or some Secrete 
 SUCCESS -AND POW
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 Few know of life's beginnings : men behold 
 
 The goal achieved the warrior, when his sword 
 
 Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun ; 
 
 The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm ; 
 
 The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice, 
 
 And mould opinion on his gifted tongue : 
 
 They count not life's first steps, and never think 
 
 Upon the many miserable hours 
 
 When hope deferred was sickness to the heart ; 
 
 They reckon not the battle and the march, 
 
 The long privations of a wasted youth ; 
 
 They never see the banner till unfurled. 
 
 What are to them the solitary nights 
 
 Passed pale and anxious by the sickly lamp, 
 
 Till the young poet wins the world at last 
 
 To listen to the music long his own ? 
 
 The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind 
 
 That makes their destiny ; but they do not trace 
 
 Its struggle or its long expectancy. 
 
 Hard are life's early steps ; and, but that youth 
 
 Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, 
 
 Men would behold its threshold, and despair. 
 
 LANDON.
 
 MASTERS 
 OF THE SITUATION 
 
 OR, 
 
 Some Secrets of Success and Power. 
 
 Sames 
 
 "NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE SUCCESS." 
 
 " When I asked an iron-master," says Emerson, " concerning the slag and cinder 
 in railroad iron, his answer was : ' There is always good iron to be had. If there was 
 cinder in the iron, it was because there was cinder in the pay.' " 
 
 " A little of the inevitable is worth more than much power merely to push and 
 pull." 
 
 T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK. 
 1888.
 
 TRUTH is as old as the world. As no two, however, see 
 exactly the same rainbow, so no truth presents itself to all 
 alike. So much has been written, we are told, that it is no 
 longer possible even to appear original. Yet all will agree 
 that the manner of presenting old truths is of the first im- 
 portance. " The difference in men consists not so much in 
 mere knowledge, after all, as in the ability to reproduce 
 knowledge that power of the mind which assimilates, tests, 
 and pronounces its own verdict on all the waifs of idea which 
 are borne to it from the minds of others." 
 
 Many of us can understand the feeling which prompted 
 him who, failing to find in his library the book he wanted, 
 went to work and made one. On the other hand, at rare 
 intervals we have found the book we wanted as well, only to 
 rise from its perusal with a keener appetite for others like 
 it. One can hardly read certain books without instinctively 
 wishing for more like them. Such books are " never crowded, 
 and never crowd." Of such there cannot be too many. Men 
 love Raphael none the less because they admire Correggio. 
 
 No one can contemplate youth, with its beauty and power, 
 its infinite hope and aspiration, without being touched to the 
 heart. While from one standpoint life seems "a joy for 
 ever," from another it impresses one as inexpressibly sad and 
 full of pathos. As one gets on in life, and realizes more and 
 
 2017761
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 more fully the lost opportunities of the irreparable past, and 
 scans the horizon, limited and narrowing at best, between 
 youth and old age, he longs to reach out a hand, to send out 
 a voice that perchance may be heard. 
 
 With all its buoyancy and hope and seeming assurance, 
 youth has its hours of discouragement and despondency, and 
 young men are often faint-hearted. They believe in all things 
 else save in themselves. Too often they lack the courage 
 to go out in pursuit of life's prizes and rewards. For such 
 this volume has been written. At the same time, it is 
 hoped it may not be found wholly wanting in hints and in- 
 centives of value to those farther on. 
 
 " My son," remarked the good old Quaker, " thee thinks 
 thee has a call to preach. Has thee also considered well 
 whether the people have a call to hear thee ? " 
 
 If those for whom this book has been written shall be 
 found to have " a call to hear," I shall not have laboured 
 in vain. 
 
 WILLIAM JAMES TILLEY. 
 ST. THOMAS'S) RECTORV. 
 December 1886.
 
 d^fon tents. 
 
 II. 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY, 
 
 3C 
 
 III. 
 
 APPLICATION, ... 
 
 6C 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE SINGLE EYE, 
 
 109 
 
 V. 
 
 HABIT, 
 
 131 
 
 VI. 
 
 HEALTH, 
 
 161 
 
 VII. 
 
 ENTHUSIASM 
 
 186 
 
 VIII. 
 
 MANNEBS, 
 
 206 
 
 IX. 
 
 "WAIT!" 
 
 232 
 
 X. 
 
 OPPORTUNITY, ... 
 
 261 
 
 XI. 
 
 GENIUS, 
 
 277 
 
 XII. 
 
 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION, 
 
 295
 
 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 promptness. 
 
 It is no use running ; to set out betimes is the main point. LA FONTAINE. 
 Never forget that others will depend upon you, and that you cannot 
 depend upon them. DUMAS, Fils. 
 
 Whilst we are considering when we are to begin, it is often too late to 
 act. QUINTILIAN. 
 
 Delays have dangerous ends. SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 WE are all familiar with the trite old aphorism, " Procrasti- 
 nation is the thief of time ; " but there is in it, doubtless, a 
 far deeper significance than some of us realize. Not alone of 
 time does it rob us ; it filches away our possibilities even. 
 Human life is like a kaleidoscope, its scenes for ever shift- 
 ing, and never twice the same. We imagine we can do, or 
 leave undone can seize to-day, or postpone till to-morrow, 
 the circumstance which invites and is full of promise. The 
 morrow comes, but not the same. The variation is slight, 
 but permanent, like the bauble which we have tossed upon 
 the receding tide, thinking we can recover it at will : we can 
 almost reach it; the next surge surely will bring it in. 
 Vain delusion ! We do not take into account the fact that,
 
 10 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 obedient to an occult, mysterious law, that which we would 
 regain is already within the resistless grasp of an alien power, 
 and momently receding, drawn farther and farther from us 
 into the insatiate maw of the all-devouring sea. 
 
 So with our projects in life. We hesitate to-day. All is 
 not just as we would have it. To-morrow will surely bring 
 our object nearer. But to-morrow it is farther away than 
 ever. Yesterday it was easily within our grasp. Now it is 
 virtually within the realm of the impossible. 
 
 It seems almost incredible that so many should allow them- 
 selves to be cajoled and deceived by that phantom, that 
 will-o'-the-wisp, to-morrow. How true to life is that picture, 
 in Mr. Charles Reade's story, of Noah Skinner, the fraudulent 
 
 banker's clerk ! "A sleepy languor now came over him ; 
 
 but his resolution remained unshaken ; by-and-by, waking up 
 from a sort of heavy cloze, he took, as it were, a last look at 
 the receipts, and murmured, ' My head, how heavy it feels ! ' 
 But presently he roused himself, full of his penitent resolution, 
 and murmured again, brokenly, ' I'll take it to Pembroke 
 Street to morrow ; to mor row.' The to-morrow found 
 him, and so did the detectives, dead." " I have spent all my 
 life in pursuit of it," declares one of Hawthorne's venerable 
 characters, "being assured that to-morrow has some vast 
 benefit or other in store for me. But I am now getting a 
 little in years, and must make haste ; for unless I overtake 
 to-morrow soon, I begin to be afraid it will finally escape me." 
 
 Doubtless one cause of the inertia so prevalent among young 
 men, this lack of promptness, is the undefined feeling that 
 one has infinite possessions in that commodity which men 
 call time. To youth the vista is boundless, the horizon 
 infinite. The thought, even if it find not expression in so 
 many words, seems to be like this : " Soul, thou hast much 
 goods laid up for many years." What need of haste? It 
 will be time enough to grapple with life's problems by-and-by. 
 The days glide noiselessly and imperceptibly on. Happy in
 
 PROMPTNESS. 11 
 
 an undefined hope, the present engrosses all the thought. 
 The hands are empty, but the stream still hurries on. " We 
 may be shipwrecked, but we cannot be delayed." And thus 
 it happens that one is often well advanced upon the journey 
 before he awakes to the consciousness that the horizon is 
 narrowing, and that if he is to do anything in this world 
 worth doing before he leaves it, it must be promptly done. 
 He must bestir himself, and at once. Some fine morning he 
 awakes to this fact. It occurs to him how short the distance 
 is between him and "the night that cometh." How fast the 
 days and months have been speeding on ! 
 
 " Remorseless Time ! 
 
 Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe ! what power 
 Can stay him in his silent course, or melt 
 His iron heart to pity ? " 
 
 Now it is doubtful if a young man does anything really 
 worthy of himself before he has had impressed upon him an 
 adequate conviction of this value of time, and hence of prompt- 
 ness in meeting each duty as it comes. In those famous 
 " Rules " of Copperfield, where Dickens takes us so charm- 
 ingly into his confidence, he makes this confession : "I have 
 been very fortunate in worldly matters, many men have 
 worked much harder and not succeeded half so well, but I 
 never could have done what I have done without the habits 
 of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination 
 to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how 
 quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I 
 then formed. Heaven knows," he continues, " I write this 
 in no spirit of self-laudation." Manhood is disgraced, says 
 Blair, by the consequences of neglected youth. " Old age, 
 oppressed by cares that belonged to a former period, labours 
 under a burden not his own." One thing at least is certain, 
 and that is, that nowhere is neglect or delay more annoying 
 than in its influence upon a man's daily tasks. The manner
 
 12 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 in which these crowd and jostle each other, if allowed the 
 advantage, is only too well known to us all. On the other 
 hand, what so refreshing as the prompt and ready despatch 
 of a duty before another conies ? It is said that in his later 
 years, Mr. Drew, " Uncle Dan'l," as he was familiarly known 
 in Wall Street, used to delight in nothing more than to visit 
 the office of James Fisk, junior, and would sit by the hour, 
 watching with eager interest the promptness and despatch 
 with which that indomitable and in many ways remarkable 
 man disposed of the business which accumulated on his desk 
 from day to day. Webster when at Marshfield, during the 
 intervals of the congressional sessions, was accustomed to rise 
 at daybreak, and before the family assembled at the breakfast- 
 table, had usually written twenty or thirty letters, and would 
 come in saying, " Well, my day's work is done. Now I am 
 ready for fishing, hunting, or anything that may come to 
 hand." The same habit of "breaking the neck of the day" 
 by taking Time " by the forelock " was true of Scott. 
 
 How striking the contrast between men of this stamp and 
 those who are for ever behindhand with their work ; who 
 allow one thing after another to accumulate on their hands 
 until a perfect chaos is the result ! Gibbon, we are told, was 
 in his study every morning, summer and winter, at six o'clock. 
 " Before nine o'clock in the morning," says Bowditch, " I 
 learned all my mathematics." Bishops Burnet and Jewell 
 commenced their studies every morning at four o'clock. 
 " Whatever I have accomplished in the way of Commentary 
 on the Scriptures," says Doddridge, " is to be traced to the 
 fact of rising at four in the morning." Hamilton has hit off 
 certain delinquents in a decidedly happy vein. " A singular 
 mischance has occurred to some of our friends," he says. 
 " At the instant when he ushered them into existence, God 
 gave them a work to do, and he also gave them a competency 
 of time ; so much time that, if they began at the right moment 
 and wrought with sufficient vigour, their time and their work
 
 PROMPTNESS. 13 
 
 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 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 parallel, 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 nor neglect any duty ; but they 
 systematically go about it too late, and usually too late by 
 about the same fatal interval." And some of these same indi- 
 viduals, let us add, are very good people indeed. Their inten- 
 tions are excellent. In most, perhaps in all other respects, their 
 character is faultless and their example wholesome. But this 
 "fly in the ointment" mars fatally the symmetry of char- 
 acter. And it seems to be a constitutional trait, or blemish, 
 a certain omission, like that of the faculty for discrimina- 
 tion in men born colour-blind. And the worst thing about 
 it is, that the mischief which results is not confined to them- 
 selves alone. Their friends are involved. Indeed, the results 
 of their remissness radiate in an ever widening circle among 
 all their friends and acquaintances. All must suffer, though 
 one be to blame. Doubtless these failures bring much self- 
 accusation, as well as confusion of face, to the delinquents 
 themselves ; and many, no doubt, are the promises, self-made, 
 of amendment made, alas, only to be broken. The usual 
 helplessness of such reminds one of that graphic picture Victor 
 Hugo has given us of the unfortunate fisherman caught in 
 the quicksands on the coast of Brittany. The more he 
 struggles to free himself, the deeper and more hopelessly he 
 sinks, and the more powerless he becomes. 
 
 Among men who have become famous, nothing has been
 
 14 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 more noticeable than their habit of turning every moment of 
 time to good account, and thus making every scrap available. 
 For upwards of half a century Jei^emy Bentham, we are told, 
 devoted seldom less than eight, often ten, and occasionally 
 twelve hours of every day to intense study. This was the 
 more remarkable as his physical constitution was by 110 means 
 strong. He was a great economist of time. He knew the 
 value of minutes. The disposal of his hours, both of labour 
 and of repose, was a matter of systematic arrangement ; and 
 the arrangement was determined on the principle that it is a 
 calamity to lose the smallest portion of time. 
 
 The following picture of Dr. Burney, busied with his cele- 
 brated work, " The History of Music," is from the pen of his 
 daughter : " The capacious table of his small but commodious 
 study exhibited, in what he called his chaos, the countless 
 stores of his materials. Multitudinous, or rather innumer- 
 ous, blank books were severally adapted to concentrating 
 some peculiar portion of the work. And he opened an 
 enormous correspondence, foreign and domestic, with musical 
 authors, composers, and students. And for all this mass of 
 occupation he neglected no business, he omitted no duty. 
 The system by which he obtained time that no one missed, 
 yet which gave to him lengthened life independently of 
 longevity from years, was through the skill with which, 
 indefatigably, he profited from every fragment of leisure." 
 
 Youth is too apt to squander, fancying that, do what one 
 may, there will be enough left. It is only when the water 
 in the bucket begins to get low that many realize their loss. 
 When the rope becomes so worn that only a few strands 
 remain, the few begin to seem very precious. Great fortunes 
 have sometimes seduced their possessors to ruinous profusion. 
 Fatal mistake, always repented of, but always too late. 
 
 "When we have deducted," says Johnson, "all that is 
 absorbed in sleep, all that is inevitably appropriated to the 
 demands of nature, or irresistibly engrossed by the tyranny
 
 PROMPTNESS. 15 
 
 of custom ; all that passes in regulating the superficial 
 decorations of life, or is given up in the reciprocations of 
 civility to the disposal of others ; all that is torn from us by 
 the violence of disease, or stolen imperceptibly away by 
 lassitude and languor, we shall find that part of our duration 
 very small of which we can truly call ourselves masters, or 
 which we can spend wholly at our own choice." Years rush 
 by us like the wind. We cannot see whence the eddy comes 
 or whither it is tending. In the words of old Herrick : 
 
 " Time flies away fast ; 
 The while we never remember 
 
 How soon our life here 
 
 Grows old with the year 
 That dies with the next December." 
 
 It was because Nelson attended to detail in respect of 
 time that he was so uniformly victorious. "I owe," he 
 said, " all my success in life to having been always a quarter 
 of an hour before my time." " Every moment lost," said 
 Napoleon, "gives an opportunity for misfortune." 
 
 Some one has called attention to the fact that our late 
 war illustrated on several occasions the military virtue of 
 celerity of movement ; but the writer is of the opinion that 
 there was no instance of a campaign being decided by the 
 forced march of an entire army and consequent surprise of 
 the enemy. For this rapidity the first Napoleon was espec- 
 ially noted. In 1805 he swept suddenly, with a large corps, 
 across France, from Boulogne to the Rhine, and took the 
 Austrians so by surprise at Ulm that he almost finished the 
 campaign by a single blow. 
 
 When one takes into consideration the climate, one of the 
 most extraordinary marches, as well for the immediate and 
 remote effects of its rapidity as for the rapidity itself, was 
 that of Wellington in India, when, by going seventy-two 
 miles with only one interval of rest and sleep, he was en-
 
 16 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 abled to gain the victory of Assaye. He thus describes it : 
 " Starting at three in the morning, the troops went twenty - 
 five miles, and halted at noon. Then I made them lie down 
 to sleep, setting sentinels over them ; and at eight they 
 started again, marching till one at noon the next day, when 
 we were in the enemy's camp/' 
 
 There is no man living, says Todd, who might not be 
 a punctual man ; and yet there are few who are so to any- 
 thing like the degree to which they ought to attain. It is 
 vastly easier to be a little late in doing everything. It is 
 not so easy to be a prompt, punctual character ; but it is a 
 trait of inestimable value to yourself and to the world The 
 punctual man can do twice as much, at least, as another 
 man, with twice the ease and satisfaction to himself and 
 Avith equal satisfaction to others. Lord Brougham, who 
 presided in the House of Lords and the Court of Chancery, 
 who gave audience daily to -barristers and found time to 
 write reviews, to be at the head of at least ten associations 
 which were publishing works of useful knowledge, was so 
 punctual that when these associations met he was uniformly 
 there when the hour of meeting arrived, and was in his place 
 in the chair. 
 
 It has been wisely said that if one loves life he will not 
 squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of ; and a dis- 
 tinguished authority has declared that whatever knowledge 
 one does not solidly lay the foundation of before he is 
 eighteen, he will never be master of while he breathes. The 
 secret of success lies in this, one must learn to plot like an 
 old man and execute like youth. Remember always that the 
 will is weak, not in resolving, but in executing. An officer 
 of the Orleans regiment having been sent to Louis XIV. with 
 a despatch announcing a victory, demanded the Cross of the 
 Order of St. Louis. " But you are so young," objected the 
 monarch. "Sire," rejoined the officer, "the men of the 
 Orleans regiment are not in the habit of living long ! " For
 
 PROMPTNESS. 17 
 
 life in general, says a trenchant writer, there is but one 
 decree : "Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a 
 regret." "But," he truly adds, and the fact is not without 
 encouragement and inspiration, " almost everything great has 
 been done by youth." The greatest captains of ancient and 
 modern times both conquered Italy at five and twenty. 
 Youth overthrew the Persian empire. Gaston de Foix was 
 only twenty-two when he stood victor on the plain of 
 Ravenna. Gustavus Adolphus died at thirty-eight. When 
 Maurice of Saxony died at thirty-two, all Europe acknow- 
 ledged the loss of the greatest captain and the profoundest 
 statesman of the age. John de Medici was a cardinal at 
 fifteen, and was pope, as Leo X., at thirty-seven. Raphael's 
 Madonnas were all painted and his immortal works all 
 finished before thirty-seven. Sir Philip Sidney, said to be 
 the brightest figure of the Elizabethan era, and the most 
 complete embodiment of all the graces and virtues which can 
 adorn or ennoble humanity, died before he was thirty-two. 
 Francis Bacon, both admired and condemned, wrote a re- 
 markable essay on the state of Europe when he was eighteen 
 years old, at twenty-nine was Queen's Counsel, and was 
 knighted at the age of forty-two. Edward Hyde, Earl of 
 Clarendon, entered Parliament at thirty-two ; was Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer and raised to the dignity of knighthood 
 before he was thirty-six. Gibbon entered Parliament at 
 thirty-seven, and two years later gave to the world the first 
 volume of his history. Chatterton died at eighteen, Shelley 
 at thirty, and Byron at thirty-seven. It is said that the 
 finest artillery officer in the late Confederate service was 
 Major Pelham of Stuart's cavalry, a young man of thirty -two. 
 Pitt commenced his long dictatorship at twenty-four. Alex- 
 ander the Great died at thirty-three ; and Napoleon had 
 achieved all his victories at thirty-seven. At thirty-three 
 Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence ; and Ham- 
 ilton helped to frame the Constitution of the United States 
 
 (79) 2
 
 18 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 at thirty. But enough. Is it not quite manifest that the 
 history of greatness is the history of youth ? 
 
 It is the unexpected which always happens, we are told. 
 It is a fact singular and striking enough, surely, when one 
 thinks upon it, that, although a man can with skill and 
 science and piercing intellect scan the most distant future, 
 and predict with unerring certainty the very second when an 
 eclipse, for instance, shall occur, he, at the same time, never 
 knows what is just around the corner, and cannot possibly 
 tell you what an hour may bring forth. " There occur from 
 time to time in human life," says Arnold, " signal moments 
 which become the landmarks of its history. These are 
 indeed the momentous moments of life. They come upon 
 us unawares. The air is charged with no sense of oppression 
 and awe. There is no visible sign to the most observant or 
 to the most superstitious. The ' moment ' itself often comes 
 in the most ordinary and commonplace guise. It is perhaps 
 only a call, a letter, an interview, a sudden suggestion, a few 
 minutes' talk at a railway station, and with suddenness and 
 abruptness one section of life is clasped, and an entirely new 
 page of its ledger opened up." But where is strength of 
 character more finely manifest than in the power to deny 
 one's self the most tempting present advantage for the sake 
 of that dim and uncertain future which the soul instinctively 
 feels has in store still greater reward ? 
 
 There are several instances in the life of Webster during 
 his practice at the bar showing the value of promptness in 
 following one's convictions upon the instant. Once he was 
 engaged in a case in behalf of a poor man who, he felt sure, 
 had been defrauded by the villany of a wealthy resident of 
 the town in good social position. And yet, though feeling so 
 sure of the man's guilt, the proof at hand was miserably 
 meagre, and, as he afterward declared, he was never in his 
 life more badly prepared for a case. There was no evidence, 
 and what to do he did not know. Just before the case was
 
 PROMPTNESS. 19 
 
 called, a friend of his client came and told "Webster that he 
 had just seen this wealthy man talking with a worthless 
 fellow, and he had handed the latter a slip of paper in the 
 entry. Webster thanked the man, and told him that was 
 a pretty important thing to know, and asked him to say 
 nothing about it. Presently this fellow was called to testify, 
 and took the oath. During his testimony he used the 
 words, " the said Brown " told him so and so. The unusual 
 phrase from an ignorant man caught the quick ear of 
 Webster, and it flashed upon him in an instant that he was 
 being prompted from a written paper, and that this was 
 the paper which had been handed him in the entry. " There 
 sat Mason" (his great legal opponent), said Webster, "full 
 of assurance, and for a moment I hesitated. The next 
 instant, however, I said to myself, ' I will make a spoon, or 
 spoil a horn ! ' I took the pen from behind my ear, drew 
 myself up, and marched outside of the bar to the witness- 
 stand. ' Sir ! ' I exclaimed, ' give me the paper from which 
 you are testifying ! ' In an instant he pulled it out of his 
 pocket ; but before he had it quite out, he hesitated, and 
 attempted to put it back. I seized it in triumph. There 
 was his testimony in Bramble's handwriting ! Mr. Mason 
 got up and claimed the protection of the court. Judge 
 Smith inquired the meaning of this proceeding. I said : 
 ' Providence protects the innocent when they are friendless. 
 I think I could satisfy the court, and my learned brother, 
 who, of course, was ignorant of this man's conduct, that 
 I hold in Mr. Bramble's handwriting the testimony of the 
 very respectable witness who is on the stand.' The court 
 adjourned, and I had nothing further to do. Mason told his 
 client that he had better settle the affair as quickly as 
 possible." Truly, promptness, as well as boldness, has 
 "genius, power, and magic in it." A similar promptness 
 once saved the life of the first Napoleon. During his 
 Egyptian campaign his life was threatened by his disaffected
 
 20 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 generals. Walking coolly among them, he said : " Soldiers, 
 you are Frenchmen ! You are too many to assassinate, and 
 too few to intimidate me." They walked away, saying, 
 " How brave he is ! " 
 
 One whose opinion is entitled to great weight has declared, 
 that, as far as one can decide at such a distance of time and 
 of scene, it seems all but certain that the rapid advance of 
 Hannibal on Rome after the battle of Cannse, that of Henry 
 of Navarre on Paris after the battle of Ivry, or that of 
 Charles Stuart on London after penetrating as far as Derby, 
 would have changed the course of human history. Napoleon 
 used to say, that although a battle may last a whole day, 
 there were generally some ten minutes in which the fate of 
 the engagement was practically decided ; and his own mar- 
 vellous career reveals the fact that neither his splendid 
 intellectual power nor his enormous force of will was so 
 potent a factor in his success as his prompt and perpetual 
 activity. On his return from Spain to Paris, he rode on 
 horseback eighty-five miles in five hours. After his victory 
 at Rivoli, he said, "The Austrians manoeuvred admirably, 
 and failed only because they did not know the value of 
 minutes," a department of knowledge in which he himself 
 seems to have surpassed all men. 
 
 Let not impetuosity, however, betray you into imprudence. 
 Hurry and cunning, says Colton, are the two apprentices 
 of despatch and of skill, but neither of them ever learns his 
 master's trade. If after due precaution has been taken, 
 however, blunders do occur, be not dismayed. It is a well- 
 known truth in military science, that no battle is fought 
 without blunders. Good generalship practically consists in 
 the comparative fewness of them. Above all, never despair. 
 Among recent proverbs, or perhaps one should say, among 
 modern renderings of ancient saws, is one which certainly 
 commends itself for its quaintness as well as for the rare 
 vein of philosophy underlying it. It is this : " Don't cry
 
 PROMPTNESS. 21 
 
 over spilt milk ; up, and catch the cow." It is never well to 
 be too particular about carrying out one's ideal after any 
 rigidly preconceived plan. One fertile in resources, if baffled 
 or defeated in one direction, should be ready instantly to 
 adopt whatever presents itself at hand. This has been the 
 characteristic of all great leaders. In order to reach the 
 mouth of the river, it may not be necessary to follow 
 punctiliously all the windings of the stream. Be not too 
 fastidious. Though plans be imperfect and achievement fall 
 short of ideal, push on. 
 
 " Ere perfect scheme of action thou devise, 
 Will life be fled." 
 
 Schiller has written nothing truer than that. 
 
 This habit of promptness is invaluable to all public men. 
 Others soon learn to rely upon such ; and a fine reputation 
 in this regard is worth a great deal. The statue of Franklin 
 was about to be unveiled in Printing House Square. The 
 hour fixed was twelve o'clock. A few minutes before twelve 
 it was noticed that all who were to take part in the ceremony 
 were present save a certain well-known clergyman of the 
 city. As the important moment approached, fears were ex- 
 pressed that there might be a disagreeable delay. At this 
 juncture Horace Greeley interposed. " Gentlemen," said he, 
 " there is no cause for uneasiness. I know the man. If 
 
 Dr. isn't dead, or if some member of his family isn't 
 
 dead, he'll be here in time." This was certainly reassuring. 
 The confidence, however, was not misplaced. Just on the 
 stroke of twelve the doctor entered, saying he would have 
 been there at least some minutes earlier had he not been 
 unexpectedly detained by a blockade in the street. Now, 
 one cannot but feel that a reputation like that is worth 
 having. " We are all so indolent by nature and by habit," 
 says Todd, " that we feel it a luxury to find a man of real, 
 undeviating punctuality. We love to lean upon such a man,
 
 22 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 and we are willing to purchase such a staff at almost any 
 price. It shows, at least, that he has conquered himself." 
 A very good rule laid down by the same author is this : 
 When there are two things for you to do, one of which must 
 be done, and the other is what you very much desire to do, 
 be sure to begin tlie former first. Failure to observe this 
 rule, most of us can doubtless testify, has far too often been 
 disastrous to punctuality. 
 
 It does not surprise one so much that punctuality should 
 be so striking a trait in the character of the clergyman to 
 whom Mr. Greeley referred, when one discovers it to be the 
 result not only of training and self-discipline, but of con- 
 science as well ; for in a prominent periodical, in writing 
 upon this very theme, we find him classing a want of punctu- 
 ality among "the minor immoralities." "Certainly," he 
 says, " punctuality is among the highest virtues possible to 
 man. The want of it shows a regardlessness of other people's 
 property and other people's feelings. In business, no matter 
 what his other qualities, if this be lacking all one's affairs are 
 liable to get into disorder. If a man has no regard for the 
 time of other men, why should he have for their money ? 
 What is 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. It 
 is no apology for one to say he does not intend to do harm. 
 Thieves are not generally malignant." 
 
 It has been said of Howard the philanthropist, that he had 
 never been a minute under or over the time of an appoint- 
 ment, so far as it depended upon himself, for six and twenty 
 years ; and that he never continued at a place or with a per- 
 son a single day beyond the period fixed for going, in his 
 whole life. This really seems like carrying things a little to 
 the extreme, to say the least. Now, as regards this punctil- 
 iousness, the appearing on the exact stroke of the clock, and 
 never a minute over or under an appointment, there may
 
 PROMPTNESS. 23 
 
 be, not unjustly, a difference of opinion. Always to be in 
 season should be the inexorable rule ; but after that, to 
 make one's appearance a few minutes earlier would doubtless 
 be quite as convenient many times as to rigidly compel one's 
 self to appear on the exact stroke of the clock. A promi- 
 nent American statesman, observes a writer in the London 
 Globe, was said to take a pride in always knocking at any 
 door within which he had an engagement precisely with the 
 first stroke of the clock, or with the very tick of his watch. 
 "Perhaps," he continues, "if that wondrous wise statesman 
 had taken the trouble to ' tot up ' all the odds and ends of 
 time he mus't have wasted in securing this pettifogging pre- 
 cision, he would have found that, whatever he might have 
 done for other people's time, he had really been as wasteful . 
 of his own as the veriest sloven in this way may be supposed 
 to be on the showing of very exemplary people, as waste- 
 ful, for instance, as Lord Palmerston, who was known to 
 drop in to a public dinner four hours after the appointed 
 time." 
 
 When Boswell gave his fashionable dinners in Welbeck 
 Street, the guests were always given to understand that 
 time must be observed to the minute, and that if they were 
 not there, dinner must proceed without them. It was not 
 often that folks came late, for most people can be punctual 
 when they know it is expected of them. On one occasion, 
 however, it happened to be the astronomer-royal who came 
 in half a minute or so behind the appointed dinner-hour, and, 
 as ho no doubt expected, found the guests coming down the 
 staircase to the dining-room. " I trust, Mr. Friend," said 
 the host in greeting him, "that in future you will bear in 
 mind we don't reckon time here by the meridian of Green- 
 wich, but by the meridian of Welbeck Street." That sort 
 of thing may be all very well when it is clearly understood 
 that, in an auctioneer's phraseology, it is to be dinner-time 
 " prompt ; " but it is not every host who can muster the
 
 24 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 hardihood for such rigidity, even though the guests may 
 not be astronomers - royal. Most people would agree with 
 Dr. Johnson in his well-known dictum on the point 
 " Ought six people to be kept waiting for one 1 " asked Bos- 
 well. "Why, yes," said Johnson; "if the one will suffer 
 more by your sitting down than the six will by waiting." 
 
 Where one is known to be incorrigible, however, and 
 delibei'ately presumes upon his own importance or his host's 
 good-nature, the remedy is at hand, and simple. Beau 
 Brummell was of this sort. Among his other follies Brum- 
 mell had that of choosing to be always too late for dinner. 
 Wherever he was invited, we are told, he liked to be waited 
 for. He thought it was a proof of his fashion and conse- 
 quence ; and the higher the rank of his entertainer, the later 
 was the arrival of this impudent parvenu. The Marquis of 
 Abercorn had been repeatedly annoyed in this way. At 
 length he resolved to bear it no longer. Accordingly, having 
 again invited Brummell to dine, he gave strict orders to the 
 servants to have dinner on the table punctually at the time 
 appointed. The servants obeyed, and " Brummell and the 
 cheese arrived together." The " wondering beau " was 
 desired by the master of the house to sit down. No apology 
 was made. With the utmost coolness, however, the latter 
 simply added, " I hope, Mr. Brummell, cheese is not disagree- 
 able to you." It is said that Brummell was never late at 
 that house afterward. 
 
 Stuart Blackie, in his valuable little work on Self- 
 Culture, truly says : " Nothing commends a young man so 
 much to his employers as accuracy and punctuality in the 
 conduct of business." And no wonder. On each man's 
 exactitude in doing his special best depends the comfortable 
 and easy going of the whole machine. In the complicated 
 tasks of social life, no genius and no talent can compensate 
 for the lack of obedience. If the clock goes fitfully, nobody 
 knows the time of day ; and if your allotted task is a neces-
 
 PROMPTNESS. 25 
 
 sary link in the chain of another man's work, you are his 
 clock, and he ought to be able to rely on you. "The 
 greatest praise that can be given to the member of any 
 association," he continues, " is in these terms : This is a man 
 ivho always does wlwt is required of him, and who always 
 appears at the hour when he is expected to appear" 
 
 Appointments become debts. I owe you punctuality if I 
 have made an appointment with you, and have no right to 
 throw away your time if I do my own. The daughter of 
 James Peale, the famous painter, relates the following inci- 
 dent to show that the wife of Washington emulated her 
 husband in punctuality : " My father had an engagement 
 to paint a miniature of Mrs. Washington in Philadelphia, 
 the general being then out of town. He was obliged to go 
 to her house, and the appointment for a sitting was arranged 
 at seven o'clock in the morning. My father arrived at the 
 house, and taking out his watch he found he was exactly on 
 time. The thought then struck him that possibly it might 
 be early to disturb a lady, and he decided to give ten 
 minutes' grace before knocking at the door. He accordingly 
 walked the pavement, and at the end of ten minutes pulled 
 out his watch and rang the bell. He was ushered into the 
 parlour, and Mrs. Washington accosting him drew out her 
 watch and said she had given her orders for the day, had 
 heard her daughter take her lesson on the harpsichord, 
 and had read all the morning papers, and after all this had 
 been waiting for him ten minutes." The Countess of Bur- 
 ford for the last few years of her life had to ride almost 
 constantly on horseback upwards of sixteen miles to and 
 from church ; yet neither frost, snow, rain, nor bad roads 
 were sufficient to detain her at home, nor to prevent her 
 being there before the worship began. The emphasis here 
 placed upon this matter of scrupulous promptness in meeting 
 an appointment may seem to some unnecessary, or at best 
 not greatly important ; yet Dr. Fisk has declared, " I give it
 
 26 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 as my deliberate and solemn conviction, that the individual 
 who is habitually tardy in meeting an appointment will 
 never be respected or successful in life." 
 
 Every one must have been impressed with the fact that 
 there are some men who seem to have no decision of char- 
 acter. Where this is lacking, promptness is out of the 
 question. Their manner in a great crisis is "like the 
 irresolution of the sea at turn of tide." What object more 
 pitiable than a man who never seems to know his own mind? 
 As Webster once said of an opponent, "This man neither 
 advances nor recedes, he simply ' hovers.' " Nothing can 
 possibly be more exasperating, under certain critical circum- 
 stances, than this perpetual vacillation. A man of this 
 stamp can never be said really to belong to himself. He is 
 for ever at the mercy of every chance current that may 
 overtake him. Perpetually swayed from his purposes, he 
 becomes a perfect football of fortune. Such, too, are ever 
 bemoaning their fate. Had circumstances been otherwise, 
 what might they not have done ! Thus " days are lost 
 lamenting over lost days," instead of one's seizing lustily the 
 actual fact which confronts him, and compelling it to serve 
 him ; or smiting resolutely the circumstance which environs, 
 and making it his slave. How in contrast with this vacilla- 
 tion is the fine, prompt intrepidity of certain other men. 
 Their aims may be questionable ; their projects may indeed 
 be evil ; but half-hearted goodness is never a match for 
 evil in dead earnest. The very presence of a strong, prompt 
 man seems to make itself felt at once. Difficulties slink 
 away and cower out of sight like belaboured hounds. He 
 seems in league with the very "stones of the field." How 
 refreshing such a presence ! It is like a tonic. We love to 
 be near such. The very atmosphere seems charged with the 
 presage of success. Such men call forth our homage as if 
 by instinct the moment they appear. We rely on them at 
 once, without pausing to question why. This, doubtless,
 
 PROMPTNESS. 27 
 
 accounts for the marvellous sway that certain bold, bad men 
 have from time to time held over their fellows in all ages 
 of the world. Not that this was necessary. Arm virtue 
 with the same weapons, and with its vantage-ground it 
 would inevitably win. But goodness and vacillating timid- 
 ity can never hope to outwit vice and prompt, unerring 
 skill. 
 
 While Barry the painter was a young man residing at 
 Dublin, an incident occurred which strikingly illustrates the 
 character of the man. He was brought into contact with 
 some young men of dissipated habits, who on several occa- 
 sions enticed him to form one of their tavern parties. As he 
 was returning home late at night from one of these carousals, 
 a sudden impression came to him of the folly of his course, 
 in thus wasting the time which might so much more properly 
 be employed in laying the foundation of his future re- 
 spectability and independence. Distrusting, perhaps, his 
 own power to carry out any resolution he might make to 
 deny himself the gratification which he had the means of 
 purchasing, and certain that the most effectual preventive 
 would be to rid himself of the means at once, he took all his 
 money, which was probably at that time no great sum, and 
 threw it into the Liffey, and then shut himself up with great 
 perseverance to his professional studies ! 
 
 " The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, 
 Unless the deed go with it." 
 
 It was the sudden conviction of this truth that had come 
 home to the young painter. The resulting deed was not less 
 than heroic. Like Caesar's, it was a burning of bridges. 
 Knowing this, one ceases to wonder at his subsequent 
 success. That might have been counted on as almost a 
 mathematical certainty. 
 
 Some one has declared the resolute casting out of a single 
 bosom sin to be equivalent to a liberal education. The same
 
 28 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 might almost be said of the conquest of a single wasteful 
 habit ; for surely almost any man can understand somewhat 
 of the reflex influence of every prompt conquest of that which 
 is unworthy of himself. He has found it at war with his 
 nobler self too often not to realize how persistently it tends to 
 lower his ideal and mar his work. And doubtless he has 
 also found each triumph to be to him as so much added 
 capital. " There is no moment like the present," writes Miss 
 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 skurry of the world, or 
 sunk in the slough of indolence." There is much truth in 
 that. Surrounded as one is by so many distractions, im- 
 pelled by so many motives for doing this or that or the 
 other, where there are so many things one would like to do, 
 if it were best, it becomes a matter of no small moment and 
 concern to decide wisely as to that which shall receive one's 
 attention and that which should be let utterly alone. In the 
 realm of knowledge, for instance, the area has grown so vast 
 that one must rigorously choose his specialty in order to be 
 truly effective in any direction. " The secret of being 
 learned," said Helvetius, " is bravely to determine to be 
 ignorant of many things in which men take pride." Let 
 one, for instance, read the best authors, and he may safely 
 ignore the others. They are simply duplicates. It is best 
 for one who wishes properly to understand what is greatest 
 in human writings, says an eminent authority, to avoid 
 mercilessly all second-rate matter, however good. "I have 
 not read that book." Let one be frank and dare to make a 
 confession like that, if he mean to get on. "The better is 
 always an enemy to the best." The channel must be 
 narrowed that the stream may flow in a rapid current and 
 fall with great impression. It has well been said that the
 
 PROMPTNESS. 29 
 
 mechanical reading of all the standard literature would 
 require more than three thousand years. Why should one 
 attempt it just yet ? The present writer once remarked to 
 one of his instructors, a well-known Hebrew scholar, whom 
 he sometimes met in a great library, that such places often 
 exerted a depressing influence upon him, as the realization 
 came that there were so many books in the world that one 
 could never hope to read. "Ah, but that feeling never 
 troubles me," was the instant and cheery response. " I 
 know I never can read them all, but it is a comfort to feel 
 that I can browse around as much as I please." What a 
 wonderful sense of relief that remark conferred ! It revealed 
 a new standpoint. That man understood the art of " putting 
 things." To know that we do not know what we do not 
 know, and to know that we do know what we do know, says 
 Confucius, that is wisdom indeed. 
 
 Hesitation is fatal to enterprise. It is right here that 
 many men fail. They see their course, the way is plain ; 
 and yet they stand upon the brink and hesitate. Now, the 
 only way for a man to do anything worth doing in this 
 world is, as Sydney Smith says, to plunge in and scramble 
 through as best he can. One of the famous rules of Alex- 
 ander, and one to which he rigidly adhered, was, never to 
 avoid doing anything because of the short bodily trouble it 
 might occasion. It is easy to discern in this one great 
 secret of his marvellous success. A certain morbid intro- 
 spection seems to hold some men back. A man begins to 
 analyze his motives, perhaps ; or possibly all of his sur- 
 roundings are not up to his ideal, and he begins to analyze 
 these. Now, this analysis is like a wet blanket thrown upon 
 the ardour of his resolves. Then self-consciousness comes 
 in and floors him. It is probable that even the finest spirits 
 have been conscious at times of a certain indefinable hesita- 
 tion before making the important venture which is to win 
 them success. The difference between them and those who
 
 30 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 fail is, that the one promptly and resolutely conquers the 
 dread, while the other allows himself to be conquered by it. 
 "Nothing," said Mirabeau, "is impossible to the man who 
 can will. Is that necessary 1 That shall be. This is the 
 only law of success." There is a fine and striking sentence 
 in the Book of Proverbs which most of us would do well to 
 remember : " Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eye- 
 lids look straight before thee." Herein lie all the elements 
 of strength. Many a man has looked his soul in the face, 
 and, distrusting his own powers, has ignobly given up the 
 whole battle in despair, and made a failure of life, when 
 success was right at hand. A treacherous self-consciousness 
 was no doubt at the bottom of it. Let a man forget himself 
 and how he is ivorking altogether, if he would succeed. 
 
 This singular apathy, or dread, or hesitation to which we 
 have referred, which comes upon even the rarest spirits at 
 times in such an unaccountable manner, is not usually 
 fear, to say the least. It is easy to see this, and to detect 
 the difference, although in what this difference lies one may 
 not be able exactly to tell. One thing, however, is evident. 
 The " native hue of resolution " has been " sicklied o'er with 
 the pale cast of thought." This, we say, is manifest. But 
 this is not fear. In proof of this, let a great crisis come 
 suddenly upon a man at such a juncture. The emergency 
 confronts him, and must be met. An accident has happened 
 to his neighbour ; a fellow-man in great peril must be rescued. 
 The miners are imprisoned in the shaft. His comrades, 
 with death staring them in the face, are held fast in the 
 tunnel ; he must do something, and that now. Instantly 
 self-consciousness disappears. The soul is roughly shaken 
 out of its shrinking, cringing attitude, and springs at once 
 to the rescue. The deed of an unknown man becomes the 
 deed of a hero. His name is on every one's lips, and all 
 hearts are exultant at the revelation of the latent heroism of 
 which our poor, weak humanity is capable. Thus again and
 
 PROMPTNESS. 31 
 
 again have men " forgot themselves into immortality." It is 
 the forlorn hope that reveals the hero. The great crises of 
 our lives drive us out of ourselves, and reveal the nobler soul 
 which lay behind the weak, shrinking, unworthy timidity 
 which held us back. 
 
 This peculiar hesitation of which we have spoken is doubt- 
 less a constitutional trait in many instances. At least, this 
 is almost always true of men. It is rarely thus with women. 
 Man is proverbially a reasoning animal, while woman is 
 governed largely by her intuitions. Howells notes this dif- 
 ference in one of his fictions. " Our sense of details," he 
 says, " our fatal habits of reasoning, paralyze us ; we need 
 the impulse of the pure ideal." This, he holds, we can get 
 only from woman. Noting the contrast between two of his 
 characters, he says : " He had a man's dark prevision of the 
 means, and she had a heavenly scorn of everything but the 
 end to be achieved." Certain great military leaders have 
 seemed to combine both traits. No one, for instance, was 
 more scrupulous in attention to details than Napoleon ; and 
 no one, on the other hand, seemed to have a more exultant 
 scorn of danger when the hour came for carrying out his 
 plans. Grant, who resembled him more closely than any 
 other military leader of modern times, was like him in this. 
 Sherman, in a remarkable letter, honourable alike both to the 
 head and heart of the writer, in which he pays Grant such 
 a noble tribute, after referring to his careful preparation 
 before a battle, goes on to say : " You then went into battle 
 as if the event of possible defeat had never for a moment 
 entered your thought. I can compare it to nothing," he 
 beautifully adds, " but to the faith of a Christian in his Sav- 
 iour. It was this that gave us confidence." 
 
 It must have cost Caesar many anxious hours of delibera- 
 tion, says Foster, before he decided to pass the Rubicon; 
 but it is probable he suffered but few to elapse between the 
 decision and the execution. "And anyone of his friends
 
 32 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 who should have been apprised of his determination and 
 understood his character would have smiled contemptuously 
 to hear it insinuated that though Caesar had resolved, Csesar 
 would not dare ; or that though he might cross the Rubicon, 
 whose opposite bank presented to him no hostile legion, he 
 might come to other rivers which he would not cross; or 
 that either rivers or any other obstacles would deter him 
 from prosecuting his determination from this ominous com- 
 mencement to its very last consequence." Let us never for- 
 get that a prompt action is an inspiration in itself. It is 
 contagious. Its influence is that of a clarion note or a bugle 
 call. It is Sheridan plunging the rowels into his steed, 
 halting the panic-stricken soldiers, and by his own indomitable 
 courage promptly turning the tide of battle and winning the 
 day. One finds a similar inspiration in certain short, sharp, 
 bristling sentences which hold within them truths that are 
 masters of the world. " In the hot haste of business, in the 
 perilous scenes of temptation, in the dark hours of pain and 
 sorrow, men will not listen to long arguments." The terse, 
 prompt, pregnant sentence is what men need. 
 
 Of the "dangerous ends" that wait upon " delays," whole 
 volumes might be written. The brakeman fails to signal 
 the oncoming train ; the courier bearing the reprieve dallies 
 at the inn, carousing with his boon companions until the 
 life of the poor fellow which he held in his hands is the for- 
 feit paid. There is ten minutes' delay of the telegram, the 
 note goes to protest, and financial ruin stares the victim in the 
 face. Csesar, on his way to the senate house, delays reading 
 the message which would have saved his life. Plutarch tells 
 us that when Archias, the polemarch at Thebes, dissolved in 
 wine and pleasure, received from his pontifical namesake at 
 Athens a full and particular account by letter of the con- 
 spiracy of Pelopidas and the exiles, who were even then 
 counting the minutes ere they struck the blow, although 
 the messenger expressly urged his excellency to read the
 
 PROMPTNESS. 33 
 
 missive forthwith, as the contents were of instant import, 
 Archias only smiled a tipsy smile and said, " Business to- 
 morrow." Then he put the unopened letter under his pillow, 
 and resumed his colloquy with his host, Philidas, who was 
 in the plot, and who was taking good care to ply the pol- 
 emarch with wine. Business to-morrow. Alas ! for him no 
 morrow was to come. Similar instances fill the pages of 
 history. To guard against these perils of delay, most strin- 
 gent measures have at times been adopted. We owe our 
 familiar phrase "post-haste" to a measure of this kind. In 
 the sixteenth century there were no post-offices in England ; 
 government couriers were the only bearers of letters, except 
 the common carriers, whose principal business was the convey- 
 ance of parcels. These couriers were under martial law, and 
 in the time of Henry VIII. were subject to the penalty of 
 hanging for delay upon the road with their despatches. The 
 letters of those days were consequently sometimes orna- 
 mented with the sketch of a gallows, with a courier thereon 
 suspended. Underneath was the admonition : " Haste, post, 
 haste ! Haste for thy life !" 
 
 There is no denying the fact that at times downright fear, 
 a real want of moral courage, is at the root of many a fail- 
 ure. And fear is a very potent factor where it really exists. 
 Perhaps no one is always and absolutely exempt. Dr. John- 
 son tells us that when Charles V. read upon the tombstone 
 of a Spanish nobleman, " Here lies one who never knew 
 fear," he wittily said, " Then he never snuffed a candle with 
 his fingers!" But it is a man's own fault if he allow his 
 fear to conquer him. Like Caesar's officer, though with 
 blanched cheek, one must advance with firm tread. Appre- 
 hension sometimes comes from looking too far ahead. 
 
 How few of us really live in the present ! Most of us are 
 perpetually saddened by looking back upon the past, or 
 filled with apprehension from looking forward into the dim 
 and shadowy future. We are crippled in our exertions be- 
 
 (79) 3
 
 34 PROMPTNESS. 
 
 cause we fail to seize vigorously upon the present. Let us 
 learn to live now. Sydney Smith insists that the great 
 remedy for melancholy is to "take short views of life." 
 Why not 1 Surely it would rid a man of much of that need- 
 less apprehension so fatal to the fullest success. 
 
 The calmness of mind conferred by this habit of prompt- 
 ness is not to be overlooked. To say nothing of the dangers 
 of delay, the serenity which is the inseparable companion of 
 despatch is a luxury to which the disorderly man is an entire 
 stranger. But it confers still more than this : it gives weight 
 to character. That was a wise maxim of the Duke of New- 
 castle "I do one thing at a time." 
 
 Hunt, the artist, in his entertaining little volume, "Talks 
 about Art," among other valuable suggestions to young 
 artists, says, " Vitalize your work. Look for the round, but 
 look for the square within the round. Chop it out with an 
 axe, and sand-paper it afterward !" Would not this secret, 
 once learned and practised, vitalize all work? It is surely 
 a secret which successful literary workers, at least, acquire 
 early. Promptness seizes the burning, throbbing thought in 
 the rough ; chops it out rudely, it may be it matters little 
 so it be secured; then art may "sand-paper" it at leisure, 
 caress it into beauty, and impart its nameless charm. Floors 
 and flooring are of little moment, provided the pottery come 
 out well glazed. 
 
 Many an interesting instance might be given to show the 
 advantage to its possessor of ready wit and promptness in 
 repartee. The apt reply, the prompt retort, has often en- 
 abled one to come off with flying colours, even in face of 
 threatened defeat. A prompt and happy retort, moreover, 
 if good-naturedly given, rarely fails to please even the one 
 at whose expense it is given. But it must be prompt, to 
 give zest. Even in literature, as Holmes wittily says, one 
 finds it hard to get and to keep any private property in 
 thought. " Other people are all the time saying the very
 
 PROMPTNESS. 35 
 
 things we are hoarding to say when we get ready." The 
 brilliant "Autocrat," however, has certainly made sure of 
 "saying" at least a few things before other people got the 
 chance in any event, before they improved it. 
 
 Charles Sumner, when in London, at a dinner given in 
 his honour spoke of " the ashes" of some dead hero. " Ashes ! 
 what American- English !" broke in one of the guests. " Dust, 
 you mean, Mr. Sumner. We don't burn our dead in this 
 country." 
 
 " Yet," instantly replied Sumner with a courteous smile, 
 "your poet Gray tells us that 
 
 ' Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.' " 
 
 Mr. Sumner was not criticised again that evening. Surely 
 one cannot fail to perceive at a glance the advantage con- 
 ferred by prompt and ready response like this. And where 
 in all literature will you find a better bon-mot than the reply 
 of the young lady who heard her father severely criticised 
 across a dinner table ? The careless critic paused a moment 
 
 to say, " I hope he is no friend of yours, Miss L ;" and 
 
 quick as thought she replied, with the utmost nonchalance, 
 " Only a connection of my mother by marriage." 
 
 After all, work as faithfully as one may, plan and exe- 
 cute as promptly as one possibly can, it is at best but little, 
 comparatively, that one can do. It seems as if all one does 
 is but a " rough draft," and that always there is something 
 unfinished that ought to be done. 
 
 " Labour with what zeal we will, 
 
 Something still remains undone ; 
 Something uncompleted still 
 Waits the rising of the sun." 
 
 If life seem thus even to the most diligent, what must be 
 thought of those who wilfully squander it ? Let those who 
 would achieve success take the lesson to heart, that only by 
 prompt and strenuous endeavour are life's prizes to be won, 
 and that for lost opportunities there is no resurrection.
 
 II. 
 
 "And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?" 
 
 " Oh, against all rule, my lord ; most ungrammatically. Betwixt the 
 substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, 
 case, and gender, he made a breach thus stopping as if the point wanted 
 settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows 
 should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen 
 times, three seconds and three-fifths, by a stop-watch, my lord, each 
 time." 
 
 " Admirable grammarian ! But in suspending his voice, was the sense 
 suspended likewise ? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up 
 the chasm ? Was the eye silent ? Did you narrowly look ?" 
 
 " I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord." STERNE. 
 
 Look well into thyself : there is a source which will always spring up 
 if thou wilt always search there. MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 LET it be noted that the subject of this chapter is not " Indi- 
 vidualism," which, by far too often, is only another name for 
 downright selfishness. Between that quality and individ- 
 uality there is all the difference in the world. The latter is 
 often winning and prepossessing, and always desirable ; the 
 former far otherwise. Moreover, we propose to show that 
 this quality of individuality is not only not to be ignored, but 
 is often invaluable to one who means to get on. Take an 
 illustration. Europe had been "done to death." Books of 
 European travel had flooded the market The subject, worn 
 threadbare, had come to be as "tedious as a tired horse" 
 or a thrice -told tale, when an enterprising American con- 
 ceives the idea of making the " grand tour," and telling about
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 37 
 
 it in his own way. He does so. He puts his own intense 
 individuality into his work. He travels over ground familiar 
 to every one, and visits places which had been described a 
 thousand times, but describes them in his own way. Every 
 page, sparkling with wit, reveals the author's unique, original 
 way of looking at things. The result is that Mark Twain 
 and his " Innocents Abroad " become household words in two 
 hemispheres, and the author's fame and fortune are made. 
 Would you know the secret of it all ? Find it in individ- 
 uality. From the midst of a thousand platitudes and little- 
 nesses this quality steps forth, and ere the dull and listless 
 eyes of commonplace have perceived what it is doing, it has 
 clutched success and won the prize. 
 
 It seems as if most of us dare not tread on ground where 
 some one else has not already trod dare not be original. 
 Our own thought seems not worth the utterance, our own 
 deed not worth the doing, simply because it is ours. Where 
 were the Miltons or Shakespeares of the race, had these ideas 
 been universal 1 The Chinaman ploughs with a stick because 
 his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather 
 before him, ploughed with a stick ; and nothing can induce 
 him to forsake the old familiar ruts and crooked furrows of 
 his ancestors. But we are not Chinamen. Dare to believe 
 that God sent you into the world to accomplish that which 
 even an angel from heaven could not do so well Individ- 
 uality leaves the beaten track, but it is no iconoclast. It 
 dares the unknown and unexplored. It appears, as the un- 
 expected always comes, with a novelty and freshness that 
 constantly surprise and charm us. Society always makes 
 room for it, and its doors are opened wide. A thousand 
 puerilities "strut their brief hour" to little purpose; but in- 
 dividuality holds the "open sesame" before which men and 
 barriers give way. How refreshing at times, amid the com- 
 monplaces and platitudes of society, to come upon a frank, 
 sincere, and outspoken soul 1 We are naturally so afraid of
 
 38 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 one another and of one another's opinion, so restrained and 
 cautious and imitative in our intercourse with one another, 
 held under by the iron heel of custom, that when an ingen- 
 uous, untrammelled nature does appear, one having the un- 
 mistakable courage of his convictions, it is a great relief. 
 We feel unburdened and rested. The impression is like that 
 of the grateful breath of a June morning after the thraldom 
 of winter's cold. We do not mean that independence of 
 established opinion which asserts itself for the sake of being 
 singular, which one sometimes sees. This is the counterfeit, 
 and is instantly betrayed. A nature which is " nothing if 
 not critical" is a very tedious affair. On the other hand, 
 there is a certain outspoken honesty of opinion which is the 
 soul of sincerity, and is always engaging. When a soul 
 speaks from its centre, it is instantly recognized. The " ac- 
 cent of conviction" is unmistakable. And if sometimes 
 opinions be wayward, or even mutinous, according to our pre- 
 conceived notions of things, we give them place, and even 
 welcome, because the manner of their expression relieves us 
 and puts us at our ease. 
 
 There is a certain air of abandon about this quality of 
 which we have spoken, that ever carries with it to the souls 
 of others the assurance of sincerity. This always wins 
 its way. Men may not acquiesce, but they will not censure. 
 It is like Martin Luther's " Here I stand ; I cannot other- 
 wise !" And it is a curious fact that the spirit which is thus 
 willing, if need be, to lose all, oftenest gains all. This 
 quality in a man has a strange magnetic power, and wins 
 upon every one, and that from the very start. While timid 
 commonplace cowers cautiously in the background, fearing to 
 venture, and fritters itself away in compliances and in- 
 sincerities, individuality, with fine intrepidity, advances its 
 line, stations its outposts, and reaches its goal. Its rights 
 had never been acknowledged had they not been claimed ; 
 but its ends have been reached so naturally and easily
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 39 
 
 that we wonder how it was, yet cannot see how it could 
 have been otherwise. The eagle ever knows his eyrie. 
 There are certain men 
 
 ' ' Who walk up to fame as to a friend, 
 Or their own house, which from the wrongful heir 
 They have wrested, from the world's hard hand and gripe." 
 
