after all. So 
 when I come to strike a balance the an 
 nual increase in wisdom is n t anything 
 very great. But of four truths I am en 
 tirely sure. 
 
 " Very early in my business career I 
 learned that it is never wise to say: I 
 will never work for so and so, or I will 
 never live in such and such a place. 
 Youth sets out with a good many such 
 prejudices which it regards as convictions. 
 But as time goes on, one discovers that no 
 man ever had a point of pride that was not 
 136
 
 An Oracle 137 
 
 a weakness to him. I will work for any 
 one to-day who is honest and who has 
 something to give me in the way of ad 
 vancement or knowledge that I do not al 
 ready have; and I will live anywhere that 
 my work calls me. 
 
 " A little later I added this second bit of 
 knowledge. I quit trying to tell other men 
 what they ought to do with their lives. A 
 man s career is a matter to be settled by 
 himself, his wife and his Creator. I will 
 help when my help is asked, if I can; but 
 I will not take the presumptuous chance 
 of sticking my finger into the wheels of 
 any other life unless I am specifically in 
 vited. 
 
 "Later still I concluded never to say 
 to any man, If you don t do so and so, 
 I 11 quit because one day one of them 
 answered quite properly, All right, then 
 quit. 
 
 " Fourthly and finally," he said, " I have 
 learned never to slight a young man. 
 There is a double reason for that, of 
 course. In the first place, it s good re 
 ligion. Every older man ought to be a
 
 138 It s a Good Old World 
 
 kind of unofficial trustee for youth. But 
 in the second place it s good business. It 
 may be an exaggeration to say that any 
 boy can become President of the United 
 States. But it s certain that any office boy 
 may be purchasing agent or general man 
 ager or president of his company ten years 
 from now. And when he arrives, I want 
 him on my side." 
 
 Nothing very startling in all this, you 
 say; not a very imposing array of knowl 
 edge for a man to have gathered in thirty- 
 five or forty years. Very true; but the 
 more you listen to successful men, the more 
 you are impressed by the fact that the only 
 bits of truth they value are truths so old 
 that most of us learned them all in Sunday 
 school. 
 
 Honesty is the best policy; no hard work 
 is ever lost; what a man sows, that shall he 
 reap these are about all that the aver 
 age wise man is sure of. And they are 
 enough. 
 
 The Greeks had an institution which 
 they called an oracle a place where the 
 voice of the gods might be heard. Usu-
 
 An Oracle 139 
 
 ally the utterances of the oracle ran some 
 what after this fashion: "Go at the 
 enemy as hard as you can, and if you fight 
 better than he does, you will win." 
 
 Millionaires are the modern popular 
 oracles; a good many men gather around 
 them, thinking that some day the great one 
 will give them a tip by means of which they 
 may succeed. I have listened to several 
 millionaires; and what they say is usually 
 very sound and true so sound and true, 
 indeed, that it has been long ago accepted 
 by the race and may be found in any good 
 first reader.
 
 ON HEARING FROM MANY 
 
 UNHAPPY HUSBANDS 
 
 AND WIVES 
 
 IN an unguarded moment, when I was 
 the editor of a magazine, I invited let 
 ters on the subject "My Marriage"; 
 and the letters came, not in hundreds, but 
 in thousands. 
 
 I confess that the reading of them left 
 me with a certain sense of depression 
 so large a percentage were from wives 
 who do not like their husbands, and from 
 husbands who wish they had never married 
 their wives. 
 
 Of course, I might have expected that, 
 if I had thought about it in advance; and 
 there is in it no real cause for discourage 
 ment. 
 
 Happy nations, according to the old say 
 ing, have brief histories; and the same is 
 true of contented couples. 
 
 " Oh, nothing ever happens to us," the 
 140
 
 Unhappy Husbands and Wives 141 
 
 happy wife or husband says, a bit wistfully. 
 " We just float along from day to day; we 
 hardly know where the time goes." 
 
 But the individual who is not happy sup 
 poses himself something unique in the 
 world. He broods over his troubles; he 
 wonders why Heaven has set him apart 
 from all mankind to bear so great a disap 
 pointment. And, feeling thus, he em 
 braces every opportunity to ease his spirit 
 by complaint. 
 
 There are many men and women in the 
 world, of course, who have no right to ex 
 pect to be happily married. 
 
 They misinterpret marriage. They em 
 bark upon it as if on some sort of picnic; 
 whereas a single moment s serious thought 
 ought to convince them that it is the great 
 est and most difficult profession in the 
 world. 
 
 They remind me of the man who was 
 asked if he could play the violin, and an 
 swered: " I don t know; I never tried." 
 
 Marriage is not a pleasure excursion. 
 It is a business to be studied; a kingdom to 
 be conquered; a mine of precious treasure,
 
 142 It s a Good Old World 
 
 which reveals itself only in response to 
 patient work. 
 
 Men who study years to master the com 
 paratively simple professions of law or 
 medicine or journalism suppose that the 
 mere accident of their being males is all 
 that is necessary to make them successful 
 husbands. 
 
 Girls who have never learned to carry 
 through capably the simplest operations of 
 life dance blithely into the most intimate 
 and subtle and baffling of human relation 
 ships. And, naturally, there are wrecks. 
 
 Sorrow and disappointment in some de 
 gree come to all of us, deserving or unde 
 serving: no couple can hope completely to 
 avoid them. But there are certain rocks 
 in the channel of the good ship Marriage 
 that ought to be cleared away at the very 
 start. The rock called Money, for ex 
 ample. 
 
 " I hate to ask John for money," said a 
 wife to me last week, " because if I don t 
 ask him I 11 probably get more." 
 
 No woman ought ever to have to ask 
 her husband for money.
 
 Unhappy Husbands and Wives 143 
 
 She ought to have a salary a fixed, 
 regular part of her husband s income, de 
 ducted first, not last; and apportioned to 
 her with the understanding that it is hers, 
 not because he gives it to her, but because 
 she has earned it by her contribution to 
 their common life. 
 
 Until the world recognizes that the busi 
 ness of contributing children to the race 
 and training them is the most splendid of 
 all professions, far more important than 
 anything that any man does in any office, 
 and ought to be paid for accordingly, we 
 shall continue to have wives " asking " 
 their husbands for money, and marriages 
 going into the discard on that account. 
 
 Most of all, no man or woman can be 
 permanently happy unless each has within 
 himself some green pastures on which his 
 soul can feed; some reservoir of content 
 ment and self-sufficiency, created by him 
 self for his own refreshment. 
 
 The restlessness of the modern woman 
 that we read so much about, the envy of 
 men and women toward people who seem 
 better off, rise largely from the false as-
 
 144 It s a Good Old World 
 
 sumption that what is outside a man or 
 
 woman has the power to create or destroy 
 
 happiness. 
 
 Nothing outside yourself can make you 
 
 happy, if you are barren inside. 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven is within you." 
 On that great undying truth successful 
 
 marriages always have been and always 
 
 must be built.
 
 WHAT MAKES MEDIUM-SIZED 
 MEN GREAT? 
 
 A MAN had died, and the whole city 
 mourned his going. At a club we 
 were discussing him, reminding ourselves 
 of one characteristic and another that had 
 endeared him to us. 
 
 Finally a man whose name is famous 
 spoke. 
 
 " You know our friend hardly had a fair 
 start," he said quietly. " Nature did not 
 mean to let him be a big man. She 
 equipped him with very ordinary talents. 
 
 " I can remember the first time I heard 
 him speak. It was a very stumbling per 
 formance. Yet, in his later years, we re 
 garded him as one of the real orators of 
 his generation. 
 
 " His mind was neither very original nor 
 very profound; but he managed to build a 
 great institution, and the imprint of his 
 influence is on ten thousand lives." 
 145
 
 146 It s a Good Old World 
 
 The speaker stopped, and we urged him 
 on. 
 
 " How then do you account for his suc 
 cess? " we asked. 
 
 " It is simple," he replied. " He 
 merely forgot himself. When he spoke, 
 his imperfections were lost in the glow of 
 his enthusiasm. When he organized, the 
 fire of his faith burned away all obstacles. 
 He abandoned himself utterly to his task; 
 and the task molded him into greatness." 
 
 A few days afterward I spent some 
 hours in the home of a very wealthy man. 
 
 " Young men come and ask me to use 
 my influence in their behalf to secure them 
 this or that promotion," he said. " And 
 I am amazed, not by their requests, but by 
 the attitude toward life which prompts 
 them. 
 
 " I feel like saying to them : The very 
 fact that you spend your time and thought 
 campaigning for another position proves 
 that you are not worthy even of the posi 
 tion that you now hold. 
 
 Then he went on to speak about his own 
 career, which started with the salary of
 
 Medium-Sized Men 147 
 
 an office boy and has carried him so far. 
 
