PUSHING TO THE FRONT BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN THE MARDEN BOOKS EFFICIENCY BOOKS Keeping Fit. Net, $1.25 Selling Things. ' 1.25 Victorious Attitude. " 1.25 The Joys of Living. Training for Efficiency. Woman and the Home. The Exceptional Employee. Making Life a Masterpiece. The Progressive Business Man. .25 .25 .26 .00 .25 .00 INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS Getting On. Net, $1.25 Self-Investment, Every Man a King. The Optimistic Life. Rising in the World. Be Good to Yourself. Pushing to the Front. .25 .25 .25 .25 .26 .26 Peace, Power, and Plenty. " 1.25 The Secret of Achievement. " 1.26 He Can Who Thinks He Can. 1.25 The Miracle of Right Thought. " 1.25 The Young Man Entering Business. " 1.25 SUCCESS BOOKLETS Per volume, Net, 50 cents. Character. Good Manners. Opportunity. Cheerfulness. Economy. An Iron Will. Power of Personality. SPECIAL BOOKLETS Success Nuggets. Net, $ .60 I Had a Friend. " .60 Hints for Young Writers. " .50 JJ ujrfftttg to % Jfinwt OR SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES A BOOK OF INSPIRATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT TO ALL WHO ARE STRUGGLING FOR SELF-ELEVATION ALONG THE PATHS OF KNOWLEDGE AND OF DUTY BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN Author of ** Peace, Power, and Plenty," " Every Man a King," etc. Editor of Success Magaxint We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another name for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race. EMERSON NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1894, Bl ORISON SWETT MARDEN. PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION )FTER the author had worked for years on the original manu- script of "Pushing to the Front" it was entirely destroyed by fire; and it was with great difficulty that he reproduced it, as all of his notes, which he had been collecting for many years, were burned also. As he had never before written anything for pub- lication, he expected that the rewritten manuscript, sent to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company of Boston, would be declined, but they promptly ac- cepted it and published twelve editions the first year. The book has probably gone through more than one hundred editions since. The author has received thousands of letters from people in nearly all parts of the world, telling how the book has aroused their ambition, changed their ideals and aims, increased their confidence, and how it has spurred them to the successful undertaking of what they before had thought impossible. Many of these letters have come from youths telling how it has encouraged them to return to school or college after having given up in despair; to go back to vocations which they had left in a moment of discouragement; enheartened to take up other dropped or neglected tasks with new hope and new ambition; and how the book has proved a turning point in their careers; the cause of their success. "Pushing to the Front" has been translated into m'any foreign languages, and has been very success- v 35998*s tortured because they were not enthusiastic in em- ployments which they loathed, and against ROUND BOYS IN SQUARE HOLES 89 which every fiber of their being was uttering perpetual protest. It is often a narrow selfishness in a father which leads him to wish his son a reproduc- tion of himself. " You are trying to make that boy another you. One is enough," said Emerson. John Jacob Astor's father wished his son to be his successor as a butcher, but the instinct of commercial enterprise was too strong in the future merchant. Nature never duplicates men. She breaks the pattern at every birth. The magic com- bination is never used but once. Frederick the Great was terribly abused because he had a passion for art and music and did not care for military drill. His father hated the fine arts and imprisoned him. He even con- templated killing his son, but his own death placed Frederick on the throne at the age of twenty-eight. This boy, who, because he loved art and music, was thought good for noth- ing, made Prussia one of the greatest na- tions of Europe. How stupid and clumsy is the blinking eagle at perch, but how keen his glance, how steady and true his curves, when turning his powerful wing against the clear blue sky! Ignorant parents compelled the boy Ark- 90 PUSHING TO THE FRONT wright to become a barber's apprentice, but Nature had locked up in his brain a cunning device destined to bless humanity and to do the drudgery of millions of England's poor; so he must needs say "hands off" even to his parents, as Christ said to his mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's busi- ness?" Galileo was set apart for a physician, but when compelled to study anatomy and phy- siology, he would hide his Euclid and Arch- imedes and stealthily work out the abstruse problems. He was only eighteen when he dis- covered the principle of the pendulum in a lamp left swinging in the cathedral at Pisa. He invented both the microscope and tele- scope, enlarging knowledge of the vast and minute alike. The parents of Michael Angelo had de- clared that no son of theirs should ever fol- low the discreditable profession of an artist, and even punished him for covering the walls and furniture with sketches ; but the fire burn- ing in his breast was kindled by the Divine Artist, and would not let him rest until he had immortalized himself in the architecture of St. Peter's, in the marble of his Moses, and on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. ROUND BOYS IN SQUARE HOLES 91 Pascal's father determined that his son should teach the dead languages, but the voice of mathematics drowned every other call, haunting the boy until he laid aside his gram- mar for Euclid. The father of Joshua Reynolds rebuked his son for drawing pictures, and wrote on one: " Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Yet this "idle boy" became one of the founders of the Royal Academy. Turner was intended for a barber in Maiden Lane, but became the greatest land- scape-painter of modern times. Claude Lorraine, the painter, was appren- ticed to a pastry-cook; Moliere, the author, to an upholsterer; and Guido, the famous painter of Aurora, was sent to a music school. Schiller was sent to study surgery in the military school at Stuttgart, but in secret he produced his first play, " The Robbers," the first performance of which he had to witness in disguise. The irksomeness of his prison- like school so galled him, and his longing for authorship so allured him, that he ventured, penniless, into the inhospitable world of let- ters. A kind lady aided him, and soon he produced the two splendid dramas which made him immortal, 92 PUSHING TO THE FRONT The physician Handel wished his son to be- come a lawyer, and so tried to discourage his fondness for music. But the boy got an old spinet and practised on it secretly in a hay- loft. When the doctor visited a brother in the service of the Duke of Weisenfelds, he took his son with him. The boy wandered unobserved to the organ in a chapel, and soon had a private concert under full blast. The duke happened to hear the performance, and wondered who could possibly combine so much melody with so much evident unfamil- iarity with the instrument. The boy was brought before him, and the duke, instead of blaming him for disturbing the organ, praised his performance, and persuaded Dr. Handel to let his son follow his bent. Daniel Defoe had been a trader, a soldier, a merchant, a secretary, a factory manager, a commissioner's accountant, an envoy, and an author of several indifferent books, before he wrote his masterpiece, " Robinson Crusoe." Wilson, the ornithologist, failed in five dif- ferent professions before he found his place. Erskine spent four years in the navy, and then, in the hope of more rapid promotion, joined the army. After serving more than two years, he one day, out of curiosity, at- ROUND BOYS IN SQUARE HOLES 93 tended a court, in the town where his regiment was quartered. The presiding judge, an ac- quaintance, invited Erskine to sit near him, and said that the pleaders at the bar were among the most eminent lawyers of Great Britain. Erskine took their measure as they spoke, and believed he could excel them. He at once began the study of law, in which he eventually soon stood alone as the greatest forensic orator of his country. A. T. Stewart studied for the ministry, and became a teacher, before he drifted into his proper calling as a merchant, through the accident of having lent money to a friend. The latter, with failure imminent, insisted that his creditor should take the shop as the only means of securing the money. "Jonathan," said Mr. Chase, when his son told of having nearly fitted himself for col- lege, " thou shalt go down to the machine- shop on Monday morning." It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop, to work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a United States Senator from Rhode Island. It has been well said that if God should commission two angels, one to sweep a street crossing, and the other to rule an empire, 94 PUSHING TO THE FRONT they could not be induced to exchange call- ings. Not less true is it that he who feels that God has given him a particular work to do can be happy only when earnestly engaged in its performance. Happy the youth who finds the place which his dreams have pictured ! If he does not fill that place, he will not fill any to the satisfaction of himself or others. Na- ture never lets a man rest until he Las found his place. She haunts him and drives him until all his faculties give their consent and he falls into his proper niche. A parent might just as well decide that the magnetic needle will point to Venus or Jupiter without trying it, as to decide what profession his son shall adopt. What a ridiculous exhibition a great truck- horse would make on the race-track; yet this is no more incongruous than the popular idea that law, medicine, and theology are the only desirable professions. How ridiculous, too, for fifty- two per cent, of our American coU lege graduates to study law! How many young men become poor clergymen by trying to imitate their fathers who were good ones ; of poor doctors and lawyers for the same reason! The country is full of men who are out of place, " disappointed, soured, ruined, ROUND BOYS IN SQUARE HOLES 95 out of office, out of money, out of credit, out of courage, out at elbows, out in the cold." The fact is, nearly every college graduate who succeeds in the true sense of the word, pre- pares himself in school, but makes himself after he is graduated. The best thing his teachers have taught him is how to study. The moment he is beyond the college walls he ceases to use books and helps which do not feed him, and seizes upon those that do. We must not jump to the conclusion that because a man has not succeeded in what he has really tried to do with all his might, he cannot succeed at anything. Look at a fish floundering on the sand as though he would tear himself to pieces. But look again: a huge wave breaks higher up the beach and covers the unfortunate creature. The mo- ment his fins feel the water, he is himself again, and darts like a flash through the waves. His fins mean something now, while before they beat the air and earth in vain, a hindrance instead of a help. If you fail after doing your level best, ex- amine the work attempted, and see if it really be in the line of your bent or power of achievement. Cowper failed as a lawyer. He was so timid that he could not plead a case, 96 PUSHING TO THE FRONT but he wrote some of our finest poems. Mo- Here found that he was not adapted to the work of a lawyer, but he left a great name in literature. Voltaire and Petrarch abandoned the law, the former choosing philosophy, the latter, poetry. Cromwell was a farmer until forty years old. Very few of us, before we reach our teens, show great genius or even remarkable talent for any line of work or study. The great majority of boys and girls, even when given all the latitude and longitude heart could de- sire, find it very difficult before their fifteenth or even before their twentieth year to decide what to do for a living. Each knocks at the portals of the mind, demanding a won- derful aptitude for some definite line of work, but it is not there. That is no reason why the duty at hand should be put off, or why the labor that naturally falls to one's lot should not be done well. Samuel Smiles was trained to a profession which was not to his taste, yet he practised it so faithfully that it helped him to authorship, for which he was well fitted. Fidelity to the work or everyday duties at hand, and a genuine feeling of responsibility to our parents or employers, ourselves, and our ROUND BOYS IN SQUARE HOLES 97 God, will eventually bring most of us into the right niches at the proper time. Garfield would not have become President if he had not previously been a zealous teacher, a responsible soldier, a conscientious statesman. Neither Lincoln nor Grant started as a baby with a precocity for the White House, or an irresistible genius for ruling men. So no one should be disappointed be- cause he was not endowed with tremendous gifts in the cradle. His business is to do the best he can wherever his lot may be cast, and advance at every honorable opportunity in the direction towards which the inward monitor points. Let duty be the guiding-star, and success will surely be the crown, to the full measure of one's ability and industry. What career? What shall my life's work be? If instinct and heart ask for carpentry, be a carpenter; if for medicine, be a physician. With a firm choice and earnest work, a young man or woman'cannot help but succeed. But if there be no instinct, or if it be weak or faint, one should choose cautiously along the line of his best adaptability and opportunity. No one need doubt that the world has use for him. True success lies in acting well your 98 PUSHING TO THE FRONT part, and this every one can do. Better be a first-rate hod-carrier than a second-rate any- thing. The world has been very kind to many who were once known as dunces or blockheads, after they have become very successful; but it was very cross to them while they were struggling through discouragement arof five minutes ; and it has been said that among the trifles that conspired to de- feat him at Waterloo, the loss of a few mo- ments by himself and Grouchy on the fatal morning was the most significant Bliicher was on time, and Grouchy was late. It was enough to send Napoleon to St. Helena, and to change the destiny of millions. It is a well-known truism that has almost been elevated to the dignity of a maxim, that what may be done at any time will be done at no time. The African Association of London wanted to send Ledyard, the traveler, to Africa, and asked when he would be ready to go. " To- morrow morning," was the reply. John Jer- vis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent, was asked when he could join his ship, and replied, " Directly." Colin Campbell, appointed com- mander of the army in India, and asked when he could set out, replied without hesitation, " To-morrow." The energy wasted in postponing until to- morrow a duty of to-day would often do the work. How much harder and more disagree- 142 PUSHING TO THE FRONT able, too, it is to do work which has been put off! What would have been done at the time with pleasure or even enthusiasm, after it has been delayed for days and weeks, be- comes drudgery. Letters can never be an- swered so easily as when first received. Many large firms make it a rule never to allow a letter to lie unanswered overnight. Promptness takes the drudgery out of an occupation. Putting off usually means leav- ing off, and going to do becomes going un- done. Doing a deed is like sowing a seed : if not done at just the right time it will be for- ever out of season. The summer of eternity will not be long enough to bring to maturity the fruit of a delayed action. If a star or planet were delayed one second, it might throw the whole universe out of harmony. " There is no moment like the present/' said Maria Edgeworth; "not only so, there is no moment at all, no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hopes from them afterward. They will be dissipated, lost in the hurry and scurry of the world, ,'or sunk in the slough of indolence." Cobbett said he owed his success to being TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS 143 "always ready" more than to all his natural abilities combined. " To this quality I owed my extraordinary promotion in the army," said he. " If I had to mount guard at ten, I was ready at nine ; never did any man or anything wait one minute for me." "How," asked a man of Sir Walter Ra- leigh, " do you accomplish so much, and in so short a time?" "When I have anything to do, I go and do it," was the reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator, even if he have the better judgment, will fail. When asked how he managed to accom- plish so much work, and at the same time attend to his social duties, a French states- man replied, " I do it simply by never post- poning till to-morrow what should be done to-day." It was said of an unsuccessful pub- lic man that he used to reverse this process, his favorite maxim being " never to do to- day what might be postponed till to-m'orrow." How many men have dawdled away their success and allowed companions and relatives to steal it away five minutes at a time! " To-morrow, didst thou say ? " asked Cot- 144 PUSHING TO THE FRONT ton. "Go to I will not hear 'of it. To- morrow ! 