 There is a cry in every human soul for its individuality, 
 its own identity. It. had rather be itself than be an angel 
 and lose its own identity. What the world wants is indi- 
 viduality. If one have peculiarities, so called, let him be 
 thankful for them, so be that he train them to proper ends. 
 Have prejudices ; settle some things once for all. Do not 
 have again to lay the foundation. Settle some questions, 
 and then go on. These very peculiarities may be strong 
 points in one's character. Only see to it that they be util- 
 ized in the right direction. Harness them up and make 
 them work for you, lest they make against you. Fire and 
 water are both admirable servants, but bad masters. So, 
 too, righteous indignation is a fine thing; but fretful, uncalled- 
 for anger is wasteful and exhaustive. Thus make your 
 peculiarities and idiosyncrasies perpetual avenues of delight, 
 rather than sources of annoyance to others. 
 
 It is curious, if not a little surprising, when one reflects 
 upon it, how many people are willing and contented to have 
 their thinking done for them ; how many blindly and 
 slavishly follow the opinions of other people, made for them 
 ready at hand. But then, real thinking is, of course, hard 
 work, and the " toil of thought " exhausting. As George 
 Eliot says in " Middlemarch," " It is very difficult to be 
 learned. One gets so worn out on the way to great thoughts, 
 that one is often too tired to enjoy them." But all too 
 common is this tendency and willingness to which we have 
 referred. One easily falls into the slavish habit; and 
 because, forsooth, the thought he so blindly follows is
 
 40 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 printed, it must needs be true. Ah, the talismanic influence 
 of type ! Instead of this servitude, begin early to think 
 and act for yourself. Dare to differ with your author, if 
 need be. Aim to find yourself in his book. As I pass 
 through the market-place, I see a thousand things I don't 
 want, and have no use for. Let me demand and take what 
 is mine. A clever modern essayist has called attention to 
 the habit which seems to be very general, of this mere 
 adhesion to received opinion ; and he declares that this 
 habit in any matter is most mischievous, since it strikes at 
 the root of independence of thought, and in literature tends 
 to make the public taste mechanical. He further declares 
 that there are certain books which are standard, before which 
 the great majority of us bow the knee and doff the cap with 
 a reverence that, in its ignorance, reminds one of fetich- 
 worship. He thinks a good deal of this mock worship is 
 due to abject cowardice ; that there is a great tendency in 
 society to praise books which one has never read, simply 
 because others praise them, and a deplorable absence of that 
 independence of character, or individuality, Avhich dares to 
 differ upon occasion, and give voice to its honest conviction. 
 He admires very much the courage of Charlotte Bronte for 
 confessing that she couldn't find much pleasure in Miss 
 Austen's novels, at the very period when everybody pro- 
 fessed to adore them ; and he alludes to a similar confession 
 of Miss Martineau regarding a very famous fiction. He 
 accuses Macaulay of having (without probably intending it) 
 done most to promote this hypocrisy in literature, but 
 thinks Macaulay himself might have been a little more 
 modest in view of the fact that his own reading in certain 
 directions had been to so little purpose. " When Dr. John- 
 son is free to confess that he does not admire Gray's Elegy, 
 and Macaulay to avow that he sees little to praise in 
 Dickens and Wordsworth, why should not humbler folks 
 have the courage of their own opinions ? They cannot pos-
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 41 
 
 sibly be more wrong than Johnson and Macaulay were ; and 
 it is surely better to be honest, though it may expose one to 
 some ridicule, than to lie." The more we agree with the 
 verdict of the generations before us on these matters, the 
 more, it is quite true, we are likely to be right ; but the 
 agreement should be an honest one. " As a rule," he con- 
 tinues, " I suppose even people in society (the drawing- 
 rooms and the clubs) are not absolutely base, and yet one 
 would really think so, to judge by the fear that is enter- 
 tained by them of being natural." 
 
 The lesson of Longfellow's " Gaspar Becerra " cannot be 
 insisted on too often, " That is best which lieth nearest." 
 In vain shall we seek outside of ourselves for that power 
 which must come alone from within. Let one not make 
 the mistake of supposing anything too profound or rich for 
 popular appreciation. No train of thought, says Choate, is 
 too deep or subtile or grand ; but the manner of presenting it 
 to untutored minds should be peculiar. It should be pre- 
 sented in anecdote, or sparkling truism, or telling illustration, 
 or stinging epithet ; always in some concrete form, never in 
 a logical, abstract, syllogistic shape. 
 
 Who can estimate the amount of talent lost to the world 
 for the want of a little courage 1 " There is one circum- 
 stance," says Sydney Smith, " I would preach up morning, 
 noon, and night, to young persons, for the management of 
 their understanding. Whatever you are from Nature, keep 
 to it ; never desert your own line of talent. If Providence 
 only intended you to write posies for rings, or mottoes for 
 twelfth-cakes, keep to posies and mottoes ; a good motto for 
 a twelfth-cake is more respectable than a villanous epic 
 poem in twelve books. Be what Nature intended you for, 
 and you will succeed ; be anything else, and you will be ten 
 thousand times worse than nothing." Elsewhere the same 
 author divides mankind into classes, and among others 
 whom he facetiously hits off is the class which he denomi-
 
 42 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 nates " the Let-well-aloners, cousins-german to the Noodle, 
 yet a variety, people who have begun to think and to act, 
 but are timid, and afraid to try their wings, and tremble at 
 the sound of their OAvn footsteps as they advance, and think 
 it safer to stand still." 
 
 Of course, the secrets of eloquence were known to men 
 long before the treatise on oratory or rhetoric appeared. 
 What, indeed, is a treatise but the crystallized product of 
 observations on results already achieved? The fearless 
 thought was uttered, the dauntless heroism displayed, the 
 thunder of the beak, the lightning of the eye, the melting 
 pathos of speech, had all wrought their spell upon listening 
 auditories long before the books appeared telling us how 
 it should be done. What but individuality impelled the 
 adventurous, self-reliant spirit to thus give voice to its 
 emotion and its thought, and Columbus-like to brave the 
 unexplored, while other men came afterward to tell how 
 the success was won ! So has it been in art, in literature, 
 in science, everywhere. " Ancient Grecian art ascended by 
 a stairway of two thousand years." The experiment comes 
 first always. Again and again has the daring scientist, like 
 Franklin braving the thunderbolt with his kite and hempen 
 string, heroically taken his life in his hand before his 
 brilliant achievement is recorded. There are heroisms of the 
 laboratory no less than of the battlefield, and triumphs no 
 less signal. That must be an enviable moment when the 
 great chemist, after long waiting and patient experiment, 
 scores his great victory and unlocks the hidden sources of 
 comfort and enrichment to mankind. Whether in labora- 
 tory, or on the verge of yawning crevasse or Alpine glacier, 
 it is individuality that dares. 
 
 Picture to yourself that voyage of Columbus over the 
 unknown deep, and endeavour, if you can, to enter into his 
 feelings as the strange seaweeds at length came floating by, 
 and the birds of brilliant plumage were seen flitting around
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 43 
 
 the ship, while the growing sultriness of atmosphere unmis- 
 takably betokened the approaching land. " What a moment 
 was that when the first projector of an eclipse saw at 
 length his daring prophecy realized, or when the great law 
 of gravitation first revealed itself to Newton!" Is it easy, 
 think you, for one to realize the impressions with which 
 Leverrier " received back from Berlin the tidings that the 
 predicted planet was found;" or the feelings with which 
 Copernicus upon his dying bed received the first printed 
 copy of his immortal work? " He knows that in that 
 volume he has rebelled against the sway of Ptolemy, which 
 the scientific world had acknowledged for a thousand 
 
 years He knows that the world will be shocked by his 
 
 innovations upon the popular philosophies ; but he knows 
 that his book is true. He is dying, but he leaves a glorious 
 truth as his dying bequest to the world." That was 
 another such " moment," when that " great Columbus of 
 the heavens," Galileo, first raised his newly constructed 
 telescope to the skies, and saw fulfilled the grand prophecy 
 of Copernicus as he beheld the planet Venus " crescent 
 like the moon." Cannot one almost hear, through the won- 
 drous silence of that starry night, a voice saying to his 
 inmost soul, " Galileo, no mortal has passed this way 
 hitherto!" 
 
 " It is easy enough for sugar to be sweet and for nitre to 
 be salt," and it has been justly observed that to think is the 
 highest exercise of the mind ; to say what you think, the 
 boldest effort of moral courage. But no man can express 
 with spirit and vigour any thoughts but his own. This was 
 the secret of Rousseau's eloquence. The principal of the 
 Jesuits' College one day asked him by what art he had been 
 able to write so well " I said what I thought," was the 
 terse reply. It would be well, doubtless, if men oftener 
 had the courage to do this. In a recent number of London 
 Truth, Labouchere strikes a blow at conventional art
 
 44 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 criticism. There are " Sir Joshuas," and " Lawrences," and 
 " Romneys," and " Gainsboroughs," he says ; " some are good, 
 others are bad. There are landscapes by Poussin and 
 others. What is their excellence 1 I am sure that I do not 
 know." If people would only be sincere, he adds, ninety- 
 nine out of a hundred would admit that they do not know. 
 
 One must learn to think for, and believe in, himself. 
 He will find at every turn friends and relatives only too 
 ready to volunteer advice, and urge him strenuously to the 
 pursuit of this course, or that, or the other ; but after adopt- 
 ing this or that course of life so zealously urged upon him, 
 he will discover that these very friends have either myste- 
 riously disappeared, or, if not indifferent, are utterly power- 
 less to help him in the event of his defeat. Nay, rather 
 let a young man fix firmly in his mind the conviction that 
 no other man is either able or willing to help him. Let 
 him consult his own adaptations, and follow the leadings of 
 his own nature. Having found wherein his greatest strength 
 lies, and the direction in which he is convinced, therefore, 
 his greatest success must also lie, let him follow tenaciously 
 the course thus deliberately marked out for himself. Let 
 him hold inflexibly to this choice, and allow nothing to 
 divert him from it. Even if he fail, he will then at least 
 have the satisfaction of knowing that it is chargeable to his 
 own account, and not, as is too often the case, to the folly 
 of heeding the superficial and ill-considered advice of other 
 people. Rest assured, however, in this course, instead of 
 failure, the chances all point the other way. 
 
 In Sherman's remarkable letter to Grant, to which refer- 
 ence has elsewhere been made in this volume, occurs this 
 notable sentence : " You are now Washington's legitimate 
 successor, and occupy a position of almost dangerous eleva- 
 tion ; but if you can continue as heretofore, to be yourself, 
 simple, honest, and unpretending, you will enjoy through 
 life the respect and love of friends and the homage of
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 45 
 
 millions of human beings." Who has not known certain 
 men of strong originality who always seemed to do naturally, 
 and as if by instinct, exactly what should be done, and in its 
 exact time and place, that happy accomplishment which 
 others attain to only as the result of much experience, and 
 after prolonged and laborious effort? Quintilian mentions 
 one of this sort, who, being asked what rhetorical figure and 
 what thought are, replied : " I do not know ; but if they 
 have any relation to my subject, they will be found in my 
 declamation." These men are a law unto themselves. They 
 instinctively follow laws aiad rules without knowing it. 
 Bonaparte was one of them men who spring at a bound to 
 a full and complete development without toiling through 
 the intermediate stages of learning, experience, and progress. 
 It has been justly said of Bonaparte, that in all things, 
 except, indeed, the possession of unlimited power, for up 
 to that time he was not independent of the Directory, he 
 was the same man at the beginning of his campaigns in 
 Italy as he was at the peace of Tilsit. " From the moment 
 of his crossing the Alps he had nothing to learn in the 
 art of war." Notwithstanding all his great determinations 
 were his own, Grant was never averse to availing himself 
 of the ideas of others, says Badeau; "and as I must always 
 repeat," he adds, " no man ever learned the lesson of ex- 
 perience quicker or applied it more absolutely. But the 
 suggestions of others were simply presented, and either 
 accepted or rejected, as his judgment dictated ; he was 
 never persuaded. And if he took up an idea that he found, 
 it was so developed by his own mind that it became as 
 original in reality as if he had conceived the germ. Every 
 one who might be called an associate felt this. Sherman 
 resented the ascription to himself of the origin of the Vicks- 
 burg campaign, and has often told the story of his objection 
 to the movement with loyal and splendid magnanimity." 
 Men of this stamp, too, are shrewd and far-seeing, and
 
 46 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 know their opportunity. They are full of enterprise and 
 daring ; and seem instinctively, also, to know their public. 
 Depressed markets make little difference to them. In the 
 midst of the worst depressions of trade one of these men 
 will set his wits to work and invent something which every- 
 body feels he must have, even from motives of economy ; 
 and thus a demand is created, which, while it helps other 
 people to save their money, enables him to make his at a 
 very rapid rate. His duller companions look on in wonder 
 and envy at the apparent ease with which the whole trans- 
 action was accomplished and the fortune made which lay so 
 nearly within their own grasp, and which they might 
 have captured so easily had their faculties but been keen 
 enough to see their opportunity. The fact is, the sicker 
 the patient the greater the demand for certain remedies, if 
 only the patient can be made to feel that the remedy will 
 effect a cure, or even administer to his comfort, if you 
 please. Thus, persons are often willing to pay a good round 
 sum even for the sake of sympathy or simple cheer. And 
 certain men have the sagacity to perceive this. As we 
 have said, they know their public. Thus in the midst of 
 the depressions of trade and the dulness of a hard winter 
 Twain visits Washington, gives two of his characteristic 
 readings, and departs a thousand dollars richer for his 
 work. When Verdi was putting the finishing touches to 
 " II Trovatore," he was visited in his study by a privileged 
 friend for whose opinion as critic he had the highest re- 
 spect. He showed him his score, and played for him the 
 " Anvil Chorus " on the piano. " What do you think of 
 it?" said Verdi. "Trash," cried the connoisseur. Verdi 
 rubbed his hands and chuckled. " And of this, and this ? " 
 he continued, playing. " Rubbish ! " replied the candid 
 friend. The composer arose and embraced his friend with 
 a burst of joy. " What do you mean by this ? " was asked, 
 in natural astonishment. " My dear friend," responded
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 47 
 
 Yerdi, " I have been composing a popular opera. In it I 
 determined to please everybody except the great judges and 
 classicists like you. Had I pleased you, I should have 
 pleased no one else ; but your disdain assures me of success. 
 In three months ' II Trovatore ' will be sung, roared, whistled, 
 and barrel-organed all over Italy." Who doubts that Verdi 
 understood his world? True, such power is rare, but men 
 are willing to pay for rare things. Thus it happens that 
 while platitudes and commonplace go a-begging, individuality, 
 as we have said, finds a ready market even in the dullest 
 times. It is surely worth something to have wares that 
 possess, under all circumstances, a marketable value and 
 steady demand. Who fails to see the significance of this 
 factor in reckoning on success 1 
 
 One of the most distinguished and vigorous writers of the 
 day, himself a conspicuous instance of individuality, has de- 
 clared : " Individual effort is, after all, the grand thing. A 
 man alone can do more than a man with fifty men at his 
 heels to fetter him. Committees are seldom of much use, 
 and bodies and societies are sometimes a loss of strength in- 
 stead of a gain. As some one has facetiously said, if Noah's 
 ark had had to be built by a company, the keel would not 
 have been laid yet." There is much truth in the old adage, 
 that what is everybody's business is nobody's. Kingsley has 
 strongly emphasized the essential nakedness of even the most 
 favoured souls. Alone, he says, we must make our most 
 important decisions in life, and alone we must go to the grave. 
 The Germans call one of their greatest authors " The only," 
 because they find none with whom to compare him. In one 
 sense, and that a true one, the humblest man or woman may 
 be called by the same title. When a great strong personality 
 does appear, note how he takes hold upon his fellows. As 
 Brooks declares, the thought, the feeling in the central man 
 in a great city, touches all who are in it who think and feel. 
 The very boys, he says, catch something of his power, and
 
 48 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 have something about them that would not be there if he 
 were not in the town. Now, no man can assume such a 
 position ; it must belong to him. The moment he attempts 
 to play the role which belongs to another, he gets befogged. 
 The mere imitator is a servile slave. Like the pupils of 
 Plato, who are said to have imitated his crooked shoulders, 
 the imitator is sure to pounce upon the very faults and 
 defects of his model, which, blemishes as they are, are yet 
 tolerated for the sake of the genius of their possessor, but 
 which even he would be infinitely better without. Phillips 
 Brooks has called attention to a passage in Macaulay's diary 
 which he thinks is full of philosophy. " I looked through 
 
 ," he says. " He is, I see, an imitator of me ; but I am 
 
 a very unsafe model. My manner is, I think, and the world 
 thinks, on the whole a good one; but it is very near to a very 
 bad manner indeed. And those clear characteristics of my 
 style which are the most easily copied are the most ques- 
 tionable." In further illustration of the same, the distin- 
 guished rector of Trinity cites an instance which came under 
 his own observation. "The obtuseness of the imitator is 
 amazing," he says. " I remember going, years ago, with an 
 intelligent friend to hear a great orator lecture. The dis- 
 course was rich, thoughtful, glowing, and delightful. As 
 we came away my companion seemed meditative. By-and- 
 by he said, ' Did you see where his power lay 1 ' I felt un- 
 able to analyze and epitomize in an instant such a complex 
 result, and meekly I said, ' No ; did you ? ' ' Yes,' he replied 
 briskly ; ' I watched him, and it is in the double motion of 
 his hand. When he wanted to solemnize and calm and 
 subdue us, he turned the palm of his hand down ; when he 
 wanted to elevate and inspire us, he turned the palm of his 
 hand up. That was it.' And that was all the man had 
 seen," he adds, " in an eloquent speech. He was no fool, 
 but he was an imitator. He was looking for a single secret 
 for a multifarious effect. I suppose he has gone on from
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 49 
 
 that day till this, turning his hand upside down and down- 
 side up, and wondering that nobody is either solemnized or 
 inspired." 
 
 How accustomed one is to hearing mental products of all 
 kinds spoken of as the author's children ! How suggestive 
 to speak of Handel's Messiah, Raphael's Madonnas, Gibbon's 
 Rome, and Hume's England ! Jeffrey once said to Macaulay, 
 "Where on earth did you pick up that English style?" 
 But a style like Macaulay's or that of any other great 
 master of English is not " picked up : " it is the man him- 
 self ; it is the result of the training of the special power of 
 the individual. The romantic attraction of Macaulay's style 
 had numbered among his eager readers hundreds of thou- 
 sands who seldom trouble historical tomes ; and as for the 
 permanent hold his solid genius had established on the 
 reading world, Mr. Trevelyan sums up a page of figures with 
 the statement that " within a generation of its first appear- 
 ance upwards of one hundred and forty thousand copies of 
 the History will have been printed and sold in the United 
 Kingdom alone." Dr. Johnson's advice to give one's days 
 and nights to Addison is well known. The study of the 
 dii majores is of course valuable to a man ; but, after all, 
 they can only bring out and modify and perfect the native 
 qualities which are already his. No absolute rules can be 
 laid down by which one can acquire a fine style. It is 
 nascitur, non fit. The study of the great spirits may 
 awaken and inspire one, however. As Charles Kingsley 
 says : " Bathe your spirit in their noble thoughts as in May 
 dew; and feel thereby, if but for an hour, more fair." Or, 
 as another English writer advises : " Analyze the special 
 beauties of great authors. Acquaint yourself with Shake- 
 speare ; study his marvellous creations, his sublime thoughts, 
 his great and varied powers of expression. Take down your 
 De Quincey, and learn the resources of your mother-tongue. 
 Compare Hazlitt's clear, cool, and somewhat hard English 
 
 (79) 4
 
 50 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 with the delicate grace and humour of Charles Lamb, or 
 with the earnestness and enthusiasm, the manly vigour, and 
 the tenderness no less manly, of Charles Kingsley and Dr. 
 John Brown. Study Macaulay. The style of these men," 
 he continues, "is not the expression of the mind merely, 
 but of the whole character." So is it always. It rests, 
 therefore, in great measure with ourselves whether our 
 style shall be good or bad. The permanence of our work 
 is almost entirely dependent upon the quality of the style. 
 "What we say may be very valuable, but unless we say it 
 as well as it can be said, a day will come when some one 
 else will say it better, and our work will be superseded." 
 
 This quality is the secret of that charm which our favourite 
 authors have for us. " I would prefer to think like Emer- 
 son, but to write like Holmes," was the response of a dis- 
 tinguished divine, when asked which of the two famous 
 authors' styles he would wish to have. There is a certain 
 individuality about every man's style, as about his features. 
 It has been truly observed that if an author has not been a 
 slave to others, his production will be as individual as him- 
 self. As his constitutional looks and organism differ from 
 those of all others, so will the construction and appearance 
 of his mental product differ also. The deportment or air of 
 the parent shows itself in the literary no less than in the 
 literal child. The style of Burke, for instance, differs vastly 
 from that of Johnson. And yet, who would willingly lose 
 either? In Burke, some one has said, we see the manly 
 movement of a well-bred gentleman ; in Johnson, an equally 
 profound and vigorous thinker, the measured march of a 
 grenadier. "We forgive the great moralist his stiff and 
 cumbrous phrases in return for the rich stores of thought 
 and poetry which they conceal ; but we admire in Burke, as 
 in a fine antique statue, the grace with which the large 
 flowing robe adapts itself to the majestic dignity of the 
 person." The individuality of the producer inevitably
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 51 
 
 appears in the production. A few notes heard, a few pencil- 
 strokes seen, a few sentences read, quickly betray the com- 
 poser, artist, or author. 
 
 ' ' Where'er the ocean inlet strays, 
 The salt sea wave its source betrays ; 
 Where'er the queen of summer blows, 
 She tells the zephyr, ' I'm the rose! ' " 
 
 The line of Apelles is not to be mistaken. Who, for in- 
 stance, does not instantly recognize one of Boughton's pic- 
 tures 1 Some subtle felicity of treatment or composition often 
 reveals the identity of the artist and the special characteristic 
 of his genius, or of his technical methods, which are unmis- 
 takable. "There would seem at first sight," says Macaulay, 
 " to be no more in Milton's words than in other words. But 
 they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pro- 
 nounced than the past is present and the distant near. 
 New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all 
 the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change 
 the structure of the sentence, substitute one synonym for 
 another, and the whole effect is destroyed." Matthew 
 Arnold bears witness to what we have just been saying, in a 
 recent article concerning America. He refers to an " admir- 
 able essay of Sir Henry Maine," which, though not signed, 
 "betrays him for its author," he says, "by its rare and 
 characteristic qualities of mind and style." 
 
 We have already remarked that no one can assume the 
 position of another. By this we would not be understood to 
 mean that one must not study another, or the methods of 
 others. The most individual of men have been the most 
 familiar with the methods of other men. Webster, we are 
 told, was able to recite from memory half the orations of 
 Cicero ; and it has been asserted of Michael Angelo, the most 
 original of modern artists, that he knew every statue and 
 painting, and the excellency of every statue and painting, in
 
 62 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 the world, of any master, past or present. Other minds are 
 to native genius but so much nature, one among the many 
 ingredients in the common soil from which by its own elect- 
 ive chemistry it draws its life. " Artists all over the world 
 go to Dresden and Florence and Rome to study the works 
 of other artists, and still they retain their originality. The 
 artists of America collect their works annually in the Acad- 
 emy of Design in New York, and are themselves the most 
 frequent visitors, that they may comprehend the works and 
 methods of one another, and in some degree take to them- 
 selves the gifts of all." 
 
 " People are always talking about originality," says 
 Goethe; "but what do they mean? As soon as we are 
 born, the world begins to work upon us ; and this goes on to 
 the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except 
 energy, strength, and will 1 If I could give an account of 
 all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there 
 would be but a small balance in my favour." A most able 
 and vigorous modern thinker has declared that one who 
 cannot use the experience of others, and preserve at the same 
 time his own originality, misses a vantage that is hard to 
 over-estimate. Newton was great, he says, not near so much 
 because of what he discovered as because of his ability to 
 bring together and combine all that others had observed. 
 "The original discoveries of Newton would have been an 
 impossibility to him had he not first comprehended what 
 
 others had wrought In the power to digest and assimilate 
 
 the experience of others is the great difference between men. 
 The experience of a thousand men becomes the experience of 
 one man, and that one rises head and shoulders above his 
 fellows. We do not abate one jot of our originality in learn- 
 ing from others. To see a truth is to own it. Where or 
 how originated, a thought is ours when we understand it. 
 The right of discovery has no validity in the domain of truth. 
 Bread and meat are ours when they turn to bone and muscle
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 53 
 
 in us. As has been said, no man eats veal and becomes a 
 calf, or mutton and becomes a sheep. The individuality of 
 every man's body is assured by the laws of digestion and 
 assimilation, but not more so than is the individuality of the 
 mind by corresponding laws. The great Swedish mystic 
 uttered the most sublime of uninspired truths when he said, 
 " The more angels the more room. True men are never 
 crowded and never crowd. The healthy mind sees the truth, 
 embraces, absorbs it, and forgets to think about him who 
 uttered it." He further assures us that the world's progress 
 is in its accumulations, and mentions the saying of Emerson, 
 that nearly half the lines in Shakespeare's dramas are bor- 
 rowed in whole or in part from the writings of others, but 
 were so mastered by him that Shakespeare's originality was 
 unquestioned. " Doubtless what we call Homer is a com- 
 bination of the best in all poets that lived before him in 
 Greece. Through him the streams flowed and became one, 
 and were known ever after by the name of him in whom they 
 were united. Let us fear the utterance of immature, half- 
 understood thoughts, but not the lack of originality." 
 
 Could anything be more inspiring than contact with a 
 master-mind? Let one read a few pages of Emerson, and 
 fascinating as the author seems, and strong as the tempta- 
 tion is to go on with one's reading, does he not soon find 
 rising up within him, stronger, if possible, than all else, 
 the impulse to go out at once and do something worthy 
 of himself ere the night shuts in 1 The most vigorous and 
 powerful minds have ever acknowledged their indebtedness 
 to others for kindling their own fires and inspiring them 
 for their work. Byron himself, and Robertson, both con- 
 fess to the habit of reading the production of some vigorous 
 thinker to get their minds in working trim for their own 
 intellectual tasks. Gray seldom sat down to compose with- 
 out first reading through some cantos of the "Faerie Queene," 
 it is said; and Corneille "fired himself" with the perusal of
 
 54 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 "Lucan." One mind thus quickens another and illumines 
 the path, and inspires us to enter ; but, as has been truly 
 said, every man who would ascend the hill of the immortals 
 must for the most part walk alone, unaccompanied by mortal 
 man. 
 
 The real help, then, which comes to us from great men 
 would seem to lie in the fact that they evoke one's own 
 life. Thus a man's mind may be roused by another, but 
 he must "mould his own material, quarry his own nature, 
 make his own character." And thus, too, it may happen at 
 times, and often has, doubtless, that the pupil becomes at 
 length even wiser indeed than his instructor. He may 
 not always accept his conclusions, but he will own, " You 
 awakened me to be myself; for that I thank you ! " Wher- 
 ever I find myself, either in nature or the libraries of the 
 world, that is mine. I may find page after page dry as 
 dust. At length I find in some brief sentence, perhaps, 
 myself. I gladly throw aside as worthless whole pages 
 which others might value. It is by the assimilation of all 
 that is best around him, allowing it to enter into the very 
 fibre of his being, and to become a part of his own life- 
 blood, that one comes most surely to his own true individu- 
 ality. Art thus becomes to him a second nature, like the 
 polished manners of well-bred men, to which Schiller refers. 
 True ease always comes "from art, not chance." It will 
 often happen, doubtless, that one will find his own best 
 thought anticipated by some former writer ; but one need 
 not be discouraged on this account. One possessed of re- 
 sources of his own, and competent to think for himself, will 
 neither, as Colton has put it, anathematize others with a 
 pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint, nor despair himself, 
 but will rather go on, like John Hunter in physics, discov- 
 ering things before discovered until, like him, he is rewarded 
 with a terra hitherto incognita, an empire indisputably his 
 own, both by right of conquest and of discovery.
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 55 
 
 Holmes, in reviewing Edwin Arnold's " Light of Asia," 
 remarked : " It is impossible for such an artist as Mr. Arnold 
 not to remind us, whether by mere coincidence or unconscious 
 
 imitation, of the great masters and the favourite authors 
 
 These coincidences may amuse a reader, but they are of small 
 account. All literature, we might say without unpardonable 
 extravagance, lives by borrowing and lending. A good 
 image is like a diamond, which may be set a hundred times 
 in as many generations, and gain new beauties with every 
 change. " 
 
 It is curious to note how men of most marked individu- 
 ality and most original methods have been perpetually 
 influenced and swayed by some great predecessor. Each 
 has the master in his eye. Napoleon dreamed of Julius 
 Ctesar. Alexander the Great constantly slept with " Homer" 
 under his pillow. The ideal hero of the Iliad helped to 
 make the real heroes of later Greece. When Beaconsfield 
 was asked in what style his official residence should be 
 furnished and decorated, he said, pointing to a portrait 
 of Sir Robert Walpole, one of the greatest and purest of 
 England's prime ministers, "Furnish it for that portrait." 
 What could be more beautiful than that utterance of 
 Raphael just before he died, " I shall see Dante " ? 
 
 After all, it is but little that others can do for one, even 
 though most willing to aid and advance him. One must 
 early learn to depend on himself and his own unaided 
 effort. Friends, affection, and human sympathy may accom- 
 pany us to the beach, but each must set sail for himself 
 and steer his own ship. No one can create heroism for 
 another ; it must be in himself. " We accompany the 
 youth with sympathy and manifold old sayings of the wise 
 to the gate of the arena," says Emerson, " but it is certain 
 that not by strength of ours, nor by the old sayings, but 
 only on strength of his own, unknown to us or to any, he 
 must stand or fall." Like King Edward standing on the
 
 56 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 " little windmill hill," at the battle of Cregy, while his son, 
 the Black Prince, was engaged in the hottest of the fray, 
 the father can send encouraging words and admire the 
 heroism of his son, but he cannot send him aid. He must 
 win his own spurs. 
 
 A brave soul, moreover, is a thing that all things serve. 
 Fearless intrepidity finds the way open as it advances. 
 
 " The distant mountains that uprear 
 Their solid bastions to the skies, 
 Are crossed by pathways that appear 
 As we to higher levels rise." 
 
 The great point, after all, is for one to be sure of himself. 
 Let one assure himself, first of all, that he can do or say 
 something which the world wants done or said, and then 
 let him fearlessly act upon his conviction. As a recent 
 writer has well put it in some words to would-be authors : 
 " If you are planning to become an author, it will be wise 
 to remember the advice of Punch to the young man con- 
 templating marriage, ' Don't.' That is, don't if you can 
 avoid it. Don't unless the pressure is so strong upon you 
 that you can recognize yourself as really being ' called,' and 
 that literature is to be the calling. Books must be written 
 out of that which is in you ; and if, without such calling, a 
 man sits down and says to himself, 'Go to, let us make a 
 book,' so surely will the end of that book and of that man 
 or woman be disappointment and emptiness." The 
 same might be said of music and painting. When a youth 
 came to Mozart and asked him how he should begin to 
 compose, the great man advised him to wait "But," re- 
 plied the youth, "you composed much earlier." "So I 
 did," was the answer; "but then I asked nobody about it." 
 The true poet wreaks his thought upon expression because 
 he cannot help it. So with the artist. His finest concep- 
 tions will not leave him until he has revealed his thought
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 57 
 
 upon the speaking canvas. Men are thrilled with delight 
 as they stand before his completed work. Ah, could they 
 but see that which struggled for expression within the 
 artist's soul ! Culture, training, polish, all these are good, 
 but without this inner fire they are of little worth. It is the 
 personality behind all else which counts. It is this which 
 always takes the shortest road and the surest method. It 
 is truthful, simple, natural. True individuality will not 
 imitate, and cannot be imitated. There is as much differ- 
 ence between the genuine and its counterfeit as between 
 "the reverberation of thunder in an Alpine valley and the 
 tin-rattle of the theatre." " Through every clause and part 
 of speech of a right book I meet the eyes of the most 
 determined of men," says Emerson. " His force and terror 
 inundate every word ; the commas and dashes are all alive, 
 so that the writing is athletic and nimble, and can go far 
 
 and live long.. It makes a great difference to the force of 
 
 any sentence whether there be a man behind it or no." It 
 is well known that certain famous actors and singers have 
 been made great simply by what is termed the "sympathetic" 
 voice. It was this that made Rubini so famous, and which 
 gave Gazzaniga the ability to sing " through your very 
 heart." 
 
 Garrick's individuality revolutionized the whole dramatic 
 stage. Men might condemn and criticise, but his perpetual 
 and unvarying success was their answer. And what was 
 his secret ? He was true to nature, true to himself. Mrs. 
 Clive was one night standing at the wing, alternately weep- 
 ing and scolding at Garrick's acting ; and turning away in 
 anger, she exclaimed, " I believe he could act a gridiron ! " 
 In King Lear, it used to be said that Garrick's very stick 
 acted. When Dr. Johnson was asked his opinion of the 
 reputation attained by this wonderful interpreter of Shake- 
 speare, he replied, "Oh, sir, he deserves everything he has 
 acquired, for having seized the soul of Shakespeare, for
 
 58 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 having embodied it in himself, and for having expanded its 
 glory over the world." Of Massena, Napoleon declared, 
 " He is not himself until the battle begins to go against 
 him ; then, when the dead fall in ranks about him, are 
 awakened his powers of combination, and he puts on terror 
 and victory as a robe." And Wellington once said of him, 
 " I do not know which was the best of the French marshals, 
 but I know that I always found Massena where I least 
 desired that he should be." 
 
 This power of individuality is often strikingly manifest in 
 great parliamentary leaders. It was pre-eminent- in Henry 
 Clay. " It would perhaps be impossible to find in the par- 
 liamentary annals of the world," says one whose own learn- 
 ing and large experience in public life give great weight to 
 his opinion, "a parallel to Mr. Clay in 1841, when at sixty- 
 four years of age he took the control of the Whig party 
 from the President who had received their suffrages, against 
 the power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence 
 of Choate in the Senate, against the herculean efforts of 
 Caleb Gushing and Henry A. Wise in the House. In un- 
 shared leadership, in the pride and plenitude of power, he 
 hurled against John Tyler, with deepest scorn, the mass of 
 that conquering column which had swept over the land in 
 1840, and drove his administration to seek shelter behind 
 the lines of his political foes." This strong personality, 
 as the same authority has shown, conquers often, both 
 against the right and the "heavy battalions;" as when 
 young Charles Fox, in the days of his Toryism, carried the 
 House of Commons " against justice, against its immemorial 
 rights, against his own convictions, if indeed at that period 
 Fox had convictions, and in the interest of a corrupt ad- 
 ministration, in obedience to a tyrannical sovereign, drove 
 Wilkes from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex 
 had chosen him, and installed Luttrell in defiance, not merely 
 of law, but of public decency."
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 59 
 
 It was not adventitious circumstance that gave Secretary 
 Chase his wonderful power over the financial destiny of the 
 country in its hour of peril ; it was the power of individu- 
 ality and sheer moral courage. He had faith in the people. 
 He dared to trust them. He did trust them. " When 
 every other face was clouded, he stood in the sun. The 
 people met him with an equal courage, and freely gave him 
 all the money he wanted." Such power is the attribute of 
 a commanding personality alone. This magnetism makes 
 acts and words efficient, because courage and confidence are 
 contagious. 
 
 " Each petty hand can steer a ship becalmed : 
 But he that will govern and carry her to her ends, 
 Must know his tides, his currents ; 
 How to shift her sails ; what she will bear in foul, 
 What in fair weathers ; what her springs are, 
 Her leaks, and how to stop them ; what strands, 
 What rocks do threaten her ; 
 
 The forces and the natures of all winds, gusts, storms, and tempests. 
 When her keel ploughs hell, and deck knocks heaven, 
 Then to manage her becomes the name and office of a pilot." 
 
 It has doubtless been noted by the observant reader that 
 reference has repeatedly been made in these pages to the 
 first Napoleon, and his life and character have been held up 
 as illustrating in a striking manner many of those qualities 
 which seem so essential to success. This has been done 
 not blindly but advisedly, and after the most careful study 
 of the man. While the author is not unmindful of the fact 
 that many serious faults and blemishes serve to mar the 
 symmetry of his character, and while the " fierce light 
 which beats upon" his household relations in such works 
 as the "Memoirs of Madame de Re"musat" must necessarily 
 reveal many faults and foibles and much that is unlovely, 
 yet, with due allowance for these failings, he still believes 
 that the instances are extremely rare in which are combined 
 in any one man so many striking and admirable qualities,
 
 60 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 and so many of those traits which inevitably command 
 success. No life, surely, will better repay careful and dis- 
 criminating study. Said an eminent man of middle age not 
 long since, " If I had read the life of Napoleon when I was 
 a boy, my own life might have been very different. It 
 would have filled me with an ambition to make the most of 
 myself." Not the least among other things for which he 
 should be honoured is his noble and striking testimony to 
 the divinity of Christ ; and, as Dr. Schaff justly observes, 
 the logical conclusion of this master-mind may well be set 
 over against the illogical denial of Christ's divinity by in- 
 ferior minds. One surely discerns in this life how almost 
 inevitably unremitting study and a careful culture of all the 
 faculties lead to the highest places. Indeed, the hero of 
 Austerlitz himself realized that his greatest triumphs were 
 not those of his battle-fields. " I shall go down to posterity," 
 said he, "with my Code in my hand." No one quality in 
 him, probably, was more striking than his marvellous in- 
 dividuality. Before this man imbecile kings, effete mon- 
 archies, shams of all kinds, Avent down. Thrones crumbled, 
 and royalty waited in his ante-chamber to know the will of 
 this master. One who had frequently seen him at St. 
 Helena relates that on one occasion, when Napoleon with 
 his suite galloped through the British camp on Deadwood, 
 the soldiers involuntarily and without orders fell into ranks 
 and saluted him. The orders given by the English Govern- 
 ment were very explicit that Napoleon should not be recog- 
 nized as emperor, but simply as general. When the emperor 
 was informed of this decree, he simply remarked, "They 
 may call me what they please ; they cannot prevent me from 
 being myself." Even Wellington thought his presence sub- 
 stantially equal to forty thousand men added to the strength 
 of an army. In Napier's opinion he was "the greatest 
 genius and the greatest soldier that ever lived." Wellington 
 himself once declared, "Napoleon was a very great man."
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 61 
 
 And upon another occasion, "It is no impulse of vanity 
 which leads me to speak so highly of my opponent ; for it 
 was not I who beat him, but the determined bravery of the 
 English troops and their unconquerable steadiness." 
 
 The Allies, despite their enormous preponderance of forces, 
 would willingly shrink from meeting Napoleon in person. 
 They hardly ventured on any movement where he was 
 present except in overwhelming masses. When in 1814 
 he came to Chalons to withstand the flood of invasion, his 
 generals hoped he was being followed by supports of troops. 
 He coolly told them "No," and proceeded to encourage 
 them by unfolding the boldness and profundity of his plans. 
 But "the resistless might of Europe was setting in upon 
 him, and even he could not achieve miracles. " Men may ask, 
 
 " Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, 
 That he is grown so great ? " 
 
 But the real secret lay far behind all, in the great per- 
 sonality, the intense individuality of the man. See the 
 courage this confers as he fearlessly visits the stricken 
 soldiers dying of the plague in the hospitals. Says Goethe : 
 " Napoleon visited those sick of the plague, in order to prove 
 that the man who could vanquish fear could vanquish the 
 plague also ; and he was right. 'Tis incredible what force 
 the will has in such cases : it penetrates the body and puts 
 it in a state of activity which repels all hurtful influences, 
 while fear invites them." That there was no mere fustian 
 about this man let Emerson's words testify. " We cannot," 
 he says, "in the universal imbecility, indecision, and in- 
 dolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this 
 strong and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, and 
 showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere force 
 of such virtues as all men possess in less degree namely, by 
 punctuality, by personal attention, by courage, and thorough- 
 ness His power does not consist in any wild, extravagant
 
 62 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 force in any enthusiasm like Mahomet's, or singular power 
 of persuasion ; but in the exercise of common sense on each 
 emergency, instead of abiding by rules and customs. The 
 lesson he teaches is that which vigour always teaches that 
 there is always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly 
 doubts is not that man's life an answer ! " 
 
 Who has not been impressed with the power of this great 
 quality to dwarf all its surroundings, however stately or 
 grand 1 How the mere splendour of the most massive archi- 
 tecture, for instance, fades before the greater splendour of a 
 great orator's personality ! All surroundings dwindle and 
 become simply satellites of the central sun. It is curious, 
 too, to note how men differ in this regard. As Pere Arrius 
 wittily declared, " When Bourdaloue preached at Rouen, the 
 tradesmen all left their shops, the smiths their forges, and 
 the physicians their sick, and nocked to hear the silver- 
 tongued orator. But," he added, " when I preached there 
 the following year, I set everything to rights again. Every 
 man minded his own business." 
 
 How, too, this quality perpetually brightens our homes 
 with its thousand artistic surprises and devices that fill us 
 with ever renewed wonder and delight. What a charm it 
 imparts to maidenhood ! Though its piquant caprices may 
 sometimes laugh to scorn the conventionalities, in spite of 
 ourselves we are obliged to admire indeed, we cannot 
 help it ; for innocence and charming originality are always 
 allowed. 
 
 "Persons approach us," remarks a shrewd observer, "fa- 
 mous for their beauty, for their accomplishments, worthy of 
 all wonder for their charms and gifts ; they dedicate their 
 own skill to the hour and the company with very imperfect 
 
 result Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, 
 
 a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and easily, 
 so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our 
 proper veins We are utterly relieved and refreshed."
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 63 
 
 Hawthorne, in his " Scarlet Letter," touches a similar vein 
 where he refers to that "mightier touch" of one coming 
 after, awakening all the sensibilities and revealing the con- 
 trast between " the marble image of happiness and the warm 
 reality." As with metals, so with men. The magnet has 
 something to give ; the steel is made to receive. Some men, 
 it has been observed, have a penetrating and distributive 
 personality that is felt as surely and swiftly as is the 
 pungency of gums or the heat of fire ; and others are made to 
 be as responsive to them as clay. The indefinite word, in 
 .short, which comprehends all that draws and holds men is 
 called " magnetism. " We despair of getting a clear and full 
 analysis of this subtile power ; but it is enough, perhaps, that 
 we know it when it exists, and are able to develop it where 
 it is found. A visitor to Carlyle, who sought the great 
 modern seer with much reverence, complained afterwards 
 that " his presence, in some unaccountable manner, rasped 
 the nerves. You left him feeling as if you had drunk sour 
 wine or had had an attack of sea-sickness." Some one, 011 
 the other hand, describes the entrance of Dickens into a 
 room as " the sudden kindling of a big fire, by which every 
 one was warmed." The rare charm of Lord Houghton's 
 social nature made itself everywhere felt, we are told. One 
 whose tastes, by the way, were widely different, declared, 
 "Whenever Mimes comes into a room everybody is in better 
 humour with everybody else." As a recent authority has 
 affirmed, this power is worth study by young people be- 
 ginning life ; for though intangible and almost indescrib- 
 able, it is the strongest power which a man or a woman can 
 poaseea 
 
 The self -consciousness of greatness is one of its most 
 singular and interesting characteristics. Never, says Le- 
 gouve, amid the fiercest agony, whether mental or physical, 
 does a great artist lose self-consciousness; he is an eternal 
 spectacle unto himself; great as may be his despair, ho
 
 64 INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 watches it with argus eyes. Rachel felt her own elegance 
 as she posed for a young invalid ; she seemed to herself a 
 beautiful statue of Grief. 
 
 To sum up the whole matter, then, let us say : Dare to 
 be yourself. Learn to think and act for yourself. Believe 
 your own thought. To believe that what is true for you in 
 your private heart is true for all men that is genius, says 
 Emerson. " Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be 
 the universal sense. Take the place and attitude which 
 belong to you, and all men acquiesce." Lay everything 
 under tribute. Let all your studies, your observation, and 
 experience contribute to develop only the more truly your 
 real self, your true individuality. Aim ever to find your- 
 self that which belongs to you in whatever direction, whether 
 earth or sea or sky. All roads lead to Rome. Let all the 
 roads you travel serve to bring you only the more surely to 
 your distinct and true personality. In this way you shall 
 arrive at that true independence which alone is of value. 
 Richard Wagner, the composer, writing of himself, says : 
 " My course of study under Weinlig was finished in less 
 than half a year. He himself dismissed me from my ap- 
 prenticeship, after having conducted me so far that I could 
 solve the most difficult exercises in counterpoint with ease. 
 ' That which you have gained through this dry study is called 
 independence,' he said to me." And independence in thought 
 and deed was ever one of Wagner's most striking and noble 
 characteristics. 
 
 The little mind is timid and full of compliances, and must 
 needs go with the crowd. The great soul dares to stand 
 apart, and is "never less alone than when alone." Nothing, 
 surely, is more remarkable than the appearance and achieve- 
 ments of gifted men. What trails of light or darkness have 
 certain men left behind them ! Blot out the names of the 
 few great ones who have left their impress on the ages, and 
 history would be a very tame affair. It was said of the first
 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 65 
 
 Emperor Alexander of Russia, that his personal character 
 was equivalent to a constitution ; and of Montaigne, that his 
 was worth more to him than a regiment of horse. "A man 
 Ctesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman empire." 
 One Waterloo " changed the front of the world." The works 
 of Raphael and Michael Angelo, the creations of Beethoven 
 and Mozart, of Handel and the great masters, exercise for 
 ever their magic spell, and leave humanity their debtors. 
 The heroes of the race shrank doubtless from their work, as 
 you are shrinking now from yours from a sense of unfitness. 
 At length, unable longer to resist the call of duty, "each 
 forgot his weakness, and went and worked his fragment." 
 So for each of us the duty waits. Our deed may not seem 
 worth the doing, because so small. But it is our " fragment," 
 and must be done ; and no one else can do it for us. Let 
 not life, then, be frittered away in vacillation and weak 
 compliances, "like those meagre streamlets which seem to 
 lose their way at every new impediment, for ever turning 
 backward or creeping around ; nor, on the other hand, 
 emulate the headlong mountain torrent, boisterous and 
 destructive." Let the ideal of your strength be rather that 
 of the ocean, which, as one finely observes, in the calmest 
 hour still heaves its resistless might of waters to the shore 
 with an imperial consciousness of strength that laughs at 
 opposition. 
 
 " Practise thy spirit to great thoughts and things ; 
 
 We can foretell the future of ourselves, 
 And fateful only to himself is each. "
 
 III. 
 application. 
 
 " It is not ease, but effort not faculty, but difficulty, that makes men." 
 That cocoa-nut grove will not flourish which does not daily hear the 
 steps of its owner in it. HINDU SAYING. 
 
 There is a fire-fly in the southern clime 
 
 Which shineth only when upon the wing : 
 
 So is it with the mind, 
 
 When once we rest, we darken. BAILEY, Festus. 
 
 Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before 
 kings. PROVERBS xxii. 29. 
 
 THERE is no concealing the fact that a very foolish notion is 
 widely prevalent among young men respecting the dignity 
 and value of work. The idea that the necessity for applica- 
 tion is incompatible with the possession of great qualities, 
 that the virtues of diligence and industry, forsooth, are 
 inconsistent with great natural gifts, or some such foolish 
 notion, has defeated many a man in the race of life, and 
 done incalculable harm. The careful observer will not be 
 long in discovering a certain class of men who have come to 
 believe that if one is a " born genius " he will do great things 
 anyway, and therefore there exists small need for exertion. 
 The favourite idea of a genius, among these, appears to be 
 that of one who never studies, or who studies nobody can 
 tell when, and now and then strikes out at a heat, as the 
 phrase is, some wonderful production. The notion seems to 
 be that success is to be conquered by a sudden leap. " A
 
 APPLICATION. 67 
 
 masterly magazine article, a picture dashed off in fiery haste, 
 some speech, or deed, or stroke of business ability, will 
 certainly ere long, unless they are greatly mistaken, set the 
 tongue of the town wagging, and carry them straight up the 
 heights." 
 
 This "genius" is a character, as Devvey has justly ob- 
 served, that has figured largely in the history of our litera- 
 ture, in the person of our Fieldings, our Savages, and our 
 Steeles, loose fellows about town, or loungers in the 
 country, who slept in alehouses and wrote in bar-rooms, who 
 took up the pen as a magician's wand to supply their wants, 
 and when the pressure of necessity was relieved, resorted 
 again to their carousals. Your real genius is an idle, 
 irregular, vagabond sort of person, who muses in the fields 
 or dreams by the fireside ; whose strong impulses that is 
 the cant of it must needs hurry him into wild irregularities 
 or foolish eccentricities ; who abhors order, and can bear no 
 restraint, and eschews all labour. This seems to be the 
 favourite idea. What could be more absurd? And yet, 
 " 'tis true, 'tis pity," so large is the number that compla- 
 cently regard themselves as belonging to this class, that the 
 consequences have been exceedingly disastrous. It must be 
 admitted that certain brilliant fellows have at times lent 
 colour to this conception, and, intoxicated for the time 
 being with the homage of wondering companions, have 
 no doubt willingly fostered the idea that their brilliancy 
 was due to the sudden inspiration of the moment ; but the 
 cunning deception has not always been proof against the 
 prying curiosity of human nature, and the unmasking of 
 carefully curtained windows and concealed lights has re- 
 vealed these same geniuses tugging away, as if for dear life, 
 far into the night even, at the very tasks which their less 
 gifted companions were toiling over in the ordinary way. 
 Even Sheridan's seemingly spontaneous and impromptu 
 witticisms, as every one knows, were discovered to have
 
 68 APPLICATION. 
 
 been most carefully prepared beforehand, all of which goes 
 to prove that things are not always what they seem. 
 Depend upon it, the most effective genius is the genius of 
 hard work. "Work, work, work, is the secret of all great 
 achievement and distinguished success. We commend to 
 those who are waiting for that happy moment of inspiration, 
 that old story of the two men who set out together to reach 
 a certain point. One trudged on steadily and securely 
 afoot ; the other, like Icarus, made himself wings and flew 
 a furlong, when the sun melted the wax, and he came to 
 grief. There are so many painters of one picture, writers of 
 one novel, down there in the mud with him, some one 
 significantly says. When Giardini was asked how long it 
 would take to learn to play on the violin, he replied, 
 " Twelve hours a day for twenty years together." If a man 
 has failed, said a brave painter, you will find he has dreamed 
 instead of working. There is no way to success in our art 
 but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a 
 digger on the railroad all day, and every day. The author 
 of " Telemachus " was right when he sought to impress 
 upon his pupil the fact that there was no royal road to 
 learning, and that even the grace of God would not make a 
 man a scholar. A man may be " superficially omniscient," 
 as Charles Lamb expressed it, without much hard effort ; 
 but there is but one pathway to thorough knowledge, the 
 republican one of labour and toil. What enabled William 
 Pitt, when scarcely more than a boy in years, to command 
 universal attention to his first speech in the House of Com- 
 mons, and to extort from Burke the encomium, " He is not 
 a chip from the old block, but the old block itself"? Such 
 success is no accident ; it is the well-earned reward of many 
 years of laborious and complete preparation. " That was 
 a great moment when the king sent for Pitt as the only man 
 who could make head against Fox, and resolved to govern 
 through his means. The youngster accepted the post of
 
 APPLICATION. 69 
 
 Premier. Without one moment's faltering he responded to 
 the call. On the afternoon of the very same day on which 
 that call was made, young Pepper Arden rose in his place 
 and moved for a new writ for the borough of Appleby in 
 the room of the Right Honourable William Pitt, who since 
 his election has accepted the office of First Lord of the 
 Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. There was 
 immediately a burst of loud and general laughter." It was 
 not altogether unlike the moment when Disraeli sat down 
 amid the derision of the House, saying the time would come 
 when they would hear him. " Nevertheless, Pitt formed 
 his cabinet, his majority increased, the influence of Fox 
 declined, and at the age of twenty-four this heaven-born 
 minister of state commenced his long dictatorship." 
 
 It may be a very good thing for a boy to have great 
 natural talent, as has been well observed ; to be noted 
 among his acquaintances as a very smart boy, one who is 
 sure to make his mark in the world. But it is still a very 
 dangerous thing ; for it is a little curious that one seldom 
 in after-life hears of these remarkable boys. They generally 
 sink into very commonplace people, after all. Too often they 
 are spoiled by injudicious flattery in early life. No boy, 
 however talented, whose working power is not well trained, 
 will ever accomplish much. In whatever line that work 
 may be, he must apply himself to it with an intense purpose, 
 a tireless industry. It is astonishing what can be ac- 
 complished by constant repetition, and how easy this repeti- , 
 tion makes any task. " Know thy work, and do it," says 
 Carlyle, " and work at it like a Hercules. One monster 
 there is in the world, an idle man." How many are the 
 men, for instance, who have accomplished anything memor- 
 able in the execution or creation of musical ideas, and 
 established their pre-eminence in the musical world in any 
 other way than by hard work 1 Students must rid them- 
 selves, observes a writer in one of our musical journals, of
 
 70 APPLICATION. 
 
 the notion that talent is everything. Talent is nothing 
 unless joined with earnest and well-directed endeavour. A 
 German pianist, he tells us, during the first few years of his 
 course devoted thirteen hours every clay to study. 
 
 What right, indeed, has any man to suppose himself 
 exempted from the old law of labour? "Linue labor et 
 mora," as Horace says, are essential to all real success. 
 " Young gentlemen, remember that nothing can stand days' 
 works," said President Wayland. Of this almost omnipo- 
 tent influence of simple, tireless industry, Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds has borne witness. He is one of the first men of 
 genius, says Horner, who has condescended to inform the 
 world of the steps by which greatness is attained. " The 
 confidence with which he asserts the omnipotence of human 
 labour has the effect of familiarizing his reader with the 
 idea that genius is an acquisition rather than a gift ; while 
 withal there is blended so naturally and eloquently the most 
 elevated and passionate admiration of excellence that upon 
 the whole there is no book of a more inflammatory effect." 
 Some of the striking utterances of Reynolds in this direction 
 are well known. " Whoever is resolved to excel in paint- 
 ing," he says, "or, indeed, in any other art, must bring all 
 his mind to bear upon that one object from the moment 
 that he rises till he goes to bed." At another time he said : 
 " Those who are resolved to excel must go to their work, 
 willing or unwilling, morning, noon, and night ; they will 
 find it no play, but very hard labour." Like Reynolds, 
 Michael Angelo was a great worker, and so was Titian. 
 One of the latter 's great works was eight years in hand, and 
 another seven. It has been truly observed that few realize 
 the amount of patient labour and long training involved in 
 the great works of the masters. They seem easy of accom- 
 plishment ; but the arduous toil with which this ease has 
 been acquired is frequently lost sight of. " You charge me 
 fifty sequins," said the Venetian nobleman to the sculptor,
 
 APPLICATION. 71 
 
 "for a bust that cost you only ten days' labour." "You 
 forget," said the artist, " that I have been thirty years learn- 
 ing to make that bust in ten days." 
 
 A habit of application, one might safely say, is really of 
 as much importance to almost any great man as is his genius. 
 Not that any amount of application, as has been justly 
 observed, can make a dull man brilliant ; but that without 
 steady application a brilliant man might almost as well be 
 dull, as far as anything that he is likely to accomplish is 
 concerned. Indeed, some have even gone so far as to declare 
 that perseverance is genius ; but this is hardly true. It 
 may well be called, however, " the right hand of genius." 
 That successful young real-estate broker seems to be mar- 
 vellously fortunate. Every move he makes is a lucky one. 
 With the utmost apparent ease he moves from one successful 
 transaction to another. There is no fuss, no hurry, no 
 demonstration, nothing done for effect ; yet his fine com- 
 missions continue to come rolling in, and men eager to 
 secure his services wait their turn, as one after another is 
 ushered into his private office. All this, to the superficial 
 observer, seems very enviable, surely, and a vastly easy 
 thing to do. But not all are aware that that genial and 
 affable young broker has so thoroughly mastered his business 
 that he has his hand continually on the pulse of the whole 
 city ; that not a new street has been opened, that, indeed, 
 there has been not one important transaction in real estate, 
 not a single piece of property has enhanced in value, for 
 many months, that has escaped his notice. That, added to 
 a profound insight into human nature, and a knowledge of 
 men, is a mastery of details, and a memory of facts, that 
 would astonish an indolent man. Occasionally a transaction 
 requiring apparently but a few hours' time rewards him 
 with a handsome commission of thousands. Men observing 
 only the brilliant result accomplished in so short a time 
 exclaim, " A lucky fellow !" There was nothing lucky
 
 72 APPLICATION. 
 
 about it. Behind that transaction was the generalship 
 that enabled him to manage men ; behind it, too, was the 
 sterling common sense and sound judgment that give men 
 confidence in each other ; and added to all this was a 
 certain keen sagacity, a shrewd observation which enabled 
 him to know when to move and when to wait, and an appli- 
 cation to details which placed within his grasp every fact 
 having in any wise an important bearing on the transaction, 
 from beginning to end. Thus, while his rivals were slowly 
 making up their minds, he had already closed the bargain. 
 You may say it was a stroke of genius. It was rather 
 genius and application combined. This it was which enabled 
 him successfully to make head against the bright and eager 
 fellows who were watching for the chance. The same is 
 true elsewhere. That rising young architect at whose quiet 
 bidding appeared those elegant houses and magnificent public 
 buildings which seem at once a marvel of strength and 
 a dream of beauty, as he so readily and easily suggests to 
 you this or that tasteful design for your new dwelling, is 
 not simply giving you the cursory suggestions which have 
 come to him with the passing moment. Behind those ideas 
 which impress you as so fitting and beautiful is a knowledge 
 of all the architecture of all the periods, past and present. 
 That man is familiar with the work and methods of every 
 architect of note, and with every order of architecture from 
 the beginning down. And this power, we affirm, comes 
 from application. 
 