 " I never asked for an increase in sal 
 ary," he said; " I never asked for promo 
 tion or even thought about it. I had only 
 one single thought how to make that 
 company as great and as influential as it 
 possibly could be. I believed that by ex 
 tending its influence we were extending hu 
 man happiness; more than anything else, I 
 wanted to see it reach people in every 
 corner of the world. 
 
 We made that vision come true; and 
 those of us who achieved it discovered 
 that the company to which we had given 
 our lives, had given them back to us a 
 hundred times richer than our own selfish 
 thought and planning could possibly have 
 made them." 
 
 It is Emerson who somewhere says that 
 the average run of men fret and worry 
 themselves into nameless graves, while 
 here and there a great unselfish soul for 
 gets itself into immortality. 
 
 Many hundred years before, a much 
 wiser Man had said: " For whosoever 
 will save his life shall lose it; and whoso-
 
 148 It s a Good Old World 
 
 ever will lose his life for my sake shall 
 find it." 
 
 A rather cryptic utterance; so contra 
 dictory in sound that the majority of men 
 pass it by unheeding. 
 
 But now and then there comes a man 
 who, sensing its truth, harnesses his life to 
 it, forgetting every selfish thought and 
 purpose. 
 
 Often he knows himself to be a little 
 man; or, at best, only medium-sized. 
 
 But the world, beholding the marvel of 
 his influence, remembers him and calls him 
 great.
 
 THE GREATEST SPORTING 
 
 PROPOSITION IN THE 
 
 WORLD 
 
 SIR WALTER RALEIGH was one of 
 the ablest and most attractive men of 
 his time. Yet he made this fundamental 
 mistake : he picked out the wrong thing to 
 live for. 
 
 Looking about to see what was most 
 worth while in life, he decided for fame 
 and fortune and thought they might most 
 surely be secured through the favor of 
 Queen Elizabeth. For her favor he de 
 meaned himself, and neglected his wife, 
 and was constantly in petty intrigues un 
 becoming his talents. 
 
 At the end the fickle queen turned upon 
 him and cast him into London Tower. 
 And her successor sent him to the block. 
 
 Every age has its quota of Sir Walters: 
 strong men who trade their lives for this 
 or that, and at the close have traded them 
 selves empty-handed. 
 149
 
 150 It s a Good Old World 
 
 And no man has more important busi 
 ness than to determine very early what is 
 really worth having being sure that the 
 object he selects is one that can be de 
 pended upon to satisfy him not merely 
 through his full-blooded years, but up 
 through the testing hours at the last. 
 
 What is such an object? Money? 
 
 I wish that every young man in the 
 world could see, as I once saw, a man who 
 had bartered his soul for money, and who 
 woke one morning to discover that it had 
 vanished overnight. Surely a possession 
 that can so quickly fly away, and that leaves 
 such shriveled souls behind it, cannot be 
 the supreme good. 
 
 Fame? Political preferment? Horace 
 Greeley was as famous as any man of his 
 period; he let his ambition carry him into 
 the race for the Presidency, and losing the 
 race, died of a broken heart. 
 
 There is a finer formula than either of 
 these. Plato stated it, centuries ago: 
 
 I therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these 
 accounts, and consider how I may exhibit my
 
 Greatest Sporting Proposition 151 
 
 soul before the judge in a healthy condition. 
 Wherefore, disregarding the honors that most 
 men value, and looking to the truth, I shall 
 endeavor to live as virtuously as I can; and 
 when I die, to die so. And I invite all other 
 men, to the utmost of my power; and you too 
 I in turn invite to this contest, which I affirm 
 surpasses all contests here. 
 
 A great game in which the player is a 
 man s best self on the one side, and on 
 the other all the temptations and the 
 disappointments and the buffeting of cir 
 cumstance. 
 
 The game of making yourself the best 
 you can be, let Fate say what it will; of 
 so investing the years and the talents you 
 have as to cause the largest number of 
 people to be glad, the fewest to be sorry, 
 and coming to the end with the least regret. 
 
 " Be diligent," wrote Polycarp to Igna 
 tius. " Be diligent. Be sober as God s 
 athlete. Stand like a beaten anvil." 
 
 I do not know how any man can stand 
 like a beaten anvil who has only money 
 to stand upon; or only a reputation that 
 may vanish as quickly as it came; or a
 
 152 It s a Good Old World 
 
 ribbon which is pinned on his coat to-day 
 and may be taken off to-morrow. 
 
 But let him have invested his life in the 
 mastery and the cultivation of his own 
 best self, and he has laid up riches that 
 cannot be lost. 
 
 Whatever obstacles, whatever disap 
 pointments may come, are merely added 
 chances against him, contributing to the 
 zest of the contest. 
 
 And in the end he has this surpassing 
 reward, a clear conscience and a vision 
 unafraid the prize of the victor in the 
 greatest sporting proposition in the world.
 
 TO A CAN OF BEANS PLANTED 
 AND CANNED BY OURSELVES 
 
 IT is five o clock on a winter afternoon. 
 Looking out from my office on the 
 fifteenth floor, I see thousands of lights 
 in the offices all about me. Thousands of 
 offices, all full of people. 
 
 And I wonder again to myself, as often 
 before, how they all live. Through what 
 intricate stages of evolution have we come 
 from the days when our ancestors raised 
 their own food, made their own shoes and 
 clothes, and lived their simple, self-con 
 tained and self-supporting lives! 
 
 What millions of artificial wants we 
 have created to support this vast organiza 
 tion of modern business ! 
 
 Thousands of people packed into 
 great hives, one tier above another 
 
 Retailers living off wholesalers; whole 
 salers living off manufacturers : and all liv 
 ing off the farmer. 
 
 iS3
 
 154 It s a Good Old World 
 
 What would happen if for one single 
 year the farmers should decide to quit 
 work and come to town? 
 
 I watch the lights flicker out as one man 
 after another closes his desk and starts for 
 home. 
 
 And in my heart I can not repress a 
 slight feeling of superiority toward them 
 poor dependent folk. They are going 
 home to meals that come to them only by 
 grace of the good nature and effort of 
 honest tillers of the soil. 
 
 Part of my meal will come to me in like 
 manner. But part of it 
 
 Part of it is beans. Last summer I 
 delved in the earth and raised them with 
 my own effort. And in the kitchen of our 
 little white house we imprisoned their 
 flavor and fragrance. 
 
 Only food raised by one s own toil is 
 perfect food. 
 
 All beans have strings all but the 
 beans that we raise on our own place. 
 
 I have eaten in the homes of the mighty, 
 and never yet have I encountered sandless 
 spinach. But the sand in the spinach that
 
 To a Can of Beans 155 
 
 we raise ah, just a trace of sand. A su 
 perior, far more edible sand. A kind of 
 healthy sand, to give strength and fiber 
 to the system. 
 
 As a favorite melody played in the eve 
 ning brings back the memory of glad days, 
 so those melodies in cans our beans and 
 corn and spinach carry to us, even into 
 the twilight of winter, the summer hours 
 that were, and are to be again. 
 
 Hours when we woke up with bird notes 
 in our ears and the fragrance of the ram 
 bler calling to us. And after breakfast, 
 taking our hoe in hand, we went out to the 
 little plot of land which a few weeks ago 
 had been nothing, and which by our effort 
 had become a part of the battle-line of Eu 
 rope, a feeder of the world. 
 
 The winters no longer have any terror 
 for me: I cut them short at either end. 
 
 For the beans of last summer s canning 
 carry the sunshine of that garden clear into 
 February: and in February the seed cat 
 alogs arrive, with the scent and sunshine of 
 the garden to come. 
 
 I commend to you that system of rob-
 
 156 It s a Good Old World 
 
 bing winter of its terrors: I counsel you to 
 start to-day to warm the shaded places of 
 your soul with the thought of next sum 
 mer s garden. 
 
 There is greater need for food this year 
 than ever in the modern world so you 
 shall have the satisfaction of those whose 
 duty is well done. 
 
 There will be better health for you in 
 the digging and that alone is reward 
 enough. 
 
 But, more than all, you shall have that 
 special sense of independence as you walk 
 among the mass of your dependent fellow 
 men the proud elevation of one who 
 needs not to ask of any man, since in his 
 own cellar he hath beans, raised on his own 
 good soil, canned by his own right hand.
 
 LINCOLN PULLED THROUGH, 
 AND SO SHALL WE 
 
 ONE of the wisest observations in the 
 world was made by our old friend 
 Mr. Dooley. 
 
 " Lookin around me, I see many great 
 changes takin place," he said; "but 
 lookin back fifty years, I see hardly any 
 change at all." 
 
 Unless one gets a certain perspective 
 on what is taking place about him, his life 
 will be one succession of panics. 
 
 It is necessary to take a long look; to 
 realize that human nature does not change ; 
 that in any age the same set of circum 
 stances will produce about the same re 
 sults; and that, slowly but surely, certain 
 great principles are working themselves 
 out in the world. 
 