'tis a sharper who stakes his penury against thy plenty who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes, and promises, the currency of idiots. To-morrow! it is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance in the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society with those that own it. Tis fancy's child, and folly is its father; wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic visions of the even- ing." Oh, how many a wreck on the road to success could say : " I have spent all my life in pursuit- of to-morrow, being assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me." "But his resolutions remained unshaken," Charles Reade continues in his story of Noah Skinner, the defaulting clerk, who had been overcome by a sleepy languor after deciding to make restitution; "by and by, waking up from a sort of heavy doze, he took, as it were, a last look at the receipts, and mur- mured, ' My head, how heavy it feels ! ' But presently he roused himself, full of his peni- tent resolutions, and murmured again, brok- enly, ' I'll take it to Pembroke Street to TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS 145 morrow; to morrow/ The morrow found him, and so did the detectives, dead/* "To-morrow." It is the devil's motto. All history is strewn with its brilliant victims, the wrecks of half-finished plans and unex- ecuted resolutions. It is the favorite refuge of sloth and incompetency. " Strike while the iron is hot," and " Make hay while the sun shines," are golden maxims. Very few people recognize the hour when laziness begins to set in. Some people it attacks after dinner; some after lunch; and some after seven o'clock in the evening. There is in every person's life a crucial hour in the day, which must be employed instead of wasted if the day is to be saved. With most people the early morning hour becomes the test of the day's success. A person was once extolling the skill and courage of Mayenne in Henry's presence. " You are right," said Henry, " he is a great captain, but I have always five hours' start of him." Henry rose at four in the morning, and Mayenne at about ten. This made all the difference between them. Indecision becomes a disease and procrastination is its forerun- ner. There is only one known remedy for the victims of indecision, and that is prompt 146 PUSHING TO THE FRONT decision. Otherwise the disease is fatal to all success or achievement. He who hesitates is lost. A noted writer says that a bed is a bundle of paradoxes. We go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret. We make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. Yet most of those who have become emi- nent have been early risers. Peter the Great always rose before daylight. " I am," said he, for making my life as long as possi- ble, and therefore sleep as little as possible-" Alfred the Great rose before daylight. In the hours of early morning Columbus planned his voyage to America, and Napoleon his greatest campaigns. Copernicus was an early riser, as were most of the famous astron- omers of ancient and modern times. Bryant rose at five, Bancroft at dawn, and nearly all our leading authors in the early morning. Washington, Jefferson, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were all early risers. Daniel Webster used often to answer twenty to thirty letters before breakfast. Walter Scott was a very punctual man c This was the secret of his enormous achieve- TRIUMPH CF PROMPTNESS 147 ments. He rose at five. By breakfast-time he had, as he used to say, broken the neck of the day's work. Writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel : " Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily be- sets you from not having your time fully em- ployed I mean what the women call daw- dling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after busi- ness, never before it." Not too much can be said about the value of the habit of rising early. Eight hours is enough sleep for any man. Very frequently seven hours is plenty. After the eighth hour in bed, if a man is able, it is his business to get up, dress quickly, and go to work. "A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into ex- istence, God gave them a work to do, and He also gave them a competence of time; so much that if they began at the right mo- ment, and wrought with sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good many years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allotted time was lost. They cannot tell what became of 148 PUSHING TO THE FRONT it, but sure enough, it has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring-lines laid alongside, the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their time run par- allel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the time. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters are posted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at the wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not break any engagement or neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usu- ally too late by about the same fatal interval." Some one has said that " promptness is a contagious inspiration." Whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the practical virtues of civilization. There is one thing that is almost as sacred as the marriage relation, that is, an appoint- ment. A man who fails to meet his appoint- ment, unless he has a good reason, is prac- tically a liar, and the world treats him as such. " If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace Greeley, " why should he have for their money? What is TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS 149 the difference between taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars." When President Washington dined at four, new members of Congress invited to dine at the White House would sometimes arrive late, and be mortified to find the President eating. " My cook," Washington would say, " never asks if the visitors have arrived, but if the hour has arrived." When his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow, Washington replied, " Then you must get a new watch, or I another secre* tary." Franklin said to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse, " I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else." Napoleon once invited his marshals to dine with him, but, as they did not arrive at the moment appointed, he began to eat without them. They came in just as he was rising from the table. "Gentlemen," said he, "it is now past dinner, and we will immediately proceed to business." Bliicher was one of the promptest men that ISO PUSHING TO THE FRONT ever lived. He was called " Marshal For- ward." John Quincy Adams was never known to be behind time. The Speaker of the House of Representatives knew when to call the House to order by seeing Mr. Adams coming to his seat. Once a member said that it was time to begin. " No," said another, " Mr. Adams is not in his seat." It was found that the clock was three minutes fast, and prompt to the minute, Mr. Adams arrived. Webster was never late at a recitation in school or college. In court, in congress, in society, he was equally punctual. Amid the cares and distractions of a singularly busy life, Horace Greeley managed to be on time for every appointment. Many a trenchant paragraph for the " Tribune " was written while the editor was waiting far men of leisure, tardy at some meeting. Punctuality is the soul of business, as brev- ity is of wit. During the first seven years of his mercan- tile career, Amos Lawrence did not permit a bill to remain unsettled over Sunday. Punctu- ality is said to be the politeness of princes. Some men are always running to catch up with their business : they are always in a hurry, and TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS 151 give you the impression that they are late for a train. They lack method, and seldom ac- complish much. Every business man knows that there are moments on which hang the destiny of years. If you arrive a few mo- ments late at the bank, your paper may be protested and your credit ruined. One of the best things about school and college life is that the bell which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lec- tures, teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch which is a good timekeeper; one that is nearly right en- courages bad habits, and is an expensive in- vestment at any price. " Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time ! " says H. C. Brown. " How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has ac- quired a reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the capital that in after years makes his success a certainty." Promptness is the mother of confidence and gives credit. It is the best possible proof that our own affairs are well ordered and well conducted, and gives others confidence in our ability. The man who is punctual, as 152 PUSHING TO THE FRONT a rule, will keep his word, and may be de- pended upon. A conductor's watch is behind time, and a terrible railway collision occurs. A leading firm with enormous assets becomes bankrupt, simply because an agent is tardy in transmit- ting available funds, as ordered. An inno- cent man is hanged because the messenger bearing a reprieve should have arrived five minutes earlier. A man is stopped five min- utes to hear a trivial story and misses a train or steamer by one minute. Grant decided to enlist the moment that he learned of the fall of Sumter. When Buck- ner sent him a flag of truce at Fort Donel- son, asking for the appointment of commis- sioners to consider terms of capitulation, he promptly replied : " No terms except an un- conditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner replied that cir- cumstances compelled him " to accept the un- generous and unchivalrous terms which you propose." The man who, like Napoleon, can on the instant seize the most important thing and sacrifice the others, is sure to win. Many a wasted life dates its ruin from a TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS 153 lost five minutes. "Too late" can be read between the lines on the tombstone of many a man who has failed. A few minutes often makes all the difference between victory and defeat, success and failure. VIII. A FORTUNE IN GOOD MAN- NERS Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wher- ever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess. EMERSON. With hat in hand, one gets on in the world. GERMAN PROVERR What thou wilt, Thou must rather enforce it with thy smile, Than hew to it with thy sword. SHAKESPEARE. Politeness has been compared to an air cushion, which, although there is apparently nothing in it, eases our jolts wonderfully. GEORGE L. CAREY. Birth's gude, but breedin's better. SCOTCH PROV- ERB. Conduct is three fourths of life. MATTHEW AR- NOLD. HY the doose de 'e 'old 'is 'ead down like that?" asked a cockney sergeant-major angrily, when a worthy fellow soldier wished to be reinstated in a position from which he had been dismissed. " Has 'e 's been han hofficer 'e hought to know 'ow to be'ave 'isself better. What use 'ud 'e be has a non-commissioned hofficer hif 'e didn't 154 FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 155 dare look 'is men in the face? Hif a man wants to be a soldier, hi say, let 'im cock 'is chin hup, switch 'is stick abart a bit, an give a crack hover the 'ead to hanybody who comes foolin' round 'im, helse 'e might just has well be a Methodist parson." The English is somewhat rude, but it ex- presses pretty forcibly the fact that a good bearing is indispensable to success as a sol- dier. Mien and manner have much to do with our influence and reputation in any walk of life. "Don't you wish you had my power?" asked the East Wind of the Zephyr. " Why, when I start they hail me by storm signals all along the coast. I can twist off a ship's mast as easily as you can waft thistledown. With one sweep of my wing I strew the coast from Labrador to Cape Horn with shattered ship timber. I can lift and have often lifted the Atlantic. I am the terror of all invalids, and to keep me from piercing to the very marrow of their bones, men cut down forests for their fires and explore the mines of con- tinents for coal to feed their furnaces. Un- der my breath the nations crouch in sepul- chers. Don't you wish you had my power ? " Zephyr made no reply, but floated from out 156 PUSHING TO THE FRONT the bowers of the sky, and all the rivers and lakes and seas, all the forests and fields, all the beasts and birds and men smiled at its coming-. Gardens bloomed, orchards ripened, silver wheat-fields turned to gold, fleecy clouds went sailing in the lofty heaven, the pinions of birds and the sails of vessels were gently wafted onward, and health and happi- ness were everywhere. The foliage and flowers and fruits and harvests, the warmth and sparkle and gladness and beauty and life were the only answer Zephyr gave to the in- solent question of the proud but pitiless East Wind. The story goes that Queen Victoria once expressed herself to her husband in rather a despotic tone, and Prince Albert, whose manly self-respect was smarting at her words, sought the seclusion of his own apart- ment, closing and locking the door. In about five minutes some one knocked. "Who is it?" inquired the Prince. " It is I. Open to the Queen of England ! " haughtily responded her Majesty. There was no reply. After a long interval there came a gentle tapping and the low spoken words: "It is I, Victoria, your wife." Is it necessary to add that the door was opened, FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 157 or that the disagreement was at an end? It kS said that civility is to a man what beauty ts to a woman: it creates an instantaneous impression in his behalf. The monk Basle, according to a quaint old legend, died while under the ban of excom- munication by the pope, and was sent in charge of an angel to find his proper place in the nether world. But his genial disposi- tion and great conversational powers won friends wherever he went. The fallen angels adopted his manner, and even the good an- gels went a long way to see him and live with him. He was removed to the lowest depths of Hades, but with the same result. His inborn politeness and kindness of heart were irresistible, and he seemed to change the hell into a heaven. At length the angel re- turned with the monk, saying that no place could be found in which to punish him. He still remained the same Basle. So his sen- tence was revoked, and he was sent to Heaven and canonized as a saint. The Duke of Marlborough "wrote Eng- lish badly and spelled it worse," yet he swayed the destinies of empires. The charm of his manner was irresistible and influenced all Europe. His fascinating smile and win- 158 PUSHING TO THE FRONT ning speech disarmed the fiercest hatred and made friends of the bitterest enemies. A gentleman took his daughter of sixteen to Richmond to witness the trial of his bitter personal enemy, Aaron Burr, whom he re- garded as an arch-traitor. But she was so fascinated by Burr's charming manner that she sat with his friends. Her father took her from the courtroom, and locked her up, but she was so overcome by the fine manner of the accused that she believed in his inno- cence and prayed for his acquittal. " To this day," said she fifty years afterwards, " I feel the magic of his wonderful deportment." Madame Recamier was so charming that when she passed around the box at the Church St. Roche in Paris, twenty thousand francs were put into it. At the great recep- tion to Napoleon on his return from Italy, the crowd caught sight of this fascinating woman and almost forgot to look at the great hero. " Please, Madame," whispered a servant to Madame de Maintenon at dinner, " one anec- dote more, for there is no roast to-day." She was so fascinating in manner and speech that her guests appeared to overlook all the little discomforts of life. FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 159 According to St. Beuve, the privileged cir- cle at Coppet after making an excursion returned from Chambery in two coaches. Those arriving in the first coach had a rue- ful experience to relate a terrific thunder- storm, shocking roads, and danger and gloom to the whole company. The party in the sec- ond coach heard their story with surprise ; of thunder-storm, of steeps, of mud, of danger, they knew nothing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed a purer air; such a con- versation between Madame de Stael and Ma- dame Recamier and Benjamin Constant and Schlegel! they were all in a state of delight. The intoxication of the conversation had made them insensible to all notice of weather or rough roads. " If I were Queen," said Madame Tesse, " I should command Madame de Stael to talk to me every day." " When she had passed," as Longfellow wrote of Evange- line, " it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music." Madame de Stael was anything but beau- tiful, but she possessed that indefinable some- thing before which mere conventional beauty cowers, commonplace and ashamed. Her hold upon the minds of men was wonderful. They were the creatures of her will, and she i6o PUSHING TO THE FRONT shaped careers as if she were omnipotent. Even the Emperor Napoleon feared her in- fluence over his people so much that he de- stroyed her writings and banished her from France. In the words of Whittier it could be said of her as might be said of any woman : Our homes are cheerier for her sake, Our door-yards brighter blooming, And all about the Asocial air Is sweeter for her coming. A guest for two weeks at the house of Arthur M. Cavanaugh, M. P., who was with- out arms or legs, was very desirous of know- ing how he fed himself ; but the conversation and manner of the host were so charming that the visitor was scarcely conscious of his deformity. " When Dickens entered a room," said one who knew him well, " it was like the sudden kindling of a big fire, by which every one was warmed/' It is said that when Goethe entered a res- taurant people would lay down their knives and forks to admire him. Philip of Macedon, after hearing the re- port of Demosthenes' famous oration, said; FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 161 " Had I been there he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself." Henry Clay was so graceful and impressive in his manner that a Pennsylvania tavern- keeper tried to induce him to get put of the stage-coach in which they were riding, and make a speech to himself and his wife. " I don't think much of Choate's spread- eagle talk," said a simple-minded member of a jury that had given five successive verdicts to the great advocate ; " but I call him a very lucky lawyer, for there was not one of those five cases that came before us where he wasn't on the right side." His manner as well as his logic was irresistible. When Edward Everett took a professor's chair at Harvard after five years of study in Europe, he was almost worshiped by the students. His