 Csesar, a master in the art of speaking, as in many other 
 things, attained the position, Cicero tells us, by studious 
 application to the most intricate and refined branch of liter- 
 ature, and by careful and constant attention to the purity 
 of his style. And even the obstacles surmounted by Cicero 
 himself might well have daunted one not cast in heroic 
 mould. When in early years advised to give up public 
 speaking on account of the critical condition of his health,
 
 APPLICATION. 73 
 
 " I resolved," he says, " to run any hazard rather than quit 
 the hopes of glory which I had proposed to myself from 
 pleading." That chapter from his life in which he gives us 
 an account of the pains and labour undertaken to improve 
 his natural abilities in this direction is full of encouragement 
 and vastly entertaining. 
 
 As every one knows, Clay and Choate and Everett all 
 subjected themselves to the most laborious training. Even 
 that most brilliant effort perhaps of Mr. Webster's whole 
 life, his famous reply to Hayne, was, as we now know, all 
 carefully prepared beforehand, though seemingly at the time 
 impromptu. " I was riding with him," says his friend 
 Harvey, "one morning in 1846 or 1847, to attend a cattle- 
 fair at Dedham, when the conversation turned on different 
 ways of preparing speeches. He said that no man who was 
 not inspired could make a good speech without preparation ; 
 that if there were any of that sort of people, he had never 
 met them. He added that it had often been remarked that 
 he had made no preparation for the Hayne speech. ' That 
 was not quite so,' said he. ' If it was meant that I took 
 notes, and studied, with a view to a reply, that was not 
 true ; but that I was thoroughly conversant with the subject 
 of debate from having made preparation for a totally dif- 
 ferent purpose than that speech, is true. The preparation 
 for my reply to Hayne was made upon the occasion of Mr. 
 Foote's resolution to sell the public lands. Some years 
 before that, a senator from Alabama introduced a resolution 
 into the Senate proposing to cede the public domains to the 
 State in which they were situated. It struck me at that 
 time as being so unfair and improper that I immediately 
 prepared an article to resist it. My argument embraced the 
 whole history of the public lands and the Government's 
 action in regard to them. Then there was another question 
 involved in the Hayne debate. It was as to the right and 
 practice of petition. Mr. Calhoun denied the right of
 
 74 APPLICATION. 
 
 petition on the subject of slavery. Calhoun's doctrine 
 seemed to be accepted, and I made preparation to answer 
 his proposition. It so happened that the debate did not 
 take place, because the matter never was pressed. I had 
 my notes tucked away in a pigeon-hole, and when Hayne 
 made that attack upon me, and upon New England, I was 
 already posted, and only had to take down my notes and 
 refresh my memory. In other words,' said Mr. Webster, 
 ' if he had tried to make a speech to fit my notes he could 
 not have hit it better. No man is inspired with the occasion. 
 I never ivas.' " The inspiration of a great occasion is of little 
 value to any man, unless behind it all lies the great fact of 
 complete and thorough preparation. 
 
 One of the most successful of the great manufacturers of 
 fine papers in this country owes his success largely to the 
 fact that he has been familiar with the making of fine papers 
 from his boyhood, having practically learned every item of 
 the business by actual experience. He is thus in every 
 respect master of the situation in his fine establishment. 
 He knows the materials necessary, the exact quantity and 
 quality required, and is perfectly familiar with every detail 
 from the moment the crude ingredients enter the works, to 
 the moment when the completed product, in beautiful sheets, 
 rolls from the great " Fourdrinier," or leaves the calenders. 
 That he should be defrauded, or imposed upon with impunity, 
 is therefore out of the question. The moment he enters the 
 establishment, be it night or day, he seizes a sheet of the 
 paper, rapidly inspects and tears it. This test, under the 
 eye of the master, is conclusive of all the rest. If fault or 
 imperfection be discovered here if it cannot pass this ordeal 
 some one is forthwith called to account. Who will say 
 that the application which confers such mastery as this is of 
 no moment? Old Captain Fox used to say that in his 
 opinion the midshipmen at the Naval Academy ought to 
 begin as coal-heavers, at the very bottom of the ladder, and
 
 APPLICATION. 75 
 
 then work their way up. As it is, every one knows that no 
 line officer ever comes to the command of a ship " through 
 the cabin window." Asa midshipman he must " learn all the 
 ropes," and make himself perfectly familiar with every detail 
 concerning a man-of-war, and the way to manage her in 
 weather fair or foul. He is obliged to climb shrouds and to 
 man yards, to set and furl sail in winter's storm and sleet as 
 well as summer's calm. Thus he becomes the master. And 
 thus, though in after-years he may not have this work to do, 
 he thoroughly understands how it should be done, and the 
 sailors know it too. There must be no risk of blunders in 
 command to provoke the ridicule of the sailors or imperil all 
 on board. Moreover, practised skill is ever at a premium, 
 and commands appropriate recognition. Even the old tars 
 pay it fitting deference. It was noticed during the naval 
 operations of the Civil War that the old sailors obeyed with 
 ready alacrity the orders of even young officers fresh from 
 the Academy, while they were prone to question, if not to 
 resent, those of the ablest volunteer officers placed in com- 
 mand. A certain clannishness, characteristic of old seamen, 
 prompts them to yield a ready deference and cheerful recog- 
 nition to the skill which they never hope to emulate them- 
 selves. Moreover, there is the consciousness which the 
 trained officer has of his own superior power, which is the 
 principal thing after all. 
 
 Few careers are fuller of inspiration or offer greater in- 
 centives to young men than that of Charles Dickens ; and 
 no one will deny that Dickens was a man of genius. But 
 if any one imagines that this famous author relied upon his 
 genius alone for his great successes, a study of his life will 
 soon undeceive him. One night in London, while in the 
 zenith of his fame, he was presiding at a meeting of the 
 Newspaper Press Fund, and made reference to the hard work 
 of his earlier years as follows : " I went into the gallery of the 
 House of Commons as a parliamentary reporter when I was
 
 76 APPLICATION. 
 
 a boy not eighteen, and I left it I can hardly believe the 
 inexorable truth nigh thirty years ago; and I have pursued 
 the calling of a reporter under circumstances of which many 
 of my brethren here, and my brethren's successors, can form 
 no adequate conception. I have often transcribed for the 
 printer from my shorthand notes important public speeches 
 in which the strictest accuracy was required, and a mistake 
 in which would have been, to a yowig man, severely com- 
 promising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a 
 dark lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a 
 wild country, through the dead of the night, at the then sur- 
 prising rate of fifteen miles an hour. The very last time I 
 was at Exeter I strolled into the castle yard there to identify 
 for the amusement of a friend the spot on which I once 
 ' took ' an election speech of my noble friend Lord Russell. 
 It was in the midst of a lively fight kept up by all the 
 vagabonds in that vicinity, and under such pelting rain that 
 I remember two good-natured colleagues, who chanced to be 
 at leisure, held a pocket-handkerchief over my note-book, 
 after the manner of a state canopy in an ecclesiastical pro- 
 cession. I have worn niy knees by writing 011 them on the 
 old back row of the old gallery of the House of Commons, 
 and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a prepos- 
 terous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be 
 huddled like so many sheep." 
 
 One is reminded of a somewhat similar reference in 
 " David Coppertield " to these same hard-working days. 
 " The man who reviews his life," he says, " as I do mine, in 
 going on here from page to page, had need to have been a 
 good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp conscious- 
 ness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, 
 many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within 
 his breast and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, 
 I daresay, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is 
 that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all
 
 APPLICATION. 77 
 
 my heart to do well ; that whatever I have devoted myself 
 to, I have devoted myself to completely ; that in great aims 
 and in small I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I 
 have never believed it possible that any natural or improved 
 ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the 
 steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its 
 end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. 
 Some happy talents and some fortunate opportunity may 
 form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount ; 
 but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand 
 wear and tear, and there is no substitute for thorough-going, 
 ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to 
 anything on which I could throw my whole self, and never 
 to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was, I find 
 now to have been my golden rules." 
 
 It has been truly observed that few things are more 
 interesting, though few more difficult, than to trace the 
 growth of a book from its first conception till it develops 
 into full life and vigour. One is inclined often to ask, Was 
 such and such a book composed under the influence of sudden 
 inspiration, or was it the slow product of laborious thought ? 
 Was it written off at once without stop or stay, or was it 
 corrected and revised with years of anxious care ? Nothing 
 is easier than for one to be deceived in his estimate of the toil 
 implied in certain works seemingly easiest of achievement. 
 Tom Moore used to declare that he never expected to get 
 credit for half the toil expended on some of his airiest 
 poems. It is true, as a rule, that work which is not sub- 
 jected to careful revision is not likely to serve more than a 
 temporary purpose. Much care, as well as never-ceasing 
 diligence, is required on the part of those who aspire to do 
 work that seeks a permanent place in the world of literature. 
 James Payn, writing on success in fiction, frankly admits 
 that it is quite true that some of the most admirable poems 
 of our language have been written at a sitting, and under a
 
 78 APPLICATION. 
 
 strong impulse of the mind that falls little short of inspiration; 
 but it is an error, he says, to suppose that whole novels in 
 three volumes break forth from an author's imagination. 
 Any one who has read with care the lives of our great 
 novelists, he adds, must be aware indeed that quite the 
 contrary is the case. The idea, it is true, may be born after 
 that fashion, but the working it out involves toil and study, 
 the reading of unattractive books, travel, and a hundred in- 
 conveniences abhorrent to the indolent mind. Unhappily the 
 literary mind is naturally indolent. In many of what are 
 called the inferior works of our great writers failure is 
 distinctly to be traced, not to any falling off in the writer's 
 powers, but to that disinclination to take pains which comes 
 with advancing years, especially when accompanied with 
 popularity. " Sui-e of his audience, the author is too often 
 tempted to let this stand as it is, and that run as it will, 
 rather than trouble himself, as of old, to make sure of his 
 ground, to avoid discrepancies, or carefully to collect his 
 threads together at the close of his weaving." Elsewhere 
 he observes that among the items of success in fiction it may 
 not be wholly degrading to allude to that of finance ; and as 
 indolence detracts from excellence in literature, it is also apt 
 to diminish the profits to be derived from it much more than 
 in other callings. " In no other will a man who is bent on 
 success in it make it secondary, as men of letters so often do, 
 to that of pleasure. The rising barrister, ambitious to rise 
 higher as well as to fill his purse, will require something 
 much more tempting than a fine morning to make him give 
 up going to Chambers and pass the day in the country ; nor 
 does he permit the convivialities of the evening to keep him 
 till the small hours, and therefore to disorganize him for the 
 work of the ensuing day. It is recorded, indeed, of the 
 greatest wit that has ever set our tables in a roar, that he was 
 wont to send round on ' soda-water mornings ' to a fellow- 
 scribe for ' ink,' a euphemistic term implying a request that
 
 APPLICATION. 79 
 
 he would be so good as to do his work for him ; but though 
 the gentleman in question enjoyed a high reputation in 
 letters, he could scarcely be said to have been a conspicuous 
 example of material success. Even indisposition, which is 
 often only another name for disinclination for work, should 
 not be lightly permitted to interfere with literary labour-. If 
 once a man of letters permits the consideration of his not 
 feeling quite in the humour to excuse his taking holiday, he 
 will find that sort of inspiration occur to him pretty often. 
 Of course there are many examples of writers that have done 
 well for themselves in spite of this weakness, but they would 
 have done much better if they had not given in to it. It is 
 not too much to say that there have been more failures among 
 men of high promise in letters through neglect of this 
 common virtue of application than in any other calling." 
 
 It is true that no one can be taught to write a successful 
 work of fiction ; but it has been well observed that to suppose 
 success in this direction comes by accident or impulse, that an 
 author has only to sit with his pen in his hand and his eyes on 
 the ceiling waiting for the happy moment of inspiration, is 
 an equal mistake. Let it be remembered that without in- 
 finite capacity for taking trouble no good work is possible. 
 An English author tells us that a voluminous writer once 
 said to him, " Look at iny manuscript. There is hardly a 
 single correction in it, and this is my first draught. I never 
 copy, and I rarely alter a line." " It would have been uncivil 
 to say so," continues the author referred to, "but I could 
 not help thinking that botli author and public would have 
 been none the worse if my friend had altered a good many 
 lines, and recopied not a few pages." 
 
 This question of manuscripts is one worthy of careful 
 consideration. Some one has well remarked that certain 
 authors seem to think that any sort of " copy" is good 
 enough for the press ; but the truth of the matter is quite 
 $o the contrary. An untidy, useless, illegible manuscript
 
 80 APPLICATION. 
 
 is an offence to the publisher, dangerous irritation to the 
 "reader," and to the printer an absolute cruelty. Many 
 proof corrections, often made so wantonly and costing so 
 much trouble and money, are also to be severely condemned. 
 " Doubtless the genus .irritabile has its wrongs from hard- 
 headed and often hard-hearted men of business; but vol- 
 umes might be written about the worry, the loss, the actual 
 torment, that inaccurate, irregular, impecunious, and extrav- 
 agant authors are to that much-enduring and necessarily 
 silent class, their publishers." " For my sake, if not for 
 heaven's," writes Dickens to one of his contributors, " do, I 
 entreat you, look over your manuscript before sending it to 
 the printer." And again : " Please keep, on abrupt transi- 
 tions into the present tense, your critical eye." Colton affirms 
 that the great cause of the delight we receive from a fine 
 composition, whether it be in prose or in verse, is to be found 
 in the marvellous and magic power it confers upon the 
 reader, enabling an inferior mind, at one glance and almost 
 without an effort, to seize, to embrace, and to enjoy those 
 remote combinations of wit, melting harmonies of sound, 
 and vigorous condensations of sense, that cost a superior 
 mind so much perseverance, labour, and time. Moreover, 
 an author by rewriting his own thoughts will be enriched 
 beyond the mere weight of the words employed. Gibbon, 
 we are told, rewrote his "Memoirs" nine times ; Butler his 
 "Analogy," twenty; Brougham the peroration in his plea 
 for Queen Caroline, twenty; and Burke the conclusion of 
 his speech at the trial of Hastings, sixteen. 
 
 As one contemplates the works of certain authors, one 
 marvels at the toil of hand alone required to produce them. 
 Perhaps the most remarkable example on record is to be 
 found in the person of Lope de Vega. He " thought nothing 
 of writing a play in a couple of days, a light farce in an hour 
 or two, and in the course of his life he furnished the stage 
 of Spain with upwards of two thousand original dramas."
 
 APPLICATION. 81 
 
 Hallam calculates that this extraordinary man was the 
 author of at least twenty-one million three hundred thou- 
 sand lines. The most voluminous writer in modern times 
 is, undoubtedly, Robert Southey, whose acknowledged works 
 amount to no less than one hundred and nine volumes; in 
 addition to which he contributed fifty-two essays to the 
 " Annual Review," ninety-four to the " Quarterly," and to 
 minor magazines articles without number. After Southey 
 would come Voltaire and Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 It would, says Sydney Smith, in his " Culture of the 
 Understanding," be a profitable thing to draw up a short 
 and well-authenticated account of the habits of study of the 
 most celebrated writers. It would go far to destroy the 
 absurd and pernicious associations of genius and idleness, by 
 showing that men of the most brilliant and imposing talent 
 have lived a life of intense and incessant labour. "We should 
 discover that " rapt orations flowing free" have been worked 
 out like mathematical problems ; that fervid apostrophes have 
 been compiled, and that laborious dissertations have been 
 extemporized. Take Virgil, for instance. It was his cus- 
 tom, according to Donatus, to throw off a number of verses 
 in the morning, and to employ the rest of the day in polish- 
 ing and pruning them down. " It took him upwards of 
 three years to compose his ten short Eclogues, seven years to 
 write his Georgics, and upwards of twelve years to elaborate 
 the ^neid, which he was so far from regarding as complete 
 that he attempted to rise from his death-bed to commit it to 
 the flames." Every line of Horace bears testimony to the 
 fastidious labour of its author. There are, says Lord Lytton, 
 single odes which must have cost the poet six weeks' seclu- 
 sion from the dissipations of Rome. Lucretius's one poem 
 represents the work of a whole life ; and he has himself told 
 us how completely he was absorbed in it how it filled his 
 waking hours, how it haunted him in his dreams. Nothing 
 great and durable, says Tom Moore, has ever been produced
 
 82 APPLICATION. 
 
 with ease. Labour is the parent of all the lasting monu- 
 ments of this world, whether in verse or in stone, in poetry 
 or in pyramids. 
 
 A writer in "Temple Bar" furnishes a number of instances 
 illustrative of this infinite capacity for taking trouble, of 
 which we have spoken. Thucydides, he tells us, was at least 
 twenty years in inditing his great work. That work is com- 
 prised in an octavo volume. Demosthenes made no secret of 
 the pains he expended in forging his thunderbolts against 
 Philip. So fastidious was Plato that the first sentence in 
 the "Republic" was turned into nine different ways before 
 he could satisfy himself. Pope would spend whole days 
 over a couplet ; Charlotte Bronte, an hour over a word ; and 
 Gray, a month over a short copy of verses. There is a poem 
 of ten lines in Waller, which he has owned cost him a whole 
 summer. Gibbon wrote the first chapter of the " Decline 
 and Fall" three times before he was satisfied with it, and 
 nearly a quarter of a century elapsed before the entire work 
 was completed. John Foster, the essayist, would sometimes 
 linger a week over a sentence. Addison was so fastidious 
 that, Johnson tells us, he would stop the press to insert an 
 epithet, or even a comma. Tasso toiled like a galley slave at 
 polishing his stanzas. So morbidly anxious was Cardinal 
 Bembo about style, that every poem on which he was engaged 
 passed successively through forty portfolios, which represented 
 its various stages toward perfection. How Petrarch laboured 
 at his sonnets may be gathered from the following memo- 
 randa, which were found on the original manuscript of one 
 of them : " I began this by the impulse of the Lord, 10th 
 of September, at the dawn of day, after my morning prayers. 
 
 I must make these two verses over again, singing them 
 
 [cantandd], and I must transpose them." " Three o'clock A.M., 
 19th of October: I like this." "Thirtieth of October, ten 
 o'clock in the morning : No, this does not please me." 
 "Twentieth of December, in the evening I shall return
 
 APPLICATION. 83 
 
 to this again. I am called to supper." " Eighteenth of Feb- 
 ruary, toward noon : This is now well ; however, look at it 
 again." And this is the history of one sonnet. Sheridan's 
 dialogue was little better than mosaic-work, painfully dove- 
 tailed. Gray, Miss Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles 
 James Fox were conspicuously distinguished by their morbid 
 sensibility to the niceties of style. Some one speaking of 
 Fox declared that he wrote " drop by drop." It is not a little 
 strange, also, to find in this class old Izaak Walton, whose 
 simple, homely diction was, it appears, the result of almost 
 incredible labour. Even Goldsmith bemoaned the trouble 
 his graceful periods cost him. "Every one," he once said 
 bitterly, "writes better, because he writes faster than I." 
 The account given by Rousseau of the labour his smooth and 
 lively style cost him is so curious that we shall let him tell 
 his own tale : " My manuscripts, blotted, scratched, inter- 
 lined, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me. 
 There is not one of them which I have not been obliged to 
 
 transcribe four or five times before it went to press Some 
 
 of my periods I have turned, or re-turned, in my head for 
 five or six nights before they were n't to be put to paper." 
 
 Hume wrote thirteen hours a day while preparing his 
 " History of England." Montesquieu, speaking of one part 
 of his writings, said to a friend, "You will read it in a few 
 hours ; but I assure you it cost me so much labour that it 
 has whitened my hair." We have already referred to Sheri- 
 dan and the amount of labour expended on his comedies. It 
 has been well observed that hardly any form of composition 
 seems as easy as a good comedy, and yet such an estimate 
 would be far out of the way. Take the " School for Scandal," 
 for instance. How many of those who smile at the spark- 
 ling dialogue would believe the amount of thought and labour 
 it cost ? The characters were altered and recast again and 
 again. Many of the speeches put into the mouths of Sir 
 Peter and Lady Teazle, we are told, are so shifted and re-
 
 64 APPLICATION. 
 
 modelled from what they were in the first rough draught that 
 hardly a word stands in the same order as originally written. 
 Coming down to more recent times, we find the same to 
 be true of our modern dii majores. Dr. Holmes is said to 
 write very slowly and correct a great deal. He is never 
 tired of mending or improving. Longfellow was accustomed 
 to write very slowly, though with little difficulty of compo- 
 sition. He used a lead pencil, and carefully weighed every 
 word before putting it down. It is said he sent beautiful 
 manuscript to the printers, with hardly an erasure in it ; but 
 by the time the "revise" was taken, very little of the orig- 
 inal was left. It is asserted that the whole of the " Divine 
 Tragedy" was rewritten after most of it was in type. When 
 Tennyson sits down to write he gives strict orders that he 
 shall not be disturbed. In his work he is deliberation per- 
 sonified, sometimes spending hours on a single line. Emer- 
 son was accustomed to spend the forenoon in his study with 
 constant regularity. He was a diligent, slow, and pains- 
 taking worker. The best materials of his freshest hours of 
 thought were preserved, and slowly recast and put into form 
 in the quiet of his study. His striking sentences are the 
 result of most persistent labour. " They were all carefully 
 revised again and again, corrected, wrought over, portions 
 dropped, and new matter added. He was unsparing in his 
 corrections, striking out sentence after sentence. Even whole 
 paragraphs disappear from time to time. His manuscript is 
 everywhere crowded with erasures and corrections. Scarcely 
 a page appears that is not covered with these evidences of 
 his diligent revision." One of his biographers tells us 
 that the published essays were often the results of many lec- 
 tures, the most pregnant sentences and paragraphs alone 
 being retained. "His apples were sorted over and over 
 again, until only the very rarest, the most perfect, were left. 
 It did not matter that those thrown away were very good, 
 and helped to make clear the possibilities of the orchard;
 
 APPLICATION. 85 
 
 they were unmercifully cast aside. His essays were conse- 
 quently very slowly elaborated, wrought out through days, 
 and months, and even years, of patient thought." 
 
 Parton, writing of N. P. Willis, says for the benefit of 
 young writers: "I may add that Mr. Willis never slighted 
 his work, but bestowed upon everything he did, even upon 
 slight and transient paragraphs, the most careful labour, 
 making endless erasures and emendations. On an average 
 he erased one line out of every three that he wrote, and on 
 one page of his editorial writing there were but three lines 
 left unaltered." Henry James is said to be very fastidious 
 about construction, and rewrites until his manuscript is 
 almost illegible. "I have never known," says one in writ- 
 ing of him, "a more painstaking author than Mr. James. 
 Notwithstanding his great talents and acquirements, he has 
 not an overweening confidence, even in his ability to con- 
 struct a sentence properly. He corrects and revises every 
 page until his manuscript is totally illegible to any one but 
 himself." One of his friends asserts that George W. Cable 
 is one of the most absorbed of literary workers. He is a 
 thorough believer, he tells us, in the theory that labour is 
 more powerful than genius. Like Pope, he makes correc- 
 tions even when his manuscripts are in the hands of the 
 printer. He once telegraphed to his publisher to change a 
 certain sentence which he had found capable of improve- 
 ment. Let aspiring young writers note that this extreme 
 care about the little details of phraseology is a characteristic 
 of all whose works do not sink into obscurity a few months 
 after birth. "A flowing style appears spontaneous to the 
 reader; but oialy those who have worked in the field of letters 
 themselves know of the erasures, the turning of sentences 
 and clauses, and the many rewritings that evolve the delights 
 of the printed page. As old Ben Jonson said, ' Easy writing 
 makes hard reading.'" 
 
 George Eliot is said to have worked harder on " Romola"
 
 86 APPLICATION. 
 
 than on any of her other books. In her own words, " I 
 began it a young woman I finished it an old woman ; " and 
 yet but about seventeen months were consumed in writing 
 it. One is reminded of Robert Stephenson's remark con- 
 cerning the Britannia Bridge. He declared that he grew 
 old ten years while he was building it. For weeks before it 
 was finished he could get no continuous sleep, such was his 
 wearing anxiety. He was initiating a new era of engineer- 
 ing, and was most wakeful and vigilant, that no element 
 might be overlooked in his careful computations. 
 
 Any one familiar with the rehearsals of a great oratorio 
 knows how "blue" and discouraging the outlook often seems, 
 particularly on the night of final rehearsal. The singers are 
 tired and listless, mistakes are frequent, the patience of con- 
 ductor and chorus alike sorely tried, and a total depravity of 
 affairs in general seems to prevail. Everything apparently 
 is "going to the dogs." One unaccustomed to such a state 
 of things would instantly predict inevitable and signal failure. 
 How surprising to such shall seem the brilliant success when 
 at length the eventful night arrives ! Those wearisome 
 rehearsals have not been in vain. Knowledge, accuracy, the 
 assurance and conviction of the manner in which each pas- 
 sage ought to be rendered, in a word, the mastery of the 
 oratorio has been gained. Drill and application have con- 
 ferred it these alone. It needs simply "the breath of great 
 occasion " to give the finishing touch, the needed inspiration 
 that is all. And as the perfect harmonies of the "Creation" 
 or the inspiring strains of the "Hallelujah Chorus" surge 
 out over the vast and delighted assembly, one instantly per- 
 ceives the significance and value of application and discipline 
 and drill 
 
 One sometimes hears the familiar excuse given for inaction 
 that one is waiting for his mood. This waiting for moods is 
 liable to rob one of many valuable moments. Especially is 
 this true regarding young men. It is safe to say that such
 
 APPLICATION. 87 
 
 a state of ruind should always be closely scrutinized. It may 
 transpire that such an excuse is only another name for 
 laziness. Anthony Trollope declared it all stuff and non- 
 sense for one to wait for moods ; and even Johnson main- 
 tained, as we know, that one could force himself to produce 
 good work at any time, if he would only set himself doggedly 
 at it. " Cogenda mens est ut incipiat," says Seneca. Com- 
 pulsion, doubtless, must be often used. As has been truly 
 observed, some of the best writing in the world is that which 
 is done on our first-class daily journals. Yet, as every one 
 knows, the "leader" must be written on the minute, and 
 often, as for instance when an important telegram has come 
 in late at night, against time. No journalist can habitually 
 wait for a writing mood. No one, moreover, can realize 
 more fully than an editor at the head of a great journal how 
 all-important and invaluable to one in such a position is the 
 possession of the utmost possible learning. Information on 
 all sorts of subjects cannot be amiss, and no item of know- 
 ledge is liable to prove itself useless or superfluous to its 
 possessor. "I was a college graduate before I was a re- 
 porter," said the editor of one of the great daily newspapers 
 lately. " But if I could have stopped work after I had been 
 two years in the office, and gone back to study international 
 law, history, and languages, it would have been worth a 
 large capital to me. A man does not know what he ought 
 to know until he has been at actual work in journalism for 
 a year or two." In this profession, as in every other, the 
 increasing demands of the age require wide study and inces- 
 sant work. 
 
 While it is undeniably true that the mind must often be 
 driven to its task, it is also true, doubtless, that in works of 
 the imagination the best results are only to be attained 
 when the worker is in the best of moods. But genius is a 
 law unto itself. Thackeray, it is said, would scribble page 
 after page of manuscript, and tear each one up. In this
 
 88 APPLICATION. 
 
 style he would court his mood for an hour or two. Suddenly it 
 would respond ; then he would dash off a dozen or more pages at 
 a sitting. Hawthorne's moods were capricious. There would 
 be weeks, we are told, in which he could write scarcely a 
 paragraph that he thought worth preserving. It is related 
 of Lowell that he used to walk about the house talking to 
 himself. He sometimes kept this up for days, and then 
 suddenly retired to his study. When he reappeared, his 
 work was finished. 
 
 It is curious to note in this connection what an aversion 
 certain world-famous authors have had to entering upon 
 their self-imposed tasks. They proved themselves splendid 
 workers, but at the same time seem to have dreaded the 
 work. Foster, the essayist, was one of these. While his 
 brilliant essays were so successful and so much admired, he 
 yet had almost to be driven to the task of composition. 
 Charles Kingsley, that noble worker, once wrote in a book 
 kept for the autographs of literary men, "Any sort of work," 
 in answer to the question, "What do you dislike most?" 
 Bryant may also be cited. Browne tells us that, although a 
 journalist, and accustomed to daily writing, Bryant was not 
 fond of literary composition, and seldom attempted it unless 
 there was something he particularly wanted to say. Poetry 
 with him was not only a labour of love, but a love of labour. 
 He composed with the greatest difficulty, owing to an extreme 
 fastidiousness that refused to be satisfied. Like Pope and 
 Campbell, he was always anxious to alter and revise, and 
 was ever finding what he conceived to be happier ways of 
 expression. It is said he wrote " Thanatopsis " a hundred 
 times, and that even after publication he had a copy of the 
 poem with various changes from the published form. It 
 used to be often asked why Bryant did not write more, but 
 those who knew him well did not wonder. Poetry with him 
 was "a mental agony." He took as much pains over his 
 lines as Jean Jacques did over his prose, or Tennyson over
 
 APPLICATION. 89 
 
 his verse. He almost invariably, we are told, declined to 
 furnish poems for college commencements, public occasions, 
 and national festivals. The only instance, perhaps, of his 
 departing from this established rule of his life was when he 
 furnished two short poems to the " Ledger," for which Mr. 
 Bonner paid him the unusual sum of three thousand dollars. 
 "I know a score of clever fellows in the vicinity of Printing 
 House Square," remarks Browne, in writing of him, " who 
 would write a drama, half a dozen pieces of verse, a story, 
 two or three columns of paragraphs, and a score of letters, to 
 the country press, while Bryant was inditing a short poem. 
 I am bound to say, however," he quietly adds, " his work 
 would better bear critical examination than theirs." One 
 is reminded by these instances of Grant's "Let us have 
 peace," or of that declaration in his speech at London in 
 1877: "Although a soldier by education and profession, I 
 have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have 
 never advocated it, except as a means of peace." The man 
 of war, indeed, as Badeau says of him, always preferred 
 peace. He never liked his profession. In England, when 
 the Duke of Cambridge offered him a review, the courtesy 
 was declined ; and Grant declared to his intimates that a 
 review was the last thing he desired to see. 
 
 No man, says Inness, the painter, can do anything in art 
 unless he has intuitions ; but between whiles one must work 
 hard in collecting the materials out of which intuitions are 
 made. Dante produces an immortal poem, in which both 
 heaven and earth are brought under tribute, and which he 
 says kept him lean many years, and involved immense study 
 and toil. Such a masterpiece was a work of untiring industry 
 as well as inspiration. Goethe said of one of his ballads, 
 " Whole years of reflection are comprised in it, and I made 
 three or four trials before I could bring it to its present 
 shape." One of Tennyson's lines was quoted in his presence 
 as a happy instance of a natural expression of a spontaneous
 
 90 APPLICATION. 
 
 thought, when the poet said, " I smoked a dozen cigars over 
 that line;" and Tom Moore confesses to almost incredible 
 toil in collecting his material for " Lalla Rookh." 
 
 Then, too one may as well admit it men are naturally 
 indolent. They love to take their ease, and are therefore 
 averse to active effort. This capacity for mental labour, 
 combined with reluctance to undertake it, is not uncommon. 
 An indolent, capable man, as already noted, finds it painful 
 to set his mind in motion. His inertia must be overcome 
 by a force outside of himself. Poverty has often proved a 
 great stimulus in this direction. Sir Samuel Romilly, the 
 greatest Chancery lawyer of his day, we are told, worked up 
 to an income of ten thousand pounds a year, equivalent to 
 more than twenty thousand pounds in these days. When 
 he began his professional life he had a small fortune, and 
 thought of buying with it the lucrative position of the clerk 
 of the court. But his father was in straitened circumstances, 
 and the son generously turned the money over to him and 
 went to work. His subsequent success at the bar, as he 
 himself wrote, arose out of the pecuniary difficulties and 
 confined circumstances of his father. When Lord Eldon 
 began his practice at the Chancery bar as John Scott, Lord 
 Chancellor Thurlow promised him a commissionership of bank- 
 ruptcy. But the promise remained unfulfilled, for a reason 
 which Lord Thurlow afterwards gave thus : " Jack, I with- 
 held it as a favour to you. I saw that you had ability, but 
 that you were naturally indolent, and that only want could 
 make you industrious." Indeed, Lord Eldon himself used 
 to say that the first requisite for distinction as a barrister 
 was "to be not worth a shilling." 
 
 How many college-bred men seem to have derived little or 
 no benefit from superior advantages enjoyed ! And one need 
 not often seek far to find the reason. They have shirked or 
 idled instead of working. They have passed through the 
 routine, it is true, and after a fashion have taken everything
 
 APPLICATION. 91 
 
 laid down in the college curriculum. But what has been 
 achieved? What have they to show for it? A "sheepskin," 
 perhaps, and possibly even that only by a stroke of singular 
 good fortune. They have not added to their mental fibre ; 
 they have never really known what genuine study means ; 
 they have dreaded application, and since there is no other 
 road to success, they have missed their way. Men who 
 never enjoyed the privilege of a college education have far 
 outstripped them. It has been truly said that the ranks of 
 our thinkers and literary workers are constantly recruited 
 by those who owe success to their own exertions. Many of 
 our brilliant scientists, our most polished writers, are, as we 
 say, self-made men. Howells was his own instructor; Hugh 
 Miller had few opportunities of attending school, so called ; 
 Faraday never graduated at a university, yet he left a name 
 of which all Englishmen are justly proud. Professor Gosse, 
 of Cambridge University, England, we are told, was educated 
 at home under the careful supervision of his mother, a lady 
 of rare culture and force of character. Disraeli never went 
 either to a public school or a university. If circumstances 
 are such that a young man cannot avail himself of the 
 advantages of a great school, let him not lose heart. 
 
 How large a majority of even college men, let us ask, 
 know from actual experience what that sort of study means 
 of which Bailey gives so graphic a portrayal in " Festus " ? 
 Some there are who will recognize the picture. Says 
 Festus, 
 
 " I know what study is: it is to toil 
 Hard through the hours of the sad midnight watch, 
 At tasks which seem a systematic curse 
 And course of bootless penance. 
 
 ***** 
 Wring a slight sleep out of the couch, and see 
 The self-same moon which lit us to our rest, 
 Her place scarce changed perceptibly in heaven, 
 Now light us to renewal of our toil.
 
 92 APPLICATION. 
 
 This to the young mind, wild and all in leaf, 
 
 Which knowledge, grafting, paineth. Fruit soon comes, 
 
 And more than all our troubles pays us powers ; 
 
 So that we joy to have endured so much ; 
 
 That not for nothing have we slaved and slain 
 
 Ourselves, almost." 
 
 That kind of study always tells, and one may set it down 
 as a rule that has few exceptions, that the successful man 
 is one who has " disciplined himself and made a sacrifice." 
 Nor let one conclude, because he cannot secure a whole 
 day, it will therefore be of little use to save the fragments. 
 Even an hour a day would in seven years be equivalent to 
 well-nigh a whole year's study ; and who will say that this 
 is of small account 1 Moreover, what one learns thoroughly 
 when young he retains through life. " Read Coke on Lit- 
 tleton again and again," was Lord Chancellor Eldon's ad- 
 vice to young lawyers. "If it be toil and labour to you, 
 and it will be so, think as I do when I am climbing up to 
 Swyer, or West Hill, that the world will be before you 
 when the toil is over ; for so the law will be, if you make 
 yourself complete master of that book." As Lucretius puts 
 it, a falling drop at last will cave a stone. 
 
 John Stuart Blackie declares that he never knew a man 
 good for anything in the world, who, when he had a piece 
 of work to do, did not know how to stick to it. And he 
 refers to the poet Wordsworth as giving, in his " Excursion," 
 as a reason for going on with his mountain perambulation 
 when the sky began to look cloudy, that though a little rain 
 might be disagreeable to the skin, the act of giving up a 
 fixed purpose in view of a slight possible inconvenience is 
 dangerous to the character. " There is much wisdom here," 
 continues Blackie. " We do not live in a world in which a 
 man can afford to be discouraged by trifles. A friend of mine, 
 making the ascent of Ben Cruachan, when he reached what 
 he imagined to be the top, found that the real peak was two 
 miles farther on to the west, and that the road to it lay
 
 APPLICATION. 93 
 
 along a rough stony ridge not easy for weary feet to tread 
 on. But this was a small matter. The peak was being 
 enveloped in mist, and it was only an hour from sunset. 
 He wisely determined to take the nearest way down ; but 
 what did he do next day ? He ascended the Ben again, and 
 took his dinner triumphantly on the topmost top, in order, 
 as he said, ' that the name of this most beautiful of 
 Highland Bens might not for ever be associated in his 
 mind with bafflement and defeat.'" This sort of a man, 
 depend upon it, will succeed in everything he undertakes. 
 Moreover, haste or shamming always betrays itself. All 
 successful men come at length to know that there is a certain 
 quality of attainment, whether it be in art, or science, or 
 letters, which always and unmistakably represents, no 
 matter what the native genius, that " long scorning of 
 delights and living of laborious days" without which the 
 highest success is impossible. Some seem to think that 
 success in painting, for instance, is something to be acquired 
 at a single bound. They remind one of the illustration given 
 by Hunt, the artist, with a touch of quiet humour, con- 
 cerning the parents of certain young ladies who are ever 
 anxiously on the look-out for evidences of elaborative and 
 accomplished work. " This much-admired finish," says 
 Hunt, " is like the architecture that the countryman said 
 was going to be put on his house by a Boston man 
 after it was built" Elsewhere he says, "Real finish must 
 be of the same quality as real beginning." It is for ever 
 true that great artists win their matchless power only 
 through years of "that long travail of effort wherewith great 
 gifts have birth, and through the priceless discipline of true 
 training." This confers the artist's skill and knowledge. 
 Then, at length, " strong and sure as the Atlantic tides 
 sweeping up the shore," comes the inspiration with all its 
 " hidings of power." 
 
 The same rule of application holds in the business world.
 
 94 APPLICATION. 
 
 Successful business men tell us that success in commercial 
 life depends upon certain essential qualifications, a char- 
 acter, for instance, in which are found indomitable resolution 
 and power of rigid application. These are looked upon by 
 the experienced as good as capital ; sometimes better. 
 " Without them the merchant will be beaten as the mercan- 
 tile contest thickens and the heat of the business day 
 advances. The young merchant can afford to be without 
 coat and shoes (as many have been), but not without these 
 grand and substantial elements of a business character." 
 One of the most successful of English lawyers was Pemberton 
 Leigh, Baron Kingsdown. In a privately printed work 
 which he left a most entertaining volume he gives us his 
 recollections in Parliament and at the bar. He retired 
 from both at the age of fifty. He refused to be Solicitor- 
 General ; he refused to be Lord Chancellor. For twenty 
 years he was one of the greatest judges of the final court 
 of appeals. A peerage he never took pay was the only 
 reward he would accept from his country. After the 
 touching picture which he gives us of the poverty and 
 hard work of his early life, he significantly adds : " It 
 was the severe preparation for the subsequent harvest. I 
 learned to consider indefatigable labour as the indispensable 
 condition of success, pecuniary independence as essential 
 alike to virtue and happiness, and no sacrifice too great to 
 avoid the misery of debt." 
 
 It will be well for a young man to rid himself early of 
 the idea that it is by books alone, or by books chiefly, that 
 he is to advance in intellectual power. Many a man has 
 loaded himself down so completely with the works of other 
 men, that they have crushed out all originality in him 
 and proved a useless burden. If a young man cannot go 
 through college or university without losing all his native 
 power and individuality ; if he have not strength enough 
 in himself to make all else subservient to real growth, to
 
 APPLICATION. 95 
 
 assimilate the stores of learning offered him by other men, 
 it were well to count the cost before engaging in such a 
 venture. The main thing, after all, is not so much to cram 
 one's self with other men's opinions as to have matured and 
 well-digested convictions of one's own. The aim should be 
 to train the working power in one's self. Carlyle, in a letter 
 of advice to a young friend concerning the books he was 
 to read, used these words : " Study to do faithfully what- 
 soever thing, in your actual situation there and now, you 
 find either expressly or tacitly laid to your charge : that 
 is your post. Stand to it like a true soldier. A man per- 
 fects himself by work much more than by reading. They 
 are a growing kind of men who can wisely combine the 
 two things, wisely, valiantly can do what is laid to their 
 hand in their present sphere, and prepare themselves, 
 withal, for doing other wider things, if such lie before 
 them." .And let it not be forgotten that the surest avenue 
 of escape from an uncongenial position, if a man find him- 
 self thus circumstanced, is not to lie down and bemoan his 
 fate, but to throw himself so lustily into his work that it 
 shall be seen by every one that his place is so manifestly 
 more than filled, as to suggest his fitness for a larger field. 
 It has been justly observed that the lawyer who rises to 
 conduct a difficult case in his leader's absence, the surgeon 
 who has a sudden chance presented to him, must have had 
 long preparatory training before he can skilfully avail him- 
 self of any sort of emergency. He must have been in the 
 habit of relying on himself. No way has been found for 
 making heroism easy, even for the scholar, says Emerson. 
 The world is nothing but a mass of means : 
 
 " We have but what we make, and every good 
 Is locked by nature in a granite hand, 
 Sheer labour must unclench. 
 
 ***** 
 The blowing winds are but our servants 
 When we hoist a sail."
 
 96 APPLICATION. 
 
 The extraordinary power of application which certain 
 men have at times displayed seems truly marvellous. 
 When Horace Greeley established the Tribune, Henry J, 
 Raymond went into the office as associate editor, at the 
 princely salary of eight dollars a week, and working, on an 
 average, about thirteen or fourteen hours a day. Greeley, 
 who was a perfect fanatic himself concerning labour, and 
 who thought that a man only ordinarily industrious was a 
 mere drone, actually urged Raymond not to work so much ; 
 and he was the only person the editor-in-chief of the 
 Tribune ever found it necessary to remonstrate with on that 
 account. In September 1851, the first number of the 
 Times was issued, Raymond being editor-in-chief, and it is 
 reported that he had over twelve columns of his own matter 
 in the initial issue. He was always a very fluent and easy 
 writer, and it used to be said in the office, that if the clays 
 were a little longer Raymond would write up the whole 
 paper. He was reckoned the most versatile writer on the 
 New York press. One of his most remarkable perform- 
 ances was his article on the death of Daniel Webster. It 
 filled nearly fifteen columns of the Times, was written at 
 one sitting, and in the incredibly short space of twelve 
 hours. 
 
 While in Boston, during his second visit to America, 
 Dickens kept himself strictly secluded from all but one or 
 two old and intimate friends. He remained in his rooms 
 at the Parker House, busily engaged all day in writing and 
 study, except when engaged in taking his daily walk of six 
 or eight miles. Much of his time was spent in the most 
 laborious, painstaking study of the parts he was to read. 
 The public, as we are assured by the best authority, had 
 but little idea of the cost, in downright hard work, of mind, 
 body, and voice, at which his readings were produced. In- 
 deed, we are told that although Mr. Dickens had then read 
 nearly five hundred times, he never attempted a new part
 
 APPLICATION. 97 
 
 in public until he had spent at least two months over it, in 
 study "as faithful and searching as Rachel or Cushman 
 would give to a new character." This, we are further 
 assured, extended not merely to the analysis of the text, to 
 the discrimination of character, to the minutest points of 
 elocution, but the facial expression, the tone of the voice, 
 the gesture, the attitude, and even the material surroundings 
 were determined upon. He was so conscientious that he 
 left nothing .undone that time and labour could do to give 
 to the public, that paid so much for the pleasure of hearing 
 him, the full worth of its money. " I am come here to 
 read," he said. " The people expect me to do my best ; and 
 how can I do it if I am all the time on the go 1 My time is 
 not my own when I am preparing to read, any more than it 
 is when I am writing a novel ; and I can as well do one as 
 the other without concentrating all my power on it till it is 
 done." Thus we see, as has been truly observed, that his 
 consummate ability was not acquired, or acquirable, without 
 great labour and perseverance. It often took him three 
 months, we are told, to become perfect in a new scene ; and 
 his bodily exhaustion after a night's reading was always 
 great. The same painstaking conscientiousness is true of 
 Salvini. " When I first became acquainted with him," says 
 one of his friends, " I was of opinion that his interpretation 
 of ' Hamlet ' was based only upon the translated text ; but 
 in the course of a very long conversation on the subject I 
 discovered that he was well acquainted, through literal 
 translations, not only with the text, but also with the notes 
 and comments of our leading critics. The costumes worn by 
 Salvini in ' Othello ' are copied from those depicted in 
 certain Venetian pictures of the fifteenth century in which 
 several Moorish officers appear. It took him many years 
 to master this role, and he assured me that he could not 
 play it more than three times in succession without ex- 
 periencing terrible fatigue. ' It is a matter of wonder to me,'
 
 98 APPLICATION. 
 
 he observed, ' that English actors can play a great character 
 like this so many nights in succession, and above all that 
 they retain self-possession while the fidgety noise of scene- 
 shifting is going on behind them.' Speaking about dramatic 
 elocution, he said : ' The best method is obtained by close 
 observation of nature, and above all by earnestness. If 
 you can impress people 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.' " 
 
 Handel was an indefatigable worker, and so was Haydn. 
 " Work," said Mozart, " is my chief pleasure." Meyerbeer 
 worked fifteen hours a day, and the " Huguenots," the 
 " Prophete," and his other brilliant works, bear witness to 
 the value of their author's application to his art. Domeni 
 chino was once blamed for his slowness in finishing a picture 
 which had been ordered. "I am continually painting it 
 within myself," was his reply. Say what one may, the 
 most effective genius is the genius of hard work. The first 
 Napoleon was a tremendous worker ; he was never idle. 
 At midnight, just before one of his most critical and 
 decisive battles, "which had already been fought through 
 in his own brain just as the thunderbolt of a hundred 
 thousand men which he was about in a few hours to hurl 
 from his right hand actually fought it through the next day," 
 he was found sitting in his tent and drawing up an elaborate 
 course of study for Madame Campan's young ladies' school ! 
 
 It is curious to note the various expedients which have 
 been adopted by hard workers in order to obtain that seclu- 
 sion so necessary to securing the best results of one's work. 
 M. D. Conway once, visiting Paris, found Mark Twain 
 hidden away in Millet's studio finishing one of his books. 
 It is told of Professor Anthon, that one summer, wishing to
 
 APPLICATION. 99 
 
 devote himself uninterruptedly to his " Classical Dictionary," 
 he had a room fitted up in the attic of his residence, and 
 callers were invariably told that the professor was " taking 
 his summer vacation." It is related of Greeley that when 
 he was writing his "American Conflict" he found it neces- 
 sary to conceal himself somewhere, to prevent constant in- 
 terruptions. He accordingly took a room in the Bible 
 House, where he worked from ten in the morning until five 
 in the afternoon, and then appeared in the sanctum seem- 
 ingly as fresh as ever. Beggars, politicians, reformers, 
 counsel-seekers, all pursued him so persistently that at length 
 his sanctum on the editorial floor was demolished and a den 
 prepared for him in the " impenetrable recesses in the 
 vicinity of the counting-room." Many a one attempted to 
 find him even there, but the result of the search was usually 
 " a mingled groan and malediction, amid the howling dark- 
 ness of the press-room," this, and nothing more. 
 
 Of all the heroisms of history, nothing is more striking 
 than the record of the almost herculean tasks which have 
 at times been performed under the inspiration of a pure 
 and romantic attachment, or of that wifely affection which 
 reveals so unmistakably " the beauty and strength of woman's 
 devotion." In the account given by Sir William Napier 
 of the immense service rendered him by his wife in the 
 composition of his work on the " History of the Peninsular 
 War," he tells us that when the immense mass of King 
 Joseph's correspondence, taken at Vittoria, was placed in 
 his hands, he was dismayed at finding it to be a huge 
 collection of letters, without order, and in three languages, 
 one of which he did not understand. " Many also were in 
 very crabbed and illegible characters, especially those of 
 Joseph's own writing, which is nearly as difficult to read as 
 Napoleon's. The most important documents were in cipher, 
 and there was no key. Despairing of any profitable ex- 
 amination of the materials, the thought crossed me of giving
 
 100 APPLICATION. 
 
 up the work, when my wife undertook, first to arrange the 
 letters by dates and subjects, next to make a table of refer- 
 ence, translating and epitomizing the contents of each ; and 
 thus, without neglecting for an instant the care and educa- 
 tion of a very large family, she did it in such a simple and 
 comprehensive manner that it was easy to ascertain the 
 original document in a few moments. She also undertook 
 to decipher the correspondence, and not only succeeded, but 
 formed a key to the whole, detecting even the nulls and 
 stops, and so accurately, that when, in the course of time, 
 the original key was placed in my hands, there was nothing 
 to learn. Having mentioned this to the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, he seemed at first incredulous, observing that I must 
 mean that she had made out the contents of some letters. 
 Several persons had done this for him, he said, but none 
 had ever made out the nulls or formed a key ; adding, ' I 
 would have given twenty thousand pounds to any person 
 who would have done that for me in the Peninsula.'" 
 When we consider, says one in commenting upon the mag- 
 nitude of the achievement, the immense deal of labour 
 involved, the ingenuity requisite to bring order out of con- 
 fusion, it stands as perhaps the most wonderful record of 
 wifely love ever known. " No pleasure lured her from the 
 task ; no sunshine dancing without wooed her from the 
 still solitude of the room where, patient, constant, unwearied, 
 she pondered over the dark hieroglyphics, all for the love 
 of him to whom she was so precious a helpmate, companion, 
 and friend." The wife of Nathaniel Bowditch, the trans- 
 lator of Laplace's " Mecanique Celeste," was a woman of 
 great piety and sweetness of disposition. He frequently 
 declares that had it not been for her encouragement and 
 sympathy he could not have carried on the work. Dr. 
 Hitchcock of Amherst College pays a similar tribute to 
 his " Beloved Wife," in the dedication of his " Religion of 
 Geology."
 
 APPLICATION. 101 
 
 It is undeniably true that in that fine quality which 
 " hopes and endures and is patient," which is ever so promi- 
 nent a factor in all distinguished success, womanhood is un- 
 surpassed. In illustration of this, many notable instances 
 might be given. Mrs. Reeves tells us that a certain prima 
 donna refused to sit down at all on a day when she was 
 to sing. " No, she would walk around the room, talking 
 perhaps, singing perhaps, sometimes very busy with her 
 needle and thread, but never sitting down the livelong day 
 until the performance was all over. I remember well 
 enough," she continues, "how, on the morning of a per- 
 formance, Jenny Lind, Mr. Reeves, Mr. Goldschmidt, and 
 myself were in the room ; and during the morning Jenny 
 Lind and my husband were never still, passing each other, 
 with music in hand, singing and practising, and intent on 
 the work before them. ' Why, Jenny,' said Mr. Gold- 
 schmidt, ' you must have sung those songs many times ; 
 surely there is no need of all this.' But remonstrance was 
 in vain. Suppose you had called to see Jenny Lind," 
 she adds, " on a day when she was singing. She would 
 probably come into the room with a bundle of music in her 
 hand, put it on a chair and sit down upon it, talk away 
 pleasantly enough for a few minutes, turn to a passage in 
 one of the pieces and hum it over. Having satisfied herself 
 of her correctness, she would replace it and sit down again 
 as calmly as possible, and resume the conversation at the 
 point it was broken off." Who doubts that in this unwearied 
 patience and persistence and application are to be found, in 
 great part at least, the secret of that brilliant success of the 
 "Swedish Nightingale" of which our fathers never tire of 
 telling ? 
 
 We sometimes hear, says Legouve", that certain great 
 artists made their own voices. The expression is incorrect. 
 No one can make a voice who has not one to start with, and 
 this is proved by the fact that the voice is perishable. No
 
 102 APPLICATION. 
 
 voice would ever be lost, could it be made at will ; but it 
 may be changed, it may gain body, brilliancy, and expres- 
 sion, not only from a series of gymnastics adapted to 
 strengthen the whole organ, but from a certain method of 
 attacking the note. Additional notes may also be gained by 
 study. On one occasion the famous Malibran, when sing- 
 ing the Rondo from " Sonnambula," finished her cadenza 
 with a trill on D in alt, running up from low D, thus em- 
 bracing three octaves. These three octaves were no natural 
 gift, but the result of long and patient labour. After the 
 concert some one expressed his admiration of her D in alt, to 
 which she replied, "Well, I've worked hard enough for it. 
 I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued it everywhere, 
 when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair ; and at last 
 I found it in the toe of a shoe that I was putting on." Von 
 Bulow once declared that if he omitted practice for a single 
 day, he himself could perceive the effect of it upon his play- 
 ing ; if he omitted it for two days, his friends could perceive 
 it ; and if for a longer period, the public would notice it. 
 That old German inscription on a key, " If I rest, I rust," 
 would seem to be as true of men as of iron. 
 
 Of the great musicians, Beethoven probably surpassed all 
 others in painstaking fidelity and application. " Audacious 
 and impassioned beyond every one," says Grove, "the mo- 
 ment he takes his pen in hand he becomes the most cautious 
 and hesitating of men. It would almost seem as if this great 
 genius never saw his work as a whole until it actually 
 
 approached completion There is hardly a bar in his music 
 
 of which it may not be said with confidence that it has been 
 rewritten a dozen times. Of the air, ' O Hoffnung,' in 
 ' Fidelio,' the sketch-books show eighteen attempts, and of 
 the concluding chorus, ten." Of many of the brightest gems 
 of the opera, says Thayer, the first ideas are so trivial that it 
 would be impossible to admit that they were Beethoven's if 
 they were not in his own handwriting. And so it is with all
 
 APPLICATION. 103 
 
 his works. His favourite maxim was : " The barriers are 
 not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, 
 'Thus far, and no farther.'" Mozart tells us that his 
 melodies came to him of themselves, he knew not whence ; 
 and yet it is well known that Mozart was also a great 
 worker. 
 
 Many have doubtless been struck with the graphic 
 descriptions of natural scenery and surroundings in the 
 works of William Black ; but not every one is aware of the 
 manner in which these well-nigh photographic delineations 
 are produced. "We have known him in windy weather," 
 says a recent writer, "shut up in the forecastle of a seven- 
 ton yacht under full sail, diligently doing his -hour's writ- 
 ing he only works so much every day while the debris 
 of the forecastle was rattling around him and the ropes 
 whistling above his head. Much of the fidelity of Mr. 
 Black's descriptions of nature is due to the fact that they 
 are actual transcriptions taken down at the moment under 
 all sorts of difficulties." The world calls these persons men 
 of genius. But no native ability relieves them from the 
 necessity of earnest and persistent application to whatever 
 they undertake. How little conception has the public 
 generally of the infinite pains taken by some of our great 
 lawyers when an important suit is pending, or how faint an 
 idea of the amount of labour performed ! Men look on and 
 marvel as they perceive how unmistakably and how easily, 
 to all appearances, the great advocate proves himself master 
 of the situation; but few have any adequate idea of the 
 secret of it all, or of the amount of toil involved. A lawyer 
 of large practice is compelled by his cases to master subjects 
 in almost every department of knowledge. An incident 
 illustrative of this is told in the life of Lord Lyndhurst. He 
 was employed as counsel in a case which related to Mr. 
 Heathcote's famous invention of the bobbin -net machine. 
 That he might conduct the case successfully, he determined
 
 104 APPLICATION. 
 
 to understand the working of the machine. Accordingly 
 he went to Nottingham, and took his place in the mill at 
 one of the looms. He did not leave it till he could make 
 a piece of bobbin-net with his own hands, and understood 
 perfectly the details of manufacture, as well as its principles. 
 When the case came on in court he produced a model machine 
 and worked it with such ease and skill, and explained the 
 nature of the invention with such clearness, that judge, jury, 
 and spectators were alike astonished. He gained the case, 
 because, in the opinion of all, he had mastered the details and 
 principles of the invention. It is related of Daubray, a 
 French actor, who was to play a butcher's part in a recent 
 piece, that he rose early every morning for weeks to visit the 
 market and observe how the butchers cut their meats. The 
 famous Gavarni spent his days in observation of the manners 
 of different social classes. He even got his tailor to have 
 him arrested, that he might make a study of the prisoners in 
 a Paris jail. His restless eyes were ever on the watch for 
 material. He sat frequently on a bench in the Tuileries, or 
 before a cafe, with a pencil concealed in his hand and his 
 little book at his side. Never be afraid of taking pains/ 
 What finer motto could a young man adopt than that 1 Rest 
 assured of one thing, if you will not take pains, pains will 
 take you, as Whately wittily observes. 
 