 This is the value of reading history. 
 And right now is a good time to do a little
 
 158 It s a Good Old World 
 
 reading of history; a few hours spent with 
 a Life of Lincoln will be especially reas 
 suring. 
 
 You are worried because the Govern 
 ment at Washington seems so dawdling 
 and ineffective. 
 
 See how Lincoln dawdled with the rebel 
 lion: postponing the relief of Sumter un 
 til it was too late; allowing things to drift 
 while the South armed itself with govern 
 ment equipment and gained the advantage 
 of superior preparation. 
 
 It depressed you to see a United States 
 Senator making a vulgar attack upon a 
 man like Herbert Hoover, who sacrificed 
 every personal interest to serve the nation. 
 
 All right. Before you give up hope, 
 turn back and read the attacks that were 
 made upon Lincoln. 
 
 Our enemies of the late war were three 
 thousand miles away; but the enemies of 
 1 86 1 were at the very door of the Capital; 
 and still Congressmen talked and Senators 
 worried about their patronage. 
 
 Your faith in democracy is shaken be 
 cause it seems impossible for the politicians
 
 Lincoln Pulled Through 159 
 
 to put aside their petty interests even in 
 the face of national emergency. 
 
 Lincoln, wrestling with the problem of 
 saving the Union, was so besieged by of 
 fice-seeking politicians that he exclaimed: 
 " If the twelve apostles were to be chosen 
 again, I suppose they would have to be 
 distributed according to geographical di 
 visions." 
 
 And at another time he burst out upon 
 a delegation of Senators who wanted Sew- 
 ard s head: 
 
 You gentlemen, to hang Mr. Seward, 
 would destroy the government! " 
 
 If the state of the public mind for the 
 past few months were to be represented by 
 a chart, the line would look like the record 
 of a fever patient s temperature. 
 
 One day we were excited by reports of 
 German weakness and Allied success; and 
 up went our hopes of early peace. The 
 next day, with no special developments, 
 our thoughts turned to the inefficiencies of 
 Washington, and we were thrown into 
 deep despair. 
 
 A long view is necessary: the sooner we
 
 160 It s a Good Old World 
 
 train ourselves to take it, the happier and 
 more effective we will be. 
 
 The war was won by the Allies, be 
 cause democracy fought on their side, and 
 the whole trend of the world since the Re 
 formation has been toward democracy. 
 
 But it had its ups and downs: there 
 were days of good news and days of bad. 
 The wise man held his spirits in check on 
 both days, looking toward the final result, 
 and allowing himself to be neither unduly 
 elated nor unduly depressed. 
 
 A monarchy, as some one said, is like a 
 trim, tight yacht. It is easily handled, 
 and those on board are dry and warm. 
 But once it hits a reef it is a total loss. 
 
 A democracy is a raft; those on board 
 have their feet in the water most of the 
 time, but they can not sink. 
 
 The very things that serve to make us 
 inefficient in war free speech, unlimited 
 debate, a government organized for peace 
 instead of war are the very things that 
 make life worth living for us in normal 
 times. 
 
 And one reason why we pray for the de-
 
 Lincoln Pulled Through 161 
 
 mocratization of the world is just because 
 democracies make war so ineptly. Our 
 hope for the future is founded on this 
 that before two democracies can get in 
 shape to hurt each other very much the 
 passions of their people will cool. 
 
 Be patient with the ineptness, the ineffi 
 ciencies, and the extravagances of democ 
 racy. Lincoln pulled through in spite of 
 them; and so shall we.
 
 THEY WHO TARRY BY THE 
 STUFF " 
 
 LOOKING back over the history of 
 some of the previous wars in the 
 world, I came across the campaign which 
 David waged against the Amalekites. 
 
 They had swarmed down upon his home 
 district during his absence on important 
 business, and had burned his city, Ziklag. 
 When he returned, it was to find smoking 
 ruins, and the women of the city gone, in 
 cluding even his own wives. 
 
 So he set out with six hundred men, to 
 seek revenge. Four hundred men he kept 
 with him to do the fighting, and two hun 
 dred he ordered to " tarry by the stuff." 
 
 The battle was fought, the Amalekites 
 defeated, and the victors returned laden 
 with their spoils. 
 
 They were flushed and greedy with their 
 
 conquest : they looked with scorn upon the 
 
 two hundred men who had not fought. 
 
 Why should they who had risked their 
 
 162
 
 "Who Tarry By the Stuff 163 
 
 lives divide with those who had remained 
 behind? 
 
 But David, looking at both groups of 
 men, those who had borne the burden of 
 battle and those who at home had kept 
 the country and its possessions safe, re 
 plied: 
 
 " As his part is that goeth down to the 
 battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by 
 the stuff: they shall part alike." 
 
 And the account continues : " It was so 
 from that day forward, that he made it a 
 statute and an ordinance for Israel unto 
 this day." 
 
 I am thinking of those men who wanted 
 to go to war and couldn t; of those who 
 were compelled to " tarry by the stuff." 
 
 I know how they feel : I have talked with 
 dozens of them. 
 
 They read the stirring news of war in 
 every paper : they heard the bands play and 
 saw the flags wave : one after another, 
 their friends appeared in uniform. 
 
 And inside themselves the fight went on 
 ^ the call to the colors against the call of 
 the duty that lay at home.
 
 1 64 It s a Good Old World 
 
 I wish I might point out to those men 
 this one great truth : 
 
 Wars are full of curious phenomena: 
 and one of the most curious is this that 
 often the nation that wins a war really 
 loses it. 
 
 Germany won the war with France in 
 1870. Her troops marched home tri 
 umphant: out of Paris rolled a great train 
 loaded with the indemnity of millions of 
 marks. 
 
 And what happened? 
 
 The prosperity that followed that in 
 demnity corrupted the moral fiber of Ger 
 many. The flush of conquest made mili 
 tarism the national god. Out of that ill- 
 gotten victory grew all the crassness that 
 has had its final fruitage in the war just 
 ended. 
 
 And France, shorn of her egotism by 
 defeat, forced by her indemnity to practise 
 thrift, grew stronger and firmer and finer 
 than she had ever been before. 
 
 The years that followed our Civil War 
 make up the least attractive period of our 
 history.
 
 "Who Tarry By the Stuff 165 
 
 Go through the country and you can pick 
 out almost unerringly the houses that were 
 constructed in that period ugly archi 
 tecture, mirroring ugly thoughts. 
 
 Politically it was the period of the 
 bloody shirt: spiritually it was noisy with 
 agnosticism: financially it saw speculation 
 and corruption, ending in the panic of 73. 
 
 We won the late war on the battle-field. 
 
 The question is, shall we win it also at 
 home? 
 
 Shall there emerge from the war a 
 thriftier nation, living more simply and 
 more wholesomely; a more unselfish na 
 tion, trained to sacrifice; a more spiritual 
 nation, dedicated to a great ideal? 
 
 The man who could not go to war, but 
 who devoted himself unselfishly to service 
 here at home, need not feel that he had no 
 part in the great conflict. 
 
 Let him not for one moment forget that 
 he was helping to make America s military 
 victory a moral and a spiritual victory as 
 well. 
 
 Helping even while he " tarried by the 
 stuff."
 
 THAT FINE OLD FAKE ABOUT 
 THE GOOD OLD DAYS 
 
 SEVERAL years ago I had a talk with 
 a veteran of the Civil War. 
 
 I can see him now as he sat on his 
 piazza, stroking his white whiskers and 
 talking to me lugubriously. 
 
 A crowd of high-school boys passed us, 
 shouting and jostling each other: and the 
 old man, watching them with sad eyes, 
 made them the text of his dissertation. 
 
 " The moral fiber of our youth is de 
 teriorating," he said sorrowfully. Why, 
 at their age I was carrying a gun in the 
 defense of my country. When I look at 
 those thoughtless boys and think what 
 might happen to our country if another 
 war should come, I give you my word, sir, 
 I shudder." 
 
 The good old man is gone beyond all 
 shuddering: but I wish so much he might 
 have lived. 
 
 166
 
 The Good Old Days 167 
 
 For another war came. 
 
 And the poor old country that he wor 
 ried about had nothing but those thought 
 less boys to depend on. 
 
 Nothing but those thoughtless boys 
 indeed. One day I picked up the local 
 paper from that town, and there were their 
 pictures hundreds of them, all in uni 
 form. 
 
 Transformed overnight from thought 
 less boys into men by their country s need. 
 Just as he and his companions were trans 
 formed, fifty years ago. The same sort 
 of crisis, the same boy-stuff, and the same 
 glorious result. 
 
 Of all the fine old fakes that have en 
 slaved the human mind, there is none 
 greater than the myth of the " good old 
 days." 
 
 The Greeks were subject to it, looking 
 back always to their fabled " Golden Age." 
 