manner seemed touched by that exquisite grace seldom found except in women of rare culture. His great popular- ity lay in a magical atmosphere which every one felt, but no one could describe, and which never left him. A New York lady had just taken her seat in a car on a train bound for Philadelphia, when a somewhat stout man sitting just ahead of her lighted a cigar. She coughed 162 PUSHING TO THE FRONT and moved uneasily; but the hints had no effect, so she said tartly : " You probably are a foreigner, and do not know that there is a smoking-car attached to the train. Smok- ing is not permitted here." The man made no reply, but threw his cigar from the win- dow. What was her astonishment when the conductor told her, a moment later, that she had entered the private car of General Grant. She withdrew in confusion, but the same fine courtesy which led him to give up his cigar was shown again as he spared her the morti- fication of even a questioning glance, still less of a look of amusement, although she watched his dumb, immovable figure with apprehension until she reached the door. Julian Ralph, after telegraphing an account of President Arthur's fishing-trip to the Thousand Islands, returned to his hotel at two o'clock in the morning, to find all the doors locked. With two friends who had accompanied him, he battered at a side door to wake the servants, but what was his cha- grin when the door was opened by the Presi- dent of the United States ! "Why, that's all right," said Mr. Arthur when Mr. Ralph asked his pardon. "You wouldn't have got in till morning if I had not FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 163 come. No one is up in the house but me. I could have sent my colored boy, but he had fallen asleep and I hated to wake him." The late King Edward, when Prince of Wales, the first gentleman in Europe, invited an eminent man to dine with him. When cof- fee was served, the guest, to the consternation of the others, drank from his saucer. An open titter of amusement went round the table. The Prince, quickly noting the cause of the un- timely amusement, gravely emptied his cup into his saucer and drank after the manner of his guest. Silent and abashed, the other members of the princely household took the rebuke and did the same. Queen Victoria sent for Carlyle, who was a Scotch peasant, offering him the title of nobleman, which he declined, feeling that he had always been a nobleman in his own right. He understood so little of the man- ners at court that, when presented to the Queen, after speaking to her a few minutes, being tired, he said, " Let us sit down, madam ;" whereat the courtiers were ready to faint. But she was great enough, and gave a gesture that seated all her puppets in a moment. The Queen's courteous suspension of the rules of etiquette, and what it may 164 PUSHING TO THE FRONT have cost her, can be better understood from what an acquaintance of Carlyle said of him when he saw him for the first time. " His presence, in some unaccountable manner, rasped the nerves. I expected to meet a rare being, and I left him feeling as if I had drunk sour wine, or had had an attack of seasick- ness." Some persons wield a scepter before which others seem to bow in glad obedience. But whence do they obtain such magic power? What is the secret of that almost hypnotic influence over people which we would give anything to possess? Courtesy is not always found in high places. Even royal courts furnish many ex- amples of bad manners. At an entertainment given years ago by Prince Edward and the Princess of Wales, to which only the very cream of the cream of society was admitted, there was such pushing and struggling to see the Princess, who was then but lately married, that, as she passed through the reception rooms, a bust of the Princess Royal was thrown from its pedestal and damaged, and the pedestal upset; and the ladies, in their eagerness to see the Princess, actually stood upon it. FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 165 When Catherine of Russia gave receptions to her nobles, she published the following rules of etiquette upon cards : " Gentlemen will not get drunk before the feast is ended. Noblemen are forbidden to strike their wives in company. Ladies of the court must not wash out their mouths in the drinking- glasses, or wipe their faces on the damask, or pick their teeth with forks." But to-day the nobles of Russia have no superiors in manners. Etiquette originally meant the ticket or tag tied to a bag to indicate its contents. If a bag had this ticket it was not examined. From this the word passed to cards upon which were printed certain rules to be ob- served by guests. These rules were " the ticket" or the etiquette. To be "the ticket/' or, as it was sometimes expressed, to act or talk by the card, became the thing with the better classes. It was fortunate for Napoleon that he married Josephine before he was made com- mander-in-chief of the armies of Italy. Her fascinating manners and her wonderful pow- ers of persuasion were more influential than the loyalty of any dozen men in France in attaching to him the adherents who would 166 PUSHING TO THE FRONT promote his interests. Josephine was to the drawing-room and the salon what Napoleon was to the field a preeminent leader. The secret of her personality that made her the Empress not only of' the hearts of the French- men, but also of the nations her husband conquered, has been beautifully told by her- self. " There is only one occasion," she said to a friend, " in which I would voluntarily use the words, '/ will!' namely, when I would say, ' I will that all around me be happy/ " " It was only a glad ' good-morning/ As she passed along the way, But it spread the morning's glory Over the livelong day." A fine manner more than compensates for all the defects of nature. The most fasci- nating person is always the one of most win- ning manners, not the one of greatest physi- cal beauty. The Greeks thought beauty was a proof of the peculiar favor of the gods, and considered that beauty only worth adorning and transmitting which was unmarred by out- ward manifestations of hard and haughty feeling. According, to their ideal, beauty must be the expression of attractive qualities within such as cheerfulness, benignity, con- tentment, charity, and love. FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 167 Mirabeau was one of the ugliest men in France. It was said he had " the face of a tiger pitted by small-pox," but the charm of his manner was almost irresistible. Beauty of life and character, as in art, has no sharp angles. Its lines seem continuous, so gently does curve melt into curve. It is sharp angles that keep many souls from be- ing beautiful that are almost so. Our good is less good when it is abrupt, rude, ill timed, or ill placed. Many a man and woman might double their influence and success by a kindly courtesy and a fine manner. Tradition tells us that before Apelles painted his wonderful Goddess of Beauty which enchanted all Greece, he traveled for years observing fair women, that he might embody in his matchless Venus a combina- tion of the loveliest found in all. So the good-mannered study, observe, and adopt all that is finest and most worthy of imitation in every cultured person they meet. Throw a bone to a dog, said a shrewd ob~- server, and he will run off with it in his mouth, but with no vibration in his tail. Call the dog to you, pat him on the head, let him take the bone from your hand, and his tail will wag with gratitude. The dog recognizes 168 PUSHING TO THE FRONT the good deed and the gracious manner of doing it. Those who throw their good deeds should not expect them to be caught with a thankful smile. "Ask a person at Rome to show you the road/' said Dr. Guthrie of Edinburgh, " and he will always give you a civil and polite an- swer; but ask any person a question for that purpose in this country [Scotland], and he will say, ' Follow your nose and you will find it.' But the blame is with the upper classes; and the reason why, in this country, the lower classes are not polite is because the upper classes are not polite. I remember how astonished I was the first time I was in Paris. I spent the first night with a banker, who took me to a pension, or, as we call it, a boarding-house. When we got there, a serv- ant girl came to the door, and the banker took off his hat, and bowed to the servant girl, and called her mademoiselle, as though she were a lady. Now, the reason why the lower classes there are so polite is because the upper classes are polite and civil to them." A fine courtesy is a fortune in itself. The good-mannered can do without riches, for they have passports everywhere. All doors FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 169 fly open to them, and they enter without money and without price. They can enjoy nearly everything without the trouble of buy- ing or owning. They are as welcome in every household as the sunshine; and why not? for they carry light, sunshine, and joy everywhere. They disarm jealousy and envy, for they bear good will to everybody. Bees will not sting a man smeared with honey. " A man's own good breeding," says Ches- terfield, " is the best security against other people's ill manners. It carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petu- lant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlbor- ough, or a civil one to Sir Robert Walpole." The true gentleman cannot harbor those qualities which excite the antagonism of others, as revenge, hatred, malice, envy, or jealousy, for these poison the sources of spir- itual life and shrivel the soul. Generosity of heart and a genial good will towards all are absolutely essential to him who would possess fine manners. Here is a man who is cross, crabbed, moody, sullen, silent, sulky, stingy, and mean with his family and servants. He refuses his wife a little money to buy = 170 PUSHING TO THE FRONT needed dress, and accuses her of extrava- gance that would ruin a millionaire. Sud- denly the bell rings. Some neighbors call: what a change! The bear of a moment ago is as docile as a lamb. As by magic he be- comes talkative, polite, generous. After the callers have gone, his little girl begs her father to keep on his "company manners" for a little while, but the sullen mood re- turns and his courtesy vanishes as quickly as it came. He is the same disagreeable, con- temptible, crabbed bear as before the arrival of his guests. What friend of the great Dr. Johnson did not feel mortified and pained to see him eat like an Esquimau, and to hear him call men " liars " because they did not agree with him ? He was called the " Ursa Major," or Great Bear. Benjamin Rush said that when Gold- smith at a banquet in London asked a ques- tion about "the American Indians," Dr. Johnson exclaimed : " There is not an Indian in North America foolish enough to ask such a question." " Sir," replied Goldsmith, " there is not a savage in America rude enough to make such a speech to a gentleman." After Stephen A. Douglas had been abused FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 171 in the Senate he rose and said : " What no gentleman should say no gentleman need an- swer." Aristotle thus described a real gentleman more than two thousand years ago: "The magnanimous man will behave with modera- tion under both good fortune and bad. He wall not allow himself to be exalted; he will not allow himself to be, abased. He will neither be delighted with success, nor grieved with failure. He will never choose danger, nor seek it. He is not given to talk about himself or others. He does not care that he himself should be praised, nor that other peo- ple should be blamed." A gentleman is just a gentle man : no more, no less; a diamond polished that was first a diamond in the rough. A gentleman is gen- tle, modest, courteous, slow to take offense, and never giving it. He is slow to surmise evil, as he never thinks it. He subjects his appetites, refines his tastes, subdues his feel- ings, controls his speech, and deems every other person as good as himself. A gentle- man, like porcelain-ware, must be painted be- fore he is glazed. There can be no change after it is burned in, and all that is put on afterwards will wash off. He who has lost 172 PUSHING TO THE FRONT all but retains his courage, cheerfulness, hope, virtue, and self-respect, is a true gentleman, and is rich still. " You replace Dr. Franklin, I hear," said the French Minister, Count de Vergennes, to Mr. Jefferson, who had been sent to Paris to relieve our most popular representative. " I succeed him ; no man can replace him," was the felicitous reply of the man who became highly esteemed by the most polite court in Europe. " You should not have returned their sa- lute," said the master of ceremonies, when Clement XIV. bowed to the ambassadors who had bowed in congratulating him upon his election. " Oh, I beg your pardon," re- plied Clement. " I have not been pope long enough to forget good manners." Cowper says: A modest, sensible, and well-bred man Would not insult me, and no other can. " I never listen to calumnies," said Mon- tesquieu, " because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they are true, of hating people not worth thinking about." " I think," says Emerson, " Hans Ander- FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 173 sen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was invisible woven for the king's garment must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely nature." No one can fully estimate how great a factor in life is the possession of good man- ners, or timely thoughtfulness with human sympathy behind it. They are the kindly fruit of a refined nature, and are the open sesame to the best of society. Manners are what vex or soothe, exalt or debase, barba- rize or refine us by a constant, steady, uni- form, invincible operation like that of the air we breathe. Even power itself has not half the might of gentleness, that subtle oil which lubricates our relations with each other, and enables the machinery of society to perform its functions, without friction. " Have you not seen in the woods, in a late autumn morning," asks Emerson, " a poor fungus, or mushroom, a plant without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly, by its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its way up through the frosty ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on its head? It is the symbol of the power of kind- ness." 174 PUSHING TO THE FRONT "There is no policy like politeness," says Magoon ; " since a good manner often suc- ceeds where the best tongue has failed." The art of pleasing is the art of rising in the world. The politest people in the world, it is said, are the Jews. In all ages they have been maltreated and reviled, and despoiled of their civil privileges and their social rights ; yet are they everywhere polite and affable. They in- dulge in few or no recriminations; are faith- ful to old associations; more considerate of the prejudices of others than others are of theirs; not more worldly-minded and money- loving than people generally are; and, every- thing considered, they surpass all nations in courtesy, affability, and forbearance. " Men, like bullets," says Richter, " go far- thest when they are smoothest." Napoleon was much displeased on hearing that Josephine had permitted General Lorges, a young and handsome man, to sit beside her on the sofa. Josephine explained that, in- stead of its being General Lorges, it was one of the aged generals of his army, entirely un- used to the customs of courts. She was un- willing to wound the feelings of the honest pld soldier, and so allowed him to retain his / FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 175 seat. Napoleon commended her highly for her courtesy. President Jefferson was one day riding with his grandson, when they met a slave, who took off his hat and bowed. The Presi- dent returned the salutation by raising his hat, but the grandson ignored the civility of the negro. " Thomas," said the grandfather, " do you permit a slave to be more of a gen- tleman than yourself?" " Lincoln was the first great man I talked with freely in the United States," said Fred Douglass, " who in no single instance re- minded me of the difference between himself and me, of the difference in color." " Eat at your own table," says Confucius, " as you would eat at the table of the king." If parents were not careless about the man- ners of their children at home, they would seldom be shocked or embarrassed at 'their behavior abroad. James Russell Lowell was as courteous to a beggar as to a lord, and was once observed holding a long conversation in Italian with an organ-grinder whom he was questioning about scenes in Italy with which they were each familiar. In hastily turning the corner of a crooked 176 PUSHING TO THE FRONT street in London, a young lady ran with great force against a ragged beggar-boy and al- most knocked him down. Stopping as soon as she could, she turned around and said very kindly : " I beg your pardon, my little fel- low ; I am very sorry that I ran against you/' The astonished boy looked at her a moment, and then, taking off about three quarters of a cap, made a low bow and said, while a broad, pleasant smile overspread his face: " You have my parding, miss, and welcome, and welcome; and the next time you run ag'in* me, you can knock me clean down and I won't say a word." After the lady had passed on, he said to a companion : " I say, Jim, it's the first time I ever had anybody ask my parding, and it kind o' took me off my feet." " Respect the burden, madame, respect the burden," said Napoleon, as he courteously stepped aside at St. Helena to make way for a laborer bending under a heavy load, while his companion seemed inclined to keep the narrow path. A Washington politician went to visit Daniel Webster at Marshfield, Mass., and, in taking a short cut to the house, came to a stream which he could not cross. Calling to FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 177 a rough-looking farmer near by, he offered a quarter to be carried to the other side. The farmer took the politician on his broad should- ers and landed him safely, but would not take the quarter. The old rustic presented himself at the house a few minutes later, and to the great surprise and chagrin of the visitor was introduced as Mr. Webster. Garrison was as polite to the furious mob that tore his clothes from his back and dragged him through the streets as he could have been to a king. He was one of the serenest souls that ever lived. Christ was courteous, even to His persecutors, and in terrible agony on the cross He cried : " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." St. Paul's speech before Agrippa is a model of dignified courtesy, as well as of persuasive eloquence. Good manners often prove a fortune to a young man. Mr. Butler, a merchant in Prov- idence, R. I., had once closed his store and was on his way home when he met a little girl who wanted a spool of thread. He went back, opened the store, and got the thread. This little incident was talked of all about the city and brought him hundreds of customers. He became very wealthy, largely because of his courtesy. 