 According to all accounts Meissonier, the great French 
 artist, possesses this splendid trait. It was he who received 
 from A T. Stewart sixty thousand dollars for one of his 
 paintings. He almost always paints from a model. " Here," 
 said he to a visitor recently, as he took up a small wax figure, 
 " is the model of a horse prancing. It would have been im- 
 possible to draw direct from nature, so I had a horse brought 
 around here and made to prance while I modelled him in 
 wax. It was a terrible job. I had the horse brought here 
 every morning for four weeks, before the image was perfect ; 
 but it is finished now, and I can draw from it at my leisure.
 
 APPLICATION. 
 
 105 
 
 You see, too, I had a miniature set of harness made and 
 fitted on the image, so as to have every strap and buckle just 
 right. Here is another figure of a horse rolling upon the 
 ground as if struck by a shot. It is for a battle scene. I 
 had them throw a horse down and make him roll and 
 struggle while I modelled him, and they had to do it more 
 than a score of times." 
 
 Wherein lies the secret of the great superiority of certain 
 well-known products in the market over others apparently the 
 same, but which one finds upon examination to be far inferior 1 ? 
 One of the leading New York dailies some time since gave 
 an admirable answer to this question, as follows : " Simply 
 because they are made by people who know more than any 
 other people in the world engaged in the same work. They 
 put more brains into their work than others do ; they are 
 intelligent enough to know the value of care, intelligent 
 enough to be conscientious about employing it, intelligent 
 enough to know how to employ it with skill to produce the 
 best results." And does it not pay ? 
 
 Two or three generations ago a member of a family now 
 well known in Massachusetts determined to develop the in- 
 dustry of paper-making in this country. By application, per- 
 sistency, and thrift he laid the foundation of a great fortune. 
 His sons and grandsons, inheriting the same fine qualities, 
 and maintaining the highest standard of excellence in manu- 
 facture, received the contract for making the first " Green- 
 backs," and now send their elegant papers to all parts of the 
 world. In a eulogy on Jeremiah Mason, before the Suffolk 
 bar, Mr. Webster said : " I will not say of the advantages 
 which I have derived from his intercourse and conversation 
 all that Mr. Fox said of Edmund Burke ; but I am bound to 
 say that of my own professional discipline and attainments, 
 whatever they may be, I owe much to that close attention to 
 the discharge of my duties which I was compelled to pay for 
 nine successive years, from day to day, by Mr. Mason's efforts
 
 106 APPLICATION. 
 
 at the same bar. Fas est ab hoste doceri ; and I must have 
 been unintelligent, indeed, not to have learned something 
 from the constant displays of that power which I had so 
 much occasion to see and feel." 
 
 ]STo young man need bemoan the fact of his having but a 
 meagre library. It has often been the case that the finest 
 work has been done by possessors of the fewest tools. In 
 fact, in these days it would seem that one's danger lies in 
 just the opposite direction. Amid the multiplicity of cheap 
 books, one is in danger of becoming surfeited, and allowed 
 little opportunity to think for himself, or to thoroughly 
 digest any one of the many works thrust upon him. The 
 reading and re-reading of a single volume has been the 
 making of many a man. The thorough mastery of one great 
 book will at times reveal powers of thought in the student 
 of which he never dreamed. One is apt to dissipate his 
 strength if he attempts to spread himself over too large a 
 surface. Instances are not uncommon of a single picture, 
 for instance, thoroughly mastered, having a great influence 
 in the training and development of an artist's genius. To a 
 Velasquez, a portrait of the Due d'Olivarez, which the Earl 
 of Elgin lent him, that he might study it while yet a young 
 artist, Sir Francis Grant ascribed much of his after success. 
 
 Let a young man, then, at the outset of his career resolve 
 that he will, by all fair means at his disposal, conquer his 
 place in the world, and deserve success even if he does not 
 reach it. Let him neither shrink nor shirk, but make up his 
 mind to pay full price. " The gods sell anything and to 
 everybody at a fair price." Let him not despise recreation, 
 but not give it undue prominence in his calculations ; learn 
 to regard it rather as a means to an end. " Rest is not what 
 I want," said an eminent surgeon, "but strength." More- 
 over, to secure one's right to amusement and recreation, as 
 Lord Brougham says, one must pay an honest price, which 
 is a good day's work. Learn, like Caesar, to count nothing
 
 APPLICATION. 107 
 
 done if anything remains to be done. Remember always 
 that without the desire and the pains necessary to be con- 
 siderable, you never can be so. " What a wretched, insig- 
 nificant, worthless creature any one comes to be," writes 
 Sterling to his son, " who does not as soon as possible bend 
 his whole strength, as in stringing a stiff bow, to doing what- 
 ever task lies before him ! " Life, it has been asserted, begins 
 with renunciation, and "the angel of Martyrdom is brother 
 to the angel of Victory." Have a purpose in life, a distinct 
 aim, some goal of honourable achievement ever before you, 
 and let nothing daunt or turn you aside. Be not easily re- 
 pulsed. A publisher once wrote to an agent, " If you work 
 hard two weeks without selling a book, you will make a 
 success of it." The idea was that by so doing he would show 
 himself to have that perseverance which would enable him to 
 triumph over all obstacles, and would insure him success in 
 any undertaking. This is what Greeley termed the " genius 
 of persistence." Remember, too, that we "acquire the 
 strength we have overcome." Great success, depend upon it, 
 is ever the fruit of great labour. Moreover, if wealth and 
 royalty even are not exempt, why should any one expect to 
 be? Francis Joseph of Austria is one of the hardest of 
 workers. He is always at his desk at five o'clock in the 
 morning. Signing papers, and other business, keeps him 
 occupied till eleven o'clock. Then he has a lunch. He 
 then returns to work, remaining till four o'clock. At that 
 hour he dines. The two young Vanderbilts, Cornelius and 
 William K., the present heads of the family, are both great 
 workers. One is first vice-president and head of finance of 
 the Hudson River Railroad ; the other is second vice-president 
 and master of transportation. Each knows his business thor- 
 oughly. The most striking thing about either of them, it is 
 said, is the fact that they work as hard as if they were hired 
 by the job, which they are by the way, and that they are 
 perfectly democratic, and accessible to anybody who has
 
 108 APPLICATION. 
 
 business with them. When Cornelius was twenty he was 
 made a clerk, at the bottom of the ladder, and his youngest 
 brother, William K., was put at work in the same office the 
 next year. " For more than eighteen years now they have 
 bowed down to it in that great concern, and they are far 
 better trained than their father ever was in all the details of 
 the business." 
 
 When the famous light-house, Pharos, was built, its archi- 
 tect was commanded to place the king's name upon it. He 
 did so, but first cut his own name deep in the rock and cov- 
 ered it with cement. When the latter had hardened he 
 inscribed thereon the name of the king. The storms and 
 billows at length wore this away, leaving the name of the 
 architect permanently carved in the solid rock. The super- 
 ficial student is simply working upon cement ; the real worker, 
 the true scholar, upon the solid rock. The results achieved 
 by the one are but transient and fleeting ; the work of the 
 other shall endure. "Life is short, art long, opportunity 
 fleeting, experiment slippery, judgment difficult." These 
 first words of the medical aphorisms of the wise Hippocrates, 
 as Blackie tells us, were set down as a significant sign at the 
 porch of the benevolent science of healing more than five 
 hundred years before the Christian era ; and they remain 
 still the wisest text which a man can take with him as a 
 directory into any sphere of life. " Thy life," says Carlyle, 
 and he never wrote anything finer nor more true, " wert 
 thou the pitifullest of all the sons of earth, is no idle dream, 
 but a solemn reality. It is thy own. It is all thou hast to 
 confront eternity with. Work, then, like a star, unhasting, 
 yet unresting."
 
 IV. 
 
 Ube Single 
 
 " The undivided will 
 
 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings 
 A human music from the indifferent air." 
 
 " The wind never blows fair for that sailor who knows not to what port 
 he is bound." 
 
 " Do right, and fear no one. Thou mayest be sure that with all thy con- 
 sideration for the world, thou wilt never satisfy the world. But if thou 
 goest forward straight on thy way, not concerning thyself with the 
 friendly or the unfriendly glances of men, then thou hast conquered the 
 world, and it is subject to thee." 
 
 "!F thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of 
 light," is the familiar declaration of Holy Writ. Words 
 more true were never uttered. Is not here one secret, at 
 least, of the vast difference in men as regards success in life ? 
 There are many men alert and active enough, if that were 
 all, but somehow all they do amounts to nothing. They 
 seem perpetually running to waste. They form great proj- 
 ects, and toil terribly, but there is no great underlying 
 purpose. It is this which makes every stroke tell. One 
 can see with half an eye that something more than mere 
 activity is needed. Of what avail to fill your granary with 
 the fruits of harvest if it is all to be destroyed by rats and 
 vermin ? A man ought not merely to act, but to act with a 
 purpose. Purpose and persistency are ever essential to the 
 highest success. It was said of the first Napoleon that in 
 conversation he always went directly at the heart of a
 
 110 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 subject, whatever it might be. With an unerring instinct 
 in investigation, he would strike at the soul of a mystery, 
 and unravel it, caring little for unimportant particulars. 
 Hosvever this may have been concerning his conversation, 
 we know that it was pre-eminently true concerning his con- 
 duct of the art of war. He won his victories chiefly by 
 rapid concentration of his forces on a single point of the 
 enemy's line. A wise and eager hunter is sure to select the 
 fattest of a herd, and, leaving the rest, to pursue and capture 
 that one. The value of a burning-glass lies in its power to 
 focalize a mass of sunbeams on one point ; and the secret of 
 success in any direction consists in having one thing to do, 
 and doing it. A vigorous writer calls a lack of purpose 
 among men mental shiftlessness. Nothing is more noticeable 
 in men who have achieved great ends than a certain persist- 
 ency which nothing seems able to daunt. Defeated, perhaps, 
 times without number, they yet clung to their ideal, pursuing 
 by night and by day the object dear to their hearts, until at 
 length they were crowned with success. It is for ever true 
 that the martyrs of one age become the heroes of the next. 
 Contumely, slander, ridicule, abuse what are these to a soul 
 throbbing with a great ideal ? They are simply not to the 
 purpose ; they must stand aside. There are men, moreover, 
 as Emerson says, who rise refreshed on hearing a threat. 
 What sight more thrilling than that of a human being 
 absorbed, taken possession of by some grand conception, 
 and forgetting everything else until the daring achievement 
 is wrought 1 It is " the quiet lightning deed " that these 
 men prize, not " the applauding thunder at its heels which 
 men call fame." The fame is sure to come, but not because 
 it is run after, as Longfellow has well said. Before such 
 men civilization strides onward ; remote nations become 
 neighbourhoods ; rivers are spanned, mountains tunnelled, 
 broad oceans become ferries, and the world itself is trans- 
 formed into a vast whispering-gallery. The products of
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. Ill 
 
 every clime are at our very doors. Comforts, conveniences, 
 and even luxuries come trooping into the homes of the 
 common people, and men bask in the sunshine of prosperity, 
 forgetful often that it was simply the single eye, the strenuous 
 purpose of a great soul, that wrought it. It is well for us 
 that such souls are not easily daunted or intimidated. 
 Fulton can well afford to bide his time, even though his 
 great achievement be looked upon for the day as simply his 
 folly. To-morrow sets him right. Stephenson remonstrated 
 with by his sceptical neighbours, and triumphantly asked if 
 it would not be embarrassing should a cow invade the track, 
 quietly replies that it would be embarrassing indeed " for the 
 coo." Field crosses and recrosses the stormy Atlantic. Ten 
 years of defeat and failure cannot daunt him. On the heels 
 of all comes the unlooked-for barrier of a great civil war. 
 At length that cable is laid, and Europe and Asia are at our 
 very doors. The labours of Hercules, indeed ! Mr. Field 
 in his great enterprise, we are told, crossed the ocean nearly 
 fifty times. His perseverance conquered ; and now ocean 
 telegraphy unites all continents, and brings the East and the 
 West together to talk around one fireside. Then, too, if 
 ever a moment approached the sublime, it was that in which 
 the veteran Morse sat at his instrument on the stage of the 
 great hall in New York and sent his message around the 
 world. It would be difficult to find an instance to equal it 
 in grandeur. Never, surely, has man approached so near to 
 divinity in his control of material forces as this. There is 
 that within the soul of these men which sleeps not night or 
 day until its end is gained. As Gilfillan finely said of 
 Napoleon, he was profound, as well as brilliantly successful. 
 Unlike most conquerors, his mind was big with a great 
 thought which was never fully developed. He was not 
 raised, as many have stupidly thought, upon the breath of 
 popular triumph. It was not chance that made him king, 
 or that crowned him, or that won his battles. " He was a
 
 112 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 cumulative conqueror. Every victory, every peace, every 
 law, every movement, was the step of a giant stair winding 
 toward universal dominion. All was systematic, all was full 
 of purpose, all was growingly progressive. No rest was 
 possible. He might have noonday breathing-times, but there 
 was no nightly repose. ' Onward ! ' was the voice ever sound- 
 ing behind him. Nor was this the voice of his nation, ever 
 insatiate for novelty and conquest; nor was it the mere 
 ' Give, give ' of his restless ambition. It was the voice of 
 his ideal, the cry of his unquenchable soul. He became the 
 greatest of warriors and conquerors, or at least one of the 
 greatest, because, like a true painter, he came down upon 
 the practice of his art from a stern and lofty conception or 
 hypothesis to which everything must yield. As Michael 
 Angelo subjected all things to his pursuit and the ideal he 
 had formed of it, painted the Crucifixion by the side of a 
 writhing slave, and, pious though he was, would have broken 
 up the true cross for pencils ; so Napoleon pursued his ideal 
 through tempests of death-hail and seas of blood, and looked 
 upon poison and gunpowder and men's lives as merely the 
 box of colours necessary to his new and terrible art. When 
 we try Napoleon," he continues, " by human standards, and 
 compare his scheme with that of other conquerors, both seem 
 transcendently superb. He saw clearly that for Europe 
 there was no alternative between the surges of anarchy and 
 the absolute government of one master mind. He saw that 
 what was called ' balance of power ' was a feeble and useless 
 dream, and that all things in Europe were tending either to 
 anarchy or a new absolutism ; either to the dominion of 
 millions, or of that one who should be found a match for 
 millions. He thought himself that one. His iron hand 
 could in the first place grasp the great sceptre, and his wise 
 and powerful mind would afterward consolidate his dominion 
 by just and liberal laws. 'On this hint he spake' in 
 cannon. This purpose he pursued with an undeviating
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 113 
 
 energy, which seemed for a season sure and irresistible as 
 one of the laws of nature." 
 
 It seems amazing to the casual observer that any one 
 man could exert so prodigious an influence over his fellow- 
 men. Power like this has a singular fascination for all of 
 us. The wizard enchanter engraved his name not only on 
 the stones and marbles of the capital, but on the very heart 
 of France. " Cut an inch deeper," said a member of the 
 Old Guard to the surgeon who was probing his wounds, " and 
 you will find the emperor" meaning in his heart. Now, 
 what was the secret of this man's power 1 One secret, surely, 
 was his marvellous faculty of concentration the single eye. 
 A keen observer would have discovered this trait when the 
 obscure and untitled boy was studying mathematics at Brienne 
 no less truly than when, a few years later, all Europe was 
 trembling under the measured tramp of his armies. 
 
 Take another instance. Two hundred years ago, in north- 
 western Europe, a conglomeration of barbarous tribes were 
 striving each for the supremacy. Presently a man appears 
 a man with a great purpose. He was of the Romanoff 
 family. His own right arm and trusty sword were all his 
 equipment. But he resolves from the first to make himself 
 master of the situation. He is determined his country shall 
 be respected among foreign powers. This one purpose takes 
 full possession of him. To compass this end he leaves no 
 stone unturned. He travels abroad to gain the requisite 
 knowledge. We find him in London perfecting himself in 
 matters of government, finance, and commerce. Again he 
 appears working at the trade of a common ship-carpenter at 
 the naval yards of Saardam in Holland. He perfects him- 
 self in all the accomplishments requisite to a great ruler. 
 He is determined to lift up his people socially and politically. 
 He puts a premium on skill and learning wherever found. 
 By liberal rewards he induces men of rare accomplishments 
 in all directions to reside in his dominions. No price is too 
 (79) 8
 
 114 THE SINGLE EYE, 
 
 great, no toil too arduous, so long as his end is gained. 
 Now, note the result. " The silent rivers and widespread 
 lakes of Muscovy are suddenly made white with the sails of 
 trade ; her vast plains are covered with waving crops of 
 golden grain. The magnificent city of St. Petersburg, with 
 its marble palaces, arises like magic out of the icy swamps 
 of the Neva. A powerful navy issues from the unfre- 
 quented ports of the Baltic, and Europe is astonished by 
 the sudden apparition of a gigantic sovereignty, with its 
 powerful and disciplined armies, its numerous and well-ap- 
 pointed fleets, entering into a fierce and victorious conflict 
 with the veteran troops of Sweden, headed by Charles XII." 
 And all this due to the concentrated might of one man 
 Peter the Great ! 
 
 It is this " undivided will" which works miracles. It is 
 men of this stamp who "change the front of the world." 
 How in contrast to these appears the Jack at all trades and 
 master of none one sees on every hand ! The attempted 
 versatility of certain men reminds one of the sign in an 
 obscure London shop window "Goods removed, messages 
 taken, carpets beaten, and poetry composed on any subject ;" 
 or of that one in Paris of a certain Monsieur Kenard, who 
 announces himself as " a public scribe, who digests accounts, 
 explains the language of flowers, and sells fried potatoes." 
 
 All who have watched the careers of their schoolfellows 
 must have noted how often the brilliant member of his 
 class has succeeded in after life only in making of himself 
 a brilliant failure ; while the commonplace plodder, whose 
 horoscope was far from bright or promising in those earlier 
 years, has easily overtaken and passed his more favoured 
 rival. One need not look far to find the secret of it all. 
 With those who have failed there is almost sure to be found 
 the inevitable factor of shiftlessness. Easily dissatisfied, 
 they have drifted from one vocation to another, veritable 
 rolling stones, until all purpose and energy and stamina have
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 115 
 
 disappeared, and they have finally found themselves forced 
 by sheer necessity into the occupations and drudgeries of 
 mere menials. It is the old story of the lump of gold con- 
 tinually bartered with ever-increasing ill fortune until the 
 poor old grindstone, received in final exchange, is precipi- 
 tated by a crowning stroke of ill luck into the stream. Many 
 a man of respectable parts to begin with has thus frittered 
 his life away. One must learn to take into reckoning " the 
 long result of time," and not alone mere present gain. May 
 we not discover right here, too, an explanation of that which 
 has often puzzled more than one of us namely, the fact 
 that so many men of fine scholarship and much erudition are 
 so often inefficient, and fail to impress themselves in any 
 wise upon their fellows ? They have stores of learning, but 
 it is like lumber in a garret it is not available. They seem 
 not to know how to use it or to make it effective. And so 
 they remain apart from the great, busy, throbbing life of 
 men, like driftwood or leaves that have been whirled into an 
 eddy by the rushing tide, and left behind ; or like stranded 
 ships upon a bar, splendidly built and finely equipped, but 
 comparatively useless unless some power can be found to float 
 them. Or, to change the figure, they remind one of the 
 great Corliss engine at the Exposition perfect in every 
 part, but useless until the band is on and the connection 
 formed. Somehow, with most of these men, the band is 
 never on. 
 
 How ponderous that mass of wheels and rods and levers 
 on yonder railway ! How immense the weight, how motion- 
 less ! Who can stir it ? But stay ! Let the engineer once 
 open that throttle, and see ! she stirs ! she rouses herself ! 
 All those mighty, hidden forces, which remind one more of 
 omnipotence than all else which the hands of man have 
 chained, begin to assert their sway, and lo, what power! 
 A las ! in these men of whom we are speaking, this force, so 
 essential, seems for ever lacking. The one great requisite
 
 116 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 never comes. The omission is a fatal one. It is the pres- 
 ence of a great, controlling, all-absorbing purpose, that shall 
 make effective all the rest. It is the single eye ; it is the 
 undaunted will, bringing into subjection all the other powers, 
 and making them pay it tribute. Storrs has given us a fine 
 picture of this. " See the lawyer," he says, " before a jury 
 in a case where his convictions are strong and his feelings 
 are enlisted. He saw long ago, as he glanced over the box, 
 that five of those in it were sympathetic with him; as he 
 went on, he became equally certain of seven : the number 
 now has risen to ten ; but two are still left whom he feels 
 that he has not persuaded or mastered. Upon them he now 
 concentrates his power, summing up the facts, setting forth 
 anew and more forcibly the principles, urging upon them his 
 view of the case with a more and more intense action of his 
 mind upon theirs, until one only is left. Like the blow of 
 a hammer, continually repeated till the iron bar crumbles 
 beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion 
 on that one mind till it has yielded and accepts the convic- 
 tion on which the pleader's purpose is fixed. Men say after- 
 ward, ' He surpassed himself.' It was only because the 
 singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and overpowering 
 energy to the mind." 
 
 It is this faculty, then, of throwing ourselves with un- 
 divided power upon the immediate work in hand, whatever 
 it be, of which we speak, This power enables a man to 
 forget himself and his surroundings, to lose sight of all that 
 preceded and all that shall follow the one great absorbing 
 task which has come with the hour and confronts him. As 
 Sydney Smith says of study, the only valuable kind is "to 
 read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before 
 you expected it ; to sit with your Livy before you and hear 
 the geese cackling that saved the Capitol, and to see with your 
 own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of 
 the Roman knights after the battle of Cannae, and heaping
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 117 
 
 them into bushels ; and to be so intimately present at the 
 actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the 
 cloor, it will take you two or three seconds to determine 
 whether you are in your own study or in the plains of Lom- 
 bardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beaten face, and admir- 
 ing the splendour of his single eye." This is concentration 
 this is power, and the source of still greater power. This attri- 
 bute it is that sends the soul straight to its object. It is De- 
 mosthenes swaying his listening auditory. He tells them of 
 their wrongs, of the injustice done them, of the tyranny of 
 their oppressor, until, swayed to and fro, rocked with swell- 
 ing passions and emotions like a forest rocked beneath the 
 sway of the storm when the whirlwind is abroad, they cry 
 out in passionate utterance, with curved lip and blanched 
 cheek and clenched fist, " Let us march against Philip ! " 
 It is Brinsley Sheridan resolved on the impeachment of 
 Hastings, and bringing every point to bear in that marvel- 
 lous speech until he carries the day. It voices itself in 
 Perry's famous "We have met the enemy, and they are 
 ours ! " Its presence is unmistakable, and where it exists 
 success may be predicted with almost the certainty of fate. 
 Napoleon, being told that the Alps stood in the way of his 
 armies, exclaims, "There shall be no Alps!" and the won- 
 drous road of the Simplon is built. Given this attribute in 
 a man's character in its fullest manifestation, and there is no 
 limit to his possibilities of accomplishment. It takes pos- 
 session of the boy Warren Hastings, as he lies upon the 
 grass under the trees of the old ancestral estate at Dayles- 
 ford, which had passed into other hands, and confers a power 
 that makes the dream of this boy one of those dreams that 
 come true. 
 
 Lowell, in one of his "Biglow Papers," makes the Rev. 
 Homer Wilbur say : " People are apt to confound mere 
 alertness of mind with attention. The one is but the flying 
 abroad of all the faculties to the open doors and windows of
 
 118 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 every passing rumour ; the other is the concentration of 
 every one of them in a single focus, as in the alchemist over 
 his alembic at the moment of expected projection. Atten- 
 tion is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is 
 accumulated genius." It is well to keep this in mind. 
 Doubtless one great obstacle to this singleness of aim, or 
 concentration, is the mistaken impression that one must 
 know almost everything. One thus, by attempting to spread 
 himself over too large a surface, soon finds that he is able 
 to do nothing really as it should be done. Here was the 
 one striking weakness of Coleridge ; and Sir James Mack- 
 intosh, according to all accounts, must be placed in the same 
 category. Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Mr. Grat- 
 tan, " You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, 
 if you would buy a few yards of red tape and tie up your 
 bills and papers." Sydney Smith, referring to the remark, 
 declares that this was the fault or the misfortune of Mack- 
 intosh. " He never knew," he tells us, " the use of red 
 tape, and was utterly unfit for the common business of life. 
 That a guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and -that 
 it would barter for a quantity of cloth, he was well aware ; 
 but the accurate number of the baser coin, or the just mea- 
 surement of the manufactured article to which he was en- 
 titled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible 
 to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of the 
 ancient and melancholy struggle of genius with the difficulties 
 of existence." 
 
 Matthew Arnold has truly said that we have not time nor 
 strength to deal with half the matters which are thrown upon 
 our mind, and they prove a useless load to us. A paragraph 
 recently went the rounds of the press, headed, " Never For- 
 get Anything." This prompted a rejoinder from one of the 
 most brilliant representatives of New York journalism on 
 "The Use of Forgetfulness." It is an old proverb, he says, 
 " Da mihi, Domine, scire quod sciendum est." And he further
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 119 
 
 notes the instance of the great Grecian general Themistocles, 
 who, when some one spoke to him of an art of memory, 
 answered, "Teach me rather to forget This happily illus- 
 trates," he continues, "the disparity between what we re- 
 ceive in our minds and what we have use for. The truth 
 is, the great want of the day is concentration. Instead of 
 acquiring that which we can digest and retain, our education 
 is undertaken as if our life were endless, and our power of 
 attention and recollection inexhaustible. It is not the om- 
 nivorous reader who makes his mark in the world or best 
 does his work, but the man who concentrates his faculties 
 on those especial subjects which come up before him in his 
 life-work. When Agassiz was asked for his opinion touching 
 a matter which bore upon the chemical analysis of a plant, 
 he replied, ' I know nothing about chemistry,' and refused 
 to give an opinion. He was a naturalist, not a chemist. It 
 would be well to imitate the example of the great naturalist. 
 Life is short ; time is fleeting. The channels of knowledge 
 run wider and deeper than ever before, and multiply a thou- 
 sand-fold. It is but an infinitesimal part of the vast treasury 
 of knowledge that man can grasp and use. The mind itself 
 can retain but a given quantity ; and just as we thin out the 
 useless books of our libraries that we may appropriate the 
 space to volumes of lasting worth, as we pull up the weeds 
 in our garden that the flowers may find room to grow, so it 
 is well for us to get rid of our mental weeds, and by using 
 the means of forgetfulness relieve ourselves of the useless 
 rubbish which encumbers the mind and hinders the growth 
 and development of a true culture." 
 
 If you have anything to say, condense it ; make it brief 
 and strong. When the famous Dr. South was asked if 
 he was going to preach a short sermon, he said, " No ; I 
 have not had time to prepare one." A clear, condensed 
 statement, in the pulpit or out of it, means hard work and 
 thorough preparation. " If you want to do substantial
 
 120 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 work, concentrate ; and if you want to give others the 
 benefit of your work, condense." 
 
 The fact is, in order to attain to the highest success, one 
 must learn early in his career that there are many things 
 that are to be resolutely pushed aside. The vision becomes 
 blurred, the energies weakened, by attempting to compass 
 too wide a field. "It is always good to know something," 
 was a wise utterance of one of the wisest of men. But by 
 this he did not mean to assert that mere indiscriminate 
 knowledge is always good. It is undeniably true that 
 division of attention is with most men death to enthusiasm 
 and success. "Beauty," declared Michael Angelo, "is the 
 purgation of superfluities." To know, then, what wisely to 
 omit, what resolutely to exclude from the realm of one's 
 knowledge, is no small achievement. It is this that reveals 
 the master. The laboured and useless acquirements of some 
 men, and their ponderous and inefficient movements, remind 
 one of Sir Robert Peel's description of a certain kind of 
 eloquence, " The smallest possible quantity of common 
 sense enveloped in the greatest multitude of equivocal 
 words." 
 
 One, then, must rigorously choose and maintain his 
 specialty, in order to achieve any real success. This single- 
 ness of purpose reveals itself at once. It is manifest in all 
 that a man does. It is not easy of imitation. The bold 
 front, the confident mien, may be assumed, but no one is 
 deceived by it. One easily discovers a lurking falter in the 
 tone, a hesitancy in the speech, a something in the glance 
 which brings betrayal. All sincere and simple souls speak 
 and act from the centre. While others are vacillating, they 
 go directly to their object. Where the single eye is wanting, 
 there is a tremor in the lip, a lagging in the gait, an in- 
 decision, subtile but unmistakable, in the whole presence and 
 air and bearing. There is "mud behind the eye." The 
 ' open sesame " of the true prince is honoured at once, but
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 121 
 
 woe to the pretender. How many are the might-have- 
 beens ! Right here, probably, lies the -secret of many a 
 failure. These took one hand to their work, instead of 
 throwing their whole strength upon it and their whole heart 
 into it. How many such might have been giants who are 
 only dwarfs ! How many a one has died " with all his 
 music in him ! " How many a mute inglorious Milton sleeps 
 unknown because of failure just here ! It is a lamentable 
 fact, but one which must often have been noticed, that the 
 children of those who have raised themselves to social 
 position and influence by their own personal effort, almost 
 invariably waste what their parents have saved. Superior 
 advantages and brighter prospects are on the side of the 
 children. There appears no good reason why they should 
 not occupy even a higher place than their wise and per- 
 severing fathers. In reality they come to nothing. Take 
 that case of the younger Cicero, for instance, or the son of 
 Chesterfield ; the one with all his advantages a mere " dry 
 pump with no suction ; " the other, little more than a block- 
 head : in both, the great purpose wanting. There is much 
 truth in that remark of Cassius : 
 
 " The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
 But in ourselves, that we are underlings." 
 
 One is perpetually reminded by some men of the remark 
 once made concerning a certain personage, that he had spent 
 all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells, 
 and was frittering away his age in trying to draw them up 
 again. 
 
 In contrast with such, what an inspiration is the fine 
 spirit so noticeable in certain men ! By them life's Gordian 
 knots are instantly severed. Perplexities and vexations 
 vanish like fog before a bracing nor'-wester. Surveyed from 
 a certain standpoint, history itself seems but a record of 
 the capacity or incapacity of a few individuals. Blot from
 
 122 THE SINGLE 
 
 its pages the few great names which mark epochs, and what 
 is left seems surprisingly small. The history of the world 
 shows us that men are not to be counted by their numbers, 
 but, among other things, "by their clear and steady resolu- 
 tion of either ceasing to live or of achieving a particular 
 object ; which, when it is once formed, strikes off a load of 
 manacles and chains, and gives free space to all heavenly and 
 heroic feelings." 
 
 See how this spirit manifests itself in all great souls, 
 from Saint Paul down. " This one thing I do ; " " None of 
 these things move me." Here was the secret of that simple 
 soul which something had " compelled to be seraphic." So 
 of Socrates. " A voice had spoken in his soul, and he 
 obeyed it ; he would do nothing else but obey it. He was 
 irresistible." See it in Pelopidas and Epaminondas prefer- 
 ring death rather than surrender their great purpose of 
 humbling Sparta. Note it in Pompey. It was not neces- 
 sary for him to live, he said, but it was necessary that he 
 should be at a certain point at a certain hour. In Caesar 
 and Napoleon we discover the same trait. And coming 
 down to the greatest soldier of these modern times, we find 
 the same spirit voicing itself in " I propose to move immedi- 
 ately upon your works;" and again in the words since so 
 familiar, "I shall fight it out on this line if it takes all 
 summer." Speaking of this very trait, Sherman, in that 
 remarkable letter to which reference has already been made, 
 says, " I repeat, you do M'Pherson and myself too much 
 honour. At Belmont you manifested your traits, neither 
 of us being near. At Donelson, also, you illustrated your 
 whole character. I was not near, and M'Pherson in too 
 subordinate a capacity to influence you." After referring to 
 his bravery, unselfishness, and honesty, he further says, 
 " But the chief characteristic is the simple faith in success 
 
 you have always manifested This faith gave you victory 
 
 at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you have completed
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 123 
 
 your best preparations you go into battle without hesitation, 
 as at Chattanooga, no doubts, no answers ; and I tell you 
 it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew that 
 wherever I was you thought of me, and if I got into a tight 
 place you would help me out if alive. My only point of 
 doubt was in your knowledge of grand strategy and in books of 
 science and history ; but I confess your common sense seems 
 to have supplied all these." What was this "common sense," 
 to which General Sherman thus refers, but the very quality 
 of which we are speaking, that single eye which pierces 
 through all surroundings, however chaotic, and sees at a 
 glance what to do and how to do it ; that simplicity of pur- 
 pose which carries the soul straight to its mark ; that un- 
 erring instinct of victory which compels success ? Wherever 
 one discovers great achievement, he is sure to find behind it 
 this inevitable simplicity of purpose. Rest assured that 
 nothing great will ever be accomplished without it. It is 
 true that at intervals certain men appear who seem capable 
 of great accomplishment in almost any direction ; equal to 
 any amount of work, however arduous or varied, men of 
 phenomenal talent and great versatility, like Da Vinci, for 
 instance; but these are the rare exceptions which prove the 
 rule. Let a man devote five years of persistent study and 
 application to any one thing, and he will be surprised to find 
 with what ease and comparative pleasure the task which at 
 first seemed so arduous and irksome may be performed. 
 Truly has Fuller declared that he that sips of many arts 
 drinks of none ; and Bacon, in his " Letter of Expostulation 
 to Coke," observes : " You, having a large and fruitful mind, 
 should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to 
 leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded." Ad- 
 vice like this might well be heeded by some of our more 
 voluminous authors. One might then hope to avail himself 
 of what is most valuable in them, and yet have time for 
 something else besides. ' ; Why cannot authors," some one
 
 124 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 asks, "take the time and trouble to condense their wisdom 
 and learning ; for, really, who of the most diligent of their 
 readers can hope to master even the truly valuable works of 
 our great writers 1 There is Carlyle, for instance, with his 
 thirty octavo volumes, and Ruskin with twenty. Both have 
 amply illustrated the beauty and strength of the English 
 language, but years alone are sufficient to do justice to these 
 many volumes. Who doubts that each of these volumes 
 might, not unprofitably, be cut down one -half ; or better, 
 that all might be condensed into a few handy volumes of 
 reasonable size?" It has been well said of Ruskin, that were 
 he to set forth and illustrate in a single volume the philos- 
 ophy of art which he has spread over a score of volumes, 
 there would be some possibility of a busy world acquainting 
 itself with his principles and his spirit. But when one 
 remembers that there are a hundred other eminent names 
 besides, each with twenty, thirty, fifty, or a hundred volumes, 
 all worthy of reading and study, one is simply overwhelmed, 
 and is compelled to implore future writers, at least, to sift 
 and resift their ideas and words, so that they may be brought 
 into as small a compass as possible. Harriet Martineau con- 
 densed all that was valuable in the " Positive Philosophy " of 
 Comte into a single volume ; and Froude tells us that the 
 great Spinoza compressed into three volumes the whole of his 
 system of speculative philosophy, which was the work of a 
 lifetime, and which revolutionized all previous systems. Had 
 he been like certain others we know, he might have left 
 mayhap a hundred volumes for dust and the moths. The 
 voice of experience, the pressure of the times, the demand of 
 the age, the conspicuous examples of failure and of success, 
 all combine to emphasize the truth that a man must go 
 straight to the mark if he would win. 
 
 When Louis Napoleon started off for the German cam- 
 paign, the enthusiastic Parisians, we are told, removed his 
 horses and drew his carriage through the thoroughfares
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 125 
 
 themselves. But it was all a farce. Presently came Worth, 
 and Metz, and Sedan. The Emperor is a prisoner, the 
 Empress is fleeing by stealth to England, and the eyes of the 
 French people are opened. The purpose behind the German 
 bayonets was more than a match for French display. The 
 secret is the same in all realms, whether of art, or science, or 
 what not. Hunt, in his " Talks about Art," gives emphasis 
 to the desirability in a painter of that simplicity of eye which 
 is the only simplicity which can and must be learned. 
 " Think all you can. Put in as little hand work as possible, 
 and as much intelligence. Permit yourself the luxury of 
 doing it in the simplest way." Of similar import were the 
 strong and noble words of Ex-Secretary Evarts to a body of 
 theological students : " In trying cases, lawyers make little 
 of their knowledge of Justinian and Coke. So the learning 
 of the clergy should not be produced in sermons to the poor 
 and weak and wicked. The learning should be assimilated 
 into the growth of the mind, and the winged words of the 
 preacher be sent at the foe in front, and not scattered among 
 the squadrons on the sides." In the same vein, also, is the 
 excellent advice of a fine authority on literary composition : 
 " Say the most possible in the least space. Pitch right into 
 your subject. Make the title and first sentence so that it 
 must be read ; and so of the second, no matter what has pre- 
 ceded or is to follow." This has the true ring. The great 
 fault with much would-be fine writing seems to be, that its 
 author, to begin with, had nothing to say, and then has 
 taken for ever to say it. It is wonderful what power and 
 control over one's faculties may be acquired if one persist- 
 ently keeps the one great and supreme object before the soul. 
 The mind is naturally a vagrant, prone to wander into all 
 sorts of by-ways, unless kept steadily and resolutely to its 
 purpose and to its work. " Wool-gathering " is its proverbial 
 characteristic. Once under control of a great purpose, how- 
 ever, all lesser objects can happily be placed under tribute as
 
 126 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 vassals. The night before the celebrated battle of Pharsalia, 
 which was to decide the fate of the known world, Brutus 
 was in his tent reading and making notes from his author 
 with the pen. 
 
 There is nothing more striking than this power of con- 
 centration possessed by certain men, that disciplined self- 
 control which knows how to create its own solitude at will. 
 It is indeed no small accomplishment, the learning " to 
 command one's time and think one's own thoughts amid 
 the most feverish environments." But some of our finest 
 treasures of English literature have been created amid sur- 
 roundings most busy and distracting, and seemingly most 
 unfavourable. Some of the most laborious literary under- 
 takings have thus been prosecuted. It was in the midst of 
 engrossing political duties that Niebuhr carried on his his- 
 torical labours. In the intervals of a busy mercantile life 
 Roscoe produced his Histories of Lorenzo de Medici and 
 Leo X. It was in the midst of a restless and feverish 
 career that Scaliger, Buchanan, and Erasmus accomplished 
 their gigantic tasks. Or, take for instance in these modern 
 times that lovely creation, Edwin Arnold's " The Light of 
 Asia." It came not from cloister or solitude, but right from 
 the heart of busy London, born amid the throng and uproar 
 of the great metropolis, its author editor-in-chief of one of 
 the great London dailies, The Daily Telegraph, a paper with 
 an average circulation of a quarter of a million copies. That 
 this writer of " leaders," addressing every morning so large a 
 circle, should have produced from out the hurly-burly of his 
 daily occupation such a poem, is indeed a marvel. As 
 Channing of London well says, "That amidst the respon- 
 sibilities, interruptions, anxieties, harassing cares, and ever 
 varying distractions of such a life, a poet could evoke, in his 
 few hours for quiet thought, an epic in eight books on one of 
 the loftiest themes for spiritual contemplation, and one of 
 the purest ideal types of a heavenly human life known in
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 127 
 
 history, is certainly a surprising instance of concentrated 
 power." And the same writer further affirms, that to his 
 certain knowledge the book was only conceived, begun within 
 the year, and was perfected and published during one of the 
 most disturbed and trying periods that the nation had passed 
 through for a generation at least. Power like this is to be 
 coveted. To be able, as Byron has felicitously put it, thus 
 to steal from " all one has been or yet may be," and lose 
 one's self entirely in the present duty, is certainly invaluable 
 to a busy man. Charles Kingsley possessed it in a marked 
 degree. In that charming volume, " Letters and Memories " 
 of his life, we are told that his holidays were few and far 
 between in his life of labour, but when they came, he could 
 give himself wholly up to them, thanks to his " blessed habit 
 of intensity," which he declared had been his greatest help 
 in life. " I go at what I am about," he used to say, " as if 
 there were nothing else in the world for the time being. 
 That's the secret of all hard-working men ; but most of them 
 can't carry it into their amusements." As Thomas Hughes 
 said of him, his was " a spirit of fearless and manly grappling 
 with difficulties ; a spirit of vigorous, prompt, and rigorous 
 carrying out of whatever was taken in hand ; a spirit of gen- 
 erous and hearty co-operation with fellow-workers, a wide 
 range of interest, not meaning by this, scattered, desultory 
 thought, but thought like Napoleon's, ready to be concen- 
 trated at once where the battle must be fought." 
 
 Many a failure in life has been due to the fact that there 
 has been more than one object present to the mind, a double 
 vision in place of a single picture before a single eye. 
 Secondary considerations have been allowed to confuse the 
 mind and thwart the purpose. Expediency has been con- 
 sulted until the native thrill of resolution has died out. 
 Simplicity of purpose suffers not from the loss of energy, 
 which is inevitable where there is a scattering of effort. 
 Forty years ago a young mechanic took a bath in the river
 
 128 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 Clyde. While swimming from shore to shore he discerned 
 a beautiful bank, uncultivated, and he then and there re- 
 solved to be the owner of it, and to adorn it and build 
 upon it the finest mansion in all the burgh, and name it 
 in honour of the maiden to whom he was espoused. " Last 
 summer," says a well-known American, " I had the pleasure 
 of dining in that princely mansion, and of receiving this fact 
 from the lips of the great ship-builder of the Clyde." That 
 one purpose was made the ruling passion of his life, and all 
 the energies of his soul were put in requisition for its ac- 
 complishment. It has been well said, that a steady gaze, 
 a settled purpose, an unwavering earnestness, a simple 
 motive, will carry a man rapidly and pleasantly to his goal, 
 and spare him many troubles by the way. Instead of being 
 diverted by the distractions, or misled, as loiterers through 
 life are sure to be, by surrounding allurements, the simple- 
 minded worker discharges his duty and presses forward 
 unaffected by the hindrances by which others are delayed. 
 Thoroughness in work or character is priceless. It is this 
 which gives completeness to accomplishment, whether the 
 thing achieved be great or small ; and this is all-important. 
 In its finest manifestation, the great undertone which per- 
 vades it is always this : " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to 
 do, do it with thy might." One-half the failures are due 
 to a lack right here. Nothing can take its place. Neither 
 sagacity, nor keenness of instinct, nor absorbing toil and 
 devotion to one's interests will avail where this is wanting. 
 It is not so much the amount of work men do, it has been 
 said, which kills them, as the way in which the work is done. 
 Strains and bruises come from " dead lifts." 
 
 It is interesting to note the sway of a great purpose 
 over the soul, and its power to win men from minor con- 
 siderations, which, with men generally, count for so much. 
 The love of fame and the love of money, for instance, 
 have great influence with most men. But the response of
 
 THE SINGLE EYE. 129 
 
 Agassiz, when urged to devote a portion of his time to 
 lecturing, on account of his great popularity and the amount 
 of money he would be sure to make, shows how little hold 
 this consideration had upon him : " I have no time to make 
 money ! " a characteristic reply. So of Beethoven. On a 
 certain occasion, despondent on account of his increasing 
 deafness, and almost tempted to put an end to his life, he 
 said, "Art she alone, she held me back. Oh, it seemed to 
 me impossible to quit this world before I had accomplished 
 all of which I felt myself capable, and therefore I preserved 
 this unhappy life." How, too, the strength of a great pur- 
 pose has enabled men to triumph over obstacles and to 
 scorn difficulty and danger ! See Locke subsisting on bread 
 and water in a Dutch garret ; and Murray, the famous 
 linguist, learning to write by scribbling his letters on an old 
 wool-card with the end of a burnt heather-stem. Professor 
 Moore, we are told, when a young man, being too poor to 
 purchase Newton's " Principia," borrowed the book, and 
 copied the whole of it with his own hand. Samuel Drew 
 used to tighten his apron-strings "in lieu of a dinner;" and 
 Heyne slept many a night upon a barn floor with only a 
 book for his pillow. 
 
 To accomplish anything, one must have an object ; he 
 must keep his eye fixed on that. To be great in any direc- 
 tion, one must concentrate all his strength. Divide him, and 
 you conquer him ; concentrate his powers, and he becomes 
 invincible. Alexander, his heart throbbing with a great 
 purpose, conquers the world. Hannibal, impelled by his 
 hatred to the Romans, even crosses the Alps to compass his 
 design. While other men are bemoaning difficulties, and 
 shrinking from dangers and obstacles, and proposing ex- 
 pedients, the great soul, " without fuss or noise," takes the 
 step, and lo " the mountain has been levelled, and the way 
 lies open." Let the man, then, who would succeed, throw 
 
 his whole being into one work ; let him pursue it with 
 (79) 9
 
 130 THE SINGLE EYE. 
 
 relentless will and energy. Let him scorn difficulty and 
 danger, and brave defeat. Let him adopt the motto which 
 the Scottish editor posted in his sanctum sanctorum, "Nothing 
 is worse for those who have business than the visits of those 
 who have none." Let him have one dominating, ruling, 
 all-pervading purpose, and compel all else to pay it tribute, 
 and, rest assured, he will not long remain in doubt as to 
 results.
 
 V. 
 
 Ibabit 
 
 How use doth breed a habit in a man ! SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 For use almost can change the stamp of nature. Ib. 
 
 " Man is a bundle of habits." 
 
 I trust everything under God to habit, on which in all ages the law- 
 giver as well as the schoolmaster has mainly placed his reliance, habit, 
 which makes everything easy, and casts the difficulties upon the deviation 
 from a wonted course. LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 A MAN'S success in life depends so largely upon the habits 
 which he forms at a very early period, that nothing would 
 seem to be more important than to have the strongest 
 possible conviction of this wrought into his mind at the very 
 outset. " I feel as if it were not for me to record, even 
 though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine," 
 says Dickens in " David Copperfield," " how hard I worked 
 at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertain- 
 ing to it I will only add to what I have already written 
 
 of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient 
 and continuous energy which then began to be matured 
 within me, and which I know to be the strong point of my 
 character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking 
 back, I find the source of my success." The great tendency 
 with all of us is to form habits, to run in grooves. Fortu- 
 nately this great controlling principle in human nature has its 
 good side. If it indeed be true that 
 
 "111 habits gather by unseen degrees, 
 As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas,"
 
 132 HABIT. 
 
 it is also true and the thought has comfort in it that by 
 the blessed law of compensation this deep-rooted tendency 
 works for good as well as ill ; that life's sternest duties and 
 requirements, however arduous at first, become at length, 
 by their continued performance, not only easy, but a source 
 of real pleasure. 
 
 A modern essayist has somewhere declared, and it seems 
 to us a singularly wise remark, that no one's example is so 
 dangerous to us as our own ; for when we have done a cer- 
 tain thing once, it is so much easier to do it again. Habit 
 forms itself by repeated action. Habits are like paths 
 beaten hard by the multitude of light footsteps which go to 
 and fro. No reason can be given why the fact of having 
 done a thing should increase the tendency to do it ; all rea- 
 son stops at this point, it is not possible to explain it. 
 The pain annexed to the interruption of the habit, we are 
 told, is the means by which obedience to the law is secured. 
 Nature is too good a legislator to pass any act without 
 annexing a smart penalty to the violation of it. No one 
 thing concerning it is more curious than this very fact, that 
 though we feel, possibly, no pleasure in doing that to which 
 we have become accustomed, we do feel great pain from not 
 doing it. A habit is something which we have. That is 
 what the word means. As some one has wittily observed, 
 it often becomes something which has us. Sometimes men 
 shorten distances by " cutting across lots," as it is termed. 
 Where they do this, a narrow strip of grass about a foot or 
 fourteen inches wide will soon be destroyed, and a narrow 
 strip of ground about the same width beneath it will be 
 trodden hard, and that is a path. In the same way men 
 form habits. 
 
 This curious physical impulse of habit has been noted by 
 Dr. Combe. "A tendency to resume the same mode of 
 action at stated times," he says, "is peculiarly the charac- 
 teristic of the nervous system, and on this account regu-
 
 HABIT. 133 
 
 larity is of great consequence in exercising the moral and 
 intellectual power. All nervous diseases have a marked 
 tendency to observe regular periods ; and the natural incli- 
 nation to sleep at the approach of night is another instance 
 of the same fact. It is this principle of our nature which 
 promotes the formation of what are called habits. If we 
 repeat any kind of mental effort every day at the same hour, 
 we at last find ourselves entering upon it without pre- 
 meditation when the time approaches." 
 
 The proclivities which develop and harden into habits are 
 apt to reveal themselves early, and when properly encour- 
 aged and patronized they have often resulted in brilliant 
 achievement. Take for instance the simple propensity for 
 whittling. Sam Cunard was a Scottish lad of Glasgow. He 
 was clever and facile in all sorts of inventions. These 
 he wrought out with his jack-knife. This seemed his only 
 talent. For a long time it brought him neither money, 
 credit, nor reputation. But at length there came a special 
 demand for his peculiar talent. The great ship-builders 
 and owners, Burns and M'lvor, wanted to increase their 
 facilities for transatlantic navigation, for carrying foreign 
 mails in particular. They consulted Sam. He at once set 
 his wits and knife at work. The result was a model of the 
 first steamship of the celebrated Cunard Line. All their 
 magnificent ships have been built from that one model, 
 without material alteration. This company, as every one 
 knows, has now a great fleet of capacious steamships doing 
 service in every sea and employing many thousand men. 
 Surely Sir Samuel Cunard's jack-knife had wrought well. 
 That Scottish lad's whittling propensity enabled him to retire 
 from active life with an ample fortune, with the honours of 
 knighthood, and the pleasure of knowing that he left his 
 appreciative patrons more largely enriched even than him- 
 self, and the whole world greatly benefited. Napoleon's 
 boyish passion for his mimic cannon only foreshadowed the
 
 134 HABIT. 
 
 terrible execution of his artillery in later years. Those 
 crude charcoal sketches of Sir Joshua Reynolds's boyhood, 
 under which his severely practical father had written, "Done 
 by Joshua out of sheer idleness ! " foreshadowed the future 
 greatness of the man. The same may be said of that portrait 
 of the sleeping infant, drawn in red and black ink by the 
 boy West while yet only seven years old. The truant Tom 
 Gainsborough wandering along the green lanes and past the 
 hedgerows of Sudbury, and seating himself amid the flapping 
 clock-leaves to draw, betokened even then " the first English 
 painter of English landscape." One of his paintings to-day 
 is worth a fortune to its possessor ; indeed, one of them was 
 but recently sold for the sum of ten thousand guineas. So, 
 too, of many another youth it may in truth be said, "the 
 child is father of the man." 
 
 It has been said that we come into the world a bunch of 
 susceptibilities. The noiseless years pass on, and we emerge 
 into maturity "a bundle of iron habits." Ten thousand 
 influences are perpetually at work upon us ; invisible powers 
 mould and fashion us. We look into a man's face and 
 receive a certain impression, but all of the real man is out 
 of sight. The habits of thought which are transforming his 
 life and character are hidden ; yet they leave their impress 
 just as truly as the sculptor leaves his upon the marble 
 block. Note him at his work. A stroke here, another 
 there, a thousand gentle touches, and presently you perceive 
 that the curve of the lip, the play of the nostril, the expres- 
 sion of the eye, have all been growing under his hand, until 
 at length the striking countenance, powerful, impressive, 
 grand, stands out before you " the artist's thought severely 
 beautiful, fixed for ever in the solid stone." So with men. 
 The lofty aspiration, the benevolent thought, the sympathy, 
 the incorruptible integrity, all reveal themselves. There are 
 some faces that need no letter of commendation. Like the 
 shining face of Moses descending the mount, the countenance
 
 HABIT. 135 
 
 betrays the luminous secret. Contrast with these the bleared 
 visage, the sodden look, the dull and lifeless expression of 
 this other, and see what evil habit has wrought in the 
 features of the prodigal. 
 
 Every man carries within himself to a great extent his 
 own destiny. Undaunted will, unflinching energy, ever 
 and everywhere make their mark and bring success. In 
 business, who is the man that succeeds? The man who 
 thinks clearly, who plans wisely, and executes promptly and 
 with untiring energy. "Is there one," says the eminent 
 John Hunter, "whom difficulties dishearten? He will do 
 little. Is there one who will conquer ? That kind of man 
 never fails." Difficulty and hardship bring out and develop 
 the latent powers. It is the habitual blow on blow which 
 makes the arm of the blacksmith so strong. We are uncon- 
 sciously educated by our surroundings, our habitual associ- 
 ations, as well as by our habits of thought. Our compan- 
 ions, our books, the conversations of every day, leave their 
 impress for good or ill. We are not the same to-day as 
 yesterday. In the chamber of the boy who ran away to sea 
 was found the picture of a splendid ship under full sail. It 
 hung upon the wall. It greeted him every time he entered 
 the room. When he awoke in the morning his eyes turned 
 to it, his thoughts dwelt upon it. The desire to be a sailor 
 became at length the ruling passion of his life. That picture 
 was the secret of it all. This it was that at length became 
 the occasion of his flight. 
 
 The law is universal. We see its influence in every 
 direction. "There is no degree of disguise," says a dis- 
 tinguished essayist, " which human nature may not be made 
 to assume from habit. It grows in every direction in which 
 it is trained, and accommodates itself to every circumstance 
 which caprice or design places in its way." Many persons 
 wonder why men of great fortune continue to labour, instead 
 of resting and enjoying themselves, and attribute it to mere
 
 136 HABIT. 
 
 love of gain. They forget that long habit becomes second 
 nature ; that such men find rest in constant occupation, and 
 that the enjoyment prescribed for them would be the severest 
 punishment that could be inflicted. Take the case of A. T. 
 Stewart or William B. Astor, for instance. A few years 
 since, Mr. Stewart spent regularly fourteen hours of the 
 twenty-four behind his desk in his private office, working 
 daily harder than any one in his employ, and as unapproach- 
 able as the Grand Lama. Even those who succeeded in ob- 
 taining an interview achieved it only after running such a 
 gauntlet of interrogations and cross-questions at the hands of 
 the various personages set for the great merchant's defence 
 that they were not likely soon to renew the attempt. For 
 more than fifty years William B. Astor was a daily worker 
 at his desk. Sentence such men as these to idleness, and 
 before many years, not to say months, they would in all prob- 
 ability be in their graves. Long-continued habit has made 
 their work a second nature, and without it they would be 
 utterly wretched and unhappy. 
 
 Habit increases our facility for work. It is the secret of 
 skill in all realms of human endeavour. It gives rapidity to 
 the fingers of the knitter, and confers the wonderful exe- 
 cution possessed by the master musician. The rapid click, 
 click of the nimble type, dropping like leaden hail from the 
 practised hand of the skilful compositor, is the result of this 
 same all-prevailing law. Statesman, artisan, editor, all find 
 their work easier as they repeat their efforts, just as the per- 
 sistent habit of lifting heavy weights made Winship the 
 modern Hercules that he was. The skill of the Japanese 
 juggler and the marvellous feats of the gymnast are due to 
 the same law. 
 
 It is all important to remember, too, that unless the habit 
 of doing what a man proposes to do at any given time has 
 been securely built up, it is liable to break down upon the 
 application of a severe test, and often at a critical moment,
 
 HABIT. 137 
 
 when he needs it most. Never did West Point stand so high 
 in public estimation as during the war, when " the superiority 
 of men educated systematically, and in all military matters, 
 was established beyond controversy. This was seen especially 
 in unexpected movements and emergencies. The civilian 
 might fight one battle, and fight it well ; but the next might 
 take him by surprise, and end in a signal but unnecessary 
 defeat." When the great crises come, the real power and 
 stamina which long training and habit have wrought hold a 
 man unflinchingly to his post. Under ordinary circumstances 
 the captain of an ocean steamship may seem a very genial, 
 easy-going man ; but let danger threaten his noble vessel, 
 and the real character of the man begins to display itself. 
 The habits of promptness and decision, of sleepless vigilance 
 and energy, which long discipline has conferred are revealed. 
 You will find him at his post, hour after hour, undismayed 
 by the terrors of darkness or the fury of the storm. Fidelity 
 and discipline have a marvellous power. The last thing 
 heard as the waters closed over the ill-fated Arctic was the 
 sound of Stewart Holland's gun. 
 