 The Hebrews had it also. They wor- : 
 shiped the memory of Abraham who was 
 dead, and made life miserable for Moses 
 who was alive. 
 
 Woe unto you ! because ye build the
 
 1 68 It s a Good Old World 
 
 tombs of the prophets, and garnish the 
 sepulchers of the righteous," said Jesus, 
 " and are yourselves the children of them 
 which killed the prophets." 
 
 We Americans are subject to the same 
 delusion. 
 
 We look back to the great departed days 
 of the Revolution, when every man was a 
 patriot, and nobody thought of anything 
 but the glory of his country. 
 
 Yet only the other day, in the letters of 
 one of the founders of the Republic to an 
 other one, I read this sentence: 
 
 " What a lot of scoundrels we had in 
 that second Congress, did n t we? " 
 
 A successful man recently said to me : 
 " My partner is very gloomy about the 
 national outlook. He thinks that the gov 
 ernment is in the hands of fools, and that 
 we face very disastrous times." 
 
 And I said to him: " I have never met 
 your partner, but I will describe him to you. 
 He is about fifty-five years old, and his 
 health is not as good as it was, and he has 
 quite a good deal of property." 
 
 My friend acknowledged the portrait.
 
 The Good Old Days 169 
 
 " But how did you know? " he asked. 
 
 And I told him that you may guess a 
 man s age by knowing in what direction his 
 eyes are pointed. 
 
 Youth looks straight ahead into the 
 future, firm-eyed and confident. Middle 
 age is likely to look to the side, saying to 
 itself: " So-and-So, who walks beside me, 
 seems to be better off than I." 
 
 But this is the sign of old age that it 
 looks behind and talks sadly of the " good 
 old days." 
 
 Let not that baneful sign be fastened on 
 you : let no one convince you that the world 
 does not progress. 
 
 For we live, as President Wilson says, 
 in a time that calls for " forward looking 
 men "< men who, looking through the 
 eyes of faith and confidence, can see the 
 coming of the " good old days" just over 
 the next hill-top straight ahead.
 
 EVERYBODY HAS SOMETHING 
 
 H 
 
 ERE is a passage from a very dis 
 couraged man: 
 
 " If what I feel were equally distributed to 
 the whole human family there would not be one 
 cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be 
 better I cannot tell. I awfully forbode I shall 
 not. To remain as I am is quite impossible. I 
 must die to be better, it appears to me." 
 
 Another man equally spiritless wrote 
 this: 
 
 " Why, forsooth, am I in the world ? Since 
 death must come to me, why should it not be as 
 well to kill myself. . . . Since I began life in 
 suffering misfortune and nothing gives me pleas 
 ure, why should I endure these days, when noth 
 ing I am concerned in prospers? " 
 
 Poor miserable failures. When the 
 price of white paper is so high why should 
 I be allowed to soil a page with the out 
 pourings of such incompetents? 
 
 170
 
 Everybody Has Something 
 
 Well, the author of the first passage 
 made a considerable reputation for him 
 self in later life; his name was Abraham 
 Lincoln. And the other cry of defeat was 
 uttered by a gentleman named Napoleon 
 Bonaparte. 
 
 There is a very popular notion in the 
 world that men are divided into two classes 
 the fortunate and the unfortunate. 
 
 In the one class are those to whom every 
 good gift has been given. They have 
 health, and joy in living and the natural 
 capacity for achievement. 
 
 The other class includes those who, by 
 some handicap beyond their ability to con 
 quer, are kept from being the successes 
 that they ought to be. 
 
 This is the popular notion, I say, a no 
 tion invented by us ordinary folks as an 
 alibi for our own short-comings. We like 
 to assume that the reasons for our medioc 
 rity are beyond our control that if only 
 we had been given more health or more 
 money or more education or more some 
 thing or other, we would have been some 
 thing very different. It pleases us to in-
 
 172 It s a Good Old World 
 
 dulge ourselves in envy toward those who 
 just could n t help succeeding. 
 
 But what are the facts? 
 
 If any man ever lived and attained re 
 markable success who did not have some 
 serious handicap to contend with, I have 
 failed to discover that man in my reading. 
 
 Beethoven could not possibly become a 
 great musician. He began to grow deaf 
 at twenty-six. 
 
 Pope had a wonderful alibi for not try 
 ing to amount to anything. He was a 
 hunch-back. 
 
 Demosthenes stammered; Julius Caesar 
 had fits; Lamb was tied to a clerk s desk; 
 Byron had a club foot; Dr. Johnson was a 
 constant sufferer. 
 
 Whether success is worth the effort and 
 sacrifice to attain it has been much debated. 
 You and I may, if we choose, decide that a 
 comfortable mediocrity is the most satis 
 factory answer to the problem of living. 
 
 We have a perfect right to that decision. 
 
 But let s not fool ourselves with the idea 
 that some handicap is responsible for our 
 mediocrity. The difference between great
 
 Everybody Has Something 173 
 
 men and the rest of us is chiefly a difference 
 of spirit of determination and the will 
 that refuses to recognize defeat. 
 
 Nature is a very jealous distributor of 
 gifts. Nobody gets a loo /o equipment 
 for life. The game is to see how much we 
 can do with the cards we have to play. 
 
 The real good sports do not talk about 
 their handicaps; but you can depend on it 
 that if you knew all the facts you would 
 discover that every one of them has some 
 thing.
 
 WORKING FOR IT AND 
 MAKING IT WORK 
 
 THIS is the tale of two farmers, both 
 of whom are dead. As a youngster 
 I visited one of them. He and his wife 
 were earnest folks, who worked hard every 
 iay and saved money. The world thought 
 them honest and thrifty. 
 
 But honest and thrifty are better words 
 than either of them deserved; penurious 
 and sordid describe them better. Never 
 in all my life have I entered a home where 
 the worship of money was so constant and 
 oppressive. 
 
 At meal time the talk was all of the cost 
 of food, until the lettuce looked like dollar 
 bills to me, and the butter gleamed like 
 gold. 
 
 For money the woman denied herself 
 
 every comfort and satisfaction, dying 
 
 dried-up at forty-five. A little money 
 
 spent for medical care would have saved 
 
 174
 
 Working for It 
 
 the life of the son of the house, but the 
 family debated the expenditure until it 
 was too late, and sacrificed the boy. 
 
 So for the last twenty years of his life 
 the old man lived alone, figuring over 
 again the hoard that might have repre 
 sented so much in happiness and growth 
 and love. 
 
 He told me once that he had more than 
 $16,000 in the bank; and even then he did 
 not understand that the $16,000 was the 
 price of his soul. 
 
 The other farmer left a good deal less 
 than $16,000 when he passed out; most of 
 the money he might have hoarded had been 
 invested in things more enduring than 
 stocks and bonds. 
 
 Some of it went into the education of 
 his children, who are the finest, most prog 
 ressive citizens in their county to-day. 
 Some of it went into books and into trips, 
 while he and his wife were still young 
 enough to get the largest enjoyment out 
 of the trips. 
 
 He had no slacker dollars which moth 
 and rust corrupt; every dollar that passed
 
 176 It s a Good Old World 
 
 through his hands had to do its maximum 
 work in buying happiness and friendships, 
 and family pleasure and growth. So, 
 open-heartedly, he lived, and died as one 
 who knew full well that life had withheld 
 no good thing from him. 
 
 John Ruskin tells this incident: 
 
 " Lately, in the wreck of a Californian 
 ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt 
 about him with two hundred pounds of 
 gold in it, with which he was found after 
 ward at the bottom. Now, as he was sink 
 ing, had he the gold, or had the gold 
 him"? 
 
 We are all passengers working our way 
 on a ship that is destined in the end to sink. 
 
 Some of us work for money, some make 
 their money work and in the difference 
 between those phrases lies often the differ 
 ence between a successful and an unsuc 
 cessful trip. 
 
 For real wealth, as Ruskin says again, 
 " is the possession of the valuable by the 
 valiant." It may consist in gold and sil 
 ver, or in books, or a home, or the love of 
 little children, or the capacity to laugh.
 
 Working for It 177 
 
 But it is never mere money, hoarded at 
 the sacrifice of life. 
 
 Such money no man ever owns: it owns 
 the owner, works him pitilessly, robs him 
 of the joys of life, and in the end destroys 
 him.
 
 WHEN MEN COME UP TO 
 THE END 
 
 A VERY prominent manufacturer of 
 pianos and pipe organs died some 
 years ago. And this is the story that is 
 told of him. 
 
 He was very near to the end; the family 
 were gathered about, when a maid entered 
 the room hesitatingly and announced that 
 Joe, the organ tuner from the factory, was 
 at the door. 
 
 " Send him up," said the dying man; and 
 Joe came up. 
 
 " Joe, I want you to go down stairs and 
 put the organ in first class condition," he 
 commanded. " We expect to have a large 
 gathering of people here in a few days, and 
 every note must be right." 
 