178 PUSHING TO THE FRONT Ross Winans of Baltimore owed his great success and fortune largely to his courtesy to two foreign strangers. Although his was but a fourth-rate factory, his great politeness in explaining the minutest details to his visitors was in such marked contrast with the limited attention they had received in large establish- ments that it won their esteeem. The strang- ers were Russians sent by their Czar, who later invited Mr. Winans to establish locomo- tive works in Russia. He did so, and soon his profits resulting from his politeness were more than. $100,000 a year. A poor curate saw a crowd of rough boys and men laughing and making fun of two aged spinsters dressed in antiquated costume. The ladies were embarrassed and did not dare enter the church. The curate pushed through the crowd, conducted them up the central aisle, and amid the titter of the congregation, gave them choice seats. These old ladies although strangers to him, at their death left the gentle curate a large fortune. Courtesy pays. Not long ago a lady met the late President Humphrey of Amherst College, and she was so much pleased with his great politeness that she gave a generous donation to the college. FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS " Why did our friend never succeed in business?" asked a man returning to New York after years of absence; "he had suffi- cient capital, a thorough knowledge of his business, and exceptional shrewdness and sa- gacity." " He was sour and morose," was the reply ; " he always suspected his employees of cheating him, and was discourteous to his customers. Hence, no man ever put good will or energy into work done for him, and his patrons went to shops where they were sure of civility." Some men almost work their hands off and deny themselves many of the common com- forts of life in their earnest efforts to suc- ceed, and yet render success impossible by their cross-grained ungentlemanliness. They repel patronage, and, naturally, business which might easily be theirs goes to others who are really less deserving but more com- panionable. Bad manners often neutralize even honesty, industry, and the greatest energy; while agreeable manners win in spite of other de- fects. Take two men possessing equal ad- vantages in every other respect; if one be gentlemanly, kind, obliging, and conciliating, and the other disobliging, rude, harsh, and i8o PUSHING TO THE FRONT insolent, the former will become rich while the boorish one will starve. A fine illustration of the business value of good manners is found in the Bon Marche, an enormous establishment in Paris where thou- sands of clerks are employed, and where al- most everything is kept for sale. The two distinguishing characteristics of the house are one low price to all, and extreme courtesy. Mere politeness is not enough; the employees must try in every possible way to please and to make customers feel at home. Something more must be done than is done in other stores, so that every visitor will remember the Bon Marche with pleasure. By this course the business has been developed until it is said to be the largest of the kind in the world. "Thank you, my dear; please call again," spoken to a little beggar-girl who bought a pennyworth of snuff proved a profitable ad- vertisement and made Lundy Foote a million- aire. Many persons of real refinement are thought to be stiff, proud, reserved, and haughty who are not, but are merely diffi- dent and shy. It is a curious fact that diffidence often be- trays us into discourtesies which our hearts? FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS iSi abhor, and which cause us intense mortifica- tion and embarrassment. Excessive shyness must be overcome as an obstacle to perfect manners. It is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon and the Teutonic races, and has frequently been a barrier to the highest culture. It is a disease of the finest organizations and the highest types of humanity. It never attacks the coarse and vulgar. Sir Isaac Newton was the shyest man of his age. He did not acknowledge his great discovery for years just for fear of attract- ing attention to himself. He would not allow his name to be used in connection with his theory of the moon's motion, for fear it would increase the acquaintances he would have to meet. George Washington was awkward and shy and had the air of a countryman. Archbishop Whately was so shy that he would escape notice whenever it was possible. At last he determined to give up trying to cure his shyness ; " for why," he asked, " should I endure this torture all my life?" when, to his surprise, it almost entirely disappeared. Elihu Burritt was so shy that he would hide in the cellar when his parents had company. Practise on the stage or lecture platform 182 PUSHING TO THE FRONT does not always eradicate shyness. David Garrick, the great actor, was once summoned to testify in court; and, though he had acted for thirty years with marked self-possession, he was so confused and embarrassed that the judge dismissed him. John B. Gough said that he could not rid himself of his early dif- fidence and shrinking from public notice. He said that he never went on the platform with- out fear and trembling, and would often be covered with cold perspiration. There are many worthy people who are brave on the street, who would walk up to a cannon's mouth in battle, but who are tow- ards in the drawing-room, and dare not ex- press an opinion in the social circle. They feel conscious of a subtle tryanny in society's code, which locks their lips and ties their tongues. Addison was one of the purest writ- ers of English and a perfect master of the pen, but he could scarcely utter a dozen words in conversation without being embarrassed. Shakespeare was very shy. He retired from London at forty, and did not try to publish or preserve one of his plays. He took second- or third-rate parts on account of his diffi- dence. Generally shyness comes from a person FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 183 thinking too much about himself which in itself is a breach of good breeding and won- dering what other people think about him. " I was once very shy," said Sydney Smith, " but it was not long before I made two very useful discoveries : first, that all mankind were not solely employed in observing me; and next, that shamming was of no use ; that the world was very clear-sighted, and soon esti- mated a man at his true value. This cured me." What a misfortune it is to go through life apparently encased in ice, yet all the while full of kindly, cordial feeling for one's fellow menl Shy people are always distrustful of their powers and look upon their lack of con- fidence as a weakness or lack of ability, when it may indicate quite the reverse. By teach- ing children early the arts of social life, such as boxing, horseback riding, dancing, elocu- tion, and similar accomplishments, we may do much to overcome the sense of shyness. Shy people should dress well. Good clothes give ease of manner, and unlock the tongue. The consciousness of being well dressed gives a grace and ease of manner that even religion will not bestow, while inferiority of garb of- ten induces restraint. As peculiarities in ap- 184 PUSHING TO THE FRONT parel are sure to attract attention, it is well to avoid bright colors and fashionable extremes, and wear plain, well-fitting garments of as good material as the purse will afford. Beauty in dress is a good thing, rail at it who may. But it is a lower beauty, for which 3. higher beauty should not be sacrificed. They love dress too much who give it their first thought, their best time, or all their money; who for it neglect the culture of the mind or heart, or the claims of others on their serv- ice; who care more for dress than for their character; who are troubled more by an unfashionable garment than by a neglected duty. When Ezekiel Whitman, a prominent law- yer and graduate of Harvard, was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, he came to Bos- ton from his farm in countryman's dress, and went to a hotel in Boston. He entered the parlor and sat down, when he overheard the remark between some ladies and gentlemen: "Ah, here comes a real homespun country- man. Here's fun." They asked him all sorts of queer questions, tending to throw ridicule upon him, when he arose and said, " Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to wish you health and happiness, and may you grow better and FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 185 wiser in advancing years, bearing in mind that outward appearances are deceitful. You mistook me, from my dress, for a country 4 booby; while I, from the same superficial cause, thought you were ladies and gentlemen. The mistake has been mutual." Just then Governor Caleb Strong entered and called to Mr. Whitman, who, turning to the dum- founded company, said : " I wish you a very good evening." " In civilized society," says Johnson, " ex- ternal advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one." One cannot but feel that God is a lover of the beautiful. He has put robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes be- neath a mantle of beauty ; every star is veiled in brightness; every bird is clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. Some people look upon polished manners as a kind of affectation. They claim admira- tion for plain, solid, square, rugged charac- ters. They might as well say that they like square, plain, unornamented houses made from square blocks of stone. St. Peter's is 186 PUSHING TO THE FRONT none the less strong and solid because of its elegant columns and the magnificent sweep of its arches, its carved and fretted marbles of matchless hues. Our manners, like our characters, are al- ways under inspection. Every time we go into society we must step on the scales of each per- son's opinion, and the loss or gain from our last weight is carefully noted. Each mentally asks, " Is this person going up or down ? Through how many grades has he passed?" For example, young Brown enters a drawing- room. All present weigh him in their judg- ment and silently say, "This young man is gaining; he is more careful, thoughtful, po- lite, considerate, straightforward, industri- ous." Beside him stands young Jones. It is evident that he is losing ground rapidly. He is careless, indifferent, rough, does not look you in the eye, is mean, stingy, snaps at the servants, yet is over-polite to strangers. And so we go through life, tagged with these invisible labels by all who know us. I sometimes think it would be a great advan- tage if one could read these ratings of his associates. We cannot long deceive the world, for that other self, who ever stands in the shadow of ourselves holding the scales of FORTUNE IN GOOD MANNERS 187 justice, that telltale in the soul, rushes to the eye or into the manner and betrays us. But manners, while they are the garb of the gentleman, do not constitute or finally de- termine his character. Mere politeness can never be a substitute for moral excellence, any more than the bark can take the place of the heart of the oak. It may well indicate the kind of wood below, but not always whether it be sound or decayed. Etiquette is but a substitute for good manners and is often but their mere counterfeit. Sincerity is the highest quality of good manners. The following recipe is recommended to those who wish to acquire genuine good man- ners : Of Unselfishness, three drachms; Of the tincture of Good Cheer, one ounce ; Of Essence of Heart's-Ease, three drachms ; Of the Extract of the Rose of Sharon, four ounces ; Of the Oil of Charity, three drachms, and no scruples; Of the Infusion of Common Sense and Tact, one ounce; Of the Spirit of Love, two ounces. i88 PUSHING TO THE FRONT The Mixture to be taken whenever there is the slightest symptom of selfishness, exclu- siveness, meanness, or I-am-better-than-you- ness. Pattern after Him who gave the Golden Rule, and who was the first true gentleman that ever breathed. IX. THE TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSI- ASM The labor we delight in physics pain. SHAKE- SPEARE. The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincer- ity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else are comparatively easy to give away ; but when a man makes a gift of his daily Ufe and practise, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him. LOWELL. Let us beware of losing our enthusiasm. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our in- terest in all that would enrich and beautify our life. PHILLIPS BROOKS. N the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris is a beauti- ful statue conceived by a sculptor who was so poor that he lived and worked in a small garret. When his clay model was nearly done, a heavy frost fell upon the city. He knew that if the water in the interstices of the clay should freeze, the beautiful lines would be distorted. So he wrapped his bedclothes around the clay image. In the morning he was found dead, but his idea was saved, and other hands gave it en- during form in marble. 189 190 PUSHING TO THE FRONT " I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important question/' said Henry Clay ; " but on such occasions I seem to be unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject before me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of surrounding objects." "A bank never becomes very successful," says a noted financier, " until it gets a presi- dent who takes it to bed with him." En- thusiasm gives the otherwise dry and unin- teresting subject or occupation a new mean- ing. As the young lover has finer sense and more acute vision and sees in the object of his affections a hundred virtues and charms in- visible to all other eyes, so a man permeated with enthusiasm has his power of perception heightened and his vision magnified until he sees beauty and charms others cannot discern which compensate for drudgery, privations, hardships, and even persecution. Dickens says he was haunted, possessed, spirit-driven by the plots and characters in his stories which would not let him sleep or rest until he had committed them to paper. On one sketch he shut himself up for a month, and when he came out he looked as haggard as a TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 191 murderer. His characters haunted him day and night. " Herr Capellmeister, I should like to com- pose something; how shall I begin?" asked a youth of twelve who had played with great skill on the piano. " Pooh, pooh," replied Mozart, " you must wait." " But you began when you were younger than I am," said the boy. "Yes, so I did," said the great com- poser, " but I never asked anything about it. When one has the spirit of a composer, he writes because he can't help it." Gladstone said that what is really desired is to light up the spirit that is within a boy. In some sense and in some degree, in some ef- fectual degree, there is in every boy the ma- terial of good work in the world; in every boy, not only in those who are brilliant, not only in those who are quick, but in those who are stolid, and even in those who are dull, or who seem to be dull. If they have only the good will, the dulness will day by day clear away and vanish completely under the influ- ence of the good will. Gerster, an unknown Hungarian, made fame and fortune sure the first night she ap- peared in opera. Her enthusiasm almost hyp- notized her auditors. In less than a week 192 PUSHING TO THE FRONT she had become popular and independent. Her soul was smitten with a passion for growth, and all the powers of heart and mind she possessed were enthusiastically devoted to self-improvement. All great works of art have been produced when the artist was intoxicated with the pas- sion for beauty and form which would not let him rest until his thought was expressed in marble or on canvas. "Well, I've worked hard enough for it," said Malibran when a critic expressed his ad- miration of her D in alt, reached by running up three octaves from low D ; " I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued it every- where, when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair; and at last I found it on the toe of a shoe that I was putting on." " Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world," says Emerson, " is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean begin- ning, established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an example. They did they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch for a troop of cavalry. The women fought like men and TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 191 conquered the Roman men. They were mis- erably equipped, miserably fed, but they were temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. They con- quered Asia and Africa and Spain on barley. The Caliph Omar's walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it than another man's sword." It was enthusiasm that enabled Napoleon to make a campaign in two weeks that would have taken another a year to accomplish. " These Frenchmen are not men, they fly," said the Austrians in consternation. In fifteen days Napoleon, in his first Italian campaign, had gained six victories, taken twenty-one standards, fifty-five pieces of cannon, had cap- tured fifteen thousand prisoners, and had con- quered Piedmont. After