 The cultivation of a habit of attention to little things is 
 invaluable to a man. Wellington was remarkable for this. 
 All the petty details of military service and camp life 
 received his closest attention. To this scrutiny of minute 
 matters rather than to genius his success is traced. He had 
 the rare distinction, it is said, of never losing a battle. No 
 fragment of information escaped his memory or attention, 
 no matter how apparently unimportant. 
 
 Some writer has aptly observed that one ought to know 
 something about everything and everything about something. 
 Harvey, speaking of Thomas H. Benton, says : " Mr. Ben ton 
 had all sorts of knowledge. He seemed to have acquired 
 more political facts than even John Quincy Adams. He 
 had a wonderful memory, and read almost everything. 
 During the discussions on the Oregon Bill, Mr. Benton made
 
 138 HABIT. 
 
 a speech, as did many other members ; and near the close of 
 the debate, Mr. Webster was about to speak, and wanted to 
 get a book, of which he had an indistinct recollection, for some 
 geographical fact to illustrate a point in his remarks. It was 
 something he had seen a great many years before in a book 
 which was now probably out of print. He only knew the 
 name of its author, but he set to work to find it. He asked 
 Peter Force, who had collected a great political library at 
 Washington ; but Mr. Force could not find it. He then got 
 the librarian of Congress to hunt for it ; but he had no 
 success. Mr. Webster was about giving it up in despair, 
 when it occurred to him to speak to Benton, He went to 
 him and said, 'You know everything, colonel, and where 
 everything is. Have you any recollection or knowledge of 
 such a geography, such a book, or such an author 1 ?' The 
 colonel stopped a moment to think, and then replied, ' I 
 know what you want; I'll see if I can find it.' An hour 
 afterwards, Mr. Webster, having left the Senate, returned 
 to his seat, and there, lying on his desk, was an immense book, 
 with a leaf turned down to the place that he wanted to find, 
 although he had not said a word as to the particular part of 
 the book he wished to consult. Without any suggestion of 
 his, Mr. Benton had guessed at what he wanted, and turned 
 down the leaf. 'I looked up from my desk to his,' said 
 Webster, 'and there he was, bowing to me as if to say, 
 "That's it." I do not suppose there was another man who 
 could have found that book for me.' " 
 
 It is related of George the Third that on one occasion when 
 Mr. Justice Park was present, the king said of him, " It is 
 wonderful to think that this little head contains the whole law 
 of England." " Not so, sire," replied the judge ; " it but con- 
 tains the knowledge where the law may be found." These are 
 notable instances, truly. On the other hand, there are men 
 whose knowledge is so confused as to remind one of the woman 
 who had " a place for everything and everything in that place."
 
 HABIT. 139 
 
 This ability to recall at will where to find what one wants 
 strikes the key-note of all really serviceable memory. One 
 may cultivate the habit of memorizing like a parrot, but this 
 is of less use than is generally supposed. " What we most 
 want ready and available is the power and the science, not 
 the tools. A mathematician is such still, without his for- 
 mulae and diagrams. The oldest judge remembers the rules 
 of law, though he foi'gets the case in point ; and the ablest 
 counsel are allowed refreshers." Some one has well said 
 that it is the ignorant, not the wise man who tries to tell 
 you all he knows. It is the poor, not the rich man who 
 stops to count and jingle his shillings. "The scholar does 
 not con every page of his library daily or during a lifetime. 
 The millionaire does not daily convert all his property into 
 shillings and pence and enumerate them ; but the scholar and 
 the millionaire, in times of emergency, know what and where 
 are their resources, and fear no bankruptcy or sheriff, which 
 is no small satisfaction." 
 
 The first great requisite in cultivating the habit of memory 
 is attention. Indeed, it has been declared that the art of 
 memory is the art of attention. " What thou dost not know 
 thou canst not tell." In reading history, for instance, lay 
 the volume aside now and then and see if you can give a clear 
 and concise account of what you have read. Use the best 
 and most expressive words you can command. Fox once 
 said of Pitt that he had not only a word but the word, the 
 very word to express his meaning. Let this be your aim. 
 One great secret is a thorough determination to remember. 
 "They can who believe they can" is true here as elsewhere. 
 
 A habit of classification is of immense value. Let one 
 learn to have "pigeon-holes" in his brain, if we may be 
 allowed the expression. As facts come under his observa- 
 tion, let him classify them by putting those which are related 
 to each other by themselves, and others which are also re- 
 lated by themselves. One easily remembers that which
 
 140 HABIT. 
 
 interests him. He thus comes presently to have a vivid con- 
 ception of a subject, whatever it be, and conception is the 
 quality for which we call a man " clear-headed." The author 
 recalls a most striking illustration of the value of this habit 
 as exemplified in the person of a distinguished scholar. The 
 modesty of the man was unmistakable ; and yet, as one 
 listened to him, while there was no effort to shine, yet one 
 caught such glimpses of the vast stores of information at his 
 command that Goldsmith's lines seemed verified : 
 
 " And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew 
 That one small head could carry all he knew," 
 
 Tennyson is said to have brought this habit to great per- 
 fection. It is related of Sumner that at one period of his 
 senatorial career he had the impression that his memory was 
 not serving him as it should. He accordingly procured an 
 immense historical chart, hung it in his room, and formed 
 the habit of committing a. certain portion of it to memory 
 every morning. This he compelled himself to do. It was a 
 sort of mental gymnastics. 
 
 Joseph Cook affords perhaps one of the most notable illus- 
 trations of prodigious memory. A well-known general of 
 our army, who knew Cook in his boyhood, and was his class- 
 mate, related to the author an incident of the latter's early life 
 which appears not a little remarkable. It seems the students 
 were to prepare orations, and two or three weeks' time had 
 been allowed them for this purpose. On the morning of the 
 day for delivery Cook came to his classmate's room to inquire 
 concerning them. He had not done a stroke of work on his. 
 He found his friend had prepared a very elaborate pro- 
 duction, having spent days in its preparation. Cook pro- 
 posed that they proceed to the grove and rehearse it. This 
 was done. He held the manuscript during the rehearsal, 
 after which they returned. The afternoon came, and Cook 
 being first called upon, proceeded to the stage, and as a
 
 HABIT. 141 
 
 boyish trick gave the whole of his friend's oration, verbatim 
 et literatim, from beginning to end. His only opportunity 
 for committing it had been the brief interval mentioned. 
 Such power seems indeed phenomenal 
 
 Actors, we are told, have by the constant use of the mem- 
 ory accomplished some remarkable feats. Some years ago 
 John Ryder, in England, undertook to memorize a copy of 
 a London newspaper and recite it in public ; and he did it, 
 reciting the whole paper from beginning to end. The com- 
 edy of "The Game of Speculation" was translated from the 
 French, rehearsed, and produced at the Lyceum Theatre in 
 London in four days. Charles Matthews, who played the 
 leading part, Affable Hawk, and who is on the stage through- 
 out four long acts with hardly any intermission, committed 
 the character perfectly to memory in twenty-four hours, or, 
 to use his own words after the first night, " I swallowed the 
 whole dose, and don't think I spilled a drop." When the 
 curtain rose on the first production of " Pizarro," the last 
 act of the drama was not written; and Brinsley Sheridan 
 wrote off the fifth act in the green-room, the call-boy taking 
 it from him and then distributing it to the different actors 
 as the first four acts were being played, to be studied by them 
 as best they could. 
 
 It is doubtless true that certain men of eminent abilities 
 may dispense with rules. They are a law unto themselves, 
 and instinctively follow rules without knowing it. But for 
 the majority the diligent cultivation of desirable habits is 
 indispensable ; and few things are more important to one 
 than the habit of observation. It is astonishing how many 
 of us go about with our eyes open and yet seeing nothing. 
 One great secret of the vivid character of the descriptions 
 of Macaulay is the zeal with which he visited and made in- 
 quiries in the localities where many of the events took place 
 which he has recorded. At "VVeston Zoyland, a village in 
 Somersetshire about four miles from Bridgewater, celebrated
 
 142 HABIT. 
 
 as being the scene of the Duke of Moiimouth's defeat at the 
 battle of Sedgemoor, the historian was well known. He 
 resided at an humble inn in the village for some weeks, 
 occupying his time with minute investigations in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and while the facts and impressions were fresh in 
 his mind writing that portion of his narrative in a little room 
 which is still shown to the rare visitors to the locality. 
 
 We find the same method of work in writers of fiction. 
 When Sir Walter Scott was driven one day by a friend to 
 look at a ruined castle about which he wished to compose a 
 story or reproduce a legend, his friend saw him take out 
 his note-book and write the separate names of the grasses 
 and wild flowers which grew amid the ruins ; and on his 
 friend expressing his surprise, he said that it was only by 
 such means a writer could be fresh ; otherwise, in all his 
 stories he would be mentioning the same kinds of flowers. 
 This "ignominious love of details" is doubtless the secret 
 of much of an author's success, after all. Vernet, we are 
 told, was a perfect master of water when young, because he 
 studied the water itself constantly ; but when fame and age 
 came upon him, and he grew careless and neglected this 
 water study, he lost the faculty and worked by " a false and 
 uniform pattern." Never forget that it is because you have 
 acquired the habit of " looking out for other people's thoughts 
 and illustrations that you have thoughts and illustrations of 
 your own." Whitefield, it is said, was conversant with life 
 from the humblest mechanic to the first characters in the 
 land. He let nothing escape him, but turned all into gold 
 that admitted of improvement. 
 
 As an illustration of the perfection to which this habit of 
 minute observation may be brought by training, we may 
 cite the fact that some years ago there was at Washington 
 a character familiar to the frequenters of the great balls and 
 receptions, whose duty it was to receive the hats and outer 
 garments of the guests as they arrived, and who had so
 
 HABIT. 143 
 
 trained himself in this direction that without the use of 
 checks or memoranda of any kind he, on their departure, 
 with unerring accuracy would return to each of the hundreds 
 of guests his or her own property in every instance, and a 
 mistake was never known. 
 
 One will find the habit of carrying note-books to have 
 been a characteristic of most successful men. It was a con- 
 firmed habit with Beethoven. Grove tells us that he went 
 "nowhere without his sketch-books." In these books every 
 strain that occurred to him was written down at the moment. 
 He even kept a book by his bedside to record anything that 
 suggested itself. Abroad or at home it was all the same ; 
 only out of doors he made his notes in pencil, and traced 
 them in ink on his return to the house. It seems as if he 
 placed no reliance whatever on his memory. He began the 
 practice as a boy, and maintained it to the last. In the 
 sale catalogue of his effects more than fifty of such books are 
 included. They are made of large, coarse music-paper, oblong, 
 two hundred or even more pages, sixteen staves to the page, 
 and are covered from beginning to end, often margin and all, 
 with close-crowded writing. Locke, Parr, and Gibbon always 
 read with commonplace-books beside them ; and the same 
 method was adopted by Butler, the author of " Hudibras." 
 Pope always carried a note-book with him, and never hesitated 
 to jot down anything which struck him in conversation. 
 
 It is quite common for men of affairs, lawyers, editors, 
 statesmen, and men of letters, to have a system of this kind. 
 The great painters had the same habit. Leonardo da Vinci 
 always carried a sketch-book in his girdle. A certain writer 
 says of him : " He was so much pleased when he encoun- 
 tered faces of extraordinary character, or heads, or beards, 
 or hair of unusual appearance, that he would follow any 
 such more than ordinary attraction through the whole day. 
 He always carried with him a little book, in which he noted 
 down the features he met, eyes and mouths, noses and chins,
 
 144 HABIT. 
 
 necks and shoulders, and at home would combine them to 
 make up such heads as he wanted. Moreover, he often in- 
 vited people from the lower orders to his house, amusing 
 them and sketching their faces. For the sake of his studies 
 he even accompanied criminals to the place of execution." 
 Hogarth, it is said, would sketch on his finger-nail the face 
 of any one who impressed him particularly in the street. 
 This may account for the astonishing variety of the coun- 
 tenances in his drawings. Gainsborough in his morning 
 walks made collections of broken stones, herbs, and frag- 
 ments of glass. These were his memoranda. Then in his 
 studio he formed a landscape model upon the table, expand- 
 ing these objects into rocks, trees, and water. 
 
 No one, probably, ever brought this habit to greater per- 
 fection than Garfield. He had, we are told, a large leather- 
 bound blank-book, arranged with indexes and classification 
 divisions for the name, author, page, and subjects of books, 
 wherein he hoarded scraps from his fugitive readings. His 
 plan for preserving his memoranda he had matured with 
 much thought, and he credited it with having much to do 
 with the success of his extemporaneous speeches, the like of 
 which, as every one knows, for wealth of information have 
 not been heard in either branch of Congress for many years. 
 It was a common saying in the reporters' gallery that when 
 Garfield chose to cram on a subject, there was no man in 
 Washington who could stand before the deluge of facts with 
 which he would overwhelm all opposition. In his large 
 memorandum - books there were many hundreds of pages 
 filled with scraps, annotations, picked sentences, incidents, 
 and witticisms, from a collection of authors and newspapers, 
 representing the best thought in the literature, modern and 
 ancient, of almost the entire world. Besides these quota- 
 tions there were numerous thoughts of his own upon the 
 innumerable things he had read during the course of his, 
 prolonged studies, and which he embalmed in black and
 
 HABIT. 145 
 
 white " when the 'idea divine' was warm and living in his 
 brain." All were arranged in the nicest order, and through 
 the series of books one could follow the trail of the great 
 debater's readings, it is said, from their beginning. Thus, 
 for the year 1859 you would find the first annotations on 
 financial subjects at first somewhat straggling, and mixed in 
 with more or less of the classic poets ; then they become 
 more frequent, until they outnumber all other topics. In 
 addition to his scrap-book he had a large case of pigeon-holes, 
 holding perhaps fifty boxes, labelled, " The Press," " French 
 Spoliation," "Tariff," "Geneva Award," "General Politics," 
 "State Politics," "Public Men," "Parliamentary Decisions," 
 " Anecdotes," " Electoral Laws and Commission," etc. These 
 were filled with the choicest references and bits of current 
 literature on the various special topics, and were continually 
 replenished from every product of the printing-press. The 
 wonderful comprehensiveness of his readings, and the close- 
 ness with which he followed such a great number of public 
 questions, was remarkable. It was this that enabled him to 
 prepare in an hour's time to speak with detailed intelligence 
 upon any question that might be sprung in the House of 
 Representatives.' It was this, too, which made him so for- 
 midable an antagonist ; for by running over his memoranda 
 on any subject which came up for debate he was almost sure 
 to find just the thing he wanted some ugly fact, perhaps, 
 which his opponents had forgotten, because none of them 
 had taken the trouble to preserve it "in the cold exactness 
 of black and white." Garfield's references covered a greater 
 range of public questions, probably, than those of any other 
 public man in America. Indeed, it has been justly observed 
 that it is doubtful if there was a debater in any of the Euro- 
 pean countries that could boast a broader literary culture 
 than he possessed. 
 
 George Alfred Townsend's versatility in writing of public 
 men is due in great measure, doubtless, to a similar system. 
 
 (79) 10
 
 146 HABIT. 
 
 He is said to have a stock of scrap-books running back for 
 twenty years, filled entirely with personal items ; and there 
 is hardly a man that the newspapers have spoken of during 
 that time that Townsend cannot find something interesting 
 about in his compilation. 
 
 The plan of George Bancroft, the historian, is probably 
 more extended than that of any one else in this country. 
 He works on a special subject, however, and has a score of 
 stenographers and bookworms especially trained for the pur- 
 pose, " as large as the editorial force of a respectable news- 
 paper." 
 
 Emerson's habits in this direction are well known. He 
 was accustomed to jot down his thoughts at all hours and 
 places. The suggestions which came to him from his read- 
 ings, conversations, and meditations were transferred to the 
 note-book he carried with him. His mind being always 
 alert, many a gem of thought was thus preserved. Who 
 has not heard the story told of his wife suddenly waking at 
 night, while as yet his habits were unknown to her, and 
 anxiously inquiring, as she heard him moving about, if he 
 were ill. " No ; only an idea," was the response, as he pro- 
 ceeded to jot it down. 
 
 Verdi's habit is to jot down the ideas, as they arise in his 
 brain, in the pages of his note-book, on the backs of old 
 letters, odd visiting-cards, or anything, in fact, that comes to 
 hand ; then in the seclusion of his study the new work takes 
 shape and consistence. Visitors, or society in any form, are 
 said to be fatal to his work and paralyze his genius. 
 
 While many of the great creators of our literature have 
 seemed thus in many points to agree in their general habits 
 of preparation, their methods of actual work, when they 
 have fairly settled themselves down to the task of giving 
 shape and form to the products of their imagination, and 
 bestowing upon them " a local habitation and a name," have 
 differed greatly. Some, for instance, have laid great stress
 
 HABIT. 147 
 
 upon plots, while others have seemingly paid little or no 
 attention to the plot itself, but have made the personages 
 their strong point just as some lawyers emphasize the 
 points of law, while others make herculean efforts to carry 
 the jury, as Choate was wont to do. This latter course was 
 a marked characteristic of Dickens. The development of 
 a striking personage in the story seemed to wholly absorb 
 him, so much so that it has been said that he lost his own 
 identity for the time being in that of the creations of his 
 brain. His characters seemed to possess him, and he would 
 go wandering around at times as if in dreamland, while 
 under the pressure of this intense consciousness of their 
 reality literally haunted by them day and night. As for 
 his plots, however, as has been aptly observed, they resemble 
 a highroad that winds, now into a green lane, now up a 
 steep hill, and now down to a broad valley, while one is left 
 utterly puzzled to tell how he arrived there. He was accus- 
 tomed to seize at once upon the first ideas that came to him, 
 and to commit them to paper without elaboration. He was 
 at infinite pains afterwards, however, to revise and correct 
 both manuscript and proof. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet's stories, it is said, were all begun with 
 the climax and its participants, and from that point worked 
 back to the opening of the tale. Then the story was re- 
 written, the characters developed, and such incidents in- 
 troduced as suggested themselves. They were written with 
 a purpose, but it was never known to the author when a 
 story was begun what characters would enact the incidents 
 leading to the catastrophe. It was a working back from 
 effect to cause. The'ophile Gautier believed in long prefaces. 
 It was an epigram of his that his " greatest novel would be 
 all preface." Charles Reade did not approve of them. He 
 declared that many a clever story was ruined by a preface. 
 His theory was that the tale ought to tell itself, without 
 prologue or epilogue. A recent writer has given us a
 
 148 HABIT. 
 
 delightful glimpse of Reade's own habits of work. He 
 usually kept his stories on the stocks, he tells us, for a year 
 or more. His method of nursing the youngling was peculiar. 
 The chapters were roughly blocked out on separate sheets of 
 paper. Then they were numbered and arranged in their 
 order, or dropped between the leaves of a large scrap-book. 
 Then the process of fecundation began : an incident was 
 added to one chapter, a bit of description to another, and a 
 scrap of dialogue found place on still another sheet. Then 
 the shifting of scenes, incidents, dialogues, and whole chap- 
 ters began. The matter in chapter Jive, for instance, found 
 place in eleven ; eleven became seven ; seven was lodged ah five, 
 and so on. The work was growing all the time. Details 
 were evolving themselves from the mass of facts. A new 
 character was suggested. His course was traced roughly 
 through the chips of this literary carpenter shop. He was 
 hinted at, for example, in three ; he appeared in six ; he 
 became necessary to the story in nine, and so on to the 
 climax. A few important chapters were roughly written 
 out, or dictated, then pinned together and replaced in the 
 book or stowed in a pigeon-hole. Again more changes and 
 transpositions. Finally the sheets, and scraps pinned or 
 gummed to them, were all taken out and gathered into a 
 stack. Then the author rapidly shuffled them over and 
 grasped the story as a whole for the first time. When the 
 story had reached this stage it was as good as written. Mr. 
 Reade then settled down to seven or eight hours' manual 
 labour a day, and in three months the book was advertised. 
 
 The prose fictions of Charles Kingsley (with one excep- 
 tion, " Alton Locke ") were never copied. His usual habit 
 was to dictate to his wife as he walked up and down his 
 study. He was accustomed to master his subject thoroughly 
 out in the open air, in his garden, on the moor, or by the 
 side of some lonely trout-stream, and never to put pen to 
 paper until the ideas were clothed in words ; and these, save
 
 HABIT. 149 
 
 occasionally in some of his poems, he rarely altered. God- 
 win, we are told, wrote " Caleb Williams " backward, begin- 
 ning, on principle, with the last chapter and working up to 
 the first, on a plan similar to that of Daudet, to which refer- 
 ence has been made. Charles Lever had remarkably little of 
 the professional author about him. His biographer tells us 
 that no panegyric about his last book would have given him 
 as much satisfaction as an acknowledgment of his superiority 
 at whist. He hated especially the drudgery of copying and 
 revising. 
 
 Cooke tells us that when Emerson desired to write an 
 essay he would turn to his note-books and transcribe all his 
 paragraphs on the proposed subject, drawing a perpendicular 
 line through whatever he had thus copied. These separate 
 jottings, written perhaps years apart and in widely different 
 circumstances and moods, were brought together, arranged 
 in such order as was possible, and then welded together by 
 such matter as was suggested at the time. Alcott says he 
 once went to his study and found him with many sheets of 
 manuscript scattered about on the floor, which he was 
 anxiously endeavouring to arrange in something like a 
 systematic treatment of the subject then in hand. He has 
 also given us quite an entertaining account of Emerson's 
 manner of preparing his essays. After referring to his 
 remarkable diligence in securing everything which interested 
 him for his commonplace-book, he tells us concerning these 
 gathered treasures that they all had an intrinsic value, but 
 they needed a setting. He did not let any of these sentences 
 drop. How then shall these pearls be arranged and strung 
 together ? He employed no magic in this ; they were gems 
 when he had set them. That was his art. He copied them 
 on paper, and saw how they would come together. One 
 jewel after another was examined until he found one which 
 he thought would do in a certain place. " There is no 
 ordinary coherence in his essays. Each paragraph is com-
 
 150 HABIT. 
 
 plete in itself. Whatever he wrote was finished and good, 
 but he considered every sentence well before it was put on 
 paper. It was slept upon, dreamt on, and then written. 
 You can't read one of his books at a sitting and get any good 
 out of it. Each word, almost, must be pondered over." 
 
 Writing of the author of " The Scarlet Letter," one who 
 knew him well says : " Though Hawthorne was humility 
 itself in his estimate of his own powers, yet when once he 
 was under the influence of his Muse, not all the criticism of 
 ancient and modern times could have made him swerve by 
 so much as a hair's-breadth from the path along which she 
 led him. When he was at work he was in a region by him- 
 self, alone with his art, into which the voices of the 
 exterior world could never penetrate, nor its presence in- 
 trude. The work being done, however, and sent forth, the 
 worker would return to a colder and more sceptical state, in 
 which he took, as it were, the part of the world against him- 
 self, and led the attack. So little is known of the man that 
 it has always been the custom to paint his portrait from the 
 same palette which he himself used for his pictures. But it 
 is important to remember that the man and writer were, in 
 Hawthorne's case, as different as a mountain from a cloud." 
 
 It is curious to note how many poets have first clothed 
 their thoughts in prose. A recent authority assures us that 
 the original form of the ^Eneid was a prose narrative, which 
 was afterwards gradually versified, the poet writing at first 
 fluently, and then laboriously polishing his lines till he had 
 brought them as near perfection as possible. Thus, too, 
 Goldsmith worked at "The Traveller" and "The Deserted 
 Village," and Johnson composed " Irene," Butler his " Hudi- 
 bras," and Pope the " Essay on Man." 
 
 When Balzac was engaged in writing his novels he used 
 to send off the skeleton of the story to the printers, with 
 huge blank spaces for the introduction of conversations, 
 descriptions, and the like, and on receiving the printed
 
 HABIT. 151 
 
 sketch would shut himself up in his room, drink nothing but 
 water and eat nothing but fruit and bread, till he had com- 
 pleted the work by filling up the spaces. Southey usually 
 had three and sometimes four of his works passing through 
 the press at the same time, and would give to each its allotted 
 space during the twenty-four hours. "Wordsworth used to go 
 to bed on returning from his morning walk, and while break- 
 fasting there dictate the lines he had put together on the 
 march. One, at least, of Rossini's operas was composed in 
 bed. He was at that time young, poor, and unknown, and 
 lived in wretched quarters. He never wrote his overtures 
 till the very last minute, and then apparently only because 
 necessity compelled him. 
 
 Not every one can hope to bring himself under such 
 perfect discipline and control as Anthony Trollope tells us 
 he achieved, but doubtless many of us might approximate it. 
 " It is my custom," he says, "to write with my watch before 
 me, and to require from myself two hundred and fifty words 
 every quarter of an hour. I have found that the two hun- 
 dred and fifty words have been forthcoming as regularly as 
 my watch went." While all may not be equal to this, few 
 realize, who have not had the experience, how much may be 
 accomplished by strict method and the systematic using of 
 every fragment of time. Amid all the occupations of his 
 busy life, Mr. Beecher declared at the banquet given to 
 Froude, the historian, on the occasion of his visit to this 
 country, that he accomplished the entire reading of the 
 latter's " History of England " during the few spare minutes 
 in which he had from time to time been kept waiting for his 
 dinner. Longfellow's translation of the " Inferno " was the 
 result of ten minutes' daily work at a standing desk in his 
 library while his coffee was reaching the boiling point. 
 " So soon as the kettle hissed," says Ward, " he folded his 
 portfolio, not to resume that work until the following morn- 
 ing. In this wise, by devoting ten minutes a day during
 
 152 HABIT. 
 
 many years, the lovely work grew, like a coral reef, to its 
 completion." 
 
 Instances are common in every-day life of men who can- 
 not think to good purpose when shut up in a room with a 
 pen, and who find their best inspiration in wandering about 
 the streets and hearing what they want in the rattle of cabs 
 and the seething of life around them, like the scholar of 
 Padua whose conditions of work are given by Montaigne as 
 a curiosity : "I lately found one of the most learned men in 
 
 France studying in the corner of a room cut off by a 
 
 screen, surrounded by a lot of riotous servants. He told 
 me and Seneca says much the same of himself that he 
 worked all the better for this uproar, as though, overpowered 
 by noise, he was obliged to withdraw all the more closely 
 into himself for contemplation, while the storm of voices 
 drove his thoughts inward. When at Padua he had lodged 
 so long over the clattering of the traffic and the tumult of 
 the streets, that he had been trained not only to be indiffer- 
 ent to noise, but even to require it for the prosecution of his 
 studies." 
 
 Buffon declared himself utterly incapable of thinking to 
 good purpose except in full court dress. This he always 
 put on before entering his study, not even omitting his 
 sword. On the other hand, there were few coats more 
 threadbare, we are told, than those of Victor Hugo. Buffon 
 did not deign, except in lace cuffs, to occupy himself with 
 the humble animals whose history he was writing. It was 
 his habit, also, to have his hair in such elaborate order that, 
 by way of external stimulus to his brain, he had a hair- 
 dresser to interrupt his work twice, or when very busy, 
 thrice a day. Haydn used to declare that if when he sat 
 down to his instrument he had forgotten to put on a certain 
 ring, he could not summon a single idea. How he managed 
 to summon ideas, as some one aptly remarks, before Frederick 
 the Second gave him the said ring, we are not informed.
 
 HABIT. 153 
 
 But even these trivial instances of caprice, it has been well 
 observed, help to suggest that when the fancy is called upon, 
 the ordinary conditions of straightforward work must be con- 
 sidered at an end. Fancy dictates the terms on which she 
 condescends to appeal*. Of Dickens we are told that " some 
 quaint little bronze figures on his desk were as much needed 
 for the easy flow of his writing as blue ink or quill pens." 
 
 At the time when Niccolo Machiavelli composed the works 
 which have immortalized his name, he was living in obscure 
 retirement, where his only companions were rustics. He 
 himself says, in a letter to his friend Francesco "Vettori, that 
 he trifled away his days, but his nights he gave to intense 
 study. " When evening closes in," he says, " I return home 
 and shut myself up in my study ; but before entering there 
 I cast off on the threshold my rustic dress, covered with mud 
 and dirt, and put on clothes fit for courts and senates ; and 
 thus attired, I enter the ancient courts of the ancient men, 
 where, being by them affectionately received, I feed on that 
 food which alone is mine, and for which I was born." While 
 Haydn arrayed himself for his task in full court costume, his 
 peruke sprinkled with powder, his wrists enclosed with 
 delicate ruffles of fine lace, his fingers covered with rings of 
 precious stones, Oliver Goldsmith loved best to write in 
 dressing-gown and slippers. 
 
 Some men need active influences as their form of mental 
 stimulus. Alfieri could work best while listening to music 
 or galloping on horseback. Washington Irving's favourite 
 studio was a stile in some pleasant meadow, where with his 
 portfolio on his knees he formed his graceful periods. 
 When Hazlitt had a work in hand he invariably went into 
 the country to execute it, and almost always to the same 
 spot, a little wayside public-house called "The Hut," 
 standing alone and some miles distant from any other house, 
 on Winterslow Heath. It is the habit of Dumas the 
 younger, when he has a new work in hand, to flee from
 
 154 HABIT. 
 
 Paris to the chateau of Salneure, that he may write in 
 quiet. "It may seem surprising to some that an author so 
 Parisian, so bold, so fond of raillery, and so observing, should 
 flee from his models and seek to write amid the silence and 
 the poetry of the country such positive, aggressive, and 
 lively works as bear his name." 
 
 This influence of one's surroundings is a very potent one. 
 An intensely interesting chapter would be one giving an 
 account of the novel circumstances under which certain of 
 the most famous works were produced. Some of them we 
 know. Shelley composed the " Revolt of Islam " while 
 lying in a boat on the Thames at Marlow ; Keats, his " Ode 
 to the Nightingale " in a lane at Hampstead. Burns com- 
 posed his magnificent lyric, " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," 
 while galloping on horseback over a wild moor in Scotland, 
 and " Tarn o' Shanter " in the woods overhanging the Doon. 
 The greater part of Arnold's " Roman History " was written 
 in his drawing-room with his children playing about him, 
 and lively conversation, in which he frequently joined, going 
 on around the table on which his manuscript rested. 
 Priestley and Beddoes are said to have been fond of writing 
 under similar circumstances. " What would to nine men 
 out of ten be an intolerable distraction was to them a gentle 
 and welcome stimulus." Johnson's " Vanity of Human 
 Wishes" was composed as he trudged backwards and forwards 
 from Hampstead. Some of Fielding's comedies were scrawled 
 in taverns. Byron tells us that he composed the greater 
 part of " Lara " at the toilet table, and the prologue on the 
 opening of Drury Lane Theatre in a stage-coach. " Among 
 all the distractions of the events they describe, Csesar 
 committed to paper the immortal ' Commentaries.' Moore's 
 splendid Eastern romance ' Lalla Rookh ' was written in a 
 cottage blocked up by snow, with an English winter howling 
 round." Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus" came into 
 his mind as he was sitting by his fireside the night after a
 
 HABIT. 155 
 
 violent storm. " He went to bed, but could not sleep. The 
 ' Hesperus ' would not be denied ; and as he lay, the verses 
 flowed on without let or hindrance until the poem was 
 completed." Victor Hugo in his long walks would prepare 
 the work of the morrow, and as his memory was prodigious 
 he had only to write out what that dictated. He often 
 related to his friends that in his youth, during a rainy 
 winter, he was occupied with his "Marion Delorme." He 
 had chosen, as a place of exercise under shelter, the Passage 
 du Saumon. The first act, a marvellous commencement full 
 of passion, poetry, and fire, was the work of two afternoons 
 spent in promenading in this passage of dingy shops where 
 were sold, side by side, stockings, straw mattings, and 
 butchers' caps. 
 
 Authors do not often invite us behind the scenes. " Ge- 
 nius, like the Nile, keeps its springs secret." Yet we are 
 favoured with occasional glimpses, nevertheless. As one 
 perceives the utter and deliberate ignoring of all hygienic 
 laws (at least as they are commonly received) on the part of 
 many of these, the turning of night into day and day into 
 night, the reckless use of stimulants of all kinds, with other 
 similar indiscretions, one ceases to wonder that the sig- 
 nificant designation, genus irritabile, should be given the 
 unique race. A simple narrative of the way in which much 
 imaginative work has been done would, as has well been said, 
 read like an attempt to keep up the action of brain-fever 
 by artificial stimulus. " Balzac preached to us," says Theo- 
 phile Gautier, "the strangest hygiene ever propounded 
 among laymen. If we desired to hand our names down to 
 posterity as authors, it was indispensable that we should 
 immure ourselves absolutely for two or three years ; that we 
 should drink nothing but water and only eat soaked beans, 
 like Protogenes; that we should go to bed at sunset and 
 rise at midnight, to work hard till morning ; that we should 
 spend the whole day in revising, amending, extending, prun-
 
 156 HABIT. 
 
 ing, and polishing our night's work, in correcting proofs, or 
 taking notes, or in other necessary study." 
 
 Byron affords an illustration of the tendency which one 
 often finds to put one's-self " out of working condition " in 
 order to work the better. "At Distati," says Moore, "his 
 life was passed in the same regular round of habits into 
 which he naturally fell." These habits included, as we are 
 told, very late hours and semi-starvation, assisted by cigars 
 and tobacco, and in the evening by green tea without milk 
 or sugar. Schiller was a night- worker and a coffee-drinker. 
 Not only so, but he used an artificial stimulus altogether 
 peculiar to himself. He found it impossible, according to 
 the well-known anecdote, to work except in a room filled 
 with the scent of rotten apples, which he kept in a drawer 
 of his writing-table, in order to keep up his necessary mental 
 atmosphere. This at first glance seems really odd ; and yet 
 who of us has not at times realized the potency of certain 
 odours in recalling most vividly associations of the past? 
 The fragrance of new pine lumber or cedar shingles, for 
 instance, or the burning of autumn leaves in the crisp morn- 
 ing air, recalls most vividly some of the brightest associa- 
 tions of youth. Doubtless by this same law of association 
 this seemingly trivial influence brought back to the brilliant 
 poet the memory of certain rare hours, and perpetually re- 
 newed for him the familiar atmosphere, flooding the mental 
 horizon with its nameless charm. 
 
 Shelley's habit of continually munching bread while com- 
 posing is not mere trivial gossip, we are assured; and to 
 mention in passing a modern instance in this direction, it 
 is said that Jay Gould, the Wall Street magnate, has been 
 known to have two sticks of peppermint candy placed regu- 
 larly each morning on his office desk. 
 
 "That night, and not morning, is appropriate to imagi- 
 native work," declares a competent authority, " is supported 
 by a general consent among those who have followed instinct
 
 HABIT. 157 
 
 in this matter. Upon this question, which can hardly be 
 called vexed, Charles Lamb is the classical authority." Some 
 one has asserted that he would hold a good wager that 
 Milton's " Morning Hymn in Paradise " was penned at mid- 
 night. There have been two great imaginative writers, 
 however, of the very first rank who believed that " the high- 
 est and freest work can be done under the healthiest con- 
 ditions of fresh air, early hours, daylight, and temperance 
 not abstinence." One of these was Goethe, the other was 
 Scott. Goethe and Balzac were the very antipodes of each 
 other in their way of working. Mr. Lewes gives the account 
 of Goethe's day at Weimar, as follows : " He arose at seven 
 o'clock. Till eleven he worked without interruption. A cup 
 of chocolate was then brought, and he worked on again till 
 one o'clock. At two he dined. His appetite was immense. 
 Even on the days when he complained of not being hungry, 
 
 he ate much more than most men He never dined alone. 
 
 There was no dessert or coffee. Then he went to the theatre, 
 or else received friends at home. By ten o'clock he was in 
 
 bed, where he slept soundly Like Thorwaldsen he had 
 
 a talent for sleeping No man of business or dictionary 
 
 maker," adds Mr. Lewes, "could make a more healthful ar- 
 rangement of his hours." 
 
 Dumas the younger is a morning worker. His habitual 
 good-humour proves that his health is fine. " He is hungry 
 immediately on rising, and attacks a good plate of soup with 
 the eagerness of a rustic. After that he seats himself before 
 a large secretaire and writes until noon in negligent dress." 
 Hugo was an early riser, but he did not live on soup. 
 " Before noon he lived only on his thoughts. He wrote 
 much, and his heart was in his work." Lamartine was 
 another early riser. 
 
 George Sand always wrote at night. " Lady of the manor 
 during the day, devoted to her guests, making preserves, and 
 engaged in needlework, it was at one o'clock in the morning,
 
 158 HABIT. 
 
 when the chateau was fast asleep, that this genius awoke and 
 gave us ' Mauprat,' ' Frangois de Champi,' ' Consuelo,' and a 
 hundred other works." 
 
 If Balzac's may be taken as a type of the artist's life, 
 Kant's may be taken as the type of the student's. While 
 usually very methodical, there was one point in Kant's char- 
 acter which illustrates the need of the mind for artificial 
 conditions, however slight they may be, when engaged in 
 "dreaming." During the "blindman's holiday," between 
 his walk and candle-light, he sat down to think in twilight 
 fashion, and while thus engaged he always placed himself, it 
 is said, so that his eyes might fall on a certain old tower. 
 This old tower became so necessary to his thoughts, that 
 when some poplar trees grew up and hid it from his window 
 he found himself unable to think at all, until, at his earnest 
 request, the trees were cropped and the tower brought into 
 sight again. The elder Dumas, we are told, had to forbid 
 himself, by an effort of will, to leave his desk before a certain 
 number of pages were written, in order to get any work done 
 at all ; and Victor Hugo is said to have locked up his clothes 
 while writing " Notre Dame," so that he might not escape 
 from it till the last word was written. In such instances as 
 these it has well been observed that the so-called "pleasures 
 of the imagination " look singularly like the pains of stone- 
 breaking. 
 
 These glimpses vouchsafed us from time to time reveal 
 unmistakably the fact that the strange race to whom the 
 world owes so much have been " compassed " to a surprising 
 degree with whims and oddities, and ruled by habits and 
 idiosyncrasies not a few. 
 
 It would be exceedingly interesting to know how long it 
 takes for " use " to " breed a habit in a man." In this respect 
 men differ greatly. Habits seem to attach themselves to 
 certain men as readily as burrs or cockles fix themselves to 
 one's clothing in passing through a neglected field, and to be
 
 HABIT. 159 
 
 shed almost as readily ; almost every day displays some new 
 trick or mannerism. Others cling with the tenacity of bar- 
 nacles to the hull of an ancient ship. Habits seemingly most 
 trivial, yet excessively annoying, have at times gained the 
 ascendency over men of unquestioned power. What more 
 amusing, for instance, than Dr. Johnson's habit of touching 
 the posts, and of always placing his right foot first over the 
 threshold ] 
 
 While one recognizes the presence of this strange, occult 
 power within him, this mysterious tendency in one's nature 
 to repetition, holding within its viewless grasp such untold 
 possibilities for evil as well as good ; while it is also true that 
 the finest natures have yielded to its baleful influence, as De 
 Quincey's opium and poor Lamb's " wet damnation " testify ; 
 while on every hand are the bleaching bones of the victims 
 of this demon who first clutches the soul and then destroys 
 it, this mutinous sailor that scuttles the very ship on which 
 he has taken passage, it is yet a reassuring reflection that 
 this same power may be harnessed to work for a man as well 
 as against him. Let no one, then, fear to undertake the 
 acquisition of any habit which seems desirable ; for it can be 
 formed, and with more ease than one may at first suppose. 
 The habit of saving and improving every fragment of time, 
 for instance, is invaluable. In the gold-room of the Phila- 
 delphia Mint there is a perforated floor through which pass 
 the dust and filings of the gold, the aggregate value of which 
 is thirty thousand dollars every year. 
 
 The inflexible rule of regularity soon becomes an all-impor- 
 tant factor. Charles Dickens sat at his desk for three hours 
 every morning, no matter whether he wrote a word or not 
 Habits become at length part and parcel of the man himself, 
 inwrought in the very fibre of his being, betraying themselves 
 at times in the very latest utterances of the lips. Lord 
 Tenterden expiring with the words, " Gentlemen of the jury, 
 you will now consider your verdict," Napoleon's "Tete
 
 160 HABIT. 
 
 d'armee!" and Chesterfield's "Give Dayrolles a chair," are 
 striking examples of this. 
 
 Habit thus becomes destiny. " God gives us the power to 
 form habits, that we may crystallize victories. All improve- 
 ment in the eye of the painter, in the tongue of the orator, 
 in the hand of the artisan, is the gift of habit. It is a 
 channel worn in the substance of the soul, along which our 
 purpose and our ability run with increased facility." The 
 formation of a habit reduces to this simple direction : Apply 
 yourself to any course marked out for yourself industriously, 
 punctually, and persistently, and you prevail. Having this 
 marvellous power at command, use it /
 
 VI. 
 
 Ibealtb. 
 
 For life is not to live, but to be well. MARTIAL. 
 
 " A brilliant intellect in a sickly body is like gold in a spent swimmer's 
 pocket." 
 
 O blessed health ! thou art above all gold and treasure ; 'tis thou who 
 enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction and 
 to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for ; and he 
 that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee. STERNE. 
 
 THE author wishes he could be sure of making this chapter 
 so interesting that its perusal might not only confer pleasure 
 but profit as well. He is fully aware that no subject could 
 well seem more hackneyed. At the same time, he is also 
 persuaded that no subject touched upon in the whole volume 
 has so important a bearing upon the success of any man. 
 One may possibly escape the commonplace even in the treat- 
 ment of so trite a theme. Nor let it be supposed that the 
 writer is an advocate of " sawdust puddings," or that he looks 
 with any degree of allowance upon "cant," which he abhors. 
 He gives assurance, moreover, that the chapter shall not be, 
 if he can help it, a morbid one, at least. Happily, as regards 
 himself he can say that 
 
 "Good digestion waits on appetite, 
 And health on both." 
 
 Yet observation and experience have both proved to him 
 what an enemy to all a man's best interests ill-health is. He 
 (re) 11
 
 162 HEALTH. 
 
 has seen men in the great army of letters, and others in the 
 full tide of business prosperity, compelled to drop out of the 
 ranks at the very moment, perhaps, when success was just at 
 hand. He has known men of most brilliant parts and rarest 
 attainments hampered and trammelled for years for the same 
 reason, and cut off at length in middle life with their great 
 projects all unfulfilled. 
 
 Well does the author remember a certain evening when 
 one of the most brilliant and accomplished of scholars called 
 around him in his library a group of students, and in an im- 
 pressive manner urged upon them the vast importance of 
 caring for their health. Nor was the influence of his words 
 lessened by the knowledge that the advice came from the 
 depths of a bitter experience on the part of the one who gave 
 it ; and the counsel was still more strongly emphasized when 
 in a few brief months that brilliant life went out just as the 
 fruits of years of scholarly research were about to be given 
 to the world. 
 
 Now, if health be not invaluable, and of paramount im- 
 portance to a man, what means that first inquiry of all 
 nations when one man meets another? The very first salu- 
 tation of all, in slightly varying phrase, concerns a man's 
 health. Its loss is the subject of most anxious concern and 
 solicitude among friends; and yet we go on abusing it, 
 apparently without a thought of its inestimable value, 
 violating its laws until compelled by stern necessity to use 
 wisdom when perchance too late. 
 
 Blackie has called attention to the fact that great men 
 have often overworked themselves by foolishly attempting to 
 do that which might just as well have been left to subor- 
 dinates. Every one can see how foolish it would be in a 
 great military leader, on whom the lives of thousands and 
 possibly the fate of a whole campaign depends, to unneces- 
 sarily expose and hazard his life in some insignificant en- 
 counter. That remonstrance of the people when David had
 
 HEALTH. 163 
 
 mustered his army for battle, and declared that he would 
 surely go forth with them himself, was not without mean- 
 ing. " Thou shalt not go forth," said they : " for if we flee 
 away they will not care for us; neither if half of us die, 
 will they care for us ; but now thou art worth ten thousand 
 of us." And they were right. The health of every one is 
 of vast moment to himself, but there are many reasons why 
 the health of a professional man seems to be and really is 
 more valuable than that of some others. Louis XIV., saun- 
 tering in the garden of Versailles with his courtiers, saw 
 Mansard, the architect, walking through one of the alleys. 
 He soon joined the old man, and Mansard took off his hat, 
 as was strict etiquette in the presence of his sovereign ; but 
 the king lifted up his hand in friendly reprehension, and said, 
 " Pray keep it on. The evening is damp, and you may take 
 cold." The courtiers, who were all standing bareheaded 
 around the king, stared at each other at this extraordinary 
 show of courtesy. But Louis, observing their surprise, said, 
 " Gentlemen, you are amazed ; but learn this : I can make a 
 duke or a marquis with my own breath, but God only can 
 make a Mansard." 
 
 Herbert Spencer, in his after-dinner speech at the great 
 banquet given him in New York City just before his depart- 
 ure for home, said : " Along with your kindness there comes 
 to me a great unkindness from Fate ; for now that, above all 
 times in my life, I need full command of what powers of 
 .speech I possess, disturbed health so threatens to interfere 
 with them that I fear I shall very inadequately express 
 myself. Any failure in my response you must please ascribe, 
 in part at least, to a greatly disordered nervous system." 
 
 Dickens also, when he gave his famous " Readings," dur- 
 ing his second visit to America, was sadly out of health. 
 He was thus obliged to deny himself many a pleasure, and to 
 decline the most flattering invitations of a social nature. In a 
 letter written to his friend, Mr. Philp of Washington, he said :
 
 164 HEALTH. 
 
 11 1 was on the point of writing to express to you my regret 
 that I must forego the pleasure of dining with you while at 
 Washington." Then referring to his indisposition, he added: 
 "It is so oppressive, and would, but for occasional rest and 
 silence, be so incompatible with my readings, that my only 
 safe course is to hold to the principle I established when I 
 left Boston, and gloomily deny myself all social recreations. 
 I am bound to disclaim the least merit in this virtuous-look- 
 ing self-denial. I retire to the cloister as discontentedly and 
 growlingly as possible." 
 
 And poor Carlyle, that Prometheus with a vulture for 
 ever at his heart, who has not felt a throb of sympathy at 
 the spectacle of this strong spirit struggling through the long 
 years against such odds 1 May not much of the bitterness 
 and apparent ill-humour of this man be easily accounted for 
 by the fact that his whole nature was warped and distorted 
 by the pangs of his perpetual and incurable malady ; and 
 should not corresponding allowance be made 1 In his talk 
 to the students at Edinburgh he said, with an earnestness 
 wrung from the depths of his own bitter experience : "Fin- 
 ally, I have one advice to give you which is practically of 
 very great importance. You are to consider throughout, 
 much more than is done at present, and what would have 
 been a very great thing for me if I had been able to consider, 
 that health is a thing to be attended to continually ; that 
 you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal 
 things for you. There is no kind of achievement you could 
 make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What to 
 it are nuggets or millions?" As has been truly said, Carlyle 
 here but voices the common feeling of overwhelming, irrep- 
 arable mistake that vast numbers are called to undergo. 
 '' No pangs of physical suffering would have wrung from this 
 man such words as these, but the fact that he had been 
 crippled in his work, that the clearness of his vision had 
 been dimmed, and that a hue not natural to himself a hue
 
 HEALTH. 165 
 
 partial, distempered, morose was spread over all that he 
 had clone. It is late before we learn that the whole of man 
 goes into his work. Poet, orator, philosopher, or man of 
 business, his body follows him and holds the pen, and shapes 
 the thought, and imparts its quality to all that he does or 
 
 How true it is, as the Italians have it, " He that has good 
 health is rich, though he knows it not." But where you 
 find one man thoroughly well, you will find a hundred who 
 are not. And the sad thing about it is that we are so 
 reluctant to learn from the experience of others. It seems 
 as if each must needs learn the bitter lesson for himself 
 before he can be made to feel and believe its truth. And 
 thus advice like that of Carlyle and others, so invaluable if 
 youth would only heed it, is apt to go for little, if it be not 
 wholly disregarded. 
 
 One thing, however, is certain : the man who aspires to be 
 a master of the situation must have a care for his reserves. 
 What a vast difference there is in men in this regard ! Some 
 men seem utterly reckless as to these, while others are all 
 the while carefully storing them away. In ordinary times 
 the reckless man may appear to be doing as well as, or even 
 better than, the other. But any man can be a pilot in a 
 calm. We may feel that all is well when the tide makes with 
 us and the wind is fair ; but such times are of little value as 
 a test of a man's real reserve power. One might look into 
 the genial face of the captain of that Cunarder on which he 
 has taken passage as, when the weather is fine and everything 
 running smoothly, he stands pleasantly chatting with his 
 friends, and fancy it no great thing to run an ocean steamer, 
 after all. " But presently a great storm strikes the ship, and 
 all night long, shuddering and panting through the wild 
 waters, every beam and timber of the goodly vessel seems 
 strained to the utmost by the fierce onslaught of wind and 
 wave. Peering deckward by the dim light of the approach-
 
 166 HEALTH. 
 
 ing dawn, he discerns the faithful fellow at his post upon the 
 bridge, where he has been all night watching the gale with 
 steady eyes and proud to see how splendidly his gallant ship 
 behaves, bringing her about in the teeth of the tempest and 
 the trough of the sea, that she may thus escape the terrible 
 strain and avalanche of waters that might well dismay the 
 stoutest heart. Now he begins to know the man." All un- 
 daunted, alert and cheerful, at length he brings the goodly 
 vessel into her desired haven. And so when a man is 
 smitten with a sore disease, if he have reserves of power and 
 strength laid up, he will doubtless in the end pull through. 
 If it be otherwise, however, the chances are all against him. 
 Collyer declares that reserves mean to a man also achieve- 
 ment, " the power to do the grandest thing possible to your 
 nature when you feel you must, or some precious thing will 
 
 be lost ; to do well always, but best in the crisis on which 
 
 all things turn ; to stand the strain of a long fight, and still 
 find you have something left, and so never to know you are 
 beaten, because you never are beaten." 
 
 The success even of professional men depends in no slight 
 degree on their organic stamina and cultivated physical 
 strength. " A well-developed thorax is considered," says 
 Smiles, " almost as indispensable to the successful lawyer 
 or politician as a well-cultured intellect. The thorough aera- 
 tion of the blood by free exposure to a large breathing sur- 
 face in the lungs is necessary to maintain that full vital 
 power on which the vigorous working of the brain in so 
 large a measure depends. The lawyer has to climb the 
 heights of his profession through close and heated courts, 
 and the political leader has to bear the fatigue and excite- 
 ment of long and anxious debates in a crowded House ; 
 hence the lawyer in full practice, and the parliamentary 
 leader in full work, are called upon to display powers of 
 physical endurance and activity even more extraordinary 
 than those of the intellect such powers as have been ex-
 
 HEALTH. 167 
 
 hibited in so remarkable a degree by Brougham, Lyndhurst, 
 and Campbell, by Peel, Graham, and Palmerston," and by 
 our own Webster in the Senate all full-chested men. The 
 greatness of our great men is quite as much a bodily affair 
 as a mental one. A Napoleon or a Wellington, who is to 
 come off victorious at Austerlitz or Waterloo, must have 
 immense resources in reserve ; must be able to endure vast 
 drafts upon his strength, to be harassed and perplexed in a 
 thousand ways ; must submit to great fatigue, be broken of 
 rest at night and surprised by unexpected calamity by day, 
 and yet be able to surmount and rise victorious over it all. 
 
 Let not, however, this fine power of endurance be con- 
 founded with mere physical strength. While great energy 
 implies, indeed, a good body, it does not require great physi- 
 cal strength. Fine health and great nervous energy, or 
 power to endure, may often exist without the latter endow- 
 ment. Again and again it happened in our great Civil War 
 that delicate-looking town-bred men would tire down the 
 great strapping fellows from the farm, the young giants of 
 the backwoods and prairies, outfight them and outlive them ; 
 and the fine reserves of the Harvard men, it has been ob- 
 served, covered them with glory, while the shallow and 
 brute force of "Billy" Wilson's regiment ended in disgrace. 
 William M. Evarts is slender to frailness ; but, as some one 
 has said of him, he has a nervous system that enables him 
 to endure a harder and longer mental strain than any other 
 lawyer of the New York bar. It is curious to note how cer- 
 tain men have been found possessed of these exceptional 
 powers of endurance, who to all appearance were deficient 
 in this very thing ; showing that the appearance of ill-health, 
 while generally to be relied on, is not infallible. Many a 
 man who to all appearance has inherited the most fragile 
 of constitutions has been found possessed of such a wiry 
 power of endurance as would indicate rather a constitution 
 of iron or of brass. For years before he died, the venerable
 
 168 HEALTH. 
 
 Bishop Smith had the appearance of being in the last stage 
 of decline, and yet he lived to be nearly ninety. Then, too, 
 there was Chief -Justice Taney, who lived to the age of 
 eighty-seven, and seemed all his life to be hanging on the 
 verge of the grave. For a long time before Andrew Jack- 
 son appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, and got him 
 to remove the deposits from the United States Bank, he was 
 one of the leading lawyers of Maryland. Luther Martin 
 and William Pinkney were for a time his chief competitors ; 
 but they died, leaving him at the head of the bar. At this 
 time, we are told, a man who had a Chancery suit which 
 had been a long time in the courts, and bade fair to become 
 a second Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, was looking for a new law- 
 yer to take up his case. He had employed both Martin and 
 Pinkney, and one after the other they had died on his hands, 
 leaving his case still unsettled. He was recommended to 
 engage Taney, and with this in view he called upon him. 
 He entered the office, took a look at the emaciated form and 
 graveyard air of the great lawyer, and then, with an expres- 
 sion of disgust, he turned on his heel and went out. " Give 
 that man my case !" he said to the first friend he met; "I 
 would as soon give it to a corpse. He will die inside of two 
 months." But Taney did not die, and he doubtless survived 
 the above prophet by a full generation. One of the most 
 famous of these men who lived to a great age, in a character- 
 istic letter to a friend of the present writer, once, with that 
 gentle facetiousness one sometimes finds in the most serious 
 and reverent souls, compared himself to Charles the Second, 
 who apologized to the noblemen about his bed for being such 
 an unconscionable while a-dying. 
 
 It goes without saying that " half a loaf is better than no 
 bread ; " and if one must needs be a prisoner, let him garnish 
 the walls of his prison-house as best he may, and thank for- 
 tune that a kindly jailer spares him the lash and the thumb- 
 screw of torture. But what a contrast, and how far inferior,
 
 HEALTH. 169 
 
 is such merely negative, passive enjoyment, to the robust, 
 positive joy of bounding health ! Surely no sensible man will 
 affirm that a physical condition which compels the most 
 studied caution and watchful anxiety is to be compared with 
 that bounding exuberance of health and spirits which over- 
 flows its banks and inundates all around it with its own 
 immeasurable fulness of light and joy. Who would long 
 hesitate in the choice between the apprehensive timidity of 
 invalidism, which must perpetually trim and reef, and for 
 ever scan both wind and tide lest it be caught and whelmed, 
 and that thoughtless abandon of boundless health which 
 sends its possessor, like Christopher North, bareheaded and 
 free over his native hills, shouting for very joy from sheer 
 exuberance of being ? 
 
 One thing is certain. Aside from all considerations of 
 mere enjoyment or comfort, if a man leave this factor out of 
 his calculation in an age of such fierce rivalries and competi- 
 tions as the present, he will discover that most of the great 
 prizes and rewards for which men strive, and the tempting 
 fruits of that legitimate toil and endeavour which excite 
 men's noblest ambitions, are to him for ever denied. And 
 let him not wonder, for the reason is obvious. The abso- 
 lute prerequisite to perseverance, and consequently to any 
 great success, is health. Of what use, then, were the mind, 
 if its indispensable agent, the body, refuse or fail to carry 
 out its plans ? Take simply the hand, for instance. A little 
 member surely, but so curiously wrought, so wonderful in 
 its mechanism, as to call forth the world-famous essay of Sir 
 Charles Bell. How manifold and necessary its functions ! 
 How marvellous its triumphs ! " It 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 
 back the tremendous bar of the printing-press. It opened 
 the tubes for Galileo, until world after world swept largely 
 before his vision ; and it reefed the high-top-sail that rustled
 
 170 HEALTH. 
 
 over Columbus in the morning breezes of the Bahamas. 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." What if that hand, nerveless and useless, refuse 
 to obey the will of its owner ? 
 