 Can you picture the scene? Does n t it 
 make you a little prouder of belonging to 
 the human race, when you think about it? 
 
 Some weeks ago the directors of a na- 
 178
 
 Up to the End 179 
 
 tional institution held their annual meeting 
 in New York. The President, who has 
 been kept alive for the past five years only 
 by the power of an indomitable will, ad 
 dressed them: 
 
 " In order that the interests of the insti 
 tution may be conserved, I feel that you 
 should at this time consider who is to be 
 my successor," he said. And with them 
 he discussed quite impersonally various 
 candidates who might fill his place when he 
 should be dead. 
 
 The doctors have told him that he can 
 not possibly live more than another two 
 years, and may die at any moment. He 
 knows their verdict: it affects him not at 
 all. Up to the last breath he will keep 
 going, all thought of himself buried in his 
 devotion to his task; and he will die as he 
 has lived, fighting to the last breath. 
 
 There are those who run from the 
 thought of death, as children run from the 
 dark. No magazine should mention the 
 word, they say; it is an " unpleasant sub 
 ject " morbid and depressing. 
 
 On the contrary it seems to me that there
 
 i8o It s a Good Old World 
 
 is nothing more inspiring than to see the 
 way in which the brave men and women of 
 the world have walked unflinchingly to the 
 end. 
 
 " My friends, I die in peace, and with 
 sentiments of universal love and kindness 
 toward all men," said Robert Emmet, the 
 great Irish patriot. 
 
 With those words he shook hands with 
 some persons on the scaffold, presented 
 his watch to the hangman and assisted in 
 adjusting the rope around his own neck. 
 
 " Carry my bones before you on your 
 march, for the rebels will not be able to 
 endure the sight of me alive or dead," 
 Edward I instructed his son. 
 
 Even at the end of the path, his eyes 
 were fastened on the future and fear was 
 swallowed up in his determination for the 
 success of his enterprise. 
 
 Draw a line through human history at 
 the time of the birth of Christ, and com 
 pare the last words of men who died be 
 fore that date with the words of those who 
 passed on afterwards. The contrast is 
 illuminating.
 
 Up to the End 181 
 
 Before He came men went shuddering 
 into oblivion. After Him the great souls 
 of the world passed through the gate as 
 conquerors, merely changing their armour 
 in preparation for another and more glori 
 ous crusade. 
 
 Sir Henry Havelock, approaching his 
 last hour, called his son to the bedside: 
 
 " Come, my son," he cried, " and see 
 how a Christian can die." 
 
 The object of Christianity is to teach 
 men better how to live; but it would have 
 justified itself a thousand fold had it done 
 nothing except to teach men how worthily 
 to die. 
 
 Not as victims; not as baffled players 
 in a game where all must finally lose; but 
 as men a little lower than the angels 
 faithful, self-confident and unafraid.
 
 IF YOU CAN T FALL IN LOVE 
 WITH YOUR JOB, FOR GOOD 
 NESS SAKE CHANGE IT 
 
 A YOUNG man writes me this letter : 
 " I am employed in the post-office 
 at $100 a month. The salary is sufficient 
 to keep my family comfortable, but I sim 
 ply loathe the work. I see no chance of 
 promotion in it, and it demands so many 
 of my evenings that I have practically no 
 home life at all. Don t you think that 
 under these circumstances I am justified in 
 looking around for something more con 
 genial? " 
 
 My answer to him is : Every day you 
 remain in that post-office is a day lost out 
 of your life. You are to live only once. 
 What is the very best thing a man can get 
 out of life? 
 
 To be happy in his work and at home. 
 
 You are happy neither in your work 
 
 nor at home. You are wasting the only 
 
 existence that will ever be yours in this 
 
 world. You will come to the end of your 
 
 182
 
 In Love e with Your Job 183 
 
 road and, looking back, will say to your 
 self: "I was cheated. Other men had 
 life and happiness: I had only life." 
 
 No matter what the immediate sacri 
 fice, find your real place in the world 
 the job that will call out your whole best 
 self. 
 
 For until you have found it you bear 
 on your forehead the mark of discontent 
 that employers shun. The stars in their 
 courses fight against you. 
 
 " No matter what your work is, let it 
 be yours," said Emerson. " No matter if 
 you are a tinker or a preacher or a black 
 smith or president, let what you are doing 
 be organic, let it be in your bones, and 
 you open the door by which the affluence of 
 heaven and earth shall stream into you." 
 
 I know of nothing so inspiring as to 
 read the lives of men who were in love with 
 their work. 
 
 Agassiz, the great naturalist, used to 
 say that he believed " the fishes would die 
 for him just to give him their skeletons." 
 
 Edmund Halley, the astronomer, was 
 another happy workman.
 
 184 It s a Good Old World 
 
 Finding, in his youth, that other as 
 tronomers had undertaken to catalogue the 
 stars of the northern hemisphere, he loaded 
 a telescope on a boat and started to the 
 southern hemisphere. On shipboard he 
 was busy every minute, and made impor 
 tant discoveries. 
 
 Then it occurred to him that if one 
 could study the transit of Venus that 
 is, observe Venus at the time when her 
 orbit crosses the orbit of the sun one 
 could gather data from which to figure the 
 weight of the sun, its distance from the 
 earth, and many other important facts 
 about the solar system. 
 
 But the next transit of Venus was not 
 to occur until 1769. It was almost certain 
 that Halley could not live that long. 
 
 As a matter of fact, he died in 1742. 
 
 But when 1769 rolled round, the as 
 tronomers of that day found all ready and 
 waiting for them the formulas which Hal- 
 ley had prepared. 
 
 The man who had loved his work so 
 whole-heartedly in life lived on triumphant
 
 In Love with Your Job 185 
 
 over death. His devotion had won him 
 immortality. 
 
 I should want to be paid at least $50,- 
 ooo a year to be president of a brewery or 
 a civil engineer. Because I hate beer and 
 mathematics. 
 
 But I write editorials at a few dollars 
 less a year, because I love it. 
 
 And, loving it, I know that I shall 
 some day make a comfortable living. 
 
 For there is a competency for any man 
 in any job in the world into which he can 
 put his whole self enthusiastically. 
 
 " He did it with all his heart," as I have 
 quoted of Hezekiah before, " and pros 
 pered."
 
 THE BUSINESS OF DISTRIBUTING 
 
 MEDALS HAS RATHER GOT 
 
 INTO A RUT 
 
 I MET him in the smoking car, and he 
 told me he was a steel worker, on his 
 way to find a job in one of the new ship 
 yards. I remarked that the wages must 
 be very large in the shipyards. 
 
 " On the contrary," he answered, " I 
 shall be making less than I made at home 
 
 and I 11 be away from my family be 
 sides. 
 
 " But I had to do it," he continued, and 
 his eyes flashed as he spoke. " It s my 
 way of doing my part my contribution 
 to the men that are fighting to make this 
 a safe world for my kids." 
 
 When he left the train I reflected that 
 this is one of the unfortunate facts of war 
 
 that it calls forth the sacrifice of the 
 whole nation, and honors the sacrifice of 
 
 only a very few. 
 
 186
 
 Distributing Medals 187 
 
 We have the Congressional medal for 
 the man who, in one moment of valor, 
 hurls himself over the trench; and nobly, 
 in truth, does he deserve it. But where 
 is the medal for the man who, day after 
 day, quietly, unobtrusively, does his job, 
 as conscientiously as if the very safety of 
 the Republic were dependent on it? 
 
 The farther I go in the world the more 
 I distrust the mere outward signs of great 
 ness the titles and the bank rolls and the 
 popular applause. 
 
 More and more I pin my faith to the 
 spirit in which a man s life job is done. 
 
 " If God were to send two angels to 
 earth," said Stephen Tying, " one to sit 
 on the throne of England and the other to 
 sweep the streets of London, the service 
 of the two would be equally honored in 
 His sight." 
 
 I am not writing to reconcile men who 
 have failed, to failure; I have no sympathy 
 with any man who weakly contents himself 
 with being less in the world than his best. 
 
 But I grow very impatient with the kind 
 of talk and writing which would make us
 
 1 88 It s a Good Old World 
 
 believe that there is only one sort of cour 
 age the courage of battlefield; and only 
 one sort of success the success of money, 
 and fame. 
 
 Every man has in his heart the seeds of 
 courage; and every man the possibilities of 
 success. 
 
 It may be success in finance or in brick 
 laying; in government or in gardening. It 
 matters not: the measure of it is the same. 
 
 And that measure consists not in wealth 
 or titles, but in a man s own self-respect, 
 his own deep-lying consciousness that he 
 has, with the tools that were given him, 
 done his level best. 
 
 There lived one time a man named 
 Moses whose experience with democracy 
 was not altogether encouraging. 
 
 He saved his people from slavery; and 
 a good part of the time they grumbled at 
 him for doing it. 
 