this astonishing avalanche a dis- comfited Austrian general said : " This young commander knows nothing whatever about the art of war. He is a perfect ignoramus. There is no doing anything with him." But his soldiers followed their " Little Corporal " with an enthusiasm which knew no defeat or disaster. " There are important cases," says A. H. K. Boyd, " in which the difference between half 194 PUSHING TO THE FRONT a heart and a whole heart makes just the dif- ference between signal defeat and a splendid victory." " Should I die this minute," said Nelson at an important crisis, " want of frigates would be found written on my heart." The simple, innocent Maid of Orleans with her sacred sword, her consecrated banner, and her belief in her great mission, sent a thrill of enthusiasm through the whole French army such as neither king nor statesmen could produce. Her zeal carried everything before it. Oh! what a great work each one could perform in this world if he only knew his power ! But, like a bitted horse, man does not realize his strength until he has once run away with himself. " Underneath is laid the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around ! " Turn where you will in London, you find noble monuments of the genius of a man who never received in- struction from an architect. He built fifty- five churches in the city and thirty-six halls. " I would give my skin for the architect's de- sign of the Louvre," said he, when in Paris TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 195 to get ideas for the restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. His rare skill is shown in the palaces of Hampton Court and Ken- sington, in Temple Bar, Drury Lane Theater, the Royal Exchange, and the great Monument. He changed Greenwich palace into a sailor's retreat, and built churches and colleges at Oxford. He also planned for the rebuild- ing of London after the great fire, but those in authority would not adopt his splendid idea. He worked thirty-five years upon his master- piece, St. Paul's Cathedral. Although he lived so long, and was exceedingly healthy in later life, he was so delicate as a child that he was a constant source of anxiety to his parents. His great enthusiasm alone seemed to give strength to his body. Indifference never leads armies that con- quer, never models statues that live, nor breathes sublime music, nor harnesses the forces of nature, nor rears impressive archi- tecture, nor moves the soul with poetry, nor the world with heroic philanthropies. Enthu- siasm, as Charles Bell says of the hand, wrought the statue of Memnon and hung the brazen gates of Thebes. It fixed the mariner's trembling needle upon its axis, and first heaved the tremendous bar of the printing- 196 PUSHING TO THE FRONT press. It opened the tubes for Galileo, until world after world swept before his vision, and it reefed the high topsail that rustled over Columbus in the morning breezes of the Ba- hamas. It has held the sword with which freedom has fought her battles, and poised the axe of the dauntless woodman as he opened the paths of civilization, and turned the mystic leaves upon which Milton and Shakespeare inscribed their burning thoughts. Horace Greeley said that the best product of labor is the high-minded workman with an enthusiasm for his work. "The best method is obtained by earnest- ness," said Salvini. " If you can impress peo- ple with the conviction that you feel what you say, they will pardon many shortcomings. And above all, study, study, study ! All the genius in the world will not help you along with any art, unless you become a hard student. It has taken me years to master a single part." There is a "go," a zeal, a furore, almost a fanaticism for one's ideals or calling, that is peculiar to our American temperament and life. You do not find this in tropical coun- tries. It did not exist fifty years ago. It could not be found then even on the London Exchange. But the influence of the United TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 197 States and of Australia, where, if a person is to succeed, he must be on the jump with all the ardor of his being, has finally extended until what used to be the peculiar strength of a few great minds has now become character- istic of the leading nations. Enthusiasm is the being awake; it is the tingling of every fiber of one's being to do the work that one's heart desires. Enthusiasm made Victor Hugo lock up his clothes while writing " Notre Dame," that he might not leave the work un- til it was finished. The great actor Garrick well illustrated it when asked by an unsuc- cessful preacher the secret of his power over audiences : " You speak of eternal verities and what you know to be true as if you hardly believed what you were saying your- self, whereas I utter what I know to be un- real and untrue as if I did believe it in my very soul." " When he comes into a room, every man feels as if he had taken a tonic and had a new lease of life," said a man when asked the reason for his selection, after he, with two companions, had written upon a slip of paper the name of the most agreeable companion he had ever met. " He is an eager, vivid fel- low, full of joy, bubbling over with spirits. 198 PUSHING TO THE FRONT His sympathies are quick as an electric flash." " He throws himself into the occasion, whatever it may be, with his whole heart," said the second, in praise of the man of his choice. " He makes the best of everything," said the third, speaking of his own most cherished acquaintance. The three were traveling correspondents of great English journals, who had visited every quarter of the world and talked with all kinds of men. The papers were examined and all* were found to contain the name of a promi- nent lawyer in Melbourne, Australia. " If it were not for respect for human opin- ions," said Madame de Stael to M. Mole, " I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, while I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen." Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal pres- ence whence these works have originated. " One moonlight evening in winter," writes the biographer of Beethoven, " we were walk- TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 199 ing through a narrow street of Bonn. ' Hush ! ' exclaimed the great composer, sud- denly pausing before a little, mean dwelling, * what sound is that ? It is from my Sonata in F. Hark ! how well it is played ! ' " In the midst of the finale there was a break, and a sobbing voice cried : ' I cannot play any more. It is so beautiful ; it is utterly beyond my power to do it justice. Oh, what would I not give to go to the concert at Co- logne ! ' ' Ah ! my sister/ said a second voice ; ' why create regrets when there is no remedy ? We can scarcely pay our rent/ ' You are right/ said the first speaker, 'and yet I wish for once in my life to hear some really good music. But it is of no use/ " ' Let us go in/ said Beethoven. ' Go in ! ' I remonstrated ; ' what should we go in for ? ' ' I will play to her/ replied my companion in an excited tone ; ' here is feeling, genius, understanding! I will play to her, and she will understand it. Pardon me/ he continued, as he opened the door and saw a young man sitting by a table, mending shoes, and a young girl leaning sorrowfully upon an old-fash- ioned piano ; ' I heard music and was tempted to enter. I am a musician. I I also over- heard something of what you said. You wish 200 PUSHING TO THE FRONT to hear that is, you would like that is shall I play for you ? ' "' Thank you/ said the shoemaker, 'but our piano is so wretched, and we have no music/ " ' No music ! ' exclaimed the composer ; ' how, then, does the young lady I I en- treat your pardon/ he added, stammering as he saw that the girl was blind ; ' I had not perceived before. Then you play by ear? But where do you hear the music, since you frequent no concerts ? ' " ' We lived at Bruhl for two years ; and, while there, I used to hear a lady practising near us. During the summer evenings her windows were generally open, and I walked to and fro outside to listen to her/ " Beethoven seated himself at the piano. Never, during all the years I knew him, did I hear him play better than to that blind girl and her brother. Even the old instrument seemed inspired. The young man and woman sat as if entranced by the magical, sweet sounds that flowed out upon the air in rhyth- mical swell and cadence, until, suddenly, the flame of the single candle wavered, sank, flickered, and went out. The shutters were thrown open, admitting a flood of brilliant TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 201 moonlight, but the player paused, as if lost in thought. " * Wonderful man 1 ' said the shoemaker in a low tone; 'who and what are you?' 1 ' Listen ! ' replied the master, and he played the opening bars of the Sonata in F. ' Then you are Beethoven ! ' burst from the young people in delighted recognition. ' Oh, play to us once more,' they added, as he rose to go, * only once more ! ' ; ' I will improvise a sonata to the moon- light,' said he, gazing thoughtfully upon thf liquid stars shining so softly out of the depth? of a cloudless winter sky. Then he played a sad and infinitely lovely movement, which crept gently over the instrument, like the calm flow of moonlight over the earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of fairies upon the lawn. Then came a swift agitated ending a breathless, hurry- ing, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left us all in emotion and wonder. ' Fare- well to you,' he said, as he rose and turned toward the door. * You will come again ? ' asked the host and hostess in a breath. ' Yes, 202 PUSHING TO THE FRONT yes,' said Beethoven hurriedly, ' I will come again, and give the young lady some lessons. Farewell ! ' Then to me he added : ' Let us make haste back, that I may write out that sonata while I can yet remember it/ We did return in haste, and not until long past the dawn of day did he rise from his table with the full score of the Moonlight Sonata in his hand." Michael Angelo studied anatomy twelve years, nearly ruining his health, but this course determined his style, his practise, and his glory. He drew his figures in skeleton, added muscles, fat, and skin successively, and then draped them. He made every tool he used in sculpture, such as files, chisels, and pincers. In painting he prepared all his own colors, and would not let servants or students even mix them. Raphael's enthusiasm inspired every artist in Italy, and his modest, charming manners disarmed envy and jealousy. He has been called the only distinguished man who lived and died without an enemy or detractor. Again and again poor Bunyan might have had his liberty; but not the separation from his poor blind daughter Mary, which he said was like pulling the flesh from his bones; not TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 203 the need of a poor family dependent upon him; not the love of liberty nor the spur of ambition could induce him to forego his plain preaching in public places. He had so for- gotten his early education that his wife had to teach him again to read and write. It was the enthusiasm of conviction which enabled this poor, ignorant, despised Bedford tinker to write his immortal allegory with such fas- cination that a whole world has read it. Only thoughts that breathe in words that burn can kindle the spark slumbering in the heart of another. Rare consecration to a great enterprise is found in the work of the late Francis Park- man. While a student at Harvard he de- termined to write the history of the French and English in North America. With a stead- iness and devotion seldom equaled he gave his life, his fortune, his all to this one great object. Although he had, while among the Dakota Indians, collecting material for his history, ruined his health and could not use his eyes more than five minutes at a time for fifty years, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the high purpose formed in his youth, until he gave to the world the best history upon this subject ever written. 204 PUSHING TO THE FRONT After Lincoln had walked six miles to bor- row a grammar, he returned home and burned one shaving after another while he studied the precious prize. Gilbert Becket, an English Crusader, was taken prisoner and became a slave in the palace of a Saracen prince, where he not only gained the confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair daughter. By and by he escaped and returned to England, but the devoted girl determined to follow him. She knew but two words of the English lan- guage London and Gilbert; but by repeat- ing the first she obtained passage in a vessel to the great metropolis, and then she went from street to street pronouncing the other " Gilbert." At last she came to the street on which Gilbert lived in prosperity. The un- usual crowd drew the family to the window, when Gilbert himself saw and recognized her, and took to his arms and home his far- come princess with her solitary fond word. The most irresistible charm of youth is its bubbling enthusiasm. Youth sees no darkness ahead, no defile that has no outlet, it for- gets that there is such a thing as failure in the world, and believes that mankind has been waiting all these centuries for him to come TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 205 and be the liberator of truth and energy and beauty. Of what use was it to forbid the boy Handel to touch a musical instrument, or to forbid him going to school, lest he learn the gamut? He stole midnight interviews with a dumb spinet in a secret attic. The boy Bach copied whole books of studies by moonlight, for want of a candle churlishly denied. Nor was he disheartened when these copies were taken from him. The painter West began in a garret, and plundered the family cat for bristles to make his brushes. It is the enthusiasm of youth which cuts the Gordian knot age cannot untie. " Peo- ple smile at the enthusiasm of youth," says Charles Kingsley ; " that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back to with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it." How much the world owes to the enthusi- asm of Dante! Tennyson wrote his first volume at eight- een, and at nineteen gained a medal at Cam- bridge. " The most beautiful works of all art were done in youth," says Ruskin. " Almost every- thing that is great has been done by youth," 206 PUSHING TO THE FRONT wrote Disraeli. " The world's interests are, under God, in the hands of the young," says Dr. Trumbull. It was the youth Hercules that performed the Twelve Labors. Enthusiastic youth faces the sun, it shadows all behind it. The heart rules youth; the head, manhood. Alexander was a mere youth when he rolled back the Asiatic hordes that threatened to overwhelm European civilization almost at its birth. Napoleon had conquered Italy at twenty-five. Byron and Raphael died at thirty-seven, an age which has been fatal to many a genius, and Poe lived but a few months longer. Romulus founded Rome at twenty. Pitt and Bolingbroke were ministers almost before they were men. Gladstone was in Parliament in early manhood. Newton made some of his greatest discoveries before he was twenty-five. Keats died at twenty-five, Shelley at twenty- nine. Luther was a triumphant reformer at twenty-five. It is said that no English poet ever equaled Chatterton at twenty-one. White- field and Wesley began their great revival as students at Oxford, and the former had made his influence felt throughout England before he was twenty-four. Victor Hugo wrote a tragedy at fifteen, and had taken three prizes TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 207 at the Academy and gained the title of Mas- ter before he was twenty. Many of the world's greatest geniuses never saw forty years. Never before has the young man, who is driven by his enthusiasm, had such an opportunity as he has to-day. It is the age of young men and young women, Their ardor is their crown, before which the languid and the passive bow. But if enthusiasm is irresistible in youth, how much more so is it when carried into old age! Gladstone at eighty had ten times the weight and power that any man of twenty- five would have with the same ideals. The glory of age is only the glory of its enthusi- asm, and the respect paid to white hairs is reverence to a heart fervent, in spite of the torpid influence of an enfeebled body. The " Odyssey " was the creation of a blind old man, but that old man was Homer. The contagious zeal of an old man, Peter the Hermit, rolled the chivalry of Europe upon the ranks of Islam. Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, won battles at ninety-four, and refused a crown at ninety- six. Wellington planned and superintended fortifications at eighty. Bacon and Hum- boldt were enthusiastic students to the last 208 PUSHING TO THE FRONT gasp. Wise old Montaigne was shrewd in his gray-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of gout and colic. Dr. Johnson's best work, " The Lives of the Poets," was written when he was seventy- eight. Defoe was fifty-eight when he pub- lished " Robinson Crusoe." Newton wrote new briefs to his " Principia " at eighty-three. Plato died writing, at eighty-one. Tom Scott began the study of Hebrew at eighty-six. Galileo was nearly seventy when he wrote on the laws of motion. James Watt learned Ger- man at eighty-five. Mrs. Somerville finished her " Molecular and Microscopic Science " at eighty-nine. Humboldt completed his " Cos- mos " at ninety, a month before his death. Burke was thirty-five before he obtained a seat in Parliament, yet he made the world feel his character. Unknown at forty, Grant was one of the most famous generals in history at forty-two. Eli Whitney was twenty-three when he decided to prepare for college, and thirty when he graduated from Yale; yet his cotton-gin opened a great industrial future for the Southern States. What a power was Bismarck at eighty! Lord Palmerston was an " Old Boy" to the last. He became Prime Minister of England the second time at sev- TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM 209 enty-five, and died Prime Minister at eighty- one. Galileo at seventy-seven, blind and fee- ble, was working every day, adapting the principle of the pendulum to clocks. George Stephenson did not learn to read and write until he had reached manhood. Some of Longfellow's, Whittier's, and Tennyson's best work was done after they were seventy. At sixty-three Dryden began the translation of the "^Eneid." Robert Hall learned Italian when past sixty, that he might read Dante in the original. Noah Webster studied seven- teen languages after he was fifty. Cicero said well that men are like wine : age sours the bad, and improves the good. With enthusiasm we may retain the youth of the spirit until the hair is silvered, even as the Gulf Stream softens the rigors of north- ern Europe. " How ages thine heart, towards youth ? If not, doubt thy fitness for thy work." X TACT OR COMMON SENSE "Who is stronger than thou?" asked Brahma; and Force replied " Address." VICTOR HUGO. Address makes opportunities ; the want of it gives them. BOVEE. He'll suit his bearing to the hour, Laugh, listen, learn, or teach. ELIZA COOK. A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know ; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance, than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudi- tion. COLTON. The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy. ROCHEFOUCAULD. "Tact clinches the bargain, Sails out of the bay, Gets the vote in the Senate, Spite of Webster or Clay." NEVER will surrender to a nigger," said a Confed- erate officer, when a col- ored soldier chased and caught him. " Berry sorry, massa," said the negro, lev- eling his rifle; "must kill you den; hain't time to go back and git a white man." The officer surrendered. 