 Health in its fulness makes a man a king. Want has no 
 terrors for such a man, and danger no dread. He courts it 
 rather with exultant joy. Superb health breeds enterprise, 
 for ever and always. Health, buoyant, confident, strides 
 fearlessly abroad. It levels forests, it tunnels mountains, 
 spans seemingly impossible chasms, and with untiring energy 
 pushes its researches in all directions and ransacks the globe. 
 Adding triumph to triumph, it lifts itself up in its proud 
 consciousness of power, and cries out, " What is there that 
 I cannot do?" Disease, on the other hand, despondent and 
 faint-hearted, confined at home, sits cowering over the embers, 
 filled with imaginary fears. 
 
 Courage, moreover, is the presage of success. To believe 
 in one's self and one's own power is always half the battle. 
 " Possunt quia posse videntur" is for ever true. Emerson 
 declares that success itself is constitutional, and that it de- 
 pends on a plus condition of mind and body, on power of 
 work, on courage ; and he cites the instance of Napoleon at 
 Eylau, where, it seems, some thirty thousand of the men 
 composing his army were thieves and burglars. " The men 
 whom in peaceful communities we hold, if we can, with iron 
 at their legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this 
 man dealt with hand to hand, dragged them to their duty, 
 and won his victories by their bayonets." Again and again 
 we find this shrewd thinker insisting upon the importance of 
 this great factor. 
 
 Sir Andrew Clark once defined health as that state in 
 which existence just of itself is a joy; and few of us will be
 
 HEALTH. 171 
 
 inclined to disagree with him. Every one must have noticed 
 what a vast difference there is in men in sheer recuperative 
 force. One man falls from a scaffold at the height of three 
 stories; his injuries at first sight seem fatal, but he is out 
 again in a week. Another suffers a slight injury, and is 
 held a prisoner for months, if he does not succumb alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that mere physical force 
 is of supreme value where there is nothing else. Like every 
 good thing, physical culture may of course be overdone, and 
 doubtless its importance is sometimes overestimated. It is 
 not to be expected that one should so far forget himself as 
 to allow the development of his muscle to crowd out every 
 other worthy object from his life. It should never be the 
 whole nor the chief object of one's life to make either an 
 athlete merely or a savage of himself. When affairs reach 
 such a pass as to lead a young Japanese student, in writing 
 his impressions of America to friends at home, to describe 
 our American colleges as "great boat-houses," as once hap- 
 pened, it might not inappropriately be asked whether, in 
 certain quarters at least, the muscular phase of college life 
 were not approaching a questionable ascendency. Every one 
 knows that things most commendable are liable to abuse ; 
 and yet 
 
 " I see no cause but men may pick their teeth, 
 Though Brutus with a sword did kill himself." 
 
 After all is said, there is no denying the fact that prac- 
 tical success depends much more upon physical health than 
 is generally imagined. " Suppose it were perfectly certain," 
 says Huxley, " that the life and fortune of every one of 
 us would one day or another depend upon his winning or 
 losing a game of chess, don't you think that we should all 
 consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names 
 and moves of the pieces? Yet it is a very plain and ele-
 
 172 HEALTH. 
 
 mentary truth that the life, the fortune, the happiness of 
 every one of us, and more or less of those connected with 
 us, do depend on our knowing something of the rules of a 
 game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. 
 
 It is a game which has been played for untold ages The 
 
 chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of 
 the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the 
 laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from 
 us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient ; 
 but we know to our cost that he never overlooks a mistake, 
 or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man 
 who plays well the highest stakes are paid with that over- 
 flowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in 
 strength ; and one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, 
 but without remorse." Let every young man remember 
 that while health once lost may be regained, it is also true 
 that it may not, even though one "seek it carefully with 
 tears." 
 
 The typical American allows himself too few holidays. 
 Living as he does under such continual pressure, with pulse 
 at fever heat six days at least out of seven, he should oftener 
 relax should damp the furnace-fires for a while, and cool 
 off the boiler. What machinery could be expected to stand 
 such overheating and overworking without soon wearing 
 out? How seldom does he allow his recreation to quietly 
 filter through him, if one may so express it, and thus thor- 
 oughly to rest and recuperate him ! How rarely does he say 
 to himself, " I enjoy this ; I am happy now ! " No ! eagerly 
 reaching after some future good, he almost perpetually ignores 
 that which the present has thrown into his lap. "Is not the 
 life more than meat, and the body than raiment 1 " When 
 was more significant question ever put than that? More- 
 over, a man who by overwork cuts himself off in early life, 
 or in the midst of his career, not only loses sight of his own 
 best interests, but robs society of that which might prove
 
 HEALTH. 173 
 
 invaluable. All those mellowing influences of maturer years 
 which ripen and bring to rich perfection the splendid fruits 
 of toil and culture are thus lost. And who can compute the 
 loss ? Some of the rarest achievements have been wrought 
 and many of our richest treasures conferred by men who 
 were past the meridian of life. A certain indefinable flavour 
 is often wanting in fruit ripened by the forcing process. 
 The kisses of the sun, the tender influences of dews and 
 showers, and all the genial persuasions of earth and sky, 
 cannot with impunity be dispensed with. In this country 
 nearly every active business or professional man is over- 
 worked. Now, a great steamer in mid-ocean, crippled and 
 disabled, with broken shaft, is not a pleasant sight to any 
 one. To be obliged to creep slowly homeward, and to feel 
 one's way into port, to say nothing of the increased perils of 
 such a state of things, is in striking contrast with the power 
 to stride resistlessly onward, setting wind and wave at defi- 
 ance, and looking down upon the manifold perils of a stormy 
 Atlantic in triumphant scorn. And yet how often is this 
 very spectacle presented in the careers of professional and 
 business men ! " We hear a great deal about the ' vile 
 body,' " says Spencer; "and many are encouraged by the 
 phrase to transgress the laws of health. But Nature quietly 
 suppresses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of her 
 highest products, and leaves the world to be peopled by the 
 descendants of those who are not so foolish." Was there 
 ever a more apt putting of the case than that ? 
 
 It is certain that the deadliest foe to a man's longevity is 
 an unnatural and unreasonable excitement. Dickens brought 
 on his death by overwork and over-excitement. Mr. Dolby 
 tells us that the reading of the murder scene in "Oliver 
 Twist " by Dickens brought up the reader's pulse from the 
 normal seventy-two to one hundred and eighteen. On these 
 occasions he would have to be supported to his retiring-room, 
 and laid on a sofa for fully ten minutes before he could
 
 174 HEALTH. 
 
 speak a rational or consecutive sentence. Yet this reading 
 he gave frequently. Can one help feeling that a course like 
 this is little short of suicidal? Macaulay, too, was per- 
 petually overworked by his History ; and, as his biographer 
 well remarks, there is no overwork like that which has 
 grown to be dearer to a man than life itself. Trevelyan, 
 writing of him at this period, tells us that he no longer had 
 the nerve required to face the social efforts and to undergo 
 the minute and unceasing observation to which he was, or 
 fancied himself, exposed when on a visit to the city which 
 he represented. Insatiable of labour, he regarded the near 
 approach and still more the distant prospect of worry with 
 an exaggerated disquietude which in his case was a premoni- 
 tory symptom of the disease which was to kill him. Melan- 
 choly and suggestive passages abound in his journal. " In 
 the midst of my triumphs I am but poorly." " I am out 
 of sorts, and cannot write ; why, I cannot tell." " I wrote 
 some of my history not amiss, but I am not in the stream 
 
 yet. I feel quite oppressed by the weight of the task I 
 
 sometimes lose months, I do not know how, accusing myself 
 daily, and yet really incapable of vigorous exertion. I seem 
 under a spell of laziness. Then I warm, and can go on 
 working twelve hours at a stretch. How I toiled a year 
 ago ! " Ah, who doubts that in that sentence lay the secret 
 of all his trouble, which even he himself did not yet seem 
 fully to apprehend, as the very next sentence betrays " And 
 why cannot I toil so now 1 " 
 
 No one can doubt the assertion that when a man gives 
 health for money he makes the poorest investment of his 
 life, nor that when he gives money for health he makes, 
 from every worldly point of view, the best. Some one has 
 justly observed that it is, as a rule, the small man who never 
 gets a moment, and who can never find a pair of hands 
 as good as his own. "The man who cannot leave his busi- 
 ness, or thinks he cannot, shows that he lacks the highest
 
 HEALTH. 175 
 
 grade of business capacity. Money avails nothing to a 
 worn-out man, but to a man slowly wearing out it avails 
 everything when properly used. Time and money will buy 
 health." 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to note at what period 
 of a man's career one may reasonably look for the best work. 
 There is doubtless a certain point when it is full high tide, 
 when men are at their best, when they are enabled to labour 
 most assiduously, and when they may reasonably expect the 
 best results from their work. Dr. Beard declares that from 
 an analysis of the lives of a thousand representative men in 
 all the great branches of the human family, he made the 
 discovery that the golden decade was between forty and 
 fifty, the brazen between thirty and forty, the iron between 
 fifty and sixty. The superiority of youth and middle life 
 over old age in original work appears all the greater when 
 we consider the fact that all the positions of honour and 
 prestige professorships and public stations are in the hands 
 of the old. " Reputation, like money and position, is mainly 
 confined to the old. Men are not widely known until long 
 after they have done the work that gave them their fame. 
 Portraits of great men are delusions, statues are false. They 
 are taken when men have become famous, which, in the 
 average, is at least twenty-five years after they did the work 
 which gave them their fame. Original work requires en- 
 thusiasm. If all the original work done by men under 
 forty-five were annihilated, barbarism would be the result. 
 Men are at their best at that time when enthusiasm and 
 experience are almost evenly balanced. That period, on the 
 average, is from thirty-eight to forty. After this the law 
 is that experience increases, but enthusiasm decreases. Of 
 course there are exceptions, but this is the rule." 
 
 What then shall a man do 1 For one thing, he must learn 
 to live more slowly. If you ask a comprehensive motto, let 
 us say, "Less work and more repose." And by repose we
 
 176 HEALTH. 
 
 mean rest of every kind. To begin with, we would insist 
 upon more sleep. On this we lay great stress. Who doubts 
 that this generation is wearing itself out for lack of sleep 1 
 One of our most gifted writers has declared that were he to 
 adopt a pet idea, as so many people do, and fondle it to the 
 exclusion of all others, it would be that the great want 
 which mankind labours under at this present period is 
 sleep. " The world," he urges, " should recline its vast head 
 on the first convenient pillow and take a prolonged nap." 
 Is he not more than half right? Lack of sleep is a great 
 waster of vitality. There was poor Ward, in London, worn 
 out and dying before his time for want of sleep, his frail 
 constitution weakened yet more by late hours night after 
 night. Perhaps few learn to prize it at its true value until 
 taught by sad experience of its loss. The victim of insomnia 
 knows its worth. "Why is there no sleep to be sold?" 
 exclaims the French financier with a sigh. " Sleep was not 
 in the market at any price." If one would test its "com- 
 mercial " value, let him compare, in any matter which re- 
 quires nerve, one who has slept all night with one who has 
 not, and he will not be long in doubt, rest assured. "I 
 honour health," says Emerson, " as the first muse, and sleep 
 as the condition of health." Brain-workers require the best 
 of food and abundant sleep. As a rule, the larger the brain 
 the more sleep needed. Webster went to bed at nine o'clock 
 and rose at five. General Grant used to say during his 
 campaigns, "I can do nothing without nine hours' sleep." 
 Mr. Pitt was a sound sleeper, and slept night after night 
 in the House of Commons, while his colleagues watched the 
 debates and roused him when it was necessary that he should 
 speak. M. Guizot, Minister of France under Louis Philippe, 
 was a good sleeper. A late writer observes that his facility 
 for going to sleep after great excitement and mental exertion 
 was prodigious, and it was fortunate for him that he was so 
 constituted. After the most boisterous and tumultuous
 
 HEALTH. 177 
 
 sitting at the Chambers, he would go home, throw himself 
 down upon a couch, and sink immediately into a profound 
 sleep, from which he was undisturbed until midnight, when 
 proofs of the Moniteur were brought to him for inspection. 
 Once when the French army was manoeuvring in Spain, 
 Wellington, who was watching them, became very tired. 
 Pointing out one of their corps to a staff-officer, he told him 
 that it was marching in a certain direction, and would be 
 seen by-and-by at such a point. " When it is seen there, 
 call me," he added, and wrapping himself in his cloak, slept 
 soundly until called and told that the French had reached 
 that point. 
 
 " I would keep better hours if I were a boy again," declared 
 Fields, the well-known publisher, " that is, I would go to 
 bed earlier than most boys do. Nothing gives more mental 
 and bodily vigour than sound rest when properly applied. 
 Sleep is our great replenisher, and if we neglect to take it 
 regularly in childhood, all the worse for us when we grow 
 up. If we sit up late, we decay, and sooner or later we 
 contract a disease called insomnia. Late hours are shadows 
 from the grave." If one can, it is well to catch an interval, 
 say of half an hour, during the day. He will soon find it 
 amply repays him. Even the strongest man cannot work 
 strenuously day after day without occasionally becoming 
 jaded ; but, as Blackie well remarks, " a tired man is many 
 removes from a tired-out one, and there is a great deal in 
 knowing whether your work is overdoing you or simply 
 tiring you." Moreover, every brain-worker should frequently 
 give himself a complete holiday, and scrupulously forget for 
 the time being, if possible, that there ever were such things 
 as books in the world. Then, too, a man ought early to 
 learn not to attempt too much, in other words, not to allow 
 his ambition to override his better judgment. How many 
 men fail right here ! I think it is Paxton Hood who some- 
 where says he believes a good prayer for many an overworked 
 (T) " 12
 
 178 HEALTH. 
 
 man would be, ' ' Lord, help me to take fewer things into my 
 hands, and to do them well." 
 
 No one has better expressed the idea, probably, than 
 Hamerton in his "Intellectual Life." "Let your rest," he 
 says, " be perfect in its season, like the rest of waters that 
 are still. If you will have a model for your living, take 
 neither the stars, for they fly without ceasing, nor the ocean 
 that ebbs and flows, nor the river that cannot stay; but 
 rather let your life be like that of the summer air, which has 
 times of noble energy and times of perfect peace. It fills 
 the sails of ships upon the sea, and the miller thanks it on 
 the breezy uplands ; it works generously for the health and 
 wealth of all men, yet it claims its hours of rest. ' I have 
 pushed the fleet, I have turned the mill, I have refreshed 
 the city; and now, though the captain may walk impatiently 
 on the quarter-deck, and the miller swear, and the city stink, 
 I will stir no more until it pleaseth me.' " 
 
 The real intrinsic worth to a man of these periods of 
 absolute rest cannot easily be computed. And yet one will 
 find, here and there, certain "matter-of-fact" sort of men, 
 as they are pleased to count themselves, but who really are 
 nothing more than what Charles Astor Bristed most aptly 
 terms "the-just-see-before-your-nose-and-no-farther" sort, who 
 have an idea that all time not spent in doing something 
 tangible is lost ; and Bristed gives an old but clever illustra- 
 tion for their benefit as follows : " A country manager saw 
 that the trumpets of his orchestra were not taking part in 
 an overture which the other musicians were executing. He 
 rushed upon them and inveighed against their idleness. 
 'But,' said one of the assailed, 'we have fifteen bars rest 
 here.' 'Rest!' retorted the other; 'I don't pay you ten 
 shillings a night for resting : blow away ! ' How the rest 
 of the trumpets should be essential to the harmony of the 
 piece was beyond his comprehension." There are certain 
 people who seem to think that nothing is doing unless a
 
 HEALTH. 179 
 
 great stir be made. To such we commend the words of 
 Mrs. Browning : 
 
 " Think you 'mid all the mighty sum 
 
 Of things for ever speaking, 
 That nothing of itself will come, 
 But we must still be seeking ? " 
 
 The sap silently feeding the limbs of yonder oak may, at 
 any one moment, seem insignificant, but it is forming timbers 
 for a ship of the line. 
 
 If a man be wise, he will learn to husband his strength 
 and give to each act only what is due. Some men waste 
 their strength on trifles. Some use far more exertion than 
 is really needed, even for their hardest work. It is with 
 them much as if one should take a sledge-hammer to brush 
 a fly off a man's face. This avoidance of waste amounts 
 really to a fine art. Talma declared that the artist who 
 tires himself is no genius; and Legouve', in his work on 
 elocution, maintains that the breath has to play an immense 
 part in that art, and its rules are the only inviolable ones. 
 "An actor," he says, "launched on a stormy passage, 
 carried away by passion, may forget the laws of punctuation, 
 confound commas and periods, and hasten headlong to the 
 conclusion of his phrase ; but he must always be master of 
 his breath, even when he seems to lose it. An accomplished 
 actor is never out of breath, except in appearance, and for 
 effect." He gives this curious example of the science of 
 economy applied to the breath. " Take a lighted candle," 
 he says ; " stand in front of it, and sing a. The light will 
 scarcely flicker ; but instead of a single tone, sing the scale, 
 and you will see the candle quiver at every note. The 
 singer Delle Sedie runs up and down the scale before a 
 flame, and it never wavers. This is because he allows only 
 the exact amount of breath to escape which is requisite to 
 force the sound straight forward, and the air, being thus 
 occupied in the emission of the note, loses its quality of wind,
 
 180 HEALTH. 
 
 and is reduced to its quality of sound. You or I, on the 
 contrary, waste a great deal of breath, and send the sound 
 right and left, as well as forward." From this elocutionary 
 rule he makes this fine deduction : In every act of life, 
 spend no more than the exact amount of energy required. 
 Every mental emotion is a jewel. Let us hoard it up for 
 fitting use. How many people waste, in impatient and petty 
 strife, the treasure of anger, so sacred when it becomes 
 ' righteous wrath ! ' " Among his rules for the preservation 
 of health, Dr. Richardson of London insists upon the avoid- 
 ance of anger, hatred, grief, and fear. " The strongest," he 
 declares, " cannot afford to indulge in them." 
 
 In this connection let us mention one factor not often 
 touched upon, but surely one of the most helpful adjuncts to 
 a man's largest success namely, a restful home-life. " I 
 once asked the late Hepworth Dixon," writes a well-known 
 authoress, " with whom I happened to be talking on 
 this subject, what he thought was the reason why some 
 women held their husbands' hearts securely and for ever, 
 while others were but the brief tenants of a few months or 
 years. ' What,' I asked, ' is the quality in a woman that 
 her husband loves the longest?' 'That she should be a 
 pillow,' answered Mr. Dixon ; and then, meeting the inquiry 
 in my eyes, he went on, ' Yes, that is what a man needs in 
 his wife something to rest his heart on. He has excite- 
 ment and opposition enough in the world. He wants to feel 
 that there is one place where he is sure of sympathy, a place 
 that will give him ease as a pillow gives it to a tired head. 
 Do you think a man will be tempted to turn from a 
 woman whose eyes are his nattering mirror, who heals 
 where others wound 1 ?' And surely," adds this gifted lady, 
 "he was right." The wife should do what the wife of 
 Mohammed did for him, believe in him when other people 
 do not. 
 
 May not this sense of helpfulness and refreshment for his
 
 HEALTH. 181 
 
 work, which no one so keenly recognizes as the literary 
 worker, explain also the striking public acknowledgments 
 of indebtedness to their wives which world-famous men 
 have sometimes made ? Will it not account for the touching 
 dedications of famous volumes which one occasionally finds, 
 us if their authors would insist that she to whom the 
 volume doubtless owed so much should share in the honours 
 it received? Now this may seem, at a casual glance, a 
 secondary place, perhaps, for a woman to hold ; but no 
 queen ever held so supreme a sway, nor so secure a throne, 
 as she in her husband's heart. What can the doubtful 
 honours and responsibilities, the unnatural burdens and 
 festering atmosphere of public life, offer in comparison with 
 the serener air of this enviable kingdom ? The thought of 
 one sitting at home to welcome with restful and apprecia- 
 tive tokens, has nerved many a man to knightly and heroic 
 daring in the daily struggle with a hard-fisted world. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most curious features of this subject 
 of health is the wonderful influence of will-power in warding 
 off disease. It seems at times almost miraculous. The 
 well-known instance of Bonaparte's visit to those sick of the 
 plague is only one of many which might be cited. Such, 
 in fact, is the reflex influence of the mind upon the body 
 that even preoccupation will sometimes effectually ward off 
 disease. A thoughtful physician once assured the author 
 that if an express agent were to visit New Orleans in the 
 yellow-fever season having forty thousand dollars, say, in 
 his care, he would be in little danger of the fever so long as 
 he kept possession of the money. Let him once deliver that 
 into other hands, however, and the sooner he left the city 
 the better. David Dudley Field declares that one reason 
 for his being so well is that his mind has always been 
 occupied. " I am never idle," he says ; " in fact, I have no 
 time to be ill" " No, we don't get sick," said an actor 
 just in after four months on the road, " because we can't get
 
 182 HEALTH. 
 
 sick. Patti and a few other stars can afford that luxury, 
 but to the majority of us it is denied. It is a case of must, 
 with us ; and although there have been times when, had I 
 been at home, or a private man, I could have taken to my 
 bed with as good a right to be sick as any one ever had, I 
 have not done so, and have worn off the attack through 
 sheer necessity. It's no fiction that will-power is the best 
 of tonics, and theatrical people understand that they must 
 keep a good stock of it always on hand." 
 
 As regards the matter of eating and drinking, there can be 
 little doubt that many serious errors have been committed 
 right here. Abernethy used to declare that the two great 
 killing powers in the world are Stuff &nd Fret, and Jefferson 
 is credited with the remark that nobody ever repented of 
 eating too little. Cheerfulness is always commended. "To 
 be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at meal-time" was 
 one of Bacon's well-known rules for " long lasting." 
 
 It is curious to note that while some public performers eat 
 heartily before their appearances, others practise entire 
 abstinence. This may be accounted for doubtless in great 
 measure by the condition of the nervous system. Of such 
 moment is this regarded by Scalchi, the famous singer, that 
 on one occasion when her manager, without consulting her 
 beforehand, insisted upon changing the part previously 
 assigned her for her evening performance, she absolutely 
 refused to sing, and the matter resulted in a lawsuit in 
 which she came off victorious. The court held that as she 
 had been allowed to eat heartily, without due notice being 
 given her of the change desired in the programme, and that 
 it being, moreover, impossible for her to sing that particular 
 part under the circumstances, the manager had no right to 
 demand it. The reason for Scalchi's refusal was that " a 
 hearty meal abated the nervous activity by means of which 
 she throws her soul into her voice." It was simply a case of 
 "food against mood." On the other hand, we are told of a
 
 HEALTH. 183 
 
 very distinguished orator who always wanted a good dinner 
 of meat cooked rare, and that on one occasion, being congratu- 
 lated on a masterly effort, he remarked, " It was only that 
 duck I had just devoured." 
 
 Above all things, let one avoid getting into " ruts " from 
 which he cannot turn out at any time if it seem desirable. 
 One should early learn the secret of "dropping things." 
 The habit is invaluable, and it should be acquired at any 
 cost. Kingsley possessed this power in a remarkable degree. 
 " Luckily for me," he says, " I can stop from all work at 
 short notice, and turn head over heels in the sight of all 
 creation for a spell." Let the man of business, the banker, 
 the professor, learn to turn the key upon his cares in hours of 
 leisure, and shove the bolt inexorably against them. Glad- 
 stone has never allowed business of any kind to enter his 
 chamber door. " In all my political life," he declares, " I 
 have never been kept awake five minutes by any debate in 
 Parliament." Few people can realize the decision requisite 
 at times on the part of public men in this matter of simply 
 maintaining an attitude of self-defence. The inroads of 
 friends, and that hydra-headed monster the public, make 
 great demands upon both the time and the patience of a 
 public man. When Andrew Jackson was President, certain 
 friends from a distance, visiting Washington, resolved to see 
 him. Jackson happened to be unusually busy, and had been 
 worried and annoyed for hours by the incessant demands 
 made upon him, and when the cards were handed in he sent 
 back word that he must be excused. Presuming upon old 
 acquaintance, the request was renewed. He again sent back 
 word that he really could not see them. Still persisting in 
 their attempt, Jackson presently appeared in person. To 
 use a mild expression, the President was far from serene. 
 " My friends," he exclaimed, " I presume you think it a 
 mighty fine thing to live in this White House. I assure 
 you, however, that I have found it a perfect hell!" Even
 
 184 HEALTH. 
 
 on his death-bed he was tortured by office-seekers. " I am 
 dying," said he, " as fast as I can, and they all know it ; but 
 they keep swarming about me in crowds, seeking for office, 
 intriguing for office." Poor Johnson, too, while President, 
 was harassed beyond measure. It remained for Grant, with 
 that fine decision and indomitable will of his, to show the 
 dear public that a man's rights could and should be respected. 
 None more faithful than he to all, until the hour came when 
 the public duties of the day must cease. After that his time 
 was his own, and his determination to have his needed rest 
 was inexorable. And he was right. Alas, the ills endured 
 by long-suffering men who lack decision ! 
 
 Another great factor which all have insisted on is exer- 
 cise. Indeed, all observation attests that the healthiest per- 
 sons are those most fully employed. Rusting out, let it be 
 remembered, is, after all, a more rapid process than wearing 
 out. Look at David Dudley Field, for instance. What has 
 made him so hale and hearty in his old age ? These are his 
 own words : " My recipe for self-preservation is exercise ! I 
 am a very temperate man, and have always been so. I have 
 taken care of myself, and as I have a good constitution, I 
 suppose that is the reason I am so well." 
 
 After all is said, in spite of one's best efforts and utmost 
 care, unforeseen circumstances, an unnoticed draught from an 
 open window, or some equally trivial circumstance, will now 
 and then throw one upon the invalid list for a time. This is 
 the common lot. Illness is a great leveller. When Cassius 
 would show "great Caesar" on a level with himself, he 
 cries : 
 
 " He had a fever when he was in Spain, 
 And when the fit was on him, I did mark 
 How he did shake : 'tis true, this god did shake !" 
 
 As some one has truly observed, pedants write of kings, 
 heroes, and statesmen as never doing anything but upon the 
 deepest principles of sound policy ; but those who see and
 
 HEALTH. 185 
 
 observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that they 
 have headaches, indigestions, humours and passions, just like 
 other people, every one of which, in its turn, determines 
 their will in defiance of their reason. Even the strongest 
 and most prudent are doubtless at times betrayed into indis- 
 cretions and overwork under the spur of a noble ambition 
 which has taken possession of the soul. Painfully, and 
 through travail of soul, man comes to know at length his 
 limitations. A writer in All the Year Round has finely 
 voiced what many have doubtless felt. Asking himself 
 what he should choose, whether fame, or love, or life, if 
 some great angel spake and bade him choose " from treasure 
 infinite," and finding in each of these somewhat to mar his 
 great ideal, he says : 
 
 " I would choose Work, and never-failing power 
 To work without weak hindrance by the way, 
 Without recurrence of the weary hour 
 When tired tyrant nature holds its sway 
 Over the busy brain and toiling hand. 
 Ah ! if an angel came to me to-night 
 Speaking in language of the unknown land, 
 So would I choose from treasure infinite. 
 But well I know the blessed gift I crave, 
 The tireless strength for never-ending task, 
 Is not for this life. But beyond the grave, 
 It may be I shall find the thing I ask ; 
 For I believe there is a better land, 
 Where will, and work, and strength go hand in hand."
 
 VII 
 
 Entbusiasm. 
 
 People smile at the "enthusiasm of youth," that enthusiasm which 
 they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious 
 that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it. KINGSLEY. 
 
 The labour we delight in physics pain. SHAKESPEAKE. 
 
 WHO has not seen men splendidly equipped in every par- 
 ticular, with fine endowments, much learning, and many 
 advantages, yet who, notwithstanding all these, seem to 
 accomplish nothing in the world 1 And why is it, we ask 1 
 Failure is evident ; but from what cause 1 Is it not that they 
 are too often lacking in the single trait of enthusiasm, which 
 alone can fuse and make available one's other great qualities? 
 The machinery is perfect, the boiler sound, but there is no 
 fire, and hence no steam. They have no enthusiasm them- 
 selves, hence no power to kindle it in others. Life seemingly, 
 so far as they are concerned, is a pitiful failure, barren of 
 results. An intelligent lady remarked to the writer con- 
 cerning one of her sons, that he had excellent natural 
 abilities, a fine teacher, and all the elements apparently 
 necessary to success; "but," she continued, "he has no 
 enthusiasm, and will never exert himself enough to do that 
 which he might, if he would, easily accomplish." Is not this 
 true of many a one 1 One cannot help wishing at times for 
 some potent influence to break, even rudely if need be, the 
 strange spell, and arouse these natures of which so much 
 might reasonably be expected.
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 187 
 
 What could be more beautiful and inspiring than the 
 noble enthusiasm of youth ? With its lofty aspirations, its 
 "burnings to be great," youth fondly thinks its ingenuous- 
 ness and trust will always last. It hears intimations ever 
 and anon that it will be otherwise, but resolves that what- 
 ever may have been the experience of others, its own case 
 shall be the exception. Its sensibilities shall not be blunted 
 by the hardness of . men nor the coldness of the world. It 
 has not yet come to realize " all that mysteriously fatal pres- 
 sure which the years exert to reduce every ideal aim to the 
 commonplace standard." As this appears, however, to be 
 well-nigh inevitable, it would certainly seem no more than 
 fair that all right-minded persons should bear in mind that 
 injunction of Julius Hare, never to check the enthusiasm of 
 youth, because we need a good stock of it as a sort of reserve 
 force on which to draw as we go on in life. " We naturally 
 lose illusions as we get older, like teeth," said Sydney Smith, 
 "but there is no Cart w right to fit a new set into our under- 
 standings. I have, alas! only one illusion left," he continued, 
 "and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury." 
 
 Let it be understood that we are not advocating what is 
 familiarly known as " gush," to use the vulgar term. That 
 is one extreme. What we do urge is that mysterious some- 
 thing, call it what one may, which brings about great re- 
 sults, that something which you will always find to have 
 been a factor in the careers of all successful men, that 
 something which successfully laid an Atlantic cable after 
 thirteen years of defeat ; that sent Stephenson's locomotive 
 on its triumphant way in spite of carping critics, and all else 
 that might hinder its advance ; that sent " Fulton's Folly " 
 out upon the waters of the Hudson to demonstrate to all 
 coming time the wisdom of its inventor ; that swung the 
 Brooklyn Bridge over the East River ; that reared St. 
 Peter's, and wrought the " Transfiguration " and the " Para- 
 dise Lost." Indifference never wrote great works, nor
 
 188 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 thought out striking inventions, " nor reared the solemn 
 architecture that awes the soul, nor breathed sublime music, 
 nor painted glorious pictures, nor undertook heroic philan- 
 thropies. All these grandeurs are born of enthusiasm." 
 And enthusiasm is not fanaticism. Some one has said it is 
 the expiration of an inspiration. It is this inspiration that 
 holds one, as has been already intimated, with unflagging 
 attention to his work. 
 
 While, then, we repudiate mere gushing sentimentalism 
 as unworthy of any man, there is another and far greater 
 danger which menaces young men in this highly artificial 
 and pretentious age; and that is the affectation of indiffer- 
 ence to all things, which is the opposite extreme. Fore- 
 warned is forearmed, we are told. And it is well for one 
 to remember that this lack of general sensibility which is 
 becoming so prominent a characteristic of this age of affec- 
 tations is the sworn foe to all simplicity of character. We 
 warn any young man, therefore, whose aim is to make his 
 way in the world and win real success, to give this sort of 
 thing a very wide berth. The persons who labour under this 
 disorder pretend to have lost their freshness of interest in 
 everything. For them, as they would have it believed, there 
 is no surprise and no enthusiasm. Does any one imagine 
 such the most enviable of mortals? The French blase 
 would seem most appropriately to describe their condition, 
 or their assumed condition. Such a state, however, seems 
 to us anything but tempting. It is like that genteel respect- 
 ability of " our sovereign lord the king," who 
 
 " Never says a foolish thing, 
 Nor ever does a wise one. " 
 
 Surveyed in some of its aspects, society seems one grand 
 masquerade. 
 
 How seldom do we come to know each other as we really 
 are ! Men pass and repass, day after day, and still are
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 189 
 
 strangers. Women meet and converse, and part again, 
 and still there are impassable gulfs never to be spanned. 
 A thousand misunderstandings arise that never ought to 
 arise. Uncounted alienations exist that a word, a look 
 might have prevented. Differences, slight at first as the 
 trembling of a summer's leaf, have by reason of these 
 misunderstandings grown and magnified until ugly chasms 
 yawn, over which the blessed angel of reconciliation may 
 not pass. 
 
 There is, says a vigorous writer, a maxim underlying the 
 whole pagan philosophy, ancient and modern, Nil admi- 
 rari (" Admire nothing ! "). It is simply the spirit of the 
 sneerer, as Horace says again, Cum risu miror ("I never 
 admire, but I sneer "). Wonder at nothing ! Never be 
 excited to tones or thoughts of rapture or of reverence ! 
 That sentiment is worthy of a pagan, worthy only of such 
 a sad, irreverent age as this of ours. Rather let it be with 
 you exactly the reverse. " Keep the pores of your spirit 
 perpetually open to receive the health, the strength, and the 
 excitement of all things : they are all shadows cast by in- 
 visible presences. Have high models. Neither men, nor 
 gods, nor columns have allowed indifferent poets to exist. 
 And we may expect that the soul without enthusiasm will 
 be but a sorry and a poor thing. I must not be indifferent : 
 here is the foundation of success." In strikingly similar 
 vein are the trenchant words of John Stuart Blackie. 
 " There is a class of young men in the present age," he 
 says, "on whose face one imagines that he sees written, 
 Nil admirari. This is not at all a lovable class of the 
 ' youth-head ' of our land, and, unless the tone of not won- 
 dering which characterizes their manner be a sort of juvenile 
 affectation destined soon to pass away, rather a hopeless 
 class. Wonder, as Plato has it, is a truly philosophic 
 passion ; the more we have of it, accompanying the reverent 
 heart, of course, with a clear, open eye, so much the better.
 
 190 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 That it should be specially abundant in the opening scenes 
 of life is in the healthy course of nature ; and to be deficient 
 in it argues either insensibility, or that indifference, selfish- 
 ness, and conceit which are sometimes found combined with 
 a shallow sort of cleverness that with superficial observers 
 
 readily passes for true talent We are small creatures, 
 
 the biggest of us, and our only chance of becoming great in 
 
 a sort is by participation in the greatness of the universe 
 
 The chief end of man, according to the Stoics, was, ' Spectare 
 imitare mundum ! ' a fine thought, and finely expressed. 
 But how shall a man see when he has no admiring faculty 
 which shall lead him to see 1 and how shall he imitate what 
 he does not know? All true appreciation is the result of 
 keen insight and noble passion ; but the habit of despising 
 things and persons and holding them cheap blinds the one 
 factor which belongs to the complete result, and strangles the 
 
 other He who wonders not largely and habitually in the 
 
 midst of this magnificent universe does not prove that the 
 world has nothing great in it worthy of wonder, but only 
 that his own sympathies are narrow and his capacities 
 small." 
 
 The worst thing a young man can do is to begin criticis- 
 ing. Such a maxim as the one mentioned may be excusable 
 in a worn-out old cynic, but is intolerable in the mouth of a 
 hopeful young man. " There is no good to be looked for 
 from a youth who, having done no substantial work of his 
 own, sets up a business of finding fault with other people's 
 work, and calls this practice of finding fault criticism. The 
 first lesson that a young man has to learn is not to find 
 fault, but to perceive beauties. All criticism worthy of the 
 name is the ripe fruit of combined intellectual insight and 
 long experience. Only an old soldier can tell how battles 
 ought to be fought." These are strong words, but they 
 are true ones ; and the sooner a young man learns to 
 discriminate between the true and false in etiquette and
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 191 
 
 philosophy, the sooner and the more surely will he find 
 himself approaching the success for which he yearns. Take 
 for instance that so-called philosophy so widely prevalent in 
 certain quarters, that it is vulgar to be demonstrative. If 
 an old friend greets you on the street, after no matter how 
 long an absence, you are by no means to betray in any 
 manner the joyous emotions that instantly throb within you 
 for utterance : this would be a most flagrant violation of the 
 code. On the contrary, you are to receive him with the 
 utmost decorum and the most frigid politeness, nothing 
 further. Stifle your exuberant joy ; give the lie to your 
 real self, to be demonstrative is vulgar. Of all the fashion- 
 able follies of the day, what could be more absurd 1 Could 
 any code, indeed, be more false ? Self-possession, it has been 
 said, is a strong quality ; but who believes in this kind 1 
 People who school themselves to this are not apt to have the 
 other and better kind. They are not apt to manifest self- 
 possession on such occasions as really call for it, occasions 
 of difficulty, of danger, and of great trial. Touch their self- 
 love, make any unusual demand upon them for self-denial, 
 and their assumed and superficial self-possession vanishes in 
 an instant. 
 
 Self-possession, what do we mean by it ? The bull-frog 
 has an unusual amount of that quality, of a certain kind. 
 In his coldness and isolation he croaks a great deal, is noisy 
 and complacent, and "eminently self-possessed." So, in cer- 
 tain quarters, that coldness and reserve which never allows 
 itself to be startled into spontaneity of expression is greatly 
 lauded. But is it desirable ? To affect an indifference one 
 is far from feeling, and to diffuse an atmosphere like that of 
 an iceberg whose chilling influence can be felt fifty miles 
 away, is it really worth while ? It is very true, as Holmes 
 says, that we must not claim too much for sentiment. It 
 does not, of course, go a great way in deciding questions of 
 arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry. " Two and two will un-
 
 192 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 doubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other 
 idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a 
 triangle insist on being equal to two right angles in the face 
 of the most impassioned rhetoric or the most inspired verse. 
 There is a great deal of false sentiment in the world, as there 
 is of bad logic and erroneous doctrine ; but it is very much 
 less disagreeable to hear a young poet overdo his emotions, 
 or even deceive himself about them, than to hear a caustic 
 epithet-flinger repeating such words as sentimentality, and the 
 like, for the purpose of ridiculing him into silence. An over- 
 dressed woman is not so pleasing as she might be, but at any 
 rate she is better than the oil-of- vitriol squirt er whose pro- 
 fession it is to teach young ladies to avoid vanity by spoiling 
 their showy silks and satins." 
 
 The more one sees of the world, the more one is convinced 
 that simplicity is no less the inevitable accompaniment of 
 true genius than it is of true greatness. A wise observer has 
 said that true greatness never struts on stilts nor plays 
 the king upon the stage. Conscious of its elevation above 
 the rest of mankind, and knowing in what that elevation 
 consists, it is happy to take its part in the common amuse- 
 ments and business of life. It is not afraid of being under- 
 valued for its humility. Chief-Justice Marshall was a fine 
 illustration of this. In his hours of relaxation he was full 
 of fun, and as natural as a child. He entered into the spirit 
 of athletic exercises with all the ardour of youth, and at 
 sixty odd years of age was one of the best quoit-players in 
 Virginia. During the summer of 1820, at a quoit club near 
 Richmond were collected at least half-a-dozen great judges 
 and several distinguished persons of different professions, in- 
 cluding Jarvis, the portrait-painter. A match was made, 
 and the Chief-Justice threw off his coat and fell to work 
 with as much energy as he would have directed to the 
 decision of a question of neutral rights, or the conflicting 
 jurisdiction of the general and State governments. In the
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 193 
 
 course of the game, and when the parties were nearly a tie, 
 some dispute arose as to the quoit nearest the ring. The 
 Chief-Justice was chosen umpire between the quoit belonging 
 to Jarvis and that of Billy Haxall. The Judge bent down 
 on one knee, and with a straw essayed the decision of this 
 important question, on which the fate of the game in a great 
 measure depended. After nicely measuring, and biting off 
 the end of the straw, he said : " Gentlemen, you will perceive 
 this quoit would have it, but the rule of the game is to 
 measure from the visible iron. Now that clod of dirt hides 
 almost half an inch ; but then he has a right to the nearest 
 part of the ring, and here, you will perceive, is a splinter 
 which belongs to, and is a part of, the ring, as much as 
 Virginia is a part of the Union. This is giving Mr. Haxall 
 a great advantage ; but notwithstanding, in my opinion, 
 Jarvis has it by at least the sixteenth part of an inch, and 
 so I decide, like a judge, in my own favour." As has been 
 said, a man who is not afraid, whatever exaltation he may 
 have reached, to let himself thus down to the level of his 
 fellow-men, must have that innate consciousness of genius 
 which is in itself sufficient evidence of its possession. " How 
 ages thine heart, towards youth ? If not, doubt thy fitness 
 for thy work." 
 
 Keal enthusiasm is infectious. And by this is not meant 
 that quality referred to sometimes by the word in its cheap- 
 ened sense. It is not a simple spasmodic ebullition, agitat- 
 ing only the surface of the soul. Enthusiasm, in the best 
 sense of the word, is not "a shallow estuary where a sloop 
 might run aground," but is i-ather the mighty deep, bearing 
 on its bosom the navies of the world. This it is which has 
 ever been the inspiration of great endeavour ; this the majes- 
 tic throbbing in all heroic souls. This through days of dark- 
 ness and discouragement has nerved great spirits for their 
 struggles, until at length the brilliant success was won. 
 These, 
 
 (TO) 13
 
 194 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 "Through long days of labour, 
 And nights devoid of ease," 
 
 saw afar the coming triumph. How such men take hold of 
 other men ! How they stand out in history ! How the 
 blood tingles along the veins at mention of their names ! 
 Yet nothing is more illusive when one would define or 
 analyze this power. The secret for ever baffles and eludes 
 us ; yet the spell remains. Who can estimate the influence 
 that the simple name of Caesar had upon the career of the 
 brilliant hero of Austerlitz 1 France to-day has not shaken 
 off the spell of the latter's mighty name. In the fair city on 
 the Seine the mystic " N " confronts you everywhere. Do 
 not the finer pulses quicken at mention of Raphael and 
 Michael Angelo ? Is not the spirit stirred at the recital of 
 names which have become synonyms of power and great 
 achievement 1 It is always thus. Protogenes still worships 
 Apelles ; Dante has Yirgil ever in his thought, the tribute in 
 his heart : 
 
 " Thou art my master, and my author thou, 
 Thou art alone the one from whom I took 
 The beautiful style that has done honour to me." 
 
 Great men exist that there may be greater men. How true 
 that is ! " We go forth," says Emerson, " austere, dedicated, 
 believing in the iron links of Destiny, and will not turn on 
 our heel to save our lives ; but a book or a bust, or only the 
 sound of a name, shoots a spark through the nerves, and we 
 suddenly believe in will. I cannot even hear of personal 
 vigour of any kind, great power of performance, without 
 fresh resolution. We are emulous of all that man can do. 
 Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, ' I know that he can 
 toil terribly,' is an electric touch. We cannot read Plutarch 
 without a tingling of the blood." 
 
 Enthusiasm often becomes contagious. What more re- 
 markable than its manifestations at times among vast bodies 
 of men ? What marvellous power one sees in the unity of
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 195 
 
 purpose which sometimes possesses an army or a people ! 
 How significant is the French " esprit de corps ! " We have 
 no expression in English that adequately renders this phrase. 
 " Sheridan riding through the Shenandoah Valley exhaled 
 that something which made all the difference between victory 
 and defeat. Breathed into the soldiers, it turned the tide of 
 battle. Advantages were less than before. The odds were 
 more against them. There was simply one new factor, that 
 utterance of Sheridan." But the something implied in that 
 utterance was a revelation. It seized all ranks and all orders 
 of men, swept through the valley like a whirlwind, made 
 those under its influence irresistible, and won the day. Who 
 has not seen, under similar influence, vast multitudes swelling 
 and surging like the swelling of the sea, and well-nigh as 
 uncontrollable ? A simple song may suffice to create it. 
 Take that Marseillaise, for instance. Among the despatches 
 found not long since in the Palace of St. Cloud was one to 
 the following effect : "The Privy Secretary of the Emperor 
 to the Minister of Fine Arts in Paris : You may authorize 
 the song [Marseillaise]. The Emperor has charged me to 
 inform you of this. It will be well if you will previously 
 give notice of it to the Prefect of Police." Comment is un- 
 necessary. 
 
 As regards this influence of men upon each other, there 
 are certain natures with which it is impossible for one to 
 come in contact without feeling ennobled and lifted up into 
 a higher region of objects and aims than that in which one 
 is tempted habitually to dwell. Artists have often felt this 
 power. The genius of Haydn, for instance, was first fired 
 by Handel, we are told ; and Haydn himself believed that 
 he would never have written the "Creation," had he not 
 heard Handel play. The great are always friends. Nothing 
 could exceed the admiration of Beethoven for Cherubini, and 
 he most generously recognized the genius of Schubert. 
 Young Northcote pushing his way through the crowd that
 
 196 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 he might get near enough to Reynolds to touch the skirt of 
 his coat, and the satisfaction it gave him, as he afterwards 
 confessed, reveal the "true touch of youthful enthusiasm." 
 " Better, much better," says Blackie, " than even the mirror 
 of greatness in the biographies of truly great men, is the liv- 
 ing influence of such men when you have the happiness of 
 coming in contact with them. The best books are only a 
 clever machinery for stirring the nobler nature, and they act 
 indirectly and feebly ; but a living great man coming across 
 your path carries with him an electric influence which you 
 cannot escape, that is, of course, if you are capable of being 
 affected in a noble way ; for the blind do not see, and the 
 dead do not feel To have felt the thrill of a fervid human- 
 ity shoot through your veins at the touch of a Chalmers, a 
 MacLeod, or a Bunsen, is to a young man of a fine suscepti- 
 bility worth more than all the wisdom of the Greeks, all 
 the learning of the Germans, and all the sagacity of the 
 Scotch." 
 
 How in contrast to the influence of these gifted souls is 
 the influence of certain other men whom we all know ! 
 They are superbly educated, finely trained, but there is in 
 them no light and no heat. They stand apart, cold, stately, 
 glittering, " faultily faultless," but solitary and alone. Youth 
 is not drawn towards them ; in fact no one is. They them- 
 selves, possibly, are amazed to find it so; but the human 
 heart instinctively knows its teacher, and cannot be deceived. 
 
 Some people remind one of Sydney Smith's " Utilitarian," 
 the man " so hard that you might drive a broad-wheeled 
 waggon over him and it would produce no impression, and if 
 you were to bore holes in him with a gimlet, sawdust would 
 come out of him." The same author, in his classification of 
 mankind, calls certain of this sort the " lemon-squeezers of 
 society," people who act on you as a wet blanket ; who 
 always see a cloud in the sunshine ; predictors of evil, extin- 
 guishers of hope ; who, where there are two sides, see only
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 197 
 
 the worst, " people whose very look curdles the milk and 
 sets your teeth on edge." The brilliant Canon of West- 
 minster in "Julian Home" pays his respects to a certain 
 class of university men who profess to admire nothing, hope 
 for nothing, and love nothing ; who think warmth of heart 
 a folly and sentiment a crime. These men, he tells us, would 
 not display an interest in anything more important than a 
 boat race to save their lives ; are very fond of the phrase, 
 " All that sort of nonsense," to express everything that rises 
 above the dead level of their own dead mediocrity in intelli- 
 gence and life. " If you would not grovel in spirit, if you 
 would not lose every tear that sparkles and every sigh that 
 burns, if you would not ossify the very power of passion, if 
 you would not turn your soul into a mass of shapeless lead, 
 avoid those despicable cynics who never leave their discussion 
 of the merits of beer, or the powers of stroke oars, unless it 
 be to carp at acknowledged eminence and jeer at genuine 
 emotion. How often in such company have I seen men 
 relapse into stupid silence, because, if they ventured on any 
 expression of lively interest, one of the throng, amid the 
 scornful indifference of the rest, would give the only acknow- 
 ledgment of his remark by taking the pipe out of his mouth 
 to give vent to a low guttural laugh ! Deliver us from the 
 world without souls ! " 
 
 Many doubtless are familiar with that interesting passage 
 in John Stuart Mill's autobiography where he takes stock 
 of the loss and gain in his own training, and decides that 
 even his great debt of gratitude to his father for setting him 
 as a youth in the intellectual position of maturity was almost 
 cancelled by the rigid coat of reserve in which the severity 
 of his education had enclosed all emotion and impulse. We 
 so perpetually act and react upon each other that one never 
 knows, in any accurate way, the influence he exerts. As 
 the reading and re-reading of a single book will sometimes 
 reveal powers of thought in a literary student, so the really
 
 198 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 great work of art of a master will some day perchance, after 
 having been gazed at, admired, and passed, by amateurs of 
 the more thoughtless crowd, fan into sudden flame the fire 
 slumbering in an enthusiastic breast, and encourage some 
 youth, obscure and all unknown, to exclaim, " I, too, am 
 a painter ! " That inspiration shall carry the young man 
 through his initial studies, shall blend the colours on his 
 palette, guide his pencil, and shine upon his canvas, until 
 some future Titian on witnessing his productions shall be 
 ready to exclaim, " Were I not Titian, I should wish to be 
 Correggio ! " When a mere child, Couture was taken by his 
 father to the Museum of the Louvre, and the first picture 
 he saw was the " Marriage in Cana," by Veronese. His 
 father corrected him for exclaiming aloud that it was the 
 " Marriage in Cana," pointing out to him that it could not 
 be, because the figures were dressed in the costume of the 
 Middle Ages instead of that of the age of Tiberius. The 
 father soon learned from a bystander the mistake he had 
 made, and that his son was right. " I do not know why," 
 says Couture in his book, "but it appeared to me very beau- 
 tiful." It was long afterwards that this boy was able to 
 paint his famous " Romans of the Decadence," which gave 
 him an immediate and wide renown ; but its striking simi- 
 larity in matter and treatment to the great work of Vero- 
 nese makes it seem a late result of that outburst of boyish 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 No great man, it is said, really does his work by impos- 
 ing his maxims on his disciples. He evokes their life. Nor 
 let any one imagine that he can impress upon others the 
 thought which has not mastered him and taken possession 
 of his own soul. No one need expect others to respond to 
 that which awakens no kindred enthusiasm in his own 
 breast. The thought must breathe, and the word must 
 burn, before it shall find lodgment and kindle the fire in the 
 heart of another.
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 199 
 
 " What poets feel not when they make 
 
 A pleasure in creating, 
 The world in its turn will not take 
 Pleasure in contemplating." 
 
 So writes Matthew Arnold, and nothing could be more true. 
 Of course one cannot expect that the tide will never ebb. 
 The wind goes down, and one suddenly finds himself be- 
 calmed. The sails flap idly, and he is left tugging at the 
 oar. The old enthusiasm has fled. One wonders where all 
 the aspirations which but yesterday so thrilled him are gone. 
 He goes grieving, and desolate, and sad. " The fresh morning 
 yields to the hot, white light of the long, dull afternoon of 
 life. " How monotonous and commonplace everything appears ! 
 Life seems to have resolved itself into a succession of petty 
 cares. The season of depression has succeeded that of ex- 
 altation. Success is full of promise, it has been said, till 
 men get it ; and then it is a last year's nest from which the 
 bird has flown. Care smothers the rising aspiration. The 
 hollow-eyed goddess, haggard and wrinkled and wan, clutches 
 the arm and shrivels the sinews of endeavour. One is 
 amazed as he realizes how dull and stupid and aimless it is 
 possible to be. 
 
 ' ' We, too, have autumns, when our leaves 
 
 Drop loosely through the dampened air ; 
 And all our good seems bound in sheaves, 
 While we stand reaped and bare." 
 
 We are tired of the daily sameness of life. The tide has 
 ebbed, and left behind only the flat and oozing sands. All 
 men, even the most heroic and enthusiastic, have come to 
 such periods. This feeling is voiced in Shakespeare's famous 
 sonnet 
 
 " Tired with all these, for restful death I cry ; " 
 
 and in Shelley's plaintive words 
 
 " I could sit down like a tired child, 
 And weep away this life of care."
 
 200 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 Dr. Maurice Buscb, the Boswell of Bismarck, tells us : 
 "The prince passes for a man of iron character for a spirit 
 confident in and certain of itself. I do not deny that he is 
 so; but he, too, has his moments of weakness periods of 
 apparent or real dissatisfaction with his own performances 
 and his destiny lackadaisical, or, let us rather say, gloomy 
 tempers which express themselves in a sort of universal 
 wailing." It is a part of that "inexorable weariness" 
 which, as Goethe declares, lies at the basis of our life. 
 Now, what is one to do? Let him do the duty that lies 
 nearest. 
 
 Closely allied to this condition, too, is a certain lethargy 
 to which youth, perhaps, is peculiarly liable, though it is 
 not confined to youth. Earnest and conscientious workers, 
 men of great ability and industry and corresponding ambi- 
 tions, often feel its power, and for the time must yield. 
 Dr. Wilson has said, "It is the scholar's great affliction ; 
 it is bred with thought beneath the brow that never sweats." 
 Another has graphically portrayed its influence : " The 
 editor busy at his desk suddenly feels the fatal influence 
 steal over him ; his grasp on his subject weakens, the pen 
 drops from his hand, his ideas move sluggishly, or seem to 
 escape altogether ; he is utterly gravelled for lack of matter. 
 The lawyer, listening to his client's story, discovers that he 
 is not following him ; his mind refuses to seize and apply to 
 it the principles of the law ; his thoughts wander and grow 
 hazy ; he wonders whether he will be able to avoid yawning 
 in his client's face ; a sort of aversion to the whole matter 
 possesses him, and he feels that the utmost he is capable of 
 is to get rid of his importunate visitor without betraying him- 
 self. So with the college student, eagerly cramming for his 
 examination. Just at the time when he should put in double 
 work he is aware of an irresistible inclination to lean back in 
 his chair, throw away his books, and let his thoughts idly wan- 
 der on fruitless objects. The very power to make the effort to
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 201 
 
 resist this seductive influence is wanting. The stirring 
 music of the coming years which ordinarily stimulates him 
 sounds distant and feeble. Rather the subtle strain of the 
 lotus-eaters whispers in his soul, 
 
 ' Death is the end of life; ah, why 
 Should life all labour be?'" 
 
 Then, again, a habit of introspection and minute analysis 
 is fatal to enthusiasm. Did one ever attempt to analyze 
 the perfume of a flower without losing that subtile, ethereal 
 something which gave it its charm ? Does not one find by 
 pressing it too closely, by seeking to inhale its fragrance too 
 long, as if to wring from it a still deeper secret than it chooses 
 to give, that its very perfume is turned to bitterness ? And 
 who ever sought to analyze a gorgeous sunset that thrilled 
 him with delight, that did not find its glow already palling 
 on his senses, and the thrill dying out of his heart, although the 
 glowing splendour still burned radiantly in the crimson west? 
 These finer emotions were never meant for the crucible. So 
 surely as we treat them thus, the ethereal, evanescent spell 
 will inevitably leave us, and forlorn and sad, a pale and 
 ashen sky, or some barren relic of a nameless joy, will alone 
 remain. One may then regret, but of what avail 1 
 
 " Something beautiful has vanished, 
 
 And we sigh for it in vain. 
 We may seek it in the air, 
 On the earth, and everywhere, 
 
 But it never comes again." 
 
 In these intervals of depression, when the rare, fine light 
 which flooded the horizon has died away, again we ask, 
 What is one to do? Surely we need not despair. The 
 sunrise never failed us yet. In such an hour one must 
 "fall back on the steadfast resolve of a happier time." Ad- 
 here to lines marked out and projects formed in the hours 
 of illumination, when the vision was clear. The dawn will
 
 202 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 come. Nothing is more striking than the contrast when the 
 outlook brightens. The transition is sometimes sudden ; 
 without a premonition it may come. A book may do it. 
 The glowing page of some vigorous thinker has often stirred 
 the soul to its depths. We rise up refreshed and strong. 
 What is there that we cannot do ? Ah, the regal hour has 
 come. Thoughts crowd one upon another. It is no effort 
 to plan and resolve. As Emerson himself says : " Head 
 Plutarch, and the world is a proud place peopled with men 
 of positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around 
 us who will not let us sleep." And elsewhere he says that 
 all poets have confessed to rare moments when a light, a 
 freedom and power, came to them, lifting them to perform- 
 ances far better than they could reach at other times. At 
 such periods the intellect is so active that everything seems 
 to run to meet it. "In spring, when the snow melts, the 
 maple-trees flow with sugar, and you cannot get tubs fast 
 enough; but it is only for a few days." It has been said 
 that Nature is prodigal, but never a spendthrift. She hus- 
 bands her resources, that she may be able to distribute. In 
 days of plenty one must learn to anticipate the days of 
 famine. " In these hours of affluent thought and emotion, 
 when celestial gales are blowing strong, waste not a moment, 
 for they will not always blow. Make good speed towards 
 port while you may." 
 