 " Would to God that all the Lord s peo 
 ple were prophets ! " he exclaimed one 
 day. By which I take it that Re meant, 
 "Would to God there were a spark of 
 divinity in them that would make them
 
 Distributing Medals 189 
 
 capable of wider vision, a larger measure 
 of self-sacrifice." 
 
 Had he been able to see a little deeper, 
 Moses might have discovered that his wish 
 was fulfilled: that there is in every man 
 precisely the divinity for which he yearned. 
 
 War discovers that divinity as no other 
 great experience can. All around me I 
 see merchants, and day laborers, and farm 
 ers who have risen to a height of self- 
 sacrifice which is a revelation to themselves 
 and to all who know them. 
 
 It is our misfortune that there is no out 
 ward symbol with which to reward that 
 splendor. The business of awarding 
 medals has fallen into certain well-defined 
 ruts. 
 
 Perhaps some day we shall see more 
 clearly and reward with greater wisdom, 
 honoring equally the sacrifice of the bat 
 tlefield and the sacrifice at home. 
 
 For both are sparks of the same divin 
 ity twin manifestations of the presence 
 of the same great Oversoul.
 
 THE FINEST INVESTMENT YOU 
 CAN MAKE IS TO HELP THE 
 RIGHT YOUNG MAN FIND THE 
 RIGHT JOB 
 
 IN an office not far from mine is a man 
 thirty-six years old whose title is " Of 
 fice Manager." 
 
 So far as salary is concerned he is not 
 a failure. He makes a living for himself 
 and family; he carries a little life insur 
 ance and saves a little money. 
 
 But in his heart he knows he has failed; 
 he is, a woeful, pathetic misfit. 
 
 Nature intended him for a farmer: he 
 wanted to go to an agricultural college, 
 and his father sent him to a business school 
 instead. The call of the soil is in his ears, 
 and he must stifle it with the click of a 
 typewriter. 
 
 He is one of the vast army of those 
 whose brief time on this earth has been 
 largely lost because they never found the 
 work for which they were made. 
 190
 
 The Finest Investment 191 
 
 When I consider how vast that army is, 
 and the bitterness of its tragedy, I marvel 
 that fathers do not consider the question 
 of their sons careers with prayer and fast 
 ing. 
 
 Instead of which there are many men 
 who treat the lives of their sons as though 
 they were mere pawns in the game, to be 
 moved lightly here or there. 
 
 Michelangelo wanted to be an artist: 
 from his earliest days in school he neg 
 lected everything to be busy with his pen. 
 Yet his father and uncles, far from wel 
 coming his interest as a direct gift from 
 Heaven, " beat him cruelly, for they hated 
 the profession of artist, and, in their ig 
 norance of the nobility of art, it seemed a 
 disgrace to have one in the house." 
 
 John Adams s father tried by main force 
 to settle the boy at a cobbler s bench for 
 life. 
 
 Handel s father despised music and 
 would not have a musical instrument in 
 the house. 
 
 Tennyson s grandfather, tossing the lad 
 ten shillings for an elegy on his grand-
 
 192 It s a Good Old World 
 
 mother, remarked: "There, that s the 
 first money you ever earned by your poetry, 
 and, take my word for it, it will be the 
 last." 
 
 When Lowell s father learned that his 
 son had won the prize offered by Harvard 
 University for the finest poem written by 
 an undergraduate, he received the news in 
 sorrow. 
 
 " I had hoped," he said sadly, " that 
 under the steadying influence of college 
 James would become less flighty." 
 
 Lowell spoke out of the depths of per 
 sonal experience when he wrote: 
 
 " It is the vain endeavor to make our 
 selves what we are not that has strewn his 
 tory with so many broken purposes and 
 lives left in the rough." 
 
 Not all fathers, by any means, have been 
 shortsighted. A great majority, fortu 
 nately for the world, have considered the 
 selection of the right career by their sons 
 as the most important problem of their 
 lives. 
 
 The business world is full of kindly, big- 
 visioned men who have given time and
 
 The Finest Investment 193 
 
 thought, not merely to guiding their own 
 sons careers, but also to setting the feet 
 of other men s sons on the path of success. 
 
 There can be no more satisfactory em 
 ployment. No man could have a finer epi 
 taph than this: " He was the friend and 
 helper of young men." 
 
 Organizations fail, stocks prove worth 
 less, the most carefully made investments 
 too often leak away. But a young life 
 fitted into its proper place in the world is 
 an investment whose power goes on 
 through the years, and even into eternity. 
 
 " Blessed is the man who has found his 
 work," said Carlyle. 
 
 And thrice blessed is the man who 
 helped that man to find it.
 
 THE WORLD IS OWNED BY MEN 
 
 WHO CROSS BRIDGES BEFORE 
 
 THEY COME TO THEM 
 
 A YOUNG man came one day to Lorin 
 F. Deland, that wise adviser to busi 
 ness men, and said this: "I have been 
 three years in the same job, and I feel that 
 I am entirely lost sight of by my employers. 
 There is no future ahead of me; I am dis 
 couraged and hopeless. What shall I 
 do?" 
 
 Mr. Deland answered: " I will under 
 take to help you, but you must promise to 
 do exactly as I say." The young man 
 promised hopefully. 
 
 " For thirty days," said Mr. Deland, 
 " I want you to concentrate every working 
 minute on the following problem : What 
 suggestion can I make to my employer by 
 which he can in the next calendar year in 
 crease his sales $50,000, or $5,000, or 
 $500, or $100? 
 
 At the end of thirty days the young man 
 194
 
 Men Who Cross Bridges 195 
 
 returned crestfallen to report that he had 
 not been able to think of one single sug 
 gestion. 
 
 Mr. Deland then gave him this problem 
 for the second month: 
 
 " Devote every energy to discovering 
 some way by which your employer can in 
 the next year save $5,000, or $500, or $50 
 in the cost of conducting his affairs." 
 
 At the end of the second month the 
 young man was back again with a second 
 confession of failure. He said also that 
 he had decided not to ask for any further 
 help. 
 
 Then Mr. Deland spoke his mind : 
 
 So, Mills, you don t care for any more of my 
 advice [he said]. Well, this time I am going to 
 give it to you without your wanting it. My boy, 
 just realize a moment where you stand. With 
 the enormous amount of clothing business that 
 is being done, you are not able, though you have 
 been three years in this house, to increase the 
 volume of business $100 a year; with the elabor 
 ate and necessarily wasteful methods in which 
 that great business is transacted, you are not near 
 enough to it to point out a better system in any
 
 196 It s a Good Old World 
 
 department whereby the small sum of $50 a year 
 may be saved. 
 
 My boy, lie low! Attract just as little atten 
 tion to yourself as you can. Don t let the man 
 ager remember that you have been three years in 
 his employ if you can help it. If he knew how 
 incapable you are of development or progress he 
 would change you off for some young man of 
 greater promise. Lie low, my boy, lie low. 
 
 That young man was typical of thou 
 sands the great unimaginative horde 
 who have never in the slightest degree de 
 veloped their imaginations. 
 
 I do not like the phrase " never cross a 
 bridge until you come to it "; it is used by 
 too many men as a cloak for mental lazi 
 ness. 
 
 The world is owned by men who cross 
 bridges on their imaginations miles and 
 miles in advance of the procession. 
 
 Some men are born with more of imag 
 ination than others; but it can, by hard 
 work, be cultivated. 
 
 Not by mere day-dreaming, not by lazy 
 wondering, but by hard study and earnest 
 thought.
 
 Men Who Cross Bridges 197 
 
 You and I said to ourselves idly: 
 wonder what is going to happen when the 
 
 war is over." 
 
 But one day during the war I had 
 luncheon with a group of men who said: 
 " At least a thousand different develop 
 ments are coming at the close of the war, 
 each one of which will make men rich. 
 Beginning to-day we start to study " 
 
 I met another man who has recently 
 been added to the staff of a great concern 
 engaged in exporting goods to South 
 America. 
 
 That man has never seen South Amer 
 ica; but on the day war was declared in 
 Europe he said to himself: "Europe s 
 trade with South America is coming to us. 
 I am going to learn everything there is to 
 know about that continent." 
 
 He crossed his bridge four years in ad 
 vance. 
 
 Looking into the future, what bridges 
 do you see?
 
 WE SHALL WIN IF 
 OUR SENSE OF HUMOR LASTS 
 
 A SERIOUS minded reader took me to 
 task because a remark in an article 
 of mine during the war seemed to him too 
 facetious. 
 
 " In ordinary times this might be all 
 right," he reminded me; "but we are in 
 the midst of a great war, and it is no time 
 for jokes." 
 
 To which I replied that we were in the 
 midst of a great war therefore we 
 should have twice as many jokes and they 
 should be twice as funny. 
 