210 TACT OR COMMON SENSE 211 "When God endowed human beings with brains," says Montesquieu, "he did not in- tend to guarantee them." When Abraham Lincoln was running for the legislature the first time, on the platform of the improvement of the Sangamon River, he went to secure the votes of thirty men who were cradling a wheat-field. They asked no questions about internal improvements, but only seemed curious to know whether he had muscle enough to represent them in the legis- lature. Lincoln took up a cradle and led the gang around the field. The whole thirty voted for him. " I do not know how it is," said Napoleon in surprise to his cook, " but at whatever hour I call for my breakfast my chicken is always ready and always in good condition." This seemed to him the more strange because some- times he would breakfast at eight and at other times as late as eleven. " Sire," said the cook, " the reason is, that every quarter of an hour I put a fresh chicken down to roast, so that your Majesty is sure always to have it at per- fection." Talent in this age is no match for tact. We see its failure everywhere. Tact will manip- ulate one talent so as to get more out of it in 212 PUSHING TO THE FRONT a lifetime than ten talents will accomplish without it. " Talent lies abed till noon ; tact is up at six." Talent is power, tact is skill. Talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it. "Talent is something, but tact is every- thing. It is not a sixth sense, but it is like the life of all the five. It is the open eye, the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, and lively touch; it is the interpreter of all riddles, the surmounter of all difficulties, the remover of all obstacles." The world is full of theoretical, one-sided, impractical men, who have turned all the en- ergies of their lives into one faculty until they have developed, not a full-orbed, symmetri- cal man, but a monstrosity, while all their other faculties have atrophied and died. We often call these one-sided men geniuses, and the world excuses their impractical and al- most idiotic conduct in most matters, because they can perform one kind of work that no one else can do as well. A merchant is ex- cused if he is a giant in merchandise, though he may be an imbecile in the drawing-room. Adam Smith could teach the world economy in his " Wealth of Nations," but he could not manage the finances of his own household. TACT OR COMMON SENSE 213 Many great men are very impractical even in the ordinary affairs of life. Isaac Newton could read the secret of creation; but, tired of rising from his chair to open the door for a cat and her kitten, he had two holes cut through the panels for them to pass at will, a large hole for the cat, and a small one for the kitten. Beethoven was a great musician, but he sent three hundred florins to pay for six shirts and half a dozen handkerchiefs. He paid his tailor as large a sum in advance, and yet he was so poor at times that he had only a biscuit and a glass of water for dinner. He did not know enough of business to cut the coupon from a bond when he wanted money, but sold the whole instrument. Dean Swift nearly starved in a country parish where his more practical classmate Stafford became rich. One of Napoleon's marshals understood military tactics as well as his chief, but he did not know men so well, and lacked the other's skill and tact. Napoleon might fall ; but, like a cat, he would fall upon his feet. For his argument in the Florida Case, a fee of one thousand dollars in crisp new bills of large denomination was handed to Daniel Webster as he sat reading in his li- brary. The next day he wished to use some 214 PUSHING TO THE FRONT of the money, but could not find any of the bills. Years afterward, as he turned the page of a book, he found a bank-bill without a crease in it. On turning the next leaf he found another, and so on until he took the whole amount lost from the places where he had deposited them thoughtlessly, as he read. Learning of a new issue of gold pieces at the Treasury, he directed his secretary, Charles Lanman, to obtain several hundred dollars' worth. A day or two after he put his hand in his pocket for one, but they were all gone. Webster was at first puzzled, but on reflection remembered that he had given them away, one by one, to friends who seemed to appre- ciate their beauty. A professor in mathematics in a New Eng- land college, a "book-worm," was asked by his wife to bring home some coffee. " How much will you have?" asked the merchant. " Well, I declare, my wife did not say, but I guess a bushel will do." Many a great man has been so absent- minded at times as to seem devoid of common sense. "The professor is not at home," said his servant who looked out of a window in the dark and failed to recognize Lessing when TACT OR COMMON SENSE 215 the latter knocked at his own door in a fit of absent-mindedness. " Oh, very well," replied Lessing. " No matter, I'll call at another time." Louis Philippe said he was the only sover- eign in Europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots. The world is full of men and women apparently splendidly en- dowed and highly educated, yet who can scarcely get a living. Not long ago three college graduates were found working on a sheep farm in Australia, one from Oxford, one from Cambridge, and the other from a German University, col- lege men tending brutes! Trained to lead men, they drove sheep. The owner of the farm was an ignorant, coarse sheep-raiser. He knew nothing of books or theories, but he knew sheep. His three hired graduates could speak foreign languages and discuss theories of political economy and philosophy, but he could make money. He could talk about noth- ing but sheep and farm ; but he had made a fortune, while the college men could scarcely get a living. Even the University could not supply common sense. It was " culture against ignorance; the college against the ranch; and the ranch beat every time." 216 PUSHING TO THE FRONT Do not expect too much from books. Bacon said that studies " teach not their own use. but that there is a practical wisdom without them, won by observation." The use of books must be found outside their own lids. It was said of a great French scholar : " He was drowned in his talents." Over-culture, with- out practical experience, weakens a man, and unfits him for real life. Book education alone tends to make a man too critical, too self- conscious, timid, distrustful of his abilities, too fine for the mechanical drudgery of practical life, too highly polished, and too finely cul- tured for every-day use. The culture of books and colleges refines, yet it is often but an ethical culture, and is gained at the cost of vigor and rugged strength. Book culture alone tends to par- alyze the practical faculties. The bookworm loses his individuality ; his head is filled with theories and saturated with other men's thoughts. The stamina of the vigorous mind he brought from the farm has evaporated in college; and when he graduates, he is aston- ished to' find that he has lost the power to grapple with men and things, and is therefore outstripped in the race of life by the boy who has had no chance, but who, in the fierce. TACT OR COMMON SENSE 217 struggle for existence, has developed hard common sense and practical wisdom. The college graduate often mistakes his crutches for strength. He inhabits an ideal realm where common sense rarely dwells. The world cares little for his theories or his ency- clopaedic knowledge. The cry of the age is for practical men. " We have been among you several weeks," said Columbus to the Indian chiefs ; " and, al- though at first you treated us like friends, you are now jealous of us and are trying to drive us away. You brought us food in plenty every morning, but now you bring very little and the amount is less with each succeeding day. The Great Spirit is angry with you for not doing as you agreed in bringing us pro- visions. To show his anger he will cause the sun to be in darkness." He knew that there was to be an eclipse of the sun, and told the day and hour it would occur, but the Indians did not believe him, and continued to reduce the supply of food. On the appointed day the sun rose without a cloud, and the Indians shook their heads, beginning to show signs of open hostility as the hours passed without a shadow on the face of the sun. But at length a dark spot 218 PUSHING TO THE FRONT was seen on one margin; and, as it became larger, the natives grew frantic and fell pros- trate before Columbus to entreat for help. He retired to his tent, promising to save them, if possible. About the time for the eclipse to pass away, he came out and said that the Great Spirit had pardoned them, and would soon drive away the monster from the sun if they would never offend him again. They readily promised, and when the sun had passed out of the shadow they leaped and danced and sang for joy. Thereafter the Spaniards had all the provisions they needed. " Common sense/' said Wendell Phillips, " bows to the inevitable and makes use of it." When Caesar stumbled in landing on the beach of Britain, he instantly grasped a hand- ful of sand and held it aloft as a signal of tri- umph, hiding forever from his followers the ill omen of his threatened fall. Goethe, speaking of some comparisons that had been instituted between himself and Shakespeare, said: "Shakespeare always hits the right nail on the head at once ; but I have to stop and think which is the right nail, be- fore I hit." It has been said that a few pebbles from a brook in the sling of a David who knows TACT OR COMMON SENSE 219 how to send them to the mark are more effec- tive than a Goliath's spear and a Goliath's strength with a Goliath's clumsiness. " Get ready for the redskins ! " shouted an excited man as he galloped up to the log- cabin of the Moore family in Ohio many years ago; "and give me a fresh horse as soon as you can. They killed a family down the river last night, and nobody knows where they'll turn up next ! " "What shall we do?" asked Mrs. Moore, with a pale face. " My husband went away yesterday to buy our winter supplies, and will not be back until morning." "Husband away? Whew! that's bad! Well, shut up as tight as you can. Cover up your fire, and don't strike a light to-night." Then springing upon the horse the boys had brought, he galloped away to warn other set- tlers. Mrs. Moore carried the younger children to the loft of the cabin, and left Obed and Joe to watch, reluctantly yielding the post of danger to them at their urgent request. " They're coming, Joe ! " whispered Obed early in the evening, as he saw several shad- ows moving across the fields. " Stand by that window with the axe, while I get the rifle 220 PUSHING TO THE FRONT pointed at this one." Opening the bullet- pouch, he took out a ball, but nearly fainted as he found it was too large for the rifle. His father had taken the wrong pouch. Obed felt around to see if there were any smaller balls in the cupboard, and almost stumbled over a very large pumpkin, one of the two which he and Joe had been using to make Jack-oManterns when the messenger alarmed them. Pulling off his coat, he flung it over the vegetable lantern, made to imitate a gi- gantic grinning face, with open eyes, nose, and mouth, and with a live coal from the ashes he lighted the candle inside. " They'll sound the war-whoop in a minute, if I give them time," he whispered, as he raised the covered lantern to the window. " Now for it ! " he added, pulling the coat away. An un- earthly yell greeted the appearance of the grinning monster, and the Indians fled wildly to the woods. "Quick, Joe! Light up the other one! Don't you see that's what scar't 'em so?" demanded Obed; and at the ap- pearance of the second fiery face the savages gave a final yell and vanished in the forest. Mr. Moore and daylight came together, but the Indians did not return. Thurlow Weed earned his first quarter by TACT OR COMMON SENSE 221 carrying a trunk on his back from a sloop in New York harbor to a Broad Street hotel He had very few chances such as are now open to the humblest boy, but he had tact and intuition. He could read men as an open book, and mold them to his will. He was unselfish. By three presidents whom his tact and shrewdness had helped to elect he was offered the English mission and scores of other important positions, but he invariably declined. Lincoln selected Weed to attempt the rec- onciliation of the " New York Herald," which had a large circulation in Europe, and was creating a dangerous public sentiment abroad and at home by its articles in sympathy with the Confederacy. Though Weed and Bennett had not spoken to each other before for thirty years, the very next day after their interview the " Herald " became a strong Union paper. Weed was then sent to Europe to counteract the pernicious influence of secession agents. The emperor of France favored the South. He was very indignant because Charleston harbor had been blockaded, thus shutting off French manufacturers from large supplies of cotton. But Weed's rare tact modified his views, and induced him to change to friend- 222 PUSHING TO THE FRONT liness the tone of a hostile speech prepared for delivery to the National Assembly. England was working night and day pre- paring for war when Weed arrived upon the scene, and soon changed largely the current of public sentiment. On his return to Amer- ica the city of New York extended public thanks to him for his inestimable services. He was equally successful in business, and acquired a fortune of a million dollars. " Tell me the breadth of this stream," said Napoleon to his chief engineer, as they came to a bridgeless river which the army had to cross. " Sire, I cannot. My scientific instru- ments are with the army, and we are ten miles ahead of it/' " Measure the width of this stream in- stantly."" Sire, be reasonable ! " " Ascer- tain at once the width of this river, or you shall be deposed." The engineer drew the cap-piece of his hel- met down until the edge seemed just in line between his eye and the opposite bank; then, holding himself carefully erect, he turned on his heel and noticed where the edge seemed to touch the bank on which he stood, which was on the same level as the other. He paced the distance to the point last noted, and said: TACT OR COMMON SENSE 223 " This is the approximate width of the stream." He was promoted. " Mr. Webster," said the mayor of a West- ern city, when it was learned that the great statesman, although weary with travel, would be delayed for an hour by a failure to make close connections, " allow me to introduce you to Mr. James, one of our most distinguished citizens." " How do you do, Mr. James?" asked Webster mechanically, as he glanced at a thousand people waiting to take his hand. "The truth is, Mr. Webster," replied Mr. James in a most lugubrious tone, " I am not very well." " I hope nothing serious is the matter," thundered the godlike Daniel, in a tone of anxious concern. " Well, I don't know that, Mr. Webster. I think it's rheu- matiz, but my wife " " Mr. Webster, this is Mr. Smith," broke in the mayor, leaving poor Mr. James to enjoy his bad health in the pitiless solitude of a crowd. His total want of tact had made him ridiculous. " Address yourself to the jury, sir," said a judge to a witness who insisted upon impart- ing his testimony in a confidential tone to the court direct. The man did not understand and continued as before. " Speak to the jury, sir, the men sitting behind you on the raised 224 PUSHING TO THE FRONT benches." Turning, the witness bowed low in awkward suavity, and said, " Good-morning, gentlemen." "What are these?" asked Napoleon, point- ing to twelve silver statues in a cathedral. " The twelve Apostles," was the reply. "Take them down," said Napoleon, "melt them, coin them into money, and let them go about doing good, as their Master did." " I don't think the Proverbs of Solomon show very great wisdom," said a student at Brown University ; " I could make as good ones myself." " Very well," replied President Wayland, " bring in two to-morrow morn- ing." He did not bring them. "Will you lecture for us for fame?" was the telegram young Henry Ward Beecher re- ceived from a Young Men's Christian Associ- ation in the West. " Yes, F. A.