 Even a slight disturbance or interruption in the flow of 
 one's thought at such times may make a marked difference 
 in results. Rossini, while snugly ensconced under the 
 blankets, in the midst of the glow and fervour of composi- 
 tion, loses his manuscript under the bed. He is too warm 
 and comfortable to get out and recover it, so he attempts 
 to rewrite it To his disgust he cannot remember what he 
 has already written, so goes to work and composes another. 
 On comparing them afterwards, the first is found to be much 
 the better of the two. Doubtless many an instance might
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 203 
 
 be cited to show how a seemingly trivial interruption has 
 often been disastrous to one's work. 
 
 It is surprising, too, what an influence one's surroundings 
 have upon his enthusiasm. But he cannot escape it. No 
 philosophy in the world can make bare walls, ungainly fur- 
 niture, and cheerless rooms other than depressing. It is 
 curious to note the effect upon one's spirits of even dis- 
 orderly arrangement in one's surroundings. But it is de- 
 cidedly unfavourable. If one has never tested this, let him sit 
 down and try to compose in an apartment where everything 
 is in confusion. Then when the servant has put the room 
 in order, let him note the contrast. There is a reflex in- 
 fluence, refreshing and helpful, which one recognizes at once. 
 Certain trained workers may, it is true, be capable of such 
 concentration of mind as virtually to ignore surroundings 
 for the time being; and yet there is an occult, subtile in- 
 fluence pervading the very atmosphere which makes against 
 one. The confusion around is pictured unconsciously upon 
 the retina, and transfers itself to the thought, making con- 
 fusion within. 
 
 George Bancroft, the historian, is a firm believer in the 
 theory that the brain at work is sensibly affected by the 
 external objects around, and in some degree takes its tone 
 from them. He works in a long, narrow room, adorned 
 profusely with historical paintings. From his seat he has a 
 full view of his art treasures, and frequently gazes at them 
 as if for inspiration. A French critic of English manners 
 once stated that in London a row of houses had been built 
 along the river side of the Strand, with the view of guarding 
 the inhabitants from the danger annually recurring of join- 
 ing hands and rushing down together to drown themselves 
 in the Thames, and he assigned as the cause the dulness of 
 the weather prevailing there in November. " Of his facts," 
 says an English writer, "I will say nothing; but I hesitate 
 to accept his reasoning. If the temptation does really exist,
 
 204 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 it is the effect, not of the much-maligned month of fogs, but 
 of the despondency arising from surroundings." Let us note, 
 in passing, that not alone are such depressing influences dis- 
 astrous to enthusiasm they are positively injurious to health. 
 
 It is well known that there were certain streets in London 
 through which Dickens would never allow himself to pass. 
 With him, however, it was the painful associations which 
 the surroundings recalled of the hardships and ill-treatment 
 of his youth. There is no denying that certain surroundings 
 are death to all enthusiasm, while others inevitably fill one 
 with finest inspiration. The presence of high art, whether 
 it be painting or architecture or statuary, at once sets the 
 pulses throbbing. It may be even extremely minute a bit 
 of church window, or a strain from one of the old masters 
 yet the spell is there. It is not hard to believe that certain 
 works could never have been produced in some surroundings; 
 the depressing influence would have been too great. Nor is 
 it difficult to understand the feeling which prompted certain 
 of the old composers to don their full court dress whenever 
 they were about to apply themselves to the task of composi- 
 tion. Some have experienced the fervour and glow of 
 literary composition most fully under the influence of fine 
 music, while others are baffled unless all around is pervaded 
 with quiet ; some have enjoyed working surrounded by their 
 friends, others have found themselves helpless save in the 
 perfect solitude of the study. As already intimated, visitors 
 or society in any form are fatal to Verdi's work, and ex- 
 tinguish all the ardour of his genius. 
 
 No one can look upon the countenances of the old masters 
 and not be impressed with that rapt expression which one so 
 often sees. The intense enthusiasm which pervaded the soul 
 reveals itself in every lineament 
 
 " Like proud crags, high up, that wear the morning ere it comes." 
 Longfellow once said, in a pleasant letter to one of his
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 205 
 
 friends : " To those who ask how I can write ' so many 
 things that sound as if I were as happy as a boy,' please say 
 that there is in this neighbourhood, or neighbouring town, a 
 pear-tree planted by Governor Endicott two hundred years 
 ago, and that it still bears fruit not to be distinguished from 
 the young tree in flavour. I suppose the tree makes new 
 wood every year, so that some part of it is always young. 
 Perhaps that is the way with some men when they grow old; 
 I hope it is so with me." Louise Chandler Moulton declares 
 that it must have been his thorough enjoyment of all that 
 he had to do that kept Longfellow's work from telling on 
 him. He was so full of fire and enthusiasm that one was 
 insensibly beguiled in his presence into that frankness of 
 the heart and the imagination which is so much rarer than 
 the more commonplace frankness of thought and opinion. 
 The intensity of feeling and enthusiasm with which Salvini 
 throws himself into the part he is representing is remarkable. 
 " This was especially evident," says one in speaking of him, 
 " on the occasion of his playing ' Saul.' After the perform- 
 ance I was invited to go behind the scenes to speak with 
 him, and was surprised, as well as pained, to find him utterly 
 exhausted. I could not help saying, ' How can you exert 
 yourself thus to please so few people 1 ?' There were scarcely 
 four hundred persons assembled to witness this sublime 
 performance. He answered with honest simplicity, ' They 
 have paid their money, and are entitled to the best I can do 
 for them ; besides that, when I am on the stage, I forget the 
 world and all that is in it, and live the character I represent.' " 
 This, then, is one of the great secrets of success. One 
 must have enthusiasm for his work ; and whether it be Bier- 
 stadt at the easel, or Brooks in the pulpit, depend upon it, 
 this factor will ever be found one of the prominent attributes 
 of the souL It is a sad day when our ideal is reached. 
 " Always think you shall succeed," was the advice of Dr. 
 Arnold, " but never think you have reached the goal."
 
 VIII. 
 
 /Banners. 
 
 " Manner is something with every one, and everything with some." 
 
 There are certain manners which are learned in good society, of that 
 force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be considered, and is 
 everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or genius. 
 EMERSON. 
 
 Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery 
 of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning 
 or owning them ; they solicit him to enter and possess. Ibid. 
 
 Civility costs nothing, and buys everything. LADY MONTAGU. 
 
 THOSE who aim to be thoroughly and always masters of the 
 situation should realize that no one factor contributes so 
 largely to this mastery as a man's manners and address. It 
 was said of Hercules that whatever thing he did, he con- 
 quered. The same is true of some men. Their manners 
 have made them simply irresistible, and have enabled them 
 to carry their point in face of prejudice, envy, hatred, and 
 all sorts of opposition, and seemingly even in spite of them- 
 selves transformed their enemies into friends. "I have 
 known men," says South, "grossly injured in their affairs, 
 depart pleased, at least silent, only because they were injured 
 in good language, ruined in caresses, and kissed while they 
 were struck." 
 
 What must have been the fascination of manner of the 
 first Napoleon, which could lead the very soldiers sent to 
 take him prisoner to bear him back in triumph to a throne ?
 
 MANNERS. 207 
 
 There is no denying the fact that a man's manners give an 
 immediate and permanent impression. We may not be able 
 in so many words to analyze or define it, or to explain why, 
 but the fact remains. Of course there are some who will 
 affect to deny this, just as certain people affect to scout and 
 deny the influence of " clothes ;" but who can safely ignore 
 it ? We can never wholly rid ourselves of first impressions. 
 Reasoning or arguing against them will not avail. In spite 
 of ourselves, we are influenced, say what we may ; and that 
 these first impressions are governed largely by " manners " 
 and " clothes," it were folly to deny. " In civilized society," 
 says Johnson, " external 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. You may analyze 
 this and say what there is in it ; but that will avail you 
 nothing, for it is a part of a general system. Pound St. 
 Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom. It 
 is, to be sure, good for nothing ; but put all these atoms 
 together, and you have St. Paul's Church." Every one 
 knows that the manner of doing things is often more 
 important than the things themselves. It has been truly 
 observed that the very same thing may become either 
 pleasing or offensive by the manner of saying or doing 
 it ; just as in works of sculpture, though the material be 
 valuable, as being silver or gold, the workmanship is still 
 more so. 
 
 La Bruyere asserts that a man's worth in this world is 
 estimated according to his conduct, and few who are ac- 
 quainted with the world will be prepared to deny it. 
 " Good-breeding alone can prepossess people in your favour 
 at first sight, more time being necessary to discover greater 
 talents." 
 
 Now, the achievement of this most desirable of accomplish- 
 ments is not so difficult, after all. Graceful manners soon 
 become a " second nature," if one really sets himself in
 
 208 MANNERS. 
 
 earnest to acquire them. The frequenting of good society 
 will inevitably confer them, and that, too, almost uncon- 
 sciously. One naturally and insensibly acquires "the air, 
 the address, and the turn " of those with whom he converses. 
 Let one but consider for a moment the origin of the codes 
 of etiquette which prevail in polite society, and he cannot 
 fail to see how naturally fine manners arose. The good 
 heart and good intention is the basis of it all. The desire to 
 save annoyance or trouble, or to give pleasure to another, 
 even at the cost of some denial or inconvenience to one's 
 self, this is indeed the real essence of all the codes. "There 
 is always a best way of doing everything," says Emerson, 
 "if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of 
 doing things ; each once a stroke of genius or of love now 
 repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich 
 varnish with which the routine of life is washed, and its 
 details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops 
 which give such a depth to the morning meadows." 
 
 Lord Chatham, in one of his letters to his nephew, defined 
 politeness as benevolence in little things ; and Hillard 
 affirms that we degrade politeness by making it anything 
 less than a cardinal virtue. This benevolence may manifest 
 itself in a thousand ways. It is revealed in little delicate 
 attentions, and thoughtfulness for another's wants or 
 pleasures. In unobtrusive manner it seems to anticipate 
 all one's wishes or preferences. Then, too, its favours are 
 conferred so naturally as to seem wholly spontaneous and 
 without premeditation ; yet one finds every want antici- 
 pated. Is it not this which has always given that nameless 
 charm to Southern hospitality, and rendered it proverbial ? 
 One visiting the South for the first time cannot fail to 
 recognize this delightful atmosphere, this " old school " 
 suggestiveness in the courtesy and attentions he receives; nor 
 will he be slow to appreciate the charm. Say what we may, 
 in whatever else its people may be wanting, for charming
 
 MANNERS. 209 
 
 manners and delightful hospitality the South has ever en- 
 joyed an enviable distinction, and deservedly so. 
 
 When one considers in what an infinite number of little 
 things human happiness consists ; that it is not made up of 
 " startling events and great emotions," but of little attentions 
 often renewed, kindly offices, cheerful looks and salutations, 
 unexpected little favours, glad surprises, and the like, he 
 comes to realize that mastership in this direction is as really 
 admirable as the bringing about at rare intervals of some 
 great and striking event. The opportunities for doing great 
 things are so rare, after all, that they seldom come to any of 
 us. To neglect, then, the little things that are sure to make 
 life seem " more fair and sweet," is a great mistake. And 
 the art is not difficult, as we have said. It is indeed very 
 simple. The kindly heart will inevitably show us the way. 
 It is Napoleon at St. Helena, meeting the labouring man 
 bending under his heavy burden, and with his usual courtesy 
 stepping aside, and mildly saying to his companion, who 
 seemed still inclined to keep the narrow path, " Respect the 
 burden, madame, respect the burden ! " It is Garibaldi en- 
 tering mighty London, and amid all the tokens of welcome 
 of the English nation, stooping to kiss the labourer's child, 
 and in that single act " folding to his heart the working- 
 people of England." It is good George Herbert stopping to 
 lift the muddy wheel of the peasant's cart out of the ugly 
 rut, and saying in response to the rallying of his friends on 
 his soiled appearance, and the performance of so menial an 
 act, that it would " make music for him at midnight." It is 
 Wellington making room for the poor man at the altar rail, 
 and remarking that all were equal there. It is the dying 
 Sir Ralph Abercromby returning Duncan Roy's blanket ; or 
 the King of the Belgians sending the wreath of immortelles 
 to the weeping mother, as he happened to witness from the 
 palace window the funeral procession of an unknown child. 
 It is these, and a thousand other self-denying heroisms in 
 (7) 14
 
 210 MANNERS. 
 
 little things, daily repeated, in palace and in cot, that serve 
 to illustrate what we mean. 
 
 It is well to remember that pleasure is reciprocal ; no one 
 feels it who does not at the same time give it. To be 
 pleased, one must please ; and what pleases you in others 
 will generally please them in you. Rest assured of one 
 thing : if one is careless and indifferent whether he pleases 
 or not, he never will please. Swift declares that Nature has 
 left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of 
 shining in company; and there are a hundred men suffici- 
 ently qualified for both, who by a very few faults that they 
 might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable. 
 They remind one of the story told of King James, who when 
 asked by a nurse to make her son a gentleman, replied : "I 
 will make him a baronet, if you will, but no power on earth 
 could make him a gentleman." 
 
 It has been said that one may do everything, however 
 unpleasant it may be to those around him, if one only does 
 it in the right way; and the instance given to prove the 
 truth of this assertion is taken from humble life. A cat 
 walks daintily into a room on a cold winter's day, and with 
 a benign glance at the company, and a melodious purring 
 sound, she walks leisurely round, selects for herself the 
 warmest place in the room, perhaps the only warm place, 
 right in front of the fire, curls herself up, and goes serenely 
 to sleep, secure that no one will be so unreasonable as to 
 question her right to sleep wherever inclination prompts her 
 to sleep. No one calls it selfish, no one is annoyed, because 
 she has done it so prettily and gracefully. Indeed, every one 
 experiences an access of warmth and comfort in himself from 
 beholding pussy's blissful repose. 
 
 Now imagine the same thing done in a different way, and 
 by a less self-possessed individual : if it were done hurriedly, 
 or noisily, or clumsily, or diffidently even, or in any way 
 obtrusively, what a storm of indignation it would excite in
 
 MANNERS. 211 
 
 the bosoms of all beholders. How thoughtless, how incon- 
 siderate, how selfish ! No, it must be done as the cat does it, 
 without a sound or a gesture to provoke criticism, or it must 
 not be done at all. 
 
 Many a man, by certain seemingly trivial faults of manner, 
 has given rise to such a dislike at first that all his merit 
 could not get the better of it afterwards. 
 
 " I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, 
 The reason why I cannot tell ; 
 But this I know, and know full well, 
 I do not love thee, Dr. Fell." 
 
 This familiar old epigram of Martial, thus anglicized by Tom 
 Brown, has doubtless given apt expression to the feelings 
 of many a one. Some, perhaps, would be puzzled to tell 
 how it is possible not to love anybody, and yet not to know 
 the reason why. But who doubts its truth ? Nothing, we 
 may be sure, can ever excuse a man for neglecting the civili- 
 ties due from man to man. When Clement the Fourteenth 
 was made Pope, the ambassadors of the several States repre- 
 sented at his court waited on his Holiness with their con- 
 gratulations. As they were introduced and severally bowed, 
 he also bowed to return the compliment. On this the master 
 of ceremonies told his Holiness that he should not have 
 returned their salute. " Oh, I beg your pardon," said he ; 
 " I have not been Pope long enough to forget good manners." 
 It is a comforting assurance to know that the desire of 
 pleasing is at least half the art of doing it, and that the rest 
 depends wholly upon the manner. And this one learns 
 simply by attention, observation, and frequenting good com- 
 pany. " If you always live with those who are lame," says 
 the old Latin adage, "you will yourself learn to limp." In 
 order to know the ways of good society one must of course 
 avail himself of every proper occasion to make himself 
 familiar with it, and carefully note the manners of those
 
 212 MANNERS. 
 
 who are its acknowledged leaders. He will find that among 
 well-bred people, as Hume says, a mutual deference is affected, 
 contempt of others disguised, authority concealed, attention 
 given to each in his turn, and an easy stream of conversation 
 maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, with- 
 out eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority. 
 Now and then one will meet with a person "so exactly 
 formed to please that he will gain upon every one that hears 
 or beholds him : this disposition is not merely the gift of 
 nature, but frequently the effect of much knowledge of the 
 world, and a command over the passions." This mingling 
 with men occasionally will save a man also from that dis- 
 agreeable, egotistical bearing which one sometimes sees mani- 
 fested, and which reminds one, for all the world, of the per- 
 sonage of whom Tourgueneff tells, who "had the air of his 
 own statue erected by national subscription." 
 
 Chesterfield relates with charming frankness his own ex- 
 perience upon his first introduction into fine society. "I 
 remember," he says, "when, with all the awkwardness and 
 rust of Cambridge about me, I was first introduced into 
 good company I was frightened out of my wits. I was 
 determined to be what I thought civil; I made fine low 
 
 bows, and placed myself below everybody If I saw 
 
 people whisper, I was sure it was at me; and I thought 
 myself the sole object of either the ridicule or the censure 
 of the whole company, who, Heaven knows, did not trouble 
 their heads about me. In this way I suffered for some time 
 like a criminal at the bar, and should certainly have re- 
 nounced all polite company for ever, if I had not been so 
 convinced of the absolute necessity of forming my manners 
 upon those of the best companies, that I determined to per- 
 severe, and suffer anything or everything rather than not 
 compass that point. Insensibly it grew easier to me, and 
 I began not to bow so ridiculously low, and to answer ques- 
 tions without great hesitation or stammering. If, now and
 
 MANNERS. 213 
 
 then, some charitable people, seeing my embarrassment, and 
 being desceiivre themselves, came and spoke to me, I con- 
 sidered them as angels sent to comfort me, and that gave 
 me a little courage. I got more soon afterwards, and was 
 intrepid enough to go up to a fine woman and tell her that 
 I thought it a warm day. She answered me very civilly that 
 she thought so too ; upon which the conversation ceased on 
 my part for some time, till she, good-naturedly resuming it, 
 spoke to me thus : ' I see your embarrassment, and I am 
 sure that the few words you said to me cost you a great deal ; 
 but do not be discouraged for that reason, and avoid good 
 company. We see that you desire to please, and that is the 
 main point ; you want only the manner, and you think that 
 you want it still more than you do. You must go through 
 your novitiate before you can profess good-breeding ; and if 
 you will be my novice, I will present you to my acquaint- 
 ance as such.' " Elsewhere he shrewdly observes : " Have 
 as much gold as you please in one pocket, but take care 
 always to keep change in the other, for you will much 
 oftener have occasion for a shilling than for a guinea. Give 
 me a man who has ready cash about him for present ex- 
 penses sixpences, shillings, half-crowns, and crowns, which 
 circulate easily ; but a man who has only an ingot of gold 
 about him is much above common purposes, and his riches 
 are not handy nor convenient Happy the man who, with 
 a certain fund of parts and knowledge, gets acquainted with 
 the world early enough to make it his bubble at an age when 
 most people are the bubbles of the world, for that is the com- 
 mon case of youth." 
 
 It has been said that 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 erudition. 
 
 Who has not seen men highly gifted, and possessed of
 
 214 MANNERS. 
 
 most admirable qualities, their minds stored with all kinds 
 of knowledge in fact, perfect walking encyclopedias 
 appear at the utmost disadvantage in a mixed company in 
 a drawing-room? Awkward and blundering, they become 
 objects of the utmost concern, not to say terror, to their 
 friends because of the uncertainty created regarding what 
 overt breach of etiquette they may be guilty of next. And 
 all this simply because of neglect in their early training, or 
 the absence of that instinct of fine breeding which often sup- 
 plies its place. " We see a world of pains taken," says Steele, 
 "and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts 
 in a college for the conduct of life, and, after all, the man so 
 qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, 
 and want common sense before an agreeable woman. Hence 
 it is that wisdom, valour, justice, and learning cannot keep a 
 man in countenance that is possessed with these excellences 
 if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called 
 good -breeding." In the same vein La Bruyere has called 
 attention to the fact that although a man may have virtues 
 and many great qualities, he may still be disagreeable ; and 
 he affirms that there is a certain fashion in manners which 
 is too often neglected as of no consequence, but which fre- 
 quently becomes the basis of the world's favourable or un- 
 favourable opinion of you. And he further shows that a 
 little attention to this, by which a man may render his man- 
 ners polished and engaging, will prevent others from enter- 
 taining prepossessions respecting one which may be greatly 
 to one's disadvantage. 
 
 One thing is absolutely indispensable, and that is unfailing 
 good-nature ; the avoidance at all hazards, and at whatever 
 cost, of anything and everything which might wound, how- 
 ever slightly, and the manifestation, instead, of simple, cor- 
 dial frankness, unassuming, winning manners, and a sunny, 
 perennial, golden temper. This never fails to please ; and 
 so essential is it that Addison has declared that there is no
 
 MANNERS. 215 
 
 society or conversation to be kept up in the world without 
 good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance 
 and supply its place. " For this reason," he says, "mankind 
 have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, 
 which is what we express by the word 'good-breeding.'" 
 How charmingly has Steele portrayed the influence of this 
 admirable quality ! " Varillas," he tells us, "has this to the 
 highest perfection, and communicates it wherever he appears. 
 The sad, the merry, the severe, the melancholy, show a new 
 cheerfulness when he comes among them. At the same time 
 no one can repeat anything that Varillas has ever said that 
 deserves repetition ; but the man has that innate goodness 
 of temper that he is welcome to everybody, because every 
 man thinks he is so to him. lie does not seem to contribute 
 anything to the mirth of the company ; and yet upon reflec- 
 tion you find it all happened by his being there." And he 
 further declares that men would come into company with 
 ten times the pleasure they do, if they were sure of hearing 
 nothing that would shock them, as well as expected what 
 would please. 
 
 Let one beware of too much effort to make himself agree- 
 able, and shun all excess. There is an ease and repose that 
 characterizes those "to the manner born" which reveals itself 
 unmistakably to the observant eye. Good-breeding shows 
 itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears least. " One 
 may now know a man that never conversed in the world by 
 his excess of good-breeding. A polite country esquire shall 
 make you as many bows in half an hour as would serve a 
 courtier for a week. There is infinitely more to do about 
 place and precedency in a meeting of justices' wives than in 
 an assembly of duchesses." The golden mean, of which one 
 hears so often, must be the rule here as elsewhere, in order 
 to attain the surest success. A fine authority on elocution 
 has observed that to serious-minded men there is but one 
 true fashion in reading namely, to pronounce distinctly
 
 216 MANNERS. 
 
 enough to be understood, but not so much so as to be re- 
 marked. Mole, the actor, has declared : " Without the 
 middle register, no reputation." The same is true here. 
 Both extremes are to be shunned. Sufficiently cordial to 
 be genial, but not so demonstrative as to attract special 
 attention. " Do not think," dryly remarks Zimmermann, 
 "that your learning and genius, your wit or sprightliness, 
 are welcome everywhere. I was once told that my company 
 was disagreeable because I appeared so uncommonly happy." 
 
 If one would like to test this influence of manners, and 
 would convince himself as regards their value, let him some 
 fine morning take a walk along a busy thoroughfare, and at 
 certain intervals stop a man and ask him the time of day, 
 for instance, or the way to some public grounds. Let him 
 demand the information from a few in a blunt and dictato- 
 rial manner, and then approach the others with well-bred 
 courtesy, and our word for it, he will not be left long in 
 doubt as to its " commercial " value, to say the least. And 
 right here let it be remarked : never be ashamed or afraid 
 of asking questions, for if they lead to information, and 
 you accompany them with some excuse, you will never be 
 reckoned a rude or impertinent questioner. All these things 
 depend entirely upon the manner ; and in that respect the 
 vulgar saying is true, that one man may better steal a horse 
 than another look over the hedge. Preface your question 
 with a remark something on this wise, for instance : " I am 
 afraid I am very troublesome with my questions, but no one 
 can inform me as well as you." After an " exordium con- 
 ciliatory " like that, to use a phrase of the rhetoricians, one 
 need have no fear. 
 
 We may set it down as a truism that one will, as a rule, 
 find himself repaid in his own coin. The secret of the polite 
 attentions of French servants is to be found in the courtesy 
 of the higher classes toward them. Italian servants also, as 
 is well known, are models of politeness. The wildest mis-
 
 MANNERS. . 217 
 
 take made in their language by a foreigner when giving an 
 order does not cause even the shadow of a smile to flit across 
 the servant's face. The words " coachman " and " spoon " 
 are much alike in Italian, as are also "cabbage" and "horse," 
 "hair" and "hats." "I have seen," says a writer in the 
 Century, " a servant when told to order ' the spoon to har- 
 ness the horses,' receive his instructions as if spoons harness- 
 ing horses was a sight he had been accustomed to from child- 
 hood. Tell your coachman to harness the cabbage, or your 
 valet to hang up your hair, and they would bow and retire 
 to carry out your absurd orders which they perfectly under- 
 stand, however with most decorous solemnity. Though they 
 never presume to disagree with their employers, yet these 
 polite servants are very firm in carrying out their own ideas." 
 The writer tells us of once having a man-cook whose aversion 
 to cats was as great as his mistress's fondness for them. Yet 
 in her presence he always spoke of cats as most charming 
 animals to have about the house. But no cat could be kept 
 in the house longer than a week. It always mysteriously 
 disappeared; had been run over, or had strayed away, or 
 been killed by a dog, and the cook was thrown thereby into 
 the depths of grief. Here, surely, was diplomacy worthy a 
 minister of state. 
 
 And why should not graceful little courtesies, both of 
 language and of manner, be more common among us ? One 
 is not apt, as a rule, to be surfeited with happiness of such 
 innocent sort in this prosy, working-day world of ours. 
 Why is it not just as well to use the decorous phrases as the 
 rude, the dainty as the severe and bald ? Poetry is as cheap 
 as prose. It was said of Villemain, that when he spoke to 
 a lady, he seemed to be presenting her a bouquet. It lies 
 much in one's own power whether the atmosphere which he 
 shall create about him be ideal or otherwise. And who 
 doubts that a man's surroundings, also, are not without a 
 certain influence? As the editor of "The Thrift Book"
 
 218 MANNERS. 
 
 shrewdly remarks : "A neatly -spread table will probably 
 induce even the surly labourer to say, ' Please pass the 
 bread,' instead of ' Chuck over the loaf.' " 
 
 The expression, " manners of the old school," is familiar 
 to us all, and doubtless most of us have an idea more or 
 less distinct of what is implied in that phrase. Instantly 
 the picture arises in our minds of manners which must have 
 been very charming. Traces of them, as well as very 
 striking illustrations, at rare intervals still reveal to us that 
 this charm has not wholly passed away. " Sir Charles 
 Grandison," remarks a well-known writer, "would seem to 
 the youth of to-day an elaborate and very tedious man ; but 
 those youth might learn of him many a valuable lesson of 
 dignity and self-respect. It is, however, rather our concep- 
 tion of the old manners than the actual historical illustration 
 of them that we have in mind when we speak of the old 
 school. Indeed, in its common use in such phrases," he 
 continues, " the word ' old ' expresses an ideal view. Old 
 times are not merely the times of our youth, or of another 
 century ; they are times that never were, or rather they 
 are ' real times touched by the imagination with a celestial 
 
 glamour.' To describe a person as a gentleman or lady of 
 
 the old school, therefore, is to speak of him or her not as 
 resembling Sir Charles Grandison or the Duchess of New- 
 castle, but as showing a gentle soul and refined courtesy, 
 with a certain endearing fascination of address and an 
 essential nobility of nature. There must doubtless be a 
 dignity of bearing fully to satisfy the phrase, and just that 
 slight and charming shade of difference from the current 
 ways of to-day which we call quaintness. There must be 
 also, for complete satisfaction, superior intelligence and 
 cultivation ; indeed, there must be a harmonious blending 
 of many high qualities." Speaking of a venerable lady who 
 had recently died as in the loftiest sense a lady of the old 
 school, he says her manner was that of one " accustomed to
 
 MANNERS. 219 
 
 association upon equal terms with the most superior men 
 and women, and no less accustomed to the most thoughtful 
 
 sympathy and regard for those who are called inferior 
 
 Present or absent, her benign influence was always and 
 everywhere perceptible in her household, as, whether the 
 service is proceeding or not, the odour of incense is the per- 
 petual atmosphere of St. Peter's." 
 
 Who does not instinctively and gratefully recognize the 
 influence of manners like these ? There is a charm which 
 awakens our reverence as well as our delight. Dining at 
 Mr. Grenville's, Sydney Smith, as usual, arrived before the 
 rest of the party. Some ladies were shortly after announced. 
 As Mr. Grenville, with his graceful dignity and cheerfulness, 
 went forward to receive them, Sydney Smith, looking after 
 him, exclaimed, " There, that is the man from whom we all 
 ought to learn how to grow old!" Of Lady Elizabeth 
 Hastings it was said that to know her was a liberal educa- 
 tion. It is not difficult for those who have ever been 
 favoured with the companionship of such, even for a limited 
 period, to understand most thoroughly what Steele meant by 
 this declaration. 
 
 True grace is elastic. In oratory, for instance, a very 
 brief utterance expressed in a certain manner may mean 
 vastly more than the mere words themselves. Thus one's 
 manner of utterance may be intensely significant, and capable 
 of producing effects undreamed of by the casual observer 
 unfamiliar with such things. The manner of Bossuet was 
 such when he pronounced the words, " The princess is dying 
 tJie princess is dead" in his funeral oration for Henrietta, 
 that he could no longer proceed, so impassioned were the 
 sobs and groans of his audience. So also, when Massillon, 
 in the funeral oration of Louis XIV., raised his arms to 
 heaven, and after remaining silent for a moment, in subdued 
 tones said, "God only is great!" the vast audience, breath- 
 less and awe-struck, started to their feet as with one impulse,
 
 220 MANNERS. 
 
 and bowed reverently before the altar. Garrick said, " I 
 would give a hundred guineas if I could say ' Oh ! ' as White- 
 field does." 
 
 So in one's daily intercourse there are certain manners 
 that simply of themselves have great significance. " Every 
 one knows how a gesture will cling to the memory ; the 
 merest little way of turning the head or lifting the eyes, 
 such slight peculiarities of movement, although they may 
 be not in the least strange or eccentric, seem to have some 
 gift for fastening themselves on the attention beyond any 
 outline of features in repose." The "artless manners," for 
 instance, of certain graceful young persons whom one meets 
 from time to time are a poem in themselves. And who has 
 not been, impressed with what Parton terms " that myste- 
 rious, omnipotent something which we call 'a presence'"? 
 What is it? we ask. We have all from time to time 
 recognized the vast difference in men in this regard. We 
 understand fully what the term seeks to convey, but can we 
 define the intangible something itself"? One can easily 
 believe it to be, in great part, physical. A writer on oratory 
 maintains that for a man to be eloquent he needs no small 
 degree of physical health and force. Other things being 
 equal, he will be the more eloquent, he says, who is in the 
 better condition physically ; and he quotes a well-known 
 philosopher who declares : " 'Tis a question of stomach and 
 constitution. The second man is as good as the first per- 
 haps better but has not stoutness of stomach as the first 
 has, and so his wit seems over-fine or under-fine." Doubtless 
 something like this would in part account for the difference 
 which we are considering, but one hesitates to attribute it 
 wholly to it. Indeed, do not facts often prove it otherwise ? 
 Does not the great and hidden secret lie far behind all else, 
 in the soul, the personality, after all ? An instance is fresh 
 in the memory of the author which cannot but serve to con- 
 firm this latter view.
 
 MANNERS. 221 
 
 Many, possibly, have noted the curious fact that a public 
 speaker under the inspiration of a great theme, and in the 
 midst of an eloquent passage, often appears, for the time, 
 physically larger than he really is. The author's attention 
 was first called to this by a remark made in his presence to 
 a speaker who certainly was not far from medium in size. 
 " How much do you weigh 1 " inquired the hearer, a man 
 of middle age and some experience. " Not far from a hun- 
 dred and thirty." " I should certainly have thought," con- 
 tinued the other, with the impression of the eloquent passage, 
 doubtless, still vividly before him, "that you weighed over 
 two hundred ! " 
 
 There is often that expressed in looks and gestures which 
 carries with it a nameless and mysterious power. George 
 Eliot tells us, for instance, of Romola at Florence, and of 
 an impalpable, golden glory, and the long shadow of herself 
 that was not to be escaped. " One sees such mysteriously 
 superior personages among those who have long breathed 
 the air of privilege." 
 
 There is no denying that certain manners have an influence 
 like that of fine music or high art. They flash upon one at 
 times, appealing instantly to all the deeper emotions of the 
 soul, and make one believe all things possible. In their 
 presence the spell and inspiration of high art are upon one, 
 and they are to a man what beauty is to a woman, creating 
 at once a prepossession in his favour, while the opposite 
 qualities exercise as quick a prejudice against him. " There 
 are people who come in ever like a child with a piece of good 
 news." It was said of the late Lord Holland that he always 
 came down to breakfast with the air of a man who had just 
 met with some signal good-fortune. 
 
 One thing we may rely on : Naturalness has a never-failing 
 charm. It is doubtless true, as Jeffrey declared, that men 
 are very long afraid of being natural from the dread of being 
 taken for ordinary. " We are not natural by nature, and it
 
 222 MANNEES. 
 
 takes one a long time to come to himself that is, to drop 
 his mannerisms and come to his own true selfhood." It is 
 ever true art which leads us back to unperverted nature. 
 The one event, we are told, which never loses its romance, is 
 the encounter with superior persons on terms allowing the 
 happiest intercourse. Ah, these indeed are the soul's rare 
 opportunities ! It has perchance for days gone groping, dis- 
 heartened and sad, under frowning skies, chilled by untoward 
 surroundings, environed by sinister circumstances, desponding 
 and desolate. Life has seemed barren, fruitless, and naked 
 as the leafless branches swayed by the winter's blast. Sud- 
 denly, without premonition perhaps, some slight turn is 
 given to our affairs. We find ourselves ushered into charm- 
 ing surroundings, and lo, all is transformed ! The soul 
 breathes again its native air, the ideal life is realized, the 
 wintry past forgotten, the breath of the tropics is on cheek 
 and brow, and ah, what a blossoming there is ! 
 
 There is a certain " hardness of character " as Sydney 
 Smith calls it, which proceeds not from malignity or care- 
 lessness, but from " a want of delicate perception of those 
 little things by which pleasure is conferred or pain excited." 
 Persons possessing this gallop over a thousand fine feelings, 
 and leave " in every step the mark of hoofs upon your heart." 
 The same author declares the conversation of a well-bred 
 man of fine sympathies to be a perpetual homage of polite 
 good-nature, leaving you in perfect good-humour with your- 
 self, because you perceive how much and how successfully 
 you have been studied, while this other, although he has 
 violated nothing which can be called a rule, has displeased 
 and dispirited you, "from wanting that fine vision which 
 sees little things, and that delicate touch which handles 
 them." 
 
 As regards that desirable quality, naturalness of manner, 
 to which reference has already been made, nothing could 
 be of greater importance to a public man. Garrick's career
 
 MANNERS. 223 
 
 is a fine illustration of its influence and power. Henry Clay 
 is also an illustrious example. It is said that Clay never 
 indulged in an expression that was not instantly recognized 
 as nature itself. Some of his intonations, we are told, were 
 indescribable. " His mightiest feelings," says Dr. Alexander, 
 "were sometimes indicated and communicated by a long 
 pause, aided by an eloquent aspect and some significant use 
 of his finger." These men were natural: how in contrast 
 to the " starched and unnatural " manners of certain other 
 men ! 
 
 One of the most common and often a seemingly insur- 
 mountable barrier in the way of appearing natural and at 
 ease is one's own self -consciousness. Now, every one must 
 have observed that the almost inevitable result of self- 
 consciousness is awkwardness; and awkwardness, Emerson 
 tells us, has no forgiveness in heaven or earth. " I was once 
 very shy," says 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 estimated a man at his just value. This 
 cured me." 
 
 It is well to remember always that the best manners 
 are the simplest, as it is in general proof of high culture to 
 say the greatest matters in the simplest way. "It is God 
 who hangs the greatest weights on the smallest wires," is the 
 ancient maxim. Thus, the best style in writing, according 
 to Coleridge, is that which forces us to think of the subject 
 without paying any attention to the particular phrases in 
 which it is clothed. Thomas Sully, the artist, relates that, 
 when in England, the higher the rank the more kind and 
 affable he found the people. There, " all is clear water and 
 plain sailing in the best circles." In these "best circles" 
 speech is "low and clear, with that delicious intonation 
 which no schoolmaster can teach, and with a grace which is
 
 224 MANNERS. 
 
 the Jim fleur of education, yet cannot be acquired, which is 
 one of the long results of time, the inheritance of generations 
 generously bred. These soft and gracious manners, which 
 are simplicity itself, yet the outcome of so much unconscious 
 cultivation, are the most beautiful things in society. They 
 come to some, indeed, who have had no training at all, nor 
 any ancestors behind them, by gift of nature, like any other 
 kind of genius ; but ordinarily they belong to those who by 
 nature have the best right to them, the descendants of well- 
 bred people for generations." 
 
 When one takes into account the fact that the whole sig- 
 nificance of what is called society the whole aim and end 
 for which people assemble together in social ways is to 
 confer mutual pleasure, and to augment one another's en- 
 joyment, he can readily see how utterly out of place must 
 be anything disagreeable, whether it be in word or deed. 
 Whatever has a tendency to make your friend dissatisfied 
 with himself or with you is to be avoided. And yet, even with 
 the best intentions, many a one has come to grief : some 
 unforeseen circumstance, some ill-timed remark, or some 
 innocent expression has leaped from the lips which one sud- 
 denly discovers, to his dismay, to be of doubtful interpretation, 
 and instantly he feels himself to have fallen into disgrace. 
 The word is now master which but a moment before was 
 slave. 
 
 In a little volume kept for the autographs of literary men, 
 in answer to the question, " What are your favourite topics 
 of conversation ? " Charles Kingsley once wrote, " Whatever 
 my companion happens to be talking about." Who of us 
 could have done better than that ? 
 
 There appeared not many years since, in one of our promi- 
 nent magazines, a somewhat notable article from the pen of 
 Charles Astor Bristed, on "Impoliteness as a National In- 
 stitution." Among other things the writer said : " There can 
 be no doubt that what Walter Scott called ' the manners or
 
 MANNERS. 225 
 
 want of manners peculiar to Americans ' has created a large 
 European prejudice against us, has been effective to deter 
 some desirable varieties of emigration, and has promoted a 
 tendency to absenteeism among many of our wealthy citizens, 
 and many who are by no means of the most wealthy. Of 
 course one of the first questions which occurs to the thinker 
 is : How far has this opprobrium been really merited ? " The 
 writer then goes on to speak of the "overbearing insolence 
 of the Jack-in-office through all his varieties, from the hotel 
 boot-black to the railroad anything-you-like," and mentions 
 the experience of a foreign diplomatic friend of his at a 
 certain hotel in New England. " I do not doubt," he con- 
 tinues, "or deny that it is possible to live some time, and 
 move about largely in our country, and receive, on the whole, 
 very civil treatment. If 8 a lottery, and that is just the 
 trouble. It's the invalid and the Shanghai cock next door, 
 over again. ' He doesn't crow all the time, perhaps he 
 doesn't crow very often ; but I never know when he will 
 crow, and am always afraid he is going to.' It is just this 
 fear and dread of encountering rudeness which causes even 
 those who know better to be tenacious upon ceremonious 
 points of etiquette." 
 
 Doubtless the strictures of this gifted and brilliant man 
 are somewhat too severe ; and yet one can but acknowledge 
 that in certain quarters there is just ground for complaint. 
 Lest one should be led to think, however, that Americans 
 monopolize the disagreeable manners of the globe, it may be 
 well to recall, as a sort of companion picture to this last, 
 Sydney Smith's arraignment of the manners of our English 
 cousins. "I believe," he says, "the English are the most 
 disagreeable people under the sun ; not so much because Mr. 
 John Bull disdains to talk, as that the respected individual 
 has nothing to say, and because he totally neglects manners. 
 Look at a French carter ; he takes off his hat to a neighbour 
 carter, and inquires after ' la sant6 de madam e,' with a bow 
 (TO) 15
 
 226 MANNERS. 
 
 that would not have disgraced Sir Charles Grandison ; and I 
 have often seen a French soubrette with a far better manner 
 than an English duchess." 
 
 Of all the unmitigated evils which infest society, the class 
 denominated " bores " must surely carry off the palm. And 
 a "bore," you know, some one has wittily said, is the person 
 who wishes to tell you all about himself, instead of letting 
 you tell him all about yourself. However this may be, there 
 are few of us who would not vote the bore an intolerable 
 nuisance. In the author's possession is an unpublished letter 
 of Oliver Wendell Holmes ; does Holmes ever write even 
 a letter, think you, in which one does not find the well-known 
 and inimitable touches of his humour or pathos ere its close 1 
 This letter was written in response to a request for "a lyric," 
 made by the managers of a great fair, held at Washington 
 soon after the war, for the benefit of disabled soldiers and 
 sailors. After saying that he must ask them to accept two 
 of his volumes instead of the poem, he continues : " To write 
 a lyric is like having a fit ; you can't have one when you 
 wish you could (as, for instance, when your bore is in his 
 third hour and having it all his own way), and you can't help 
 having it when it comes of itself." 
 
 Instead of parading one's information or learning, one 
 must always keep it in reserve : 
 
 " Men must be taught as if you taught them not, 
 And things unknown proposed as things forgot." 
 
 Above all else, bear in mind that self-possession, as already 
 intimated, is absolutely essential to good manners, and is 
 really the foundation of all grace. Without this one is never 
 sure of himself, and is at the mercy of every chance. If he 
 fail here, one is sure to be trammelled and fettered, and can 
 never appear at his best nor seem at ease. For the time 
 being he is a slave to that which is alien to his true self ; 
 and the consciousness of this, ever present, the feeling that
 
 MANNERS. 227 
 
 one is not giving expression to what his innermost instincts 
 approve as right and fitting, only makes matters worse. 
 One must train himself to conquer this at all hazards. To 
 be master of the situation, one should "find himself at home 
 wherever he is ; should by his own security and good nature 
 impart comfort to all beholders." 
 
 What could have been more charming than the manner of 
 Disraeli in society? One who knew him tells us that he 
 always talked to the guest next to him as he would to an old 
 friend. That remark surely expresses volumes. The accom- 
 plishment once ours, we may regard ourselves as having 
 taken all the degrees in fine breeding ; all else is implied. 
 At the same time, our informant tells us, he had few inti- 
 mates ; " nor did his apparent frankness unveil anything 
 more than he chose to reveal." 
 
 One's manners in conversation must by no means be over- 
 looked. In general company, beware of lengthy harangues. 
 Talk often, but not long. " Did you ever hear me preach?" said 
 Coleridge, addressing Lamb. " Never heard you do anything 
 else," was the witty response of the genial essayist. If one 
 tells stories, let it be seldom ; and then they must be brief 
 and to the point. Omit every circumstance not essential. 
 
 There is no person living who is not susceptible to the in- 
 fluence of fine manners. Some men, it has been truly said, 
 are more captious than others ; some are always wrong- 
 headed ; but every man living has such a share of vanity as 
 to be hurt by marks of slight and contempt. " Every man 
 does not pretend to be a poet, a mathematician, or a states- 
 man ; but every man pretends to common sense, and to fill 
 his place in the world with common decency, and consequently 
 does not easily forgive those negligences, inattentions, and 
 slights which seem to call in question both these pretensions." 
 
 Of one thing we may be confident, and it cannot be 
 learned too early : if one wishes to appear agreeable in 
 society, he must consent to be taught many things which
 
 228 MANNERS. 
 
 he already knows. This is especially true if one is often 
 thrown into the society of elderly people. And, by the 
 way, let no one ever allow himself to fall into the indiscre- 
 tion of using the word " old " in speaking of any such within 
 hearing. This were to commit an unpardonable blunder. 
 
 There is, we must confess, sometimes a tendency manifest 
 even on the part of certain well-bred people to wear a 
 theme threadbare before dropping it and changing to some- 
 thing else. No fault could be more wearisome. The great 
 charm of conversation is the art of passing naturally and 
 easily from one subject to another when due attention has 
 been given to the topic in hand. Failure to do this is often 
 the occasion of great annoyance; for, as Yoltaire has re- 
 marked, the secret of tiring is to say everything that can be 
 said on the subject. 
 
 Above all things, avoid "lugging in" a subject, and be- 
 ware of a reputation for riding a hobby, or of " harping for 
 ever on one string ;" otherwise you may expect to be shunned 
 rather than welcomed. A certain individual who supposed 
 his friends particularly fond of hearing about characters of 
 Scripture availed himself of every opportunity to bring 
 these in. " I affirm," said he on one of these occasions, 
 "that this Samson was the strongest man that ever lived 
 or ever will live." " It is not so," instantly remarked one 
 of the company who had heard enough of this sort of 
 thing, and determined to put an end to the tiresome 
 twaddle, "it is not so. You are a stronger man than 
 Samson, yourself." " How can that be ?" " Why, you have 
 just lugged him in by head and shoulders." The worst 
 thing about the infliction is the fact that one is usually so 
 helpless in the presence of such people and so completely at 
 their mercy. Few of us can muster the moral courage to 
 " sit down " on them, or " squelch " them, as in the instance 
 mentioned. The most one can do under ordinary circum- 
 stances is to " smile and endure it."
 
 MANNERS. 229 
 
 To some, the prospect of entertaining literary guests is 
 sufficient cause for apprehension. Those who have been 
 favoured with the rare privilege, however, have found them 
 the most agreeable and easily entertained people in the 
 world, we dare say. One has but to remember that the 
 makers of books are not apt to be the ones most eager to 
 "talk book." In fact, Parton somewhere declares that 
 those who produce literature seldom care very much for the 
 literature of other men and times. In any event one thing 
 is certain : The great fact that " one touch of nature makes 
 the whole world kin" is always on one's side, and there is 
 ever a common ground on which all can meet ; for has not 
 eminent authority declared that the way to a man's heart is 
 through a certain portion of the epigastric region 1 If there 
 be attention here, minor matters may be safely disregarded. 
 Thackeray's " Now, don't let's say a word," made so win- 
 ningly and confidentially to the friend next to him, as they 
 seated themselves before the smoking viands at a sumptuous 
 banquet, conveyed a world of significance. 
 
 The gift of good sense is, after all, the foundation of all 
 true politeness. Without this it is idle to think of success. 
 One must know when to violate that code of conventional 
 forms which common consent has established, and when 
 not ; for it has been well observed that it is equally a mark 
 of weakness to be a slave to these forms, as to despise them. 
 Let one have the penetration and tact to adapt his conversa- 
 tion and manner to circumstances and individuals. If for no 
 other reason than the fact that these little items of courtesy 
 have often made the fortunes of their possessors, it were well 
 worth a little extra effort to secure them. 
 
 Why is it that in presence of certain people one feels 
 so ill at ease, under such a sense of oppression or tension, 
 while with certain others one experiences such a sense of 
 restfulness, something so grateful and refreshing, that 
 their very presence is like a tonic ? Is not the secret to be
 
 230 MANNERS. 
 
 found in this influence of manner of which we have 
 spoken 1 
 
 But aside from the mere question of pleasure and delight 
 which they confer, and far beyond it, let us not forget that 
 fine manners are really our safeguard, and that they consti- 
 tute the great bulwark by which society is protected and 
 preserved, just as the famous dikes of Holland protect its 
 people from encroachment and destruction by the all- 
 devouring sea. Though it may not appear at a glance, there 
 is always a reason for the observances which society requires, 
 and a philosophy behind them. And as regards the minor 
 matters of deportment, one does not, for instance, eat with 
 the knife, that is, put the blade of the knife into the mouth, 
 not only because " the sight of the heaped-up morsel lifted 
 on high disgusts the beholder, and allows opportunity for 
 the exhibition of a voracity revolting to the delicate and 
 sensitive," but because it is also dangerous ; and worse still 
 as a recent authority has finely put it such use of one's 
 knife indicates that one's immediate ancestry, parents and 
 grandparents, did the same thing, and were not in that grade 
 of life where attention is given to the small matters of fine 
 personal conduct, and one has consequently been deprived of 
 good-breeding, and if deficient in that particular, is probably 
 deficient in most other particulars of the sort. " Inspection 
 will show that there is as much reason also for most of the 
 lesser points of what is called polite behaviour, the ob- 
 servance of whose obligations is necessary, if for nothing 
 else, in order to show that we are not sprung directly from 
 barbarians." 
 
 If we were asked to mention any one principle as being 
 well-nigh universal in its application, and as holding within 
 itself the secret of pleasing under all circumstances, we 
 should name the simple grace of humility. One must ever 
 sink self if he would please and make others happy. There 
 is a certain rare beauty in humility which imparts a name-
 
 MANNERS. 231 
 
 less charm for all beholders. Let no one think that he 
 shall please by merely showing off his own great abilities. 
 " Learn to regard the souls around you as parts of some 
 grand instrument. It is for each of us to know the keys 
 and stops, that we may draw forth the harmonies that lie 
 sleeping in the silent octaves." Each has the instinct of 
 hero-worship ; and, strange as it may seem, instead of envy 
 and hatred, there is " a loyal delight which even the most 
 degraded and miserable of men take in every striking endow- 
 ment or excellence of their more gifted fellows." 
 
 Of one thing rest assured : No one can escape the bond- 
 age of good manners. " Its fetters may be silken, but they 
 are as strong as those that wheel the Earth along in her 
 orbit. And while all must obey its laws, those laws furnish 
 a currency with which if the beggar provide himself he is 
 better off in all the markets of the world than the prince who 
 is unprovided."
 
 IX. 
 
 "Wait!" 
 
 We may not kindle when we will 
 
 The fire that in the heart abides ; 
 The spirit bloweth, and is still, 
 
 In mystery the soul abides : 
 But tasks in hours of insight willed, 
 In hours of gloom can be fulfilled. ARNOLD. 
 And thus the empty-handed years went round ; 
 Vacant, yet voiceful ever with prophetic sound. LONGFELLOW. 
 ' How much grows everywhere if we do but wait ! Not a difficulty but 
 can transfigure itself into a triumph ; not even a deformity but, if our 
 own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow dear to us. CARLYLE. 
 
 THAT was a great night when, thrilled with the thought 
 of his triumph, Edmund Kean rushed home to his trembling 
 wife, and in a wild tumult of emotion cried out, "The 
 pit rose at me ! Mary, you shall ride in your carriage yet, 
 and Charles shall go to Eton ! " How long he had toiled 
 and suffered, poor fellow, and waited for that one great 
 night when he at length had London at his feet ! There 
 was no royal road to this triumph, nor is there a royal road 
 to triumph in any art. The path which leads to the goal is 
 long, steep, and narrow, and many grow weary and heart- 
 sick by the way. Toil, patience, and unflinching persever- 
 ance alone can win the day. The race is not to the swift, 
 much less to the superficial and pretentious. To be mediocre, 
 it has well been said, is within reach of many, but to be 
 great can be accomplished by but few. " The number of
 
 "WAIT!" 233 
 
 unappreciated Juliets who, after having ' strutted their 
 brief hour upon the stage,' have now subsided into the 
 superintendency of the tea-urn and the buttered toast, is a 
 sad commentary upon the fondness of young people essaying 
 to mount Pegasus before they are out of their artistic 
 swaddling-clothes. " 
 
 One of the first and most important lessons for a young 
 man is the learning how to wait. When will young men 
 appreciate the wisdom contained in that old Latin motto, 
 Festina lente ? In these days of scramble and rush, the man 
 who really learns to "hasten slowly" will find himself vastly 
 the gainer in the end. Scores of men are betrayed into 
 failure through imprudence just here. They are always in 
 haste, and always distanced. A distinguished traveller 
 relates that while in Europe he started early one morning 
 to climb a mountain. Stimulated by the bracing air and 
 inspiring scenery, he pushed on briskly, instead of husband- 
 ing his strength for the uphill work before him. Soon after 
 setting out he overtook a peasant on his way to the summit. 
 The man was walking slowly, yet with a steady pace. 
 Wondering, as he left the countryman behind, that the 
 inspiration of the atmosphere and the surrounding scenery 
 had not produced upon him the effect which he himself 
 experienced, our enthusiastic tourist before long began to 
 lag, and by noon he was glad to throw himself down in the 
 shade of a wayside tree. As he realized how severely he 
 had taxed his strength, and that his fatigue made him loath 
 to leave his shady resting-place, he happened to cast his eyes 
 down the valley. What was his surprise to behold the 
 peasant of the morning swinging up the road with the same 
 steady stride, as fresh as he was earlier in the day ! Pres- 
 ently passing the discomfited tourist, he disappeared in the 
 distance, and left the traveller to his reflections on this new 
 version of the fabled hare and tortoise. 
 
 The great danger which menaces young men in these days
 
 234 "WAIT/" 
 
 is that of making quantity more important than quality. 
 Let it then not be forgotten that the best work is the work 
 that takes time ; and nowadays more than ever before, per- 
 haps, owing to the fierce competitions among men, the best 
 work is the work that is wanted. In this country all delay 
 seems irksome. It has been said that there are no appren- 
 tices ; all from the start are journeymen such as they are. 
 Those who would have passed for boys ten years since are 
 to-day at the head of business firms such as they are. 
 Young men seem to scorn the serving of apprenticeships 
 such as their fathers served. Their attitude and bearing 
 too often seems to say, " Go to, let us step out and make a 
 fortune." One might infer from this that the making of a 
 fortune was the easiest thing in the world. Such seem to 
 forget that ninety-five out of every hundred business men 
 fail. 
 
 Nothing is more to be deplored than this feverish haste, 
 this passion for " short cuts " in everything, which seems so 
 universally to prevail. There are no longer any boys. It is 
 but a step from childhood to the young man. And these 
 young men, half-fledged, and in no wise prepared to fill them, 
 expect to step into positions of honour and trust and grave 
 responsibility. Hence so many ill-starred careers. Hence, 
 too, so often, the instances of certain young men, more 
 reckless than usual, finding accumulations too slow, and 
 quietly appropriating the funds of other men. Let it ever 
 be remembered that forcing processes are injurious from first 
 to last. Moreover, haste always betrays itself. The house 
 constructed in haste and hurried to completion is apt to be 
 leaky and often in need of repairs. In warping joints and 
 gaping crevices and shaky foundations the builder's haste is 
 always betrayed. It is only the seasoned timber that never 
 gives. So, too, the volume written in haste, and made " to 
 sell," is always short-lived and soon forgotten. How many 
 in their feverish haste have thus marred their work, and
 
 "WAIT!" 235 
 
 made a failure of what otherwise might have been permanent 
 and enduring success ! Let us remember that the richest 
 and mellowest fruits are not the sudden result of a day's 
 forced and unnatural growth; but in the luscious morsel 
 which tempts the palate we can almost detect the breath of 
 the zephyr, the gentle benediction of the dew, the caressing 
 of the summer breeze, the kisses of the sun, and all the 
 nameless influences which have nursed it into ripe perfection. 
 So among men. The rarest products are never the result of 
 haste, are never forced, but like the autumn fruitage are the 
 outcome of a thousand mysterious influences which have 
 brought them forth. 
 
 Longfellow long ago declared the great want of our 
 national character to be "the dignity of repose." "We 
 seem to live," he declared, "in the midst of a battle there 
 is such a din, such a hurrying to and fro. In the streets of 
 a crowded city it is difficult to walk slowly. You feel the 
 rushing of the crowd, and rush with it onward. In the 
 press of our life it is difficult to be calm. In this stress of 
 wind and tide all professions seem to drag their anchors, and 
 are swept out into the main." Now, in the midst of all 
 this stress and hurry, it is worth while for a young man to 
 deliberately pause and take home to himself this truth 
 "The world is his who knows how to wait." Let him dare 
 to believe it; for, rest assured, a conviction like this will 
 prove invaluable to any man. "This idea of short cuts," 
 remarks a certain writer, " the notion that if a thing is to 
 be done at all, then 'twere well 'twere done quickly, ad- 
 mirable as it may be on the Exchange, is justly said to rub 
 from life its delicacy and bloom when made the ruling 
 maxim in all other relations and positions. A life with 
 leisure hours in it for watching and examining all that we 
 pass would seem a much more enviable and rational lot than 
 a swift rushing from one goal to another, from one sort of 
 fame or power or opulence to another and more remote."
 