 Only yesterday I was reading about a 
 Cabinet meeting held at the White House 
 in one of the most critical hours of our 
 history. The incident was recorded by 
 Secretary Stanton, not a particularly sym 
 pathetic reporter. 
 
 Around the table the various Secretaries 
 gathered, solemn-faced and silent. To 
 their amazement, the President, instead of 
 198
 
 We Shall Win 199 
 
 turning to the business in hand, began read 
 ing aloud a chapter from the humorous 
 works of Artemus Ward. 
 
 The Cabinet members were too aston 
 ished to speak: Stanton was tempted to 
 leave the room in angry protest. 
 
 The President, unheeding, read the chap 
 ter through. Then, laying the book down,, 
 he heaved a deep sigh and said: 
 
 " Gentlemen, why don t you laugh? 
 With the fearful strain that is upon me 
 night and day, if I did not laugh I should 
 die; and you need this medicine as much 
 as I." 
 
 So saying, he turned to his tall hat, 
 which was on the table beside him, and 
 drew out what Stanton described as a " lit 
 tle white paper." 
 
 That little white paper was the Emanci 
 pation Proclamation. 
 
 The members of the Cabinet never could 
 fathom the mingling of laughter and tears 
 that was the secret of Lincoln s greatness. 
 
 They were afraid of laughter: they re 
 garded it as dangerous and in times like 
 those almost immoral.
 
 200 It s a Good Old World 
 
 But Lincoln knew better. Humor to 
 him as to many another overburdened 
 man was the great shock-absorber of 
 life: without its kindly ministrations, the 
 hard places of the road would have 
 wrenched his soul beyond endurance. 
 
 Napoleon seldom smiled; Cromwell had 
 little sense of humor. Either of them 
 would be a dangerous man to handle our 
 affairs in times like these. 
 
 Such men become too profoundly im 
 pressed with their own importance. And 
 in the critical moment their self-importance 
 often betrays their better judgment. 
 
 Give us, rather, men like Washington, 
 who, as Irving writes, frequently leaned 
 back and " laughed until the tears ran 
 down his face." 
 
 Men like Lincoln, whose point of view 
 is so detached that they can laugh even at 
 themselves. 
 
 A saving sense of humor is the fourth 
 great Christian virtue, says A. C. Benson. 
 And that is so true that I wish it had been 
 written in the Bible instead of in one of 
 Mr. A. C. Benson s books.
 
 We Shall Win 201 
 
 A man may have faith and hope and 
 chanty, and still be a prig and a bore. 
 
 Jesus was none of these. He was the 
 most popular dinner guest in Jerusalem. 
 
 No one ever criticized Him for being 
 too serious minded and respectable. In 
 stead, He was criticized for dining out too 
 much, for not compelling His disciples to 
 fast, and for being too much with the loud 
 laughing crowd of " publicans and sin 
 ners." 
 
 I have some righteous friends who are 
 going to feel greatly shocked at the con 
 duct of the saints in Heaven. 
 
 They have never read that verse in the 
 Bible which says : 
 
 " He that sitteth in the heavens shall 
 laugh." 
 
 With all my heart I would urge them to 
 begin right now even in serious days 
 like these to cultivate that fourth great 
 Christian virtue. 
 
 Lest perchance they die, and in a 
 heaven presided over by a God who dearly 
 loves a laugh shall find themselves lone 
 some and ill at ease.
 
 LIVING IN A LIMOUSINE AND 
 LIVING IN A TUB 
 
 THERE was quite a little group of 
 people on the curb-stone, waiting for 
 a break in the stream of passing automo 
 biles: among them two shop-girls and I. 
 
 The girls recognized a woman in one of 
 the limousines as the wife of a very rich 
 New Yorker; and their comments were dis 
 tinctly envious. 
 
 I smiled to myself as I listened. 
 
 For only a few days before I had been 
 at a party where the lady in the limousine 
 was present: and I wished that the girls 
 might have been there too, and heard the 
 remarks she made. 
 
 She came dressed in a thousand dollars 
 worth of clothes, with five or ten thousand 
 dollars worth of jewels sprinkled over her. 
 And, from the minute of her arrival until 
 she left, her conversation consisted of 
 nothing but cynicism and complaint. 
 
 She had just moved into a new apart- 
 
 202
 
 A Limousine and a Tub 203 
 
 merit: it was noisy, she said, and she hated 
 it already. 
 
 The limousine her husband had given 
 her as a birthday surprise and he ought 
 to have known that she loathed upholstery 
 of that color. 
 
 She had seen all the new shows, and they 
 bored her to death. 
 
 Of all the bitter, soul-sick people whom 
 I have ever met she takes first prize: and 
 the little shop-girls envied her. 
 
 What feelings would have been in their 
 hearts if they had lived in Athens about 
 400 B. c., and had seen a poorly dressed 
 man living in a wooden tub? 
 
 Pity, probably : perhaps contempt. 
 
 Yet, when Alexander the Great visited 
 that man and offered him any favor in the 
 world, the man replied that he wanted only 
 one thing that Alexander should step 
 out of his sunlight. 
 
 A curious old world, is n t it, where a 
 lady in her limousine, possessed of every 
 thing, is still dissatisfied: and Diogenes in 
 his tub, owning nothing, can be so content? 
 
 We are on the threshold of a period
 
 204 It s a Good Old World 
 
 when the struggle to get things is going to 
 take on a new, perhaps more bitter, phase. 
 
 The men who have carried the hard, un 
 pleasant burdens of the world learned, dur 
 ing the war, their power over the world. 
 
 They have learned from Russia that the 
 most strongly intrenched government can 
 not stand against them. 
 
 They have learned from England that 
 Labor can dictate to Cabinets; in America, 
 as Samuel Gompers says, they have made 
 in three years a generation of progress. 
 
 I do not see how any real lover of the 
 race can fail to find satisfaction in this 
 great forward movement of the common 
 man. 
 
 The movement will have its excesses: 
 but has capitalism had no excesses? It 
 will frequently prove expensive : but so has 
 every previous regime. 
 
 My fear for the common man is not that 
 he will cost the world too much, but that, 
 when he gets what he wants, he will find 
 that he has still somehow failed of happi 
 ness. 
 
 I would have him study a little the
 
 A Limousine and a Tub 205 
 
 strange case of Diogenes, and of the 
 limousine lady. 
 
 Before he sets forth on his journey to 
 the top, I would have him cut out these 
 lines of Milton and paste them in his hat: 
 
 He that has light within his own clear breast 
 May sit in the center, and enjoy bright day; 
 
 But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts 
 Be-nighted wa^ks under the mid-day Sun ; 
 
 Himself is his o\n dungeon. 
 
 From the dungeons of poverty and hun 
 ger and want the common man is going to 
 be delivered : I would put him on his guard, 
 lest, in escaping from these, he be plunged 
 into the worse dungeon of spiritual death. 
 
 His mind is filled now with the thought 
 of a day when every one will have his own 
 limousine. 
 
 I ask him to remember that a world in 
 which we all lived in tubs would be a first- 
 class world, if we all had the spirit of 
 Diogenes: 
 
 And that where there is no vision the 
 people perish just as surely as where there 
 is no food.
 
 DEMOCRACY IS A NEW SHOW, 
 
 AND EVERY CITIZEN IS THE 
 
 STAGE-MANAGER 
 
 A VERY patriotic citizen came to me 
 during the war, much perturbed. 
 
 " These investigations in Washington 
 are outrageous," he exclaimed. " Sup 
 pose there have been mistakes; is that any 
 reason why we should advertise them to 
 our enemies? 
 
 " Is there any sense in crying from the 
 house-tops that we have only nine Brown 
 ing machine-guns, and that our men are 
 inadequately clothed and equipped? Such 
 matters ought to be kept secret." 
 
 And I remarked to him that in Germany 
 such matters were kept secret. 
 
 There are only two families living on the 
 world s Main Street, I said to him. 
 
 There is the Autocracy family, who keep 
 the front gate locked and the front curtains 
 drawn. The lawn looks tidy and the 
 206
 
 Democracy Is a New Show 207 
 
 house is well kept; but no one knows 
 what s going on behind those curtains. 
 
 It may be only a friendly game of 
 pinochle: but it may be counterfeiting, or a 
 bomb plot, or murder. 
 
 And there is the Old Widow Democ 
 racy. Her lawn is covered with tin cans, 
 and the children are scrapping all over it, 
 and she does her washing right out on the 
 front porch. 
 
 But she s in sight every minute, and she 
 has to be pretty honest, whether she wants 
 to or not. 
 
 One of the reasons we were fighting, I 
 said to him, was to make the Autocracy 
 family pull up those curtains, and bring 
 their corn-cob pipes and their laundry out 
 on the porch. 
 
 And while our boys were over in Au 
 tocracy s front yard, breaking the windows 
 and letting sunlight into the back rooms, 
 we didn t want anybody the President 
 or anyone else to be staying at home 
 and locking our doors or pulling our cur 
 tains down. 
 