* M. E. Fifty and my expenses," was the answer the shrewd young preacher sent back. Montaigne tells of a monarch who, on the sudden death of an only child, showed his re- sentment against Providence by abolishing the Christian religion throughout his dominions for a fortnight. The triumphs of tact, or common sense, over talent and genius, are seen everywhere. TACT OR COMMON SENSE 225 Walpole was an ignorant man, and Charle- magne could hardly write his name so that it could be deciphered ; but these giants knew men and things, and possessed that practical wisdom and tact which have ever moved the world. Tact, like Alexander, cuts the knots it can- not untie, and leads its forces to glorious vic- tory. A practical man not only sees, but seizes the opportunity. There is a certain getting-on quality difficult to describe, but which is the great winner of the prizes of life. Napoleon could do anything in the art of war with his own hands, even to the making of gunpowder. Paul was all things to all men, that he might save some. The palm is among the hardest and least yielding of all woods, yet rather than be deprived of the rays of the life-giving sun in the dense forests of South America, it is said to turn into a creeper, and climb the nearest trunk to the light. A farmer who could not get a living sold one half of his farm to a young man who made enough money on the half to pay for it and buy the rest. " You have not tact," was his reply, when the old man asked how one could succeed so well where the other had failed. 226 PUSHING TO THE FRONT According to an old custom a Cape Cod minister was called upon in April to make a prayer over a piece of land. " No," said he, when shown the land, " this does not need a prayer; it needs manure." To see a man as he is you must turn him round and round until you get him at the right angle. Place him in a good light, as you would a picture. The excellences and defects will appear if you get the right angle. How our old schoolmates have changed places in the ranking of actual life! The boy who led his class and was the envy of all has been distanced by the poor dunce who was called slow and stupid, but who had a sort of dull energy in him which enabled him to get on in the world. The class leader had only a theoretical knowledge, and could not cope with the stern realities of the* age. Even genius, however rapid its flight, must not omit a single essential detail, and must be willing to work like a horse. Shakespeare had marvelous tact ; he worked everything into his plays. He ground up the king and his vassal, the fool and the fop, the prince and the peasant, the black and the white, the pure and the impure, the simple and the profound, passions and characters, TACT OR COMMON SENSE 227 honor and dishonor, everything within the sweep of his vision he ground up into paint and spread it upon his mighty canvas. Some people show want of tact in resenting every slight or petty insult, however unworthy their notice. Others make Don Quixote's mistake of fighting a windmill by engaging in controversies with public speakers and edi- tors, who are sure to have the advantage of the final word. One of the greatest elements of strength in the character of Washington was found in his forbearance when unjustly attacked or ridiculed. Artemus Ward touches this bubble with a pretty sharp-pointed pen. " It was in a surtin town in Virginny, the Muther of Presidents and things, that I was shaimfully aboozed by a editer in human ^orm. He set my Show up steep, and kalled me the urbane and gentlemunly manager, but when I, fur the purpuss of showin' fair play all round, went to anuther offiss to get my handbills printed, what duz this pussillaner- mus editer do but change his toon and abooze me like a injun. He sed my wax-wurks was a humbug, and called me a horey-heded itin- erent vagabone. I thort at fust Ide pollish him orf ar-lar Beneki Boy, but on reflectin' 228 PUSHING TO THE FRONT that he cood pollish me much wuss in his paper, I giv it up; and I wood here take occashun to advise people when they run agin, as they sumtimes will, these miserble papers, to not pay no attenshun to um. Abuv all, don't assault a editer of this kind. It only gives him a notorosity, which is jist what he wants, and don't do you no more good than it would to jump into enny other mud- puddle. Editers are generally fine men, but there must be black sheep in every flock." John Jacob Astor had practical talent in a remarkable degree. During a storm at sea, on his voyage to America, the other passen- gers ran about the deck in despair, expecting every minute to go down; but young Astor went below and coolly put on his best suit of clothes, saying that if the ship should founder and he should happen to be rescued, he woul(^ at least save his best suit of clothes. "Their trading talent is bringing the Jews to the front in America as well as in Europe," said a traveler to one of that race ; " and it has gained for them an ascendency, at least in certain branches of trade, from which nothing will ever displace them." " Dey are coming to de vront, most zair- tainly," replied his companion; "but vy do TACT OR COMMON SENSE 229 you shpeak of deir drading dalent all de time?" "But don't you regard it as a talent?" "A dalent? No! It is chenius. I vill dell you what is de difference, in drade, between dalent and chenius. Ven one goes into a man's shtore and manaches to seel him vat he vonts, dat is dalent ; but ven annoder man goes into dat man's shtore and sells him vot he don't vont, dat is chenius; and dat is de chenius vot my race has got." XI. SELF-RESPECT AND SELF-CON- FIDENCE The king is the man who can. CARLYLE. Be a friend to yersel, and ithers will. SCOTCH PROVERB. A nod from a lord is a breakfast for a fool. FRANKLIN. . The reverence of man's self is, next to religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices. BACON. Self-respect, that corner-stone of all virtue. JOHN HERSCHEL. Above all things, reverence yourself. PYTHAG- ORAS. Nothing can work me damage, except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own faults. ST. BERNARD. Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers. BOVEE. POOR Scotch weaver used to pray daily that he might have a good opinion of him- self. Why not? Can I ask another to think well of me when I do not set the ex- ample? The Chinese say it never pays to respect a man who does not respect himself. 230 SELF-RESPECT 231 If the world sees that I do not honor myself, it has a right to reject me as an impostor, because I claim to be worthy of the good opinion of others when I have not my own. Self-respect is based upon the same princi- ples as respect for others. " You may deceive all the people some of the time," said Lincoln, " some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time." We cannot deceive ourselves, how- ever, any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our own respect is to deserve it. The world has a right to look to me for my own rating. We stamp our own value upon ourselves and cannot expect to pass for more. When you are introduced into society, people look into your face and eye to see what estimate you place upon yourself. If they see a low mark, why should they trouble themselves to investigate to see if you have not rated yourself too low? They know you have lived with yourself a good while and ought to know your own value better than they. " Good God, that I should have intrusted the fate of the country and of the administra- tion to such hands ! " exclaimed Pitt to Lord Temple, after listening in disgust to the ego- 232 PUSHING TO THE FRONT tistical boasting of General Wolfe, the day before his embarkation for Canada. The young soldier had drawn his sword, rapped upon the table with it, flourished it around the room, and told of the great deeds he would perform. Little did the Prime Minister dream that this egotistical young man would rise from his bed when sick with a fever, and lead his troops to glorious victory upon the Heights of Abraham. The apparent egotism was but a prophecy of his ability to achieve. "Where is your fortress now?" asked his captors derisively of Stephen of Colonna. " Here," was the bold reply, as he placed his hand upon his heart. "Well-matured and well-disciplined talent is always sure of a market," said Washing- ton Irving ; " but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of for- ward and impudent men, while men of retir- ing worth are passed over with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a mere in- operative property. A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion." SELF-RESPECT 233 John C. Fremont closed in almost forgot- ten obscurity his career as a man whose sci- entific attainment gave him the seat left va- cant by the death of Humboldt in European academies, whose wonderful enterprise gave California to the Union, and whose position was once among the foremost in the political world. " He has been ignored," said an op- ponent, " simply because he is utterly lacking in self-assertion. He has a positive talent for effacing himself." " Why, sir," said John C. Calhoun in Yale College when a fellow student ridiculed his intense application to study ; " I am forced to make the most of my time, that I may acquit myself creditably when in Congress." A laugh greeted this speech, when he exclaimed, "Do you doubt it? I assure you if I were not convinced of my ability to reach the na- tional capital as a representative within the next three years, I would leave college this very day ! " "What does Grattan say of himself?" said Curran, repeating the question of the egotis- tical Lord Erskine ; " nothing. Grattan speak of himself! Why, sir, Grattan is a great man! Torture, sir, could not wring a sylla- ble of self-praise from Grattan ; a team of six 234 PUSHING TO THE FRONT horses could not drag an opinion of himself out of him! Like all great men, he knows the strength of his reputation, and will never condescend to proclaim its march like the trumpeter of a puppet show. Sir, he stands on a national altar, and it is the business of us inferior men to keep up the fire and in- cense. You will never see Grattan stooping to do either the one 01 the other." What seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strong expression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men have usually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of his place in history, and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his own fame. " Fear not/' said Julius Caesar to his pilot fright- ened in a storm ; " thou bearest Caesar and his good fortunes." Egotism, so common in men of rank, may be a necessity. Nature gives man large hope lest he falter before reaching the high mark she sets for him. So she has overloaded his egotism, often beyond the pleasing point, to make sure that he will persist in pushing his way upward. Self-confidence indicates re- serve power. Morally considered, it is usually safe to SELF-RESPECT 235 trust those who can trust themselves, but when a man suspects his own integrity, it is time he was suspected by others. Moral degradation always begins at home. In these busy days men have no time to hunt about in obscure corners for retiring merit. They prefer to take a man at his own estimate until he proves himself unworthy. The world admires courage and manliness, and despises a young man who goes about "with an air of perpetual apology for thej unpardonable sin of being in the world." "If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is," said Schelling, " he will soon also learn what he ought to be ; let him have a theoretical respect for himself, and a prac- tical will soon follow." A person under the firm persuasion that he can command re- sources virtually has them. " Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men," said Kossuth ; " but let no one discour- age self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness." Froude wrote: "A tree must be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. A man must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only 236 PUSHING TO THE FRONT that any superstructure of intellectual culti- vation worth having can possibly be built." A youth should have that self-respect which lifts him above meanness, and makes him in- dependent of slights and snubs. " I have studied all my law books," said Curran, pleading, "and cannot find a single case where the principle contended for by the opposing counsel is established." "I suspect, sir," interrupted Judge Robin- son, who owed his position to his authorship of several poorly written but sycophantic and scurrilous pamphlets, "I suspect that your law library is rather contracted." " It is true, my lord, that I am poor," said the young lawyer calmly, looking the judge steadily in the face; "and the circumstance has rather curtailed my library. My books are not numerous, but they are select, and, I hope, have been perused with proper disposi- tions. I have prepared myself for this high profession rather by the study of a few good books than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I should be of my wealth, could I stoop to acquire it by servility and cor- ruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest. And should I ever cease to SELF-RESPECT 237 be so, many an example shows me that an ill-acquired elevation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notoriously con- temptible." Judge Robinson never again sneered at the young barrister. " Self-reliance is a grand element of char- acter," says Michael Reynolds. " It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels ; it con- fers kinship with men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's memory." Self-confidence and self-respect give a sense of power which nothing else can be- stow. The weak, the leaning, the dependent, the vacillating, the undecided, " Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride That glows in him who on himself relies. His joy is not that he has got the crown But that the power to win the crown is his." This above all, to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. SHAKESPEARE: XII. CHARACTER IS POWER Character is power is influence ; it makes friends ; creates funds; draws patronage and support; and opens a sure and easy way to wealth; honor, and happiness. J. HAWES. I'm called away by particular business, but I leave my character behind me. SHERIDAN. Character must stand behind and back up every- thing the sermon, the poem, the picture, the play. None of them is worth a straw without it. J. G. HOLLAND. Character is the diamond that scratches every other stone. BARTOL. Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own. LOWELL. OU are a plebeian," said a patrician to Cicero. " I am a plebeian," replied the great Roman orator ; " the nobility of my family be- gins with me, that of yours will end with you." " No, say what you have to say in her pres- ence, too," said King Cleomenes of Sparta, when his visitor, Anistagoras, knowing how much harder it is to persuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side, asked 238 CHARACTER IS POWER 239 him to send away his little daughter Gorgo, ten years old. So Gorgo sat at her father's feet, and listened while the stranger offered more and more money if Cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboring country. She did not understand the matter, but when she saw her father look troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, " Papa, come away come, or this strange man will make you do wrong." The king went away with the child, and saved himself and his country from dishonor. Character is power, even in a child. " Please, sir, buy some matches ! " said a little boy, with a poor thin blue face, his feet bare and red, and his clothes only a bundle of rags, although it was very cold in Edin- burgh that day. " No, I don't want any," said the gentleman. " But they're only a penny a box," the little fellow pleaded. " Yes, but you see I don't want a box." " Then I'll gie ye two boxes for a penny," the boy said at last. " And so, to get rid of him," says the gen- tleman, who tells the story in an English paper, " I bought a box, but then I found I had no change, so I said, * I'll buy a box to- 240 PUSHING TO THE FRONT "'Oh, do buy them to-nicht,' the boy pleaded again ; * I'll rin and get ye the change; for I'm very hungry/ So I gave him the shilling, and he started away. I waited for the boy, but no boy came. Then. I thought I had lost my shilling; but still there was that in the boy's face I trusted, and I did not like to think badly of him. " Late in the evening a servant came and said a little boy wanted to see me. When the child was brought in, I found it was a smaller brother of the boy who got the shil- ling, but, if possible, still more ragged and thin and poor. He stood a moment diving into his rags, as if he were seeking some- thing, and then said, ' Are you the gentleman that bought matches frae Sandie?' 'Yes/ ' Weel, then, here's fourpence oot o' yer shil- lin'. Sandie canna coom. He's no weel. A cart ran over him and knocked him doon; and he lost his bonnet, and his matches, and your elevenpence; and both his legs are broken, and he's no weel at a', and the doc- tor says he'll dee. And that's a' he can gie ye the noo/ putting fourpence down on the table; and then the child broke down into great sobs. So I fed the little man ; and then I went with him to see Sandie. CHARACTER IS POWER 241 "I found that the two little things lived with a wretched drunken stepmother; their own father and mother were both dead. I found poor Sandie lying on a bundle of shav- ings; he knew me as soon as I came in, and said, * I got the change, sir, and was coming back; and then the horse knocked me down, and both my legs are broken. And Reuby, little Reuby! I am sure I am deein'! And who will take care o' ye, Reuby, when I am gane ? What will ye do, Reuby ? ' " Then I took the poor little sufferer's hand and told him I would always take care of Reuby. He understood me, and had just strength to look at me as if he would thank me; then the expression went out of his blue eyes; and in a moment " ' He lay within the light of God, Like a babe upon the breast, Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest/ " Heaven meant principle to that little match- boy, bruised and dying. He knew little where he was to go, but he knew better than most of those who would have spurned him from their carriages, the value of honesty, truth, nobility, sincerity, genuineness, the qualities that go to make heaven. 