 Public criticism is always noisy, some-
 
 208 It s a Good Old World 
 
 times unpleasant, and frequently mistaken: 
 but it is an inseparable feature of demo 
 cratic control. And, in the long run, it 
 works well even for the men who are 
 criticized. 
 
 And now, my dear Morley [wrote Gladstone 
 to John Morley], there is one more thing I wish 
 to say to you: Take it from me that to endure 
 trampling on with patience and self-control is no 
 bad element in the preparation of a man for 
 walking firmly and successfully in the path of 
 great public duty. Be sure that discipline is full 
 of blessings. 
 
 It is a good thing also for business. 
 
 One of the great captains of industry of 
 the old school died a few years ago. A 
 little while before his death he attended a 
 meeting of the directors of one of the coun 
 try s largest industries. There he said 
 something like this : 
 
 " I am convinced that I have been 
 wrong, and that you younger men who 
 have stood for full publicity have been 
 right. I am too old now to change : but 
 if I had my life to live over again I would
 
 take the public into my confidence straight 
 through." 
 
 Most of all, publicity is a good thing for 
 governments. 
 
 In the first place, it is necessary to open up the 
 processes of our politics. They have been too 
 secret, too complicated: they have consisted too 
 much of private conference and secret under 
 standings. If there is nothing to conceal, then 
 why conceal it ? If it is a public game, then why 
 play it in private ? Publicity is one of the purify 
 ing elements of politics. 
 
 The gentleman who made these remarks 
 is now President of the United States 
 the same gentleman whom many tender 
 hearted people are seeking to shield from 
 the publicity in which he so thoroughly 
 believes. 
 
 Autocracy is a very old performance. 
 When the curtain of history rose six or 
 seven thousand years ago, kings were play 
 ing their part in the spot-light, and they 
 have been on the stage ever since. 
 
 Democracy is a new show, still in re 
 hearsal. Every individual citizen regards
 
 210 It s a Good Old World 
 
 himself as the stage-manager, with full 
 liberty to shout directions at the actors, or 
 protest at the top of his voice that the 
 performance is rotten. 
 
 The result is noise and confusion; but 
 there is no doubt that gradually the show 
 is getting better, just the same.
 
 IS YOUR CONVERSATION A 
 
 GOOD ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 FOR YOU? 
 
 AS we rode up from Washington to 
 gether a man who is a personal 
 friend of President Wilson talked to me 
 about him. 
 
 " One thing that always impresses me," 
 he said, " is the wonderful precision of his 
 speech. His mind seems to reach out and 
 grasp the needed word with unfaltering 
 accuracy. I have never known him to hes 
 itate for a word, or employ one that re 
 quired the slightest modification or expla 
 nation. 
 
 " I once asked him to what he attributed 
 this power. 
 
 " He answered that it was due to the 
 early training of his father. 
 
 " My father never allowed any mem 
 ber of his household to use an incorrect 
 expression, said the President. Any 
 
 211
 
 212 It s a Good Old World 
 
 slip on the part of one of the children was 
 at once corrected; any unfamiliar word 
 immediately explained, and each of us en 
 couraged to find a prompt use for it in our 
 conversation so as to fix it in our mem 
 ories. " 
 
 As we stepped off the train and walked 
 through the station, we passed a group of 
 smartly dressed young women. Their 
 conversation, as we caught it, was some 
 what after this fashion: 
 "Not re-eally?" 
 " Sure. I thought I d die." 
 " You don t mean it. Not re-eally." 
 " Sure I tell you. I thought I d die." 
 An unjust prejudice has grown up in 
 the world against the man who talks well, 
 and in favor of the wise-looking individual, 
 who sits stolid, saying nothing. 
 
 My observation is that, generally speak 
 ing, poverty of speech is the outward evi 
 dence of poverty of mind. 
 
 The individual whose communication is 
 confined to half a dozen worn expressions, 
 has a mind that is not working. It is 
 merely sliding along in well-oiled grooves.
 
 Your Conversation 213 
 
 A mind constantly reaching out along 
 new paths of thought, will of necessity find 
 new language with which to clothe that 
 thought. 
 
 There is a certain New York business 
 man among my friends who makes it a rule 
 to ask every applicant for a position " Can 
 you write well? " 
 
 A strange question, one would think, to 
 put to a prospective elevator boy. Yet 
 the man has a reason for it. 
 
 " No man can write clearly," he says, 
 " who does not think clearly. I want to 
 see a man s mind at work before I give 
 him a place in my organization." 
 
 A mastery of good, clean-cut English is 
 possible to anybody. 
 
 One very good way to acquire it is by 
 reading aloud. Select some author whose 
 work is worth reading, and keep your mind 
 fixed not merely on the meaning of the 
 words but on the words themselves. 
 
 Another good exercise is the one that 
 Benjamin Franklin used. He would read 
 a page from some English classic, and then, 
 putting away the book, seek to reproduce it
 
 214 It s a Good Old World 
 
 in writing. By comparing his own version 
 with the original, he learned wherein he 
 could improve. 
 
 Emerson said that Montaigne s words 
 had so much vitality that if one were to cut 
 them they would bleed. 
 
 Daniel Webster used to study the dic 
 tionary as other men study the financial 
 page. 
 
 It paid him ; it will pay you. 
 
 For good or ill, your conversation is 
 your advertisement. 
 
 Every time you open your mouth you let 
 men look into your mind. Do they see it 
 well clothed, neat, businesslike? 
 
 Or is it slouching along in shoes run 
 down at the heel, with soiled linen and 
 frazzled trousers, shabbily seeking to 
 avoid real work?
 
 AND A DOG RUNS OUT AND 
 BARKS 
 
 STRANGE how a sound will some 
 times set the chords of memory to vi 
 brating. 
 
 It may be a woman s laugh, or a snatch 
 of song, or even the barking of a dog at 
 twilight. 
 
 The other night I left the train two sta 
 tions away from home, and started to walk 
 the rest of the way across the hills. It 
 began to snow after a little. From the 
 houses along the road lights flickered 
 through the haze; and as I rounded a 
 curve, a little dog ran out and barked. 
 
 In an instant my mind leaped back 
 twenty years or more, to the days when I 
 carried a newspaper-route in Boston. I 
 remembered how long the way used to 
 seem > two miles out and two miles back 
 and how dark it was, in winter, when 
 the sun had gone. And how I hated one 
 newspaper that used to issue a great edi- 
 215
 
 216 It s a Good Old World 
 
 tion of twenty-four pages on Saturday eve 
 nings. The editors must be heartless crea 
 tures, I thought to myself; surely they had 
 never been boys and compelled to travel 
 a paper-route. 
 
 In a big house up on the hills, in the 
 district where rich men lived, there were 
 two dogs that every night barked at me. 
 
 " Oh, they won t bite," said the owner. 
 They bark, but they re perfectly good- 
 natured." 
 
 How serenely confident every man is 
 that his dog is perfectly good-natured! 
 
 Every night I had to gird up my cour 
 age to start out on that route, thinking 
 of those two dogs that would run out and 
 bark. I was just a little fellow, in short 
 pants, and the space between my knees 
 and my ankles seemed pathetically unpro 
 tected just made for dogs to bite. 
 
 The owner caught them snapping at me 
 one night; and I remember yet how he 
 laughed. It seemed to him a bully joke 
 a little boy worried by two big barking 
 dogs. 
 
 I shall never forget that owner nor
 
 A Dog Runs Out and Barks 217 
 
 the man whose house stood next to his. 
 
 It was the night before Christmas. 
 Snow was coming down, and it seemed 
 more dark than usual, and the papers were 
 heavy and the route more long. 
 
 I had just come out of the yard of the 
 man with the dogs, and as I stepped onto 
 the porch of the next house, suddenly the 
 door opened, and a big jolly-faced man 
 stood smiling in the lamplight. 
 
 " Hello, kid," he cried jovially. " I Ve 
 been waiting for you. Do you know what 
 day to-morrow is? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," I answered. " It s Christ 
 mas." 
 
 " Right you are," he shouted. " And 
 here s something from Santa Claus." He 
 opened his hand, and there was a big silver 
 dollar. 
 
 I do not know his name; I have not seen 
 him in twenty years; but last night, walk 
 ing home in the snow, I remembered him 
 with a warm feeling around my heart. 
 And I fell to thinking that I must be 
 pretty nearly as big now as he was when 
 he gave me that dollar, and about as old.
 
 And I wondered how I look to the kid 
 that brings my paper and the other kids I 
 meet, and whether I am the kind of man 
 that is always too busy to take time to be 
 kind to them or whether I am the kind 
 that they would sort of like to run into, 
 when it s cold, and the route is long, and 
 the burden is heavy. 
 
 And a dog runs out and barks. 
 
 THE END
 
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