242 PUSHING TO THE FRONT In the great monetary panic of 1857, a meeting was called of the various bank pres- idents of New York City. When asked what percentage of specie had been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent, some even as high as seventy-five per cent., but Moses Taylor of the City Bank said : " We had in the bank this morning, $400,000; this evening, $470,000." While other banks were badly " run," the confidence in the City Bank under Mr. Taylor's management was such that people had deposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks. Character gives confidence. In a yellow fever epidemic at Memphis, the members of the Relief Committee were at their wits' end to obtain watchers, when a man with coarse features, close-cropped hair, and shuffling gait went directly to one of the attending physicians and said : " I want to nurse." The doctor looked at him critically, con- cluded he was not fitted for the work in any way, and replied : " You are not needed." " I wish to nurse," persisted the stranger. "Try me for a week. If you don't like me, then dismiss me; if you do, pay me my wages," CHARACTER IS POWE& 243 "Very well," said the doctor, "Til take you, although, to be candid, I hesitate to do so." Then he added mentally, " I'll keep my eye on him." But the man soon proved that he needed nobody's eye upon him. In a few weeks he had become one of the most valuable nurses on that heroic force. He was tireless and self-denying. Wherever the pestilence raged most fiercely he worked hardest. The suffer- ing and the sinking adored him. To the neg- lected and the forgotten his rough face was as the face of an angel. He acted so strangely on pay-days, How- ever, that he was followed through back streets to an obscure place, where he was seen to put his whole week's earnings into the relief-box for the benefit of the yellow-fever sufferers. Not long afterwards he sickened and died of the plague; and when his body was prepared for its unnamed grave, for he had never told who he was, a livid mark was found which showed that John, the nurse, had been branded as a convicted felon. It is an interesting fact in this money- getting era that a poor author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has more standing in society and 244 PUSHING TO THE FRONT has more paragraphs written about him in the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antago- nists. Every success in the world of intel- lect and character is an aid and profit to so- ciety. Character is a mark cut upon some- thing, and this indelible mark determines the only true value of all people and all their work. We all believe in the man of character. What power of magic lies in a great name! Theodore Parker used to say that Socrates was worth more to a nation than many such states as South Carolina. " It is the nature of party in England," said John Russell, " to ask the assistance of men of genius, but to follow the guidance of men of character." " My road must be through character to power," wrote Canning in 1801. " I will try no other course; and I am sanguine enough to believe that this course, though not per- haps the quickest, is the surest." We can calculate the efficiency of an en- CHARACTER IS POWER 245 gine to the last ounce of pressure. Its power can be as accurately determined as the tem- perature of a room. But who can rightly determine the inherent force of a man of predominant character? Who can estimate the influence of a single boy or girl upon the character of a school? Traditions, customs, manners have been changed for several school generations by one or two strong characters, who in their own small way, but none the less important, have become school heroes as much real forces in life as if they were locomotives dragging loads of cars. Any teacher will tell you that many a school has been pulled up grade, or run down, by; just such powerful characters. In the army, fleeing from Moscow amid the bewildering snows of a biting Russian winter, was a German prince whose sterling character had endeared him to all his sol- diers. One bitter night, in the ruins of a shed built for cattle, all lay down to sleep, cold, tired, and hungry. At dawn the prince awoke, warm and refreshed, and listened to the wind as it howled and shrieked around the shed. He called his men, but received no reply. Looking around, he found their dead bodies covered with snow, while their cloaks PUSHING TO THE FRONT were piled upon himself their lives given to save his. King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched might be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy. His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the flowers he plucked, and even his little daugh- ter, whom he kissed, were all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might be taken from him. He had learned that many other things are intrin- sically far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth. "These are my jewels," said Cornelia to the Campanian lady who asked to see her gems ; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning from school. The reply was worthy of the daughter of Scipio Africanus and wife of Tiberius Gracchus. The most valuable production of any country is its crop of men. " I know of no great man," said Voltaire, " except those who have rendered great serv- ices to the human race." Men are measured by what they do, not by what they possess. "Education a debt due from present to future generations," was the sentiment found CHARACTER IS POWER 247 in a sealed envelope opened during the cen- tennial celebration at Danvers, Mass. In the same envelope was a check for twenty thou- sand dollars for a town library and institute. The sender was George Peabody, one of the most remarkable men of his century, once a poor boy, but then a millionaire banker. At another banquet given in his honor at Dan- vers, years afterwards, he gave two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the same insti- tute. " Steadfast and undeviating truth," said he, " fearless and straightforward integrity, and an honor ever unsullied by an unworthy word or action, make their possessor greater than worldly success or prosperity. These qualities constitute greatness." The honesty and integrity of A. T. Stewart won for him a great reputation, and the young schoolmaster who began life in New York on less than a dollar a day amassed nearly forty million dollars, and there was not a smirched dollar in all those millions. On the 2d of September, 1792, the popu- lace broke into the prisons of Paris, crowded almost to suffocation with aristocrats and priests. These fell like grain before the scythe of the reaper. But in the midst of that wild revel of blood, a sans culotte recog- 248 PUSHING TO THE FRONT nized the Abbe Sicard, who had spent his life teaching the deaf and dumb, and in whose house "The cunning fingers finely twined The subtle thread that knitteth mind to mind; There that strange bridge of signs was built where roll The sunless waves that sever soul from soul, And by the arch, no bigger than a hand, Truth traveled over to the silent land." " Behold the bosom through which you must pass to reach that of this good citizen," said Mounot, who knew the abbe only by sight and reputation ; " you do not know him. He is the Abbe Sicard, one of the most be- nevolent of men, the most useful to his coun- try, the father of the deaf and dumb." And the murderers around not only desisted from attacking, but embraced the abbe, and wished to carry him home in their arms. Even in that blood-stained throng the power of a noble character was still supreme. Do you call him successful who wears a bull-dog expression that but too plainly tells the story of how he gained his fortune, tak- ing but never giving? Can you not read in that brow-beating face the sad experience of CHARACTER IS POWER 249 widows and orphans? Do you call him a self- made man who has unmade others to make himself, who tears others down to build himself up? Can a man be really rich who makes others poorer? Can he be happy in whose every lineament chronic avarice is seen as plainly as hunger in the countenance of a wolf? How seldom sweet, serene, beautiful faces are seen on men who have been very successful as the world rates success! Na- ture expresses in the face and manner the sentiment which rules the heart. No man deserves to be crowned with honor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drink and accumulate money is surely not successful. The world is no bet- ter for his living in it. He never wiped a tear from a sad face, never kindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. There is no flesh in his heart; he worships no god but gold. In the days of the Abolitionists, a great "Union Saving Committee" of their oppo- nents met at Castle Garden, New York, and decided that merchants who would not op- pose the "fanatics" should be put on a " Black List " and crushed financially. Messrs. Bowen & McNamee, however, stated in their advertisements that they hoped to 250 PUSHING TO THE FRONT sell their silks, but would not sell their prin- ciples. Their independent stand created a great sensation throughout the country. People wanted to buy of men who would not sell themselves. The world, it is said, is always looking for men who are not for sale ; men who are hon- est, sound from center to circumference, true to the heart's core; men whose consciences are as steady as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right if the heavens totter and the earth reels; men who can tell the truth, and look the world and the devil right in the eye; men that neither brag nor run; men that neither flag nor flinch; men who can have courage without shouting to it , men who know their own business and attend to it ; men who will not lie, shirk, nor dodge ; men who are not afraid to say " No " with emphasis, and who are not ashamed to say, " I can't afford it." Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wounded at Zutphen, was tortured by thirst from his great loss of blood. Water was carried to him. A wounded soldier borne by on a litter fixed his eyes upon the bottle with such a wistful gaze that Sidney insisted on giving it to him, saying, " Thy necessity is greater CHARACTER IS POWER 251 than mine." Sidney died, but this deed alone would have made his name honored when that of the king he served is forgotten. Florence Nightingale tells of soldiers suffer- ing with dysentery, who, scorning to report themselves sick lest they should force more labor on their overworked comrades, would go down to the trenches and make them their death-beds. Say what you will, there is in the man who gives his time, his strength, his life, if need be, for something not himself, whether he call it his queen, his country, his colors, or his fellow man, something more truly Christian than in all the ascetic fasts, humiliations, and confessions that have ever been made. " I have read," Emerson says, " that they who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he said." It has been complained of Carlyle that when he has told all his facts about Mirabeau they do not justify his esti- mate of the latter's genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh are men of great figure and of few deeds. We cannot find the smallest 252 PUSHING TO THE FRONT part of the personal weight of Washington in the narrative of his exploits. The author- ity of the name of Schiller is too great for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works or the anecdotes is not ac- counted for by saying that the reverberation is longer than the thunder-clap; but some- thing resided in these men which begot an expectation that outran all their perform- ance. The largest part of their power was latent. This is that which we call character, a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. What others effect by talent or eloquence, the man of character accomplishes by some magnetism. "Half his strength he puts not forth." His victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing bayonets. He conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. There are men and women in every coun- try who conquer before they speak. They exert an influence out of all proportion to their ability, and people wonder what is the secret of their power over men. It is nat- ural for all classes to believe in and to fol- low character, for character is power. Never did Caesar exert a greater influence over the Roman people than when he lay upon the CHARACTER IS POWER 253 marble floor of the senate, pierced by cruel daggers, his wounds so many open mouths pleading for him. It was said of General Sheridan : " Had he possessed principle he might have ruled the world." How few young men realize that their success in life depends more upon what they are than upon what they know! It was character, not ability, that elected Washing- ton and Lincoln to the presidency. Webster bid high for it. The price was his honor all his former convictions. When a farmer heard that he had lost the nomination, he said : " The South never pays its slaves." What is this principle that Napoleon and Webster lacked ? Is it not a deathless loyalty to the highest ideal which the world has been able to produce up to the present date? This is what we admire and respect in strong men whose roots are deep in the ground and whose character is robust enough to keep them like oaks in their places when all around is whirl- ing. When promised protection in Turkey if he would embrace the Mohammedan religion, the exiled Kossuth replied : " Between death and shame, I have never been dubious. Though once the governor of a generous people, I 254 PUSHING TO THE FRONT leave no inheritance to my children. That were at least better than an insulted name. God's will be done. I am prepared to die/' " These hands of mine," he said at another time, "are empty, but clean." When Petrarch approached the tribunal to take the customary oath as a witness, he was told that such was the confidence of the court in his veracity that his word would be suffi- cient, and he would not be required to swear to his testimony. Hugh Miller was offered the position of cashier in a large bank, but declined, saying that he knew little of accounts, and could not get a bondsman. " We do not require bonds of you/' said Mr. Ross, president of the bank. Miller did not even know that Ross knew him. Our characteristics are always under inspection, whether we realize it or not. Vittoria Colonna wrote her husband, when the princes of Italy urged him to desert the Spanish cause, to which he was bound by every tie of faithfulness, " Remember your honor, which raises you above kings. By that alone, and not by titles and splendor, is glory acquired the glory which it will be your happiness and pride to transmit unspotted to your posterity." CHARACTER IS POWER 255 When Thoreau lay dying, a Calvinistic friend asked anxiously, " Henry, have you made your peace with God ? " " John," whis- pered the dying naturalist, "I didn't know God and myself had quarreled." Lincoln, although President of a great peo- ple, was the laughing-stock of the aristocratic and fashionable circles of Europe. The illus- trated papers of all Christendom caricatured the awkwardness and want of dignity of this backwoods graduate. Politicians were shocked at the simplicity of his state papers, and wished to make them more conventional ; but Lincoln only replied, " The people will understand them." Even in Washington he was ridiculed as "the ape," "stupid block- head," and " satyr." On reading these terri- ble denunciations and criticisms, he once said, " Well, Abraham Lincoln, are you a man or are you a dog?" After the repulse at Fredericksburg he said, " If there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do, I pity him/' But the great heart of the com- mon people beat in unison with his. The poor operatives in European cotton-mills sometimes nearly starved for lack of cotton, but they never petitioned their government to break Lincoln's blockade. Working people 256 PUSHING TO THE FRONT the world over believed in and sympathized with him. No man ever lived of whom it could have been more truly said that, "The elements So mixed in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, ' This is a man ! ' * Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his fellow law- yers called him " perversely honest." Noth- ing could induce him to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after learning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable time to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred dollars, he returned the money, saying : " Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on." " But you have earned that money," said the lady. " No, no," re- plied Lincoln, " that would not be right. I can't take pay for doing my duty." There should be something in a man's life greater than his occupation or his achieve- ments ; grander than acquisition or wealth ; higher than genius; more enduring than fame. Men and nations put their trust in education, culture, and the refining influences CHARACTER IS POWER 257 of civilized life, but these alone can never elevate or save a people. Art, luxury, and degradation have been boon companions all down the centuries. If there is any one power in the world that will make itself felt, it is character. There may be little culture, slender abilities, no property, no position in " society " ; yet, if there be a character of sterling excellence, it will demand influence and secure respect. " A right act strikes a chord that extends through the whole universe, touches all moral intelligence, visits every world, vibrates along its whole extent, and conveys its vibrations to the very bosom of God." Louis XIV. asked Colbert how it was that, ruling so great and populous a country as France, he had been unable to conquer so small a country as Holland. " Because," said the minister, '-the greatness of a country does not depend upon the extent of Its terri- tory, but on the character of its people." The characters of great men are the dowry of a nation. An English tanner whose leather gained a great reputation said he should not have made it so good had he not read Car- lyle. It is said that Franklin reformed the manners of a whole workshop in London. 258 PUSHING TO THE FRONT Ariosto and Titian inspired each other and heightened each other's glory. " Tell me whom you admire, and I will tell you what you are." A book or work of art puts us in the mood or train of thought