 236 " WAIT!" 
 
 As a rule, we are far too hasty and precipitate. "We read 
 the preface, and declare we know the whole book. Learn to 
 wait. Nondum (" Not yet ") was in early life the motto of 
 Charles V. ; and no less an authority than De Maistre has 
 declared that the great secret of success is to know how to 
 wait. Many a man has failed who might have succeeded 
 had he but learned this lesson. True, it requires courage 
 and self-denial ; but what was ever attained worth the having 
 without these 1 Patience, we are told, is the art of hoping. 
 
 " How poor are they that have not patience ! 
 What wound did ever heal but by degrees ? " 
 
 As Montesquieu well says, the success of the greater part 
 of things depends upon knowing how long it takes to suc- 
 ceed. 
 
 " Don't be whining about not having a fair chance," says 
 a vigorous writer. " Throw a sensible man out of a window, 
 and he will fall on his feet and ask the nearest way to his 
 work. A scant breakfast in the morning of life sharpens 
 the appetite for a feast later in the day. Your present want 
 will make future prosperity all the sweeter." The young 
 man who means to reach the heights " by great men reached 
 and kept " should understand that the broad and easy roads 
 and short cuts, so popular in these modern days, do not lead 
 to them. Those who have gained them were toiling upward 
 in the night by the old-fashioned, rugged ways, while their 
 companions slept. Men who rise in this way are not made 
 dizzy by sudden elevation. The great moment comes at 
 length, and they " walk up to fame as to a friend." The 
 classic face of the first Napoleon, when he became master of 
 Prussia as well as of all Germany, remained as cold and calm 
 in those days of proud triumph as it had been in the days of 
 adversity. His successes seemed to surprise him as little as 
 his early misfortune had discouraged him. In Longfellow's 
 "Falcon of Ser Federigo," in the "Tales of a Wayside Inn,"
 
 "WAIT!" 237 
 
 we find this principle beautifully illustrated, and that last 
 line sums up the whole, 
 
 " All things come round to him who will but wait." 
 
 Does not one sometimes look back wistfully to the good 
 old coaching days ? How delightful they must have been ! 
 A genial essayist has declared that he could be well content 
 to live upon the road, instead of getting on at the present 
 rate, and being impatient to arrive at some town, only, 
 perhaps, to be equally restless when arrived there. Not 
 that he was insensible to the pleasure of driving fast, stir- 
 ring the blood as it does, and giving a sense of power ; but 
 everything seemed to be getting a little too hasty and 
 business-like, as though we were to be eternally getting on, 
 and never realizing anything but fidget and money the 
 means instead of the end. Does it not fill one with posi- 
 tive dread to think of being hustled through Europe at the 
 rate realized by some of our modern travellers ? Actually, 
 the very thought tires one. Well has a keen and observant 
 traveller cautioned such to " stay where you are happy ; " 
 and the caution may profitably be heeded. The age in 
 general has been rightly characterized as one of stimulus 
 and high pressure. Effect is everything; results produced 
 at once something to show, and something that may tell. 
 " The folio of patient years is replaced by the pamphlet that 
 stirs men's curiosity to-day, and to-morrow is forgotten." 
 Society wants " its new number of something to appear in- 
 cessantly. There is no rest nor repose, and one subject of 
 thought succeeds another faster than wave succeeds wave." 
 The crying need of our time is for more leisure, and for 
 more leisurely preparation for one's life-work, and, as a 
 result, better accomplishment. And let it be understood 
 that by leisure we do not mean idleness. The idler or the 
 "loafer," with "his idle hands always in his idle pockets," 
 is only worthy of contempt. True leisure is the intermission
 
 238 "WAIT!" 
 
 of labour "the blink of idleness" in the life of a hard- 
 working man. 
 
 One's waiting years, indeed, should be fullest of work ; 
 for then the toil is most needful, and will tell most effec- 
 tively in the line of success. And let it ever be remembered 
 that all knowledge will some time be of value. "They say," 
 remarks Herbert, "it is an ill mason that refuseth any 
 stone;" and there is no knowledge but, in a skilful hand, 
 serves either positively as it is or else to illustrate some 
 other knowledge. The advantage of accurate knowledge, 
 though seemingly of no present value, is sometimes very 
 great. There is a notable instance in point. During one of 
 the earlier years of his professional life, as Harvey tells us, 
 a blacksmith called on Webster for advice respecting the 
 title to a small estate bequeathed to him by his father. The 
 terms of the will were peculiar, and the kind of estate trans- 
 mitted was doubtful. An attempt had been made to annul 
 the will. Mr. Webster examined the case, but was unable 
 to give a definite opinion upon the matter for want of 
 authorities. He looked through the law libraries of Mr. 
 Mason and other legal gentlemen for authorities, but in 
 vain. He ascertained what works he needed for consulta- 
 tion, and ordered them from Boston at an expense of fifty 
 dollars. He spent the leisure hours of some weeks in going 
 through them. He successfully argued the case when it 
 came on for trial, and it was decided in his favour. The 
 blacksmith was in ecstasies, for his little all had been at 
 stake. He called for his attorney's bill. Mr. Webster, 
 knowing his poverty, charged him only fifteen dollars, in- 
 tending to suffer the loss of money paid out and to lose the 
 time expended in securing the verdict. Years passed away 
 and the case was forgotten, but not the treasured knowledge 
 by which it was won. On one of his journeys to Washing- 
 ton, Mr. Webster spent a few days in New York City. 
 While he was there, Aaron Burr waited on him for advice
 
 " WAIT!" 239 
 
 in a very important case then pending in the State Court. 
 He told him the facts on which it was founded. Mr. "Web- 
 ster saw in a moment that it was an exact counterpart to 
 the blacksmith's will case. On being asked if he could state 
 the law applicable to it, he at once replied that he could. 
 He proceeded to quote decisions bearing upon the case, 
 going back to the time of Charles II. As he went on with 
 his array of principles and authorities, all cited with the 
 precision and order of a table of contents, Mr. Burr arose in 
 astonishment and asked with some warmth, " Mr. Webster, 
 have you been consulted before in this case 1 ?" "Most 
 certainly not," he replied. " I never heard of your case till 
 this evening." "Very well," said Mr. Burr; "proceed." 
 Mr. Webster concluded the rehearsal of his authorities, and 
 received from Mr. Burr the warmest praise of his profound 
 knowledge of the law, and a fee large enough to remunerate 
 him for all the time and trouble spent on the blacksmith's 
 case. 
 
 Be not too easily discouraged. It has been well said that 
 we know what we are, but know not what we may be ; and 
 it is much less what we do than what we think which fits 
 us for the future. " Some men get early disgusted," says 
 Sydney Smith, " from some excesses which they have com- 
 mitted, and mistakes into which they have been betrayed, 
 at the beginning of life. They abuse the whole art of navi- 
 gation because they have stuck upon a shoal ; whereas the 
 business is to refit, careen, and set out a second time. The 
 navigation is very difficult : few of us get through it at first 
 without some rubs and losses which the world is always 
 ready enough to forgive where they are honestly confessed 
 and diligently repaired." 
 
 The things of a man for which we visit him, says Emer- 
 son, were done in the dark and the cold. The hero is the 
 man who "forgets himself into immortality." The truly 
 heroic deed is always performed without a thought of the
 
 240 "WAIT!" 
 
 blare of trumpets or the roll of drums. Fame enters in no 
 wise into the calculation. In a fine article in the " Century," 
 General Badeau, in commenting upon the hero of Appomat- 
 tox, as he appeared at Galena in I860, while as yet "un- 
 important and unknown," uses these significant words: "No 
 restless ambition disturbed his spirit. No craving for fame 
 made him dissatisfied with obscurity. Those nearest him 
 never suspected that he possessed extraordinary ability. He 
 himself never dreamed that he was destined for great place 
 or power. Yet his vicissitudes had given him a wide and 
 practical experience, and made him, unknown to himself, a 
 representative American. He had learned patience when 
 hope was long deferred, and endurance under heavy and 
 repeated difficulties; he had displayed audacity in emer- 
 gencies, as well as persistency of resolve and fertility of 
 resource. If one means failed, he tried another. He was 
 not discouraged by ill fortune, nor discontented with little 
 things. Above all, he never quailed and never despaired. 
 The leather-merchant of Galena was not without preparation 
 even for that great future which awaited him all unknown. 
 There were many traits in him like those of Moltke. Both 
 lived simply, and almost unknown to their countrymen, for 
 many years. Moltke, it is true, remained in his profession, 
 and was more fortunate, as the world goes; but until the 
 great opportunity came, he also was comparatively obscure." 
 Fitz-Hugh Ludlow has pictured that mood of misanthropy 
 which perhaps comes upon us all at times, in his striking 
 poem, " Too Late : " 
 
 " When we want, we have for our pains 
 
 The promise that if we but wait 
 Till the want has burned out of our brains, 
 
 Every means shall be present to sate ; 
 While we send for the napkin, the soup gets cold ; 
 While the bonnet is trimming, the face grows old ; 
 When we've matched our buttons, the pattern is sold ; 
 
 And everything comes too late too late ! "
 
 " WAIT!" 241 
 
 Thackeray once, somewhat facetiously perhaps, gave utter- 
 ance to the same sentiment. "When I was a boy," said 
 he, " I wanted some toffy. It was a shilling ; I hadn't one. 
 When I was a man I had a shilling, but I didn't want any 
 toffy." A certain truth seems to reside in such sentiments 
 as these, it must be confessed ; but they are only partially 
 true, after all. That is only one glimpse of the picture, and 
 the darker one at that. Moreover, such sentiments are apt 
 to be morbid, and the less one gives heed to them the better. 
 There are too many exceptions on the bright side for one to 
 believe long in shadows. Life is like one of Rembrandt's 
 pictures the shadow only serves to reveal in finer contrast 
 the true outline and bright reality, after all. Hours of de- 
 pression will come ; but wait. It is always darkest, we are 
 told, just before day ; a brighter turn of affairs may come 
 at any moment. If burdens are heavy and energies seem 
 sorely taxed, be patient. Remember those striking words 
 of Mendelssohn, " For me, too, the hour of rest will come ; 
 do the next thing." " There is always a black spot in our 
 sunshine," exclaims Carlyle; "it is the shadow of ourselves !" 
 Even in one's happiest hours there will come at times that 
 curious moment's speck that indefinable something just 
 enough "to dash our triumph and invade our joy." But 
 these depressions, these hours of gloom, let us remember, are 
 well-nigh universal; the stoutest-hearted are not exempt. 
 The moth seems for ever striving to eat the garment, the 
 shadow to devour the light. There are hours of darkness 
 when we go grieving. Will God not enable us to fill out the 
 ragged incompleteness of our lives, which so haunts us ever- 
 more ? Is he so strong, and will he not remove the bars of 
 sinister circumstance that environ us 1 ? Ah, if he only would ! 
 Then a sudden light breaks in upon the soul The whole 
 landscape of life seems lighted up. We see clearly the path 
 which we should take the high duties for which we should 
 brace ourselves. Faint not, then, nor falter. 
 
 (79) 16
 
 242 "WAIT!" 
 
 " Through efforts long in vain, prophetic need 
 Begets the deed : 
 
 Nerve then thy soul with direst need to cope ; 
 Life's brightest hope 
 
 Lies latent in Fate's deadliest lair- 
 Never despair ! " 
 
 The world is looking for men, and the success of all 
 business enterprises depends on the character of those who 
 manage them. " The trend of thought to-day is towards the 
 accumulation of great fortunes. This has its influence upon 
 the young, and in our great haste to be rich we have lowered 
 the standard of business integrity. To be shrewd and sharp, 
 even if not transparently honest, seems to be a favourite 
 idea with some ; but a proper respect for the rights and feel- 
 ings of others is sure to count largely in one's favour in 
 the long run." The real object of all training and of all 
 education should be to develop the best type of manhood. 
 It is well to remember that, ' ' while nothing but the fairy's 
 wand can realize the capricious desire of the moment, as 
 regards the objects of laudable wishes, deeply breathed, and 
 for many a night and day ever present to the mind," these 
 are placed by Providence more within our reach than is 
 commonly supposed. " Generally speaking," says Sydney 
 Smith, "the life of all truly great men has been a life of 
 intense and incessant labour. They have commonly passed 
 the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent 
 humility, overlooked, mistaken, contemned by weaker men, 
 thinking while others slept, reading while others rioted, feel- 
 ing something within them that told them they should not 
 always be kept down among the dregs of the world ; and 
 then, when their time was come, and some little accident has 
 given them their first occasion, they have burst out into the 
 light and glory of public life rich with the spoils of time and 
 mighty in all the labours and struggles of the mind. Then 
 do the multitude cry out, ' A miracle of genius ! ' Yes, he 
 is a miracle of genius because he is a miracle of labour;
 
 "WAIT/" 243 
 
 because instead of trusting to the resources of his own single 
 mind he has ransacked a thousand minds ; because he makes 
 use of the accumulated wisdom of ages, and takes as his 
 point of departure the very last line and boundary to which 
 science has advanced ; because it has ever been the object of 
 his life to assist every intellectual gift of nature, however 
 munificent and however splendid, with every resource that art 
 could suggest and every attention diligence could bestow." 
 
 This inextinguishable courage is what men need. We are 
 told of a young New York inventor who, about twenty years 
 ago, spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, 
 which, if successful, would introduce his invention to public 
 notice and insure his fortune, and, what he valued more, his 
 usefulness. The next morning the daily papers heaped 
 unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemed 
 vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, 
 a delicate little woman, was preparing breakfast. He was 
 without a penny. He seemed like a fool in his own eyes ; 
 all these years of hard work were wasted. He went into his 
 chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands. At 
 length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood 
 erect. " It shall succeed ! " he said, shutting his teeth. His 
 wife was crying over the papers when he went back. " They 
 are very cruel," she said. "They don't understand." "I'll 
 make them understand," he replied cheerfully. " It was a 
 fight for six years," he said afterwards. " Poverty, sickness, 
 and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the 
 dogged determination that it should succeed." It did 
 succeed. The invention was a great and useful one. The 
 inventor is now a prosperous and happy man. " Be sure you 
 are right," he says to younger men ; " then never give up." 
 
 During the long years in which he had to make his way 
 against the majority in the House of Commons, Disraeli 
 never seemed disheartened by his repeated defeats, nor did 
 he ever relax the vigilance with which he watched his
 
 244 "WAIT!" 
 
 adversary. He never indulged himself, though he was 
 naturally indolent, and often in poor health, by staying 
 away from Parliament, even when business was slack ; 
 never missed an opportunity for exposing a blunder of his 
 adversaries or commanding the good service of one of his 
 own followers. "Here is a wonderful career," remarks an 
 eminent authority who knew him well, " even more wonder- 
 ful to those who live in the midst of English politics and 
 society than it can appear to observers who live in other 
 countries. A man with few external advantages, not even 
 that of education at a university, where useful friendships 
 are formed, with grave positive disadvantages in his Jewish 
 extraction and the vagaries of his first years of public life, 
 presses forward, step by step, through slights and disappoint- 
 ments "which retard but never dishearten ) assumes, as of 
 right, the leadership of a party, the aristocratic party, the 
 party peculiarly suspicious of new men and poor men ; wins 
 a reputation for sagacity which makes his early follies for- 
 gotten ; becomes in old age the favourite of a court and the 
 master of a great country, one of the three or four arbiters 
 of Europe." 
 
 Nothing was more striking about El Mahdi than his per- 
 tinacity and his power of holding his followers in spite of 
 defeat. During the four years after he first raised the 
 standard of revolt he suffered nine or ten serious defeats, 
 with barely an equal number of successes. After every de- 
 feat he returned to the attack stronger than before. Three 
 times he was repulsed with heavy losses while besieging 
 El Obeid, but he finally captured it. Hicks Pasha inflicted 
 a terrible defeat upon him, but he subsequently destroyed 
 Hicks Pasha and his entire army. Clearly the Mahdi was 
 not a foe to be despised. 
 
 A young man should learn to bide his time. " The horse 
 that frets is the horse that sweats/' is an old saying of horse- 
 men ; and it is just as true of men as of horses. Good men,
 
 "WAIT!" 245 
 
 it has been justly observed, by a natural gravitation come to 
 the front, and accident, or want of accident, only temporarily 
 retards or repels them. Therefore when a man looks for- 
 ward to his chances in life, his great business is to prepare 
 himself for those chances. Moreover, as every one knows, 
 too early flattery, unless one have strength of character 
 sufficient to resist it, has been more disastrous by far, in 
 certain instances, than cold neglect and indifference. It 
 behooves one to guard against this danger most assiduously. 
 The infant Roscius, who set all England ablaze with what it 
 was pleased to term his genius when a child, dwindled down 
 into very meagre proportions as a man. What one most 
 needs is a resolution not to be content with one's self or 
 with one's present attainments or performance ; to scorn 
 ephemeral for lasting fame ; to turn a deaf ear to the unwise 
 flattery of the present, and look to the permanent honour of 
 the future. This alone can bridge one safely over the dan- 
 gerous current of popular fancy. 
 
 See how Balzac, in his lonely garret, toiled and waited. 
 Keither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or in- 
 timidate. That inner consciousness of the possession of 
 great powers sustained him. All undaunted by privations, 
 hindrances, or discouragements, he could wait. Did not the 
 ample fortune and splendid residences of his later years 
 attest the wisdom of his course, and prove his waiting had 
 not been in vain 1 Those familiar lines of the " Psalm of 
 Life " have great meaning. Their influence may be a potent 
 one if we are wise. Let them enter the soul, then, not only 
 as the transient music of school-days, but as an inspiration 
 for the sterner conflict of maturer years, and a clarion note 
 for the battle of life : 
 
 " Let us, then, be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate ; 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 Learn to labour and to wait"
 
 246 "WAIT!" 
 
 The late Secretary Seward advised a young man who 
 consulted him regarding the study of law, to learn, first of 
 all, some certain means of subsistence by the labour of his 
 hands. The great prizes, as a rule, in the legal profession 
 come only after toil and patient waiting. Smiles gives us 
 a notable illustration in the case of Henry Bickersteth of 
 the value of this patient waiting, and at the same time the 
 laying under tribute whatever may present itself, until the 
 way shall open. " Bickersteth was the son of a surgeon in 
 Westmoreland, and was himself educated to that profession. 
 As a student at Edinburgh he distinguished himself by the 
 steadiness with which he worked and the application which 
 he devoted to the science of medicine. Returned to Kirkby 
 Lonsdale, he took an active part in his father's practice ; but 
 he had no liking for the profession, and grew discontented 
 with the obscurity of a country town. He went on, never- 
 theless, diligently improving himself, and engaged in specula- 
 tions in the higher branches of physiology. In conformity 
 with his own wish, his father consented to send him to 
 Cambridge. Close application to his studies threw him out 
 of health, however, and he accepted the appointment of 
 travelling physician to Lord Oxford. While abroad he 
 mastered Italian and acquired a great admiration for Italian 
 literature, but no greater liking for medicine than before. 
 On the contrary, he determined to abandon it ; but returning 
 to Cambridge, he took his degree, and that he worked hard 
 may be inferred from the fact that he was senior wrangler 
 of his year. Disappointed in his desire to enter the army, 
 he turned to the bar, and entered a student of the Inner 
 Temple. He worked as hard at law as he had done at 
 medicine. Writing to his father, he said, ' Everybody says to 
 me, " You are certain of success in the end, only persevere ; " 
 and though I don't well understand how this is to happen, I 
 try to believe it as much as I can, and I shall not fail to do 
 everything in my power.' At twenty-eight he was called to
 
 "WAIT/" 247 
 
 the bar, and had every step in life yet to make. His means 
 were straitened, and he lived upon the contributions of his 
 friends. For years he studied and waited ; still no business 
 came. He stinted himself in recreation, in clothes, and even 
 in the necessaries of life, struggling on indefatigably through 
 all. Writing home, he confesses that he hardly knows how 
 he shall be able to struggle on till he has had fair time and 
 opportunity to establish himself. After three years waiting 
 thus, without success, he wrote to his friends that rather 
 than be a burden upon them longer, he was willing to give 
 the matter up and return to Cambridge, where he was sure 
 of support and some profit. The friends at home sent him 
 another small remittance, and he went on. Business gradu- 
 ally came in. Acquitting himself creditably in small matters, 
 he was intrusted with cases of greater importance. He 
 never missed an opportunity, nor allowed a legitimate chance 
 of improvement to escape him. His unflinching industry 
 soon began to tell on his fortunes. A few more years, and 
 he was not only enabled to do without assistance from home, 
 but he was in a position to pay back with interest the debts 
 which he had incurred. The clouds had dispersed, and the 
 after career of Henry Bickersteth was one of honour, emolu- 
 ment, and of distinguished fame. He ended his career as 
 Master of the Rolls, sitting in the House of Peers as Baron 
 Langdale." Surely one may easily forget, "in the vision of 
 the Chancellorship, the lonely evenings in the chambers at 
 the Temple, the weary back benches in court, the heart- 
 sickening waiting, year after year, which are in the back- 
 ground of the picture ; " for it is undeniably true that 
 
 ' ' There are points from which wo can command our life, 
 When the soul sweeps the future like a glass, 
 And coming things, full-freighted with our fate, 
 Jut out dark on the offing of the mind." 
 
 More than all this : while a young man is waiting, if he
 
 248 " WAIT.'" 
 
 be true to himself, he is forming character ; and character 
 in itself is one of the most singular of all our human quali- 
 ties. There is a peculiar and subtile force belonging to it 
 which we can perceive, and yet are unable to describe. 
 Character is something entirely apart from its surroundings. 
 " It is not the mere guinea's stamp, or the royal purple and 
 crown, or the accident of birthright, or the whim of a ca- 
 pricious and admiring public. But it is the man what he 
 has made of himself." Character, as some one has said, like 
 Achilles in disguise at the court of Lycomedes, does not dis- 
 close itself till the trumpet blast is sounded, and there comes 
 the rush for arms. The slow growth of a great character is 
 one of its special necessities. As a vigorous writer has said, 
 this strange might in men is not, and by its very nature can- 
 not be, the work of an hour. What great growth in this 
 world bursts into maturity by the first breath of spring? 
 " The weed has its abrupt strength, but its death is just as 
 abrupt, while its life is purposeless. But the oak grows 
 very tardily, and seems to be as useless as the pebbles 
 through which the first germ shoots above ground towards 
 the sun and its own destiny ; nevertheless its life is a long 
 one, and the centuries play harmlessly over its branches, and 
 beat helplessly against its thick-barked trunk its anchorage 
 is broad and deep beneath the surface. The young man 
 hastens towards a reputation ; he gives ample proof of 
 ability and success ; but only later in life does he find out that 
 the world will admit him into its favour only after years of 
 steady wrestling with obstacles, and slow stages of personal 
 growth. But this ultimate judgment of men is the safe one : 
 it comes after hard effort ; but when it does come, it will be 
 the cairn, deliberate declaration of the right." Life in all 
 its departments is of one piece and one texture, and its diffi- 
 culties bring trial, discipline, and mastery. 
 
 " But heard are the voices, 
 Heard are the sages,
 
 "WAIT!" 249 
 
 The worlds and the ages : 
 Choose well ; your choice is 
 Brief, and yet endless." 
 
 " He that believeth shall not make haste," is the striking 
 utterance of Holy Writ ; and, as old George Herbert tells 
 us, the sure traveller, though he alight sometimes, still goeth 
 on. Some one once remarked to Salvini, " You will make 
 a grand Lear." "Yes," he replied ; " I think I shall be able 
 to make something out of the old king. I have been read- 
 ing the tragedy for some time, but it will still take me two 
 years to study it thoroughly." Twain, in his "Innocents 
 Abroad," has portrayed in graphic manner the unfaltering 
 belief of the third Napoleon in his own brilliant future as 
 he walked his weary beat, a common policeman of London, 
 dreaming all the while of " a coming night when he should 
 tread the long-drawn corridors of the Tuileries." 
 
 This faith in one's self is, without doubt, an important 
 factor in all great achievement. Enthusiasm, and even 
 castle -building, has a legitimate place : the most enthusi- 
 astic dreams of youth have again and again been realized, 
 if not at times exceeded, in the after life of the man. " If 
 you have built castles in the air," says Thoreau, " your work 
 need not be lost ; that is where they should be. Now put 
 foundations under them." It is curious to note how pa- 
 tiently men have waited, and how long a period has elapsed 
 at times between their early project and the final accom- 
 plishment of their plans. "It is quite astonishing," says 
 Grove in speaking of Beethoven, " to find the length of time 
 during which some of the best-known instrumental melodies 
 remained in his thoughts till they were finally used, or the 
 crude, vague, commonplace shape in which they were first 
 written down. The more they are elaborated, the more fresh 
 and spontaneous they become." 
 
 " It is never too late to mend," says the homely adage. It 
 seems to find verification in the accomplishments of certain
 
 250 " WAIT/" 
 
 men. There is something refreshing, it has been observed, 
 in the fact that Plutarch began the study of Latin when past 
 seventy ; that Dryden commenced his translation of the Iliad 
 when sixty-eight ; that Colbert, the famous French minister, 
 returned to his Latin and law studies when sixty; that 
 Ogilby, the translator of Homer and Virgil, was past fifty 
 before he knew the rudiments of Latin and Greek ; and that 
 both Sir Henry Spelman and Benjamin Franklin were past 
 fifty before they engaged in the study of science and philos- 
 ophy. Milton in his blindness, when past the age of fifty, 
 sat down to complete his world-known epic; and Scott at 
 fifty-five took up his pen to redeem an enormous liability. 
 "Yet I am learning," said Michael Angelo, when threescore 
 years and ten were past, and he had long attained the high- 
 est triumph of the pencil. John Kemble is said to have 
 written out the part of Hamlet thirty times, and each time 
 discovered something which had previously escaped him ; 
 and during his last season he remarked, "Now that I am 
 retiring, I am only beginning thoroughly to understand my 
 art." His gifted sister, Mrs. Siddons, after she had left the 
 stage, was visited by a friend, who found her in her garden 
 musing over a book. " I am reading over Lady Macbeth," 
 said the incomparable actress, " and I am amazed to discover 
 some new points in the character which I never found out in 
 acting it." 
 
 Let no young man be disheartened on account of being 
 unappreciated at home, or because, forsooth, his relatives 
 persist in underrating him. The opinions of relatives as to 
 a man's power Holmes declares to be very commonly of 
 little value ; not so much because they sometimes overrate 
 their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose, as because, 
 on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those 
 whom they have grown into the habit of considering like 
 themselves. It is curious to note how prone most people 
 are to set an undue value on things at a distance, and to
 
 "WAIT!" 251 
 
 underrate that which is near. And yet how true and how 
 common it is ! It seems to be almost universally the case 
 that that with which human nature is unfamiliar is straight- 
 way magnified, and easily believed to possess great qualities, 
 while Vile habetur quod domi est, as Seneca tersely puts it. 
 Doubtless in certain families there is an absurd and unwar- 
 rantable conceit regarding the gifts and abilities of members 
 of the household ; but in certain others, as we know, the very 
 reverse is true. One writer assures us of a family known to 
 him, in which the boys during their early education had it 
 ceaselessly drilled into them that they were the idlest, stu- 
 pidest, and most ignorant boys in the world ; but no sooner 
 had these very boys gone to a great public school, than like 
 rockets they went up forthwith to the top of their classes, 
 and afterwards were pre-eminent in university honours. 
 "It will not surprise people who know much of human 
 nature to be told that through this brilliant career of school 
 and college work the home belief in their idleness and igno- 
 rance continued unchanged, and that hardly at its end was 
 the toil-worn senior wrangler regarded as other than an idle 
 and useless blockhead." So, too, we are told of a successful 
 author whose relatives never believed, till the reviews as- 
 sured them of it, that his writings were anything but " con- 
 temptible and discreditable trash." The fact is, as Disraeli 
 somewhere observes, " custom blunts the fineness of psycho- 
 logical study ; those with whom we have lived long and 
 early are apt to blend our essential and our accidental quali- 
 ties in one bewildering association." George Eliot has said 
 many things truly, but none more truly than when she de- 
 clares, with her customary and rare discernment, that our 
 daily, familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from each 
 other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds ; and those 
 who sit with us at the same hearth are often the farthest off 
 from the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil 
 and unacted good.
 
 252 WAIT!" 
 
 Edmund Burke in early life was not happy at home, we 
 are told, there being none among the household on Arran 
 Quay to sympathize with his dreams and aspirations. " He 
 might think himself a genius," says one of his biographers ; 
 " but it was not to be expected that his own relations should 
 yet think him one." Macknight, referring to his position 
 and influence in Lord Rockingham's administration, remarks 
 that it is, after all, a man's own relatives who generally look 
 with the least confidence on his long wrestle with adversity, 
 and are most astonished when the tide turns, and a great 
 victory succeeds to what had seemed to them a mere hope- 
 less toil. " To some of the Irish Nagles on the Blackwater," 
 he says, "the news that Edmund had been taken into the 
 confidence of the great Whig, Lord Rockingham, must have 
 seemed as extraordinary as it did to Joseph's brethren that 
 he should have become so great a man in hostile Egypt." 
 Then, too, there was Jean Bodin, neglected and slighted in 
 his own land, yet at the same time exulting in the welcome 
 accorded to his books in the English universities, which 
 printed as well as prized them. Surely no young man, 
 though slighted at home, need despair on that account, or 
 even despond : it is a road that has been often travelled, 
 and by illustrious spirits too. Let one learn in patience to 
 work and wait, and calmly bide his time. It is a long lane 
 that has no turn. 
 
 Above all, whatever happens, avoid precipitation. Any- 
 thing but rashness; it is not only unwise, but often posi- 
 tively calamitous. In one of the wars between France and 
 England, two English frigates approached each other in the 
 darkness, and each supposing the other to be an enemy, 
 opened broadsides, when, after a most terrific encounter, as 
 the darkness lifted and the dawn appeared, what was their 
 consternation and amazement to discover that both were 
 flying the English flag ! Filled with grief and regret, the 
 cannonading ceased, and mournfully they saluted each other.
 
 "WAIT!" 253 
 
 Equally disastrous have been many of the misunderstand- 
 ings among men. Many a man has jeopardized if not mined 
 his prospects in life by his rashness, and bartered away his 
 success for the sake of gratifying a momentary ebullition of 
 wrath or ill-feeling. If a man has inherited a quick temper, 
 which by the way is often found along with some of the 
 finest qualities, let him mount guard over himself, and wait, 
 holding himself in check until, in coolness and candour, he 
 can survey the whole field ; and, rest assured, he will save 
 himself many an after regret. A man never gains but 
 always loses by heat. Moreover, many a misunderstanding 
 may be easily corrected if rash words have not entered as 
 unmanageable factors into the affair. To be silent even 
 when one is conscious of being in the right is heroic, and in 
 any event waiting can do no harm. "He that is slow to 
 anger is better than the mighty ; and he that ruleth his 
 spirit, than he that taketh a city." Nothing was ever truer 
 than that. Jacox, in his entertaining manner, calls atten- 
 tion to the fact that Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton's secretary, 
 Mr. Nixon, on his own showing, could not refrain from 
 blurting out just what he felt at the moment, when differ- 
 ences arose between the two. This used to vex Sir Thomas, 
 who, however, would say nothing till the next day; and 
 then, when the secretary thought that the whole matter had 
 passed off, having perhaps received great kindness in the 
 meantime, the remonstrance would come out, " What a silly 
 fellow you were, Nixon, to put yourself in such a passion 
 yesterday ! If I had spoken then, we should most probably 
 have parted. Make it a rule never to speak when you are 
 in a passion, but wait till the next day." "We are further 
 assured that if at any time Sir Thomas did happen to trans- 
 gress this rule himself, he was seriously vexed and grieved, 
 and could not rest till he had in some way made amends for 
 his want of self-restraint. 
 
 It is exceedingly interesting, and not without encourage-
 
 254 "WAIT!" 
 
 ment, to note in this connection how many world-famous 
 ones, who have had to struggle with this infirmity of temper, 
 have at length made an almost entire conquest of themselves 
 in this regard. Rudolf of Hapsburg, for instance, we are 
 assured, was by nature warm and choleric, but as he ad- 
 vanced in years he corrected this defect. Upon some of his 
 friends expressing their wonder that since his elevation to 
 the imperial dignity he had restrained the vehemence of 
 his temper, the founder of the House of Austria replied, 
 " I have often repented of being passionate, never of being 
 mild and humane." Of the sweet-mannered and well-nigh 
 imperturbable Frederick Borromeo, Manzoni tells us that 
 the admirable placability for which he was famous was not 
 natural to the devout prelate, but was the result of con- 
 tinual combat against a quick and hasty disposition. Lord 
 Macaulay, as Jacox shows, turns to the advantage of his 
 favourite Chancellor the assertion of his detractors, that the 
 disposition of the great Somers was very far from being so 
 gentle as the world believed ; that he was really prone to 
 the angry passions ; and that sometimes, while his voice was 
 soft and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame 
 was almost convulsed by suppressed emotion. " His brilliant 
 advocate is fain to accept this reproach as the highest of all 
 eulogies." Then, too, there was Sir Robert Peel. If we are 
 to believe Sir Archibald Alison, Peel was by nature afflicted 
 with a most violent temper. By degrees, however, he ob- 
 tained the mastery of this infirmity, and this at length so 
 effectually that he passed with the world at a distance as a 
 man of a singularly cold and phlegmatic temperament. 
 
 Lady Holland has given us a passing glimpse, yet full of 
 interest in this direction, of her distinguished father, the 
 Rev. Sydney Smith. She prefaces her statement that her 
 father was naturally choleric, by the reflection that although 
 it is not the part of a daughter to reveal faults, yet a fault 
 nobly repaired or repented of adds to the respect and interest
 
 "WAIT/" 255 
 
 which a character inspires. It seems that the famous 
 clergyman, though by nature thus quick and hasty, always 
 struggled against the failing, and " made many regulations 
 to avoid exciting any such emotion. When he did give 
 way, one could not but be filled with admiration to see 
 him gradually subduing his chafed spirit, and to observe 
 his dissatisfaction with himself till he had humbled himself 
 and made his peace it mattered not with whom, groom or 
 child. He could not bear the reproaches of his own heart." 
 In the journal and letters, too, of Dr. Chalmers one often 
 finds the good man taking himself to task for infirmities of 
 temper, and striving with unflinching resolution to keep 
 down every tendency to irritation. How one entry after 
 another betrays the persistent struggle going on, as for 
 instance : " Try to maintain a vigorous contest with this 
 unfortunate peculiarity of my temper;" "to school down 
 every irritable feeling." How remorsefully he records such 
 instances as getting " into a violent passion with Sandy," 
 and the like. And again : " Erred in betraying my anger to 
 my servant and wife." Surely the world knows not always, 
 indeed seldom imagines, the struggles within or the heroic 
 discipline which at length confers upon a man that greatest 
 of all triumphs, the mastery of himself. Above all things, 
 never allow yourself to despatch an angry letter. A hasty 
 word may be overlooked or forgotten, but litera scripta manet. 
 In this direction, then, if a man would be master of the 
 situation, and is aiming at success, let him learn to wait. 
 
 It is indeed true that hope may be deferred, making the 
 heart sick ; but let one not forget that " when the desire 
 cometh, it is a tree of life." Hawthorne declared that before 
 he became famous, during those long years of waiting for 
 recognition, he had supposed himself familiar with every 
 emotion possible to the human heart ; but he frankly con- 
 fessed that when fame came to him, and recognition, it was 
 an experience wholly new. At the time the " Scarlet
 
 256 " WAIT!" 
 
 Letter" was passing through the press, Whipple tells us 
 that he was permitted to read the proof-sheets. The circum- 
 stances, he further says, under which the work was published 
 were very depressing to its author. He had been dismissed 
 from his position in the Custom House. Then, too, he had 
 failed so often in obtaining any large popular recognition of 
 his peculiar powers, that he believed the " Scarlet Letter " 
 would share the fate of the " Twice Told Tales." It was 
 therefore " well that two young men, himself and Fields the 
 publisher, who were enthusiastic admirers of his genius, 
 should break in upon his solitude that summer afternoon 
 and rouse him from his despondency. Mrs. Hawthorne, the 
 very impersonation of hope and cheer, joined heartily in the 
 attempt to make the great romancer feel that he had pro- 
 duced a work which would not only make a deep and imme- 
 diate impression on the public mind, but live as long as 
 American literature existed." " His grand face and brow 
 gradually lighted up," says Whipple, " as he caught a little 
 of the contagion of our enthusiasm, and we left him some- 
 what cheered as to the prospects of his book." 
 
 Never allow yourself " for one repulse to forego the pur- 
 pose you resolved to effect." The annals of literature are 
 full of instances of those who, feeling the consciousness 
 within that they had something to say which the world ought 
 to hear, have persistently toiled and waited, in spite of the 
 fact that editors and publishers had failed to recognize their 
 right to be heard, until at length they compelled recognition. 
 The company of literary prophets and martyrs who have 
 passed through this ordeal is very great. There was Brins- 
 ley Sheridan, in Orchard Street, Portman Square, diligently 
 working away, and producing essays, pamphlets, and farces, 
 many of which never saw the light, while others fell flat, or 
 failed to bring him any fame. Indeed, as some one asks, 
 what great authors have not experienced the same disap- 
 pointments? What men would ever be great if they
 
 "WAIT!" 257 
 
 allowed such checks to damp their energy, or were turned 
 back by them from the course in which they feel that their 
 power lies ? 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the vicissitudes which 
 have befallen certain world-famous authors and their equally 
 famous books. It is well known that many have waited 
 long for recognition, and mourned bitterly at the rejection 
 of their manuscripts. Even Thackeray's " Vanity Fair " 
 was refused by a dozen publishers when offered in manu- 
 script. Yet when " Vanity Fair " once appeared, its recep- 
 tion was immediate, and success was won. Charlotte Bronte 
 wore out her patience and her hope in offering "Jane 
 Eyre," in many respects the greatest novel ever written ; 
 and the author of " Eothen " had a weary time of it, trudg- 
 ing from publisher to publisher to get it into print. Yet 
 this, as well as " Jane Eyre," when published took the world 
 by storm. Even Murray, we are told, one of the princes 
 among publishers, failed to discover the merits of Motley's 
 " Rise of the Dutch Republic." Carlyle, it is said, was mor- 
 tified by Jeffrey's sending back to him articles as unfit for 
 the Edinburgh Review. Even Macaulay suffered a similar 
 rebuff, through the petty jealousy, as he thought, of Lord 
 Brougham. Scott and Disraeli retained in their desks 
 manuscripts which no publisher would accept until their 
 names had become famous. One of the most popular novels 
 of the present day went from one publisher to another, and 
 was at last accepted by Carleton, who made it a great success. 
 Irving tells us that Murray declined the " Sketch Book," 
 which was published by Millar. The latter failed, however, 
 and then Murray was glad to take the " Sketch Book " and 
 all of Irving's subsequent productions. Now, let us ask, 
 was the waiting of these men a vain thing ? 
 
 It is always interesting to know what estimate men who 
 have attained fame in intellectual pursuits put upon their 
 own powers, and to compare this with the estimate of others 
 
 (79) 17
 
 258 "WAIT!" 
 
 who have had good opportunities of observing them. In 
 early life, Webster, it seems, took a very modest view of his 
 abilities and his prospects of professional success. His am- 
 bition was never fully aroused till Governor Gore advised 
 him to refuse the clerkship. " In his letters to his friends 
 written before this, he often spoke timidly, and sometimes 
 disparagingly, of his legal attainments and prospects. He 
 once spoke of a young lawyer who had not had a brilliant 
 success, but whose degree of prosperity would amply satisfy 
 his own ambition. That he was conscious, however, of the 
 latent powers within him is seen by his writing for the 
 papers in college, and delivering a Fourth-of-July oration 
 during his college term. He never shrank, moreover, even 
 at that early age, from any responsibility that was laid upon 
 him ; and whatever he undertook he did well." 
 
 What, indeed, is more noticeable than this consciousness 
 of the possession of great powers in those destined to distinc- 
 tion? "We judge ourselves," says Longfellow, "by what 
 we feel capable of doing ; others judge us by what we have 
 already done." The strong aspirant not only has the master 
 in his eye, but the place of a master as well. This has had 
 many an illustration. When young Angelo was in the 
 school of Ghirlandajo, he was one day busily employed, 
 when a stranger entered, and after carefully scrutinizing the 
 work of the scholars, at length approached him. It was the 
 great Lorenzo of the Garden of St. Mark. He spoke to the 
 youth, examined his work, and then turning to Domenico, 
 said, " By your leave, I select this youth for the Garden of 
 St. Mark. Will it accord with his views?" "Ay," replied 
 Ghirlandajo significantly ; "do you think the eagle does 
 not ken his eyrie?" It is always thus. Like Pitt waiting 
 for the Cabinet, and refusing all else with lofty scorn until 
 his opportunity came, such seem to feel that they can bide 
 their time, and while "it is not in mortals to command 
 success," are apparently sustained by the lofty consciousness
 
 "WAIT!" 259 
 
 that they deserve it. One sometimes marvels to note how 
 often to such as these the prizes come. 
 
 In these men, however, one may perceive a marvellous 
 pertinacity which seems well-nigh omnipotent. In illustra- 
 tion of this, take that well-known incident in the career of 
 Brinsley Sheridan. As an incentive and an encouragement 
 to young men it cannot be too often repeated. Sheridan's 
 maiden speech in Parliament was delivered November 20, 
 1780. The House listened to him with marked attention, 
 but his appearance did not entirely satisfy the expectations 
 of his friends. Woodfall, the reporter, used to relate, as 
 Goodrich tells us, that Sheridan came up to him in the 
 gallery when the speech was ended, and asked him with 
 much anxiety what he thought of his first attempt. " I am 
 sorry to say," replied Woodfall, " that I don't think this is 
 your line. You had better have stuck to your former pur- 
 suits." Sheridan rested his head on his hand for some 
 minutes, and then exclaimed with vehemence, " It is in me, 
 and it shall come out of me /" He now devoted himself 
 with the utmost assiduity, quickened by a sense of shame, 
 to the cultivation of his powers as a speaker, and on the 
 17th of February 1787 made that famous speech against 
 Warren Hastings so astonishing for its eloquence that at 
 the conclusion the whole assembly broke forth into expres- 
 sions of tumultuous applause. A motion was made to 
 adjourn, that the House might have time to recover their 
 calmness. Twenty years after, Mr. Fox and Mr. Windham, 
 two of the severest judges in England, spoke of this speech 
 with undiminished admiration. The former declared it to 
 be the best speech ever made in the House of Commons. 
 The latter said that the speech deserved all its fame, and 
 was, in spite of some faults of taste, the greatest that had 
 been delivered within the memory of man. Brinsley Sheri- 
 dan had waited to some purpose. 
 
 Thus many a one, wayworn and weary though he may
 
 260 "WAIT!" 
 
 often have been, on the pathway to the great achievement 
 whose purpose thrilled his earliest opening life, has found 
 that the waiting paid. 
 
 " Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 
 
 Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours 
 Weeping upon his bed has sate, 
 He knows you not, ye heavenly powers." 
 
 Richter suggests as an excellent antidote against moral 
 depression the calling up in our darkest moments the mem- 
 ory of our brightest. At all events refuse to be unhappy. 
 Remember Charles Kingsley's favourite motto, "Be strong!" 
 Indeed, 
 
 ' ' So many great 
 
 Illustrious spirits have conversed with woe, 
 Have in her school been taught, as are enough 
 To consecrate distress, and make ambition 
 Even wish the frown beyond the smile of fortune."
 
 Opportunity 
 
 " Opportunity is the command of God." 
 
 There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
 
 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
 
 ****** 
 And we must take the current when it serves, 
 Or lose our ventures. SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " The mill can never grind with the water which has passed." 
 
 A SCULPTOR once showed a visitor his studio. It was almost 
 full of gods. One was very curious : the face was concealed 
 by being covered with hair, and there were wings to each foot. 
 "What is its name 1 ?" said the spectator. "Opportunity," 
 was the reply. " Why is its face hidden?" " Because men 
 seldom know him when he comes to them." " Why has he 
 wings on his feet 1 ?" "Because he is soon gone, and once 
 gone, cannot be overtaken." Let it never be forgotten that 
 in reckoning on success one must take into account that all- 
 important factor, opportunity, after all ; for it is an undeni- 
 able fact that this forms at least the two sides of the ladder 
 on which men mount. With all his power and genius, a man 
 must remain unknown unless opportunity shall open the 
 way for the display of his gifts. For, as Pliny says, "no 
 man possesses a genius so commanding that he can attain 
 eminence, unless a subject suited to his talents should present 
 itself, and an opportunity occur for their development." 
 But many a man has made a failure of life by neglecting
 
 262 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 or frittering away his opportunity when it was full upon him. 
 As -one looks over the lives of men he has known, as the 
 melancholy spectacle of broken careers and wasted lives 
 comes before him, Whittier's words but too truly express 
 the dreary truth, 
 
 " Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
 The saddest are these : It might have been ! " 
 
 Let a young man " lay the flattering unction to his soul " 
 that because he has, forsooth, achieved a diploma, the greater 
 part of the battle of life has been fought, and henceforth he 
 can take things easy, and from that hour he is destined to 
 make rapid strides on the road to failure. Once let the 
 "dry -rot" enter, and what could be worse? A graduate 
 has but learned the use of weapons, if indeed even this has 
 been fully learned. The world's work lies all before him, 
 and its demands will call for the strenuous use of all his 
 powers. " The time comes to the young surgeon," observes 
 Arnold, " when after long waiting, and patient study and 
 experiment, he is suddenly confronted with his first critical 
 operation. The great surgeon is away. Time is pressing. 
 Life and death hang in the balance. Is he equal to the 
 emergency ? Can he fill the great surgeon's place, and do his 
 work ? If he can, he is the one of all others who is wanted. 
 His opportunity confronts him. He and it are face to face. 
 Shall he confess his ignorance and inability, or step into fame 
 and fortune at once ? It is for him to say. " 
 
 In a world of such incessant changes, opportunities for rising 
 are not so rare, after all. Vacancies are constantly occurring 
 in positions of trust, honour, and profit. There is room for 
 numberless promotions every year. " The everlasting swing- 
 ing of the scythe of death is clearing the ranks for eager 
 aspirants." "There are moments," says Dean Alford, 
 " which are worth more than years. We cannot help it 
 There is no proportion between spaces of time in importance
 
 OPPORTUNITY. 263 
 
 nor in value. A stray, unthougkt-of five minutes may con- 
 tain the event of a life. And this all-important moment, 
 who can tell when it will be upon us ? " It really seems, as 
 some one says, as if our fortunes met us in the dark. The 
 single hours and acts that like rudders steer us into wide seas 
 of triumph or misfortune, how significant they are ! Some 
 one has well said that there is no view of life so inspiring as 
 that which contemplates it as a constant preparation for im- 
 portant, unforeseen emergencies. What a man already is, we 
 are told, generally determines his use or neglect of a grand 
 opportunity. In England, as every one knows, it is not very 
 difficult for a man of high birth, influential position, and 
 liberal culture, to obtain a seat in Parliament. Hundreds 
 of such men never once get the ear of the House. They are 
 coughed down or laughed down on their first attempt, and 
 they never repeat it. Pitt's triumph on the occasion of that 
 first speech of his in the House of Commons was no accident. 
 It was the well-earned reward of many years of laborious 
 and complete preparation. A legislative debate, a diplomatic 
 crisis, a battle, or many an occasion far less conspicuous, may 
 in a single hour task to the utmost and crown with imperish- 
 able glory the preparation of a lifetime. Trafalgar was 
 Nelson's opportunity ; and his exclamation, " Westminster 
 Abbey, or the peerage ! " on the eve of that memorable 
 engagement, reveals the man. Rear- Admiral Hamilton, of 
 the British Navy, in his volume, " Naval Operations during 
 the Civil War in the United States," referring to the prompt 
 action of Farragut in ordering the fleet to move on despite 
 the torpedoes that had just sunk the " Tecumseh " in Mobile 
 Bay, remarks : " It appears to me that a disastrous defeat 
 was converted into victory by (in so unexpected a contingency) 
 the quickness of eye and power of rapid decision Farragut 
 possessed, which saw at a glance the only escape from the 
 dilemma the fleet was placed in, and which can only be 
 acquired by a thorough practical knowledge in the manage-
 
 264 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 ment of fleets, and for want of which no amount of theoretical 
 knowledge, however desirable in many respects, can make up 
 in the moment of difficulty." This " quickness of eye," which 
 sees at a glance one's opportunity, marks a striking difference 
 in men. Some men seem neither to see nor know their oppor- 
 tunity when it comes. Everything appears to them to Avear 
 the air of commonplace. They are like Wordsworth's Peter 
 Bell : 
 
 " A primrose by a river's brim 
 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 A vastly entertaining chapter might be written showing 
 the curious ways in which one's opportunity comes to him. 
 Take that case of Gavarni, for instance. His real name was 
 Chevalier. He was the son of poor parents, and began life 
 as a mechanic. Finding that a successful artisan should 
 possess some knowledge of drawing, Chevalier went during 
 his hours of leisure to an evening school where free instruc- 
 tion was given to mechanics. The beginning of his work as 
 a caricaturist, we are told, was the result of a chance con- 
 versation on the insipidity of the faces in a fashion plate. 
 He drew a picture as he thought it ought to be, and sent 
 it to the publishers, signed "Gavarni," the name of a 
 little hamlet in the Pyrenees where he had picnicked pleas- 
 antly. The deed was done, the sketch despatched and 
 accepted, and Gavarni became so decidedly the fashion that 
 he gave up his work as a surveyor and devoted himself to his 
 pencil. Adah Isaacs Menken found her opportunity in 
 " Mazeppa; " and many a similar instance doubtless might be 
 cited. 
 
 " 'Tis Fortune's trick to muffle up her gifts in dusky hulls, 
 
 That when they throw their mantles off, 
 
 Surprise may richness overdouble." 
 
 " Nature creates merit, and fortune brings it into play," 
 was an observation of La Rochefoucauld; and one sees it
 
 OPPORTUNITY. 265 
 
 verified every day. In what men regard as mere chance 
 work there is often order and design. " What we call a 
 turning-point," says Arnold, "is simply an occasion which 
 sums up and brings to a result previous training. Accidental 
 circumstances are nothing except to men who have been 
 trained to take advantage of them." And he cites the 
 familiar instance of Erskine making himself famous when 
 the chance came to him of making a great forensic display, 
 justly adding that unless he had trained himself for the 
 chance, the chance would only have made him ridiculous. 
 A great occasion is worth to a man exactly what his ante- 
 cedents have enabled him to make of it. "Every man, 
 sooner or later, is called upon to pass, so to speak, his cross- 
 examination. This it is which will thoroughly test what is 
 in him. The daily duties of his profession, the possible great 
 opportunities, the judgment-days, the crises of our lives." 
 And it has been truly said that it is only as one fulfils the 
 duties and bears successfully the tests of everyday life that 
 he will be ready for the great requirements, the great oppor- 
 tunities, the supreme test-days that may come. It is un- 
 deniably true that greatness seems to come to some men as 
 by a kind of destiny. " Probably they lack none of the 
 native elements of character that are the prerequisites for 
 future achievement, and the opportunities for their develop- 
 ment are not wanting. At some other times, not very remote 
 from their own, they might have lived and died in obscurity ; 
 but it falls to their lot to be at the head of affairs at some 
 momentous period of a country's history, and to conduct a 
 nation through progressive revolutions in rapid series to a 
 greatness of which few but themselves ever dreamed as 
 among things possible, and in this same process to become 
 themselves the most conspicuous figures of their age." Yet 
 the fact remains that the great mass of events with which 
 men have to do are simply opportunities that may be used 
 or neglected. From time to time we are called to confront
 
 266 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 great emergencies which are "neither resistless engines to 
 crush us, nor machines which we have framed to work out 
 our fortunes, but hinges of destiny turning either way, as we 
 choose. When we least expect it, we come to a fork in the 
 road : here lies the unfrequented way to the mountain peaks 
 of distinction ; there, to the dead level of obscurity and the 
 morass of failure. Some men have a way of always taking 
 the mountain path." The way in which her opportunity 
 came to Pauline Lucca is full of interest, and reminds one 
 of a somewhat similar incident in the career of Charlotte 
 Cushman. Her high musical gifts showed themselves early. 
 When a mere child she sang in the choir of the Karlskirche, 
 in 1856. One Sunday the principal soloist was missing, and 
 the young chorus-singer, put forward to supply her place in 
 the solo of a mass of Mozart's, revealed a beauty of voice and 
 charm of style that startled all who heard it. She studied 
 under Uschmann and Levy, and her parents being in strait- 
 ened circumstances, she entered the chorus of the opera at 
 Vienna, but left in 1859 to come out at Olmiitz. Just before 
 leaving, it fell to her to lead the bridesmaids' chorus in the 
 " Freischiitz," her performance creating a sensation that 
 made Vienna eager to retain her ; but it was too late. On 
 the 4th of September 1859 she made her debut in Olmiitz 
 as Elvira in " Ernani," and became a favourite at once. 
 
 To glance from art to trade, it was in a very simple circum- 
 stance that the greatest button-manufacturer in the United 
 States found his opportunity. He had purchased, it seems, 
 some cloth for a coat, and his wife was to make it up. He 
 bought among other trimmings some lasting buttons, and 
 paid a certain price for them, say seventy-five cents a 
 dozen. His wife asked him what he paid for them, and he 
 told her. "Why," said she, "that is a large price; with 
 button-moulds and a little lasting I could make these buttons 
 for a quarter of that price. If you will take these back and 
 get some button-moulds I will show you." He did so, and
 
 OPPORTUNITY. 267 
 
 the buttons she made were to all appearance as good as those 
 bought at the store. That led to the idea of his making 
 buttons to sell He began by employing a few girls, and 
 carrying his buttons to the country stores and selling them. 
 He found it a profitable enterprise. The business grew. 
 He afterwards employed machinery, and made an immense 
 fortune. 
 
 It is very interesting, as Arnold observes, to read of a 
 great advocate awaiting patiently his chance. " It comes at 
 last, and with the thought of wife and children tugging at 
 his robe, and urging him for their sakes to do his best, the 
 full, brilliant speech is made." Or it may be the famous 
 argument of plain John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, in 
 the leading case of Akroyd v. Smithson. An opportunity at 
 length occurred which enabled John Scott to exhibit the large 
 legal knowledge which he had so laboriously acquired. In a 
 case in which he was employed he urged a legal point against 
 the wishes both of the attorney and the client who employed 
 him. The Master of the Rolls decided against him, but on 
 an appeal to the House of Lords, Lord Thurlow reversed the 
 decision on the very point that Scott had urged. On leaving 
 the House that day an attorney tapped him on the shoulder 
 and whispered the homely but heart-cheering words, " Young 
 man, your bread and butter is cut for life." And indeed the 
 young man had started "straight and fair for the Great 
 Seal." Smiles tells us that Lord Mansfield used to say he 
 knew no interval between no biisiiiess and three thousand 
 pounds a year ; and Scott, he adds, might have told the same 
 story, for so rapid was his progress that in 1783, when only 
 thirty-two, he was appointed King's Counsel, was at the head 
 of the Northern Circuit, and sat in Parliament for the 
 borough of Weobley. 
 
 Such incidents, as has been said, do not happen so very 
 infrequently after all. The man and the hour approach. 
 The man is equal to the occasion; but often, perhaps oftener,
 
 268 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 the man is unequal to it. What would have been the use of 
 the chance coming to men who were unequal to the chance 1 
 There are lawyers who if such a chance came to them would 
 simply have to sit down, and truly enough tell the presiding 
 judge that they could not get on without their leader. One 
 must have had long training before he can skilfully avail him- 
 self of any sort of emergency. It is undeniably true that one 
 may so prepare for a crisis that when it comes it shall be 
 determined beforehand in the foreseen direction. As the 
 lumberman when about to hew a giant of the forest, though 
 powerless to move it with unaided strength, may by his rope 
 still guide and determine the direction of its fall and the 
 position it shall occupy, so in a certain sense a man may, so 
 to speak, go into training for a crisis ere it come. "It matters 
 not," says Foss, " what sea a ship is to sail : its keel must be 
 securely laid, its masts firmly set, its rigging of the toughest 
 fibre, in order to sail any sea in safety. One hour's tussle 
 with the tempest will test the fibre of its timbers which were 
 toughened by a hundred years' wrestle with Norwegian blasts. 
 The student whose special work in life is yet unchosen should 
 be made to feel that in some work he will have need of the 
 completest possible discipline of all his powers, and the largest 
 attainable acquirements. Now is the time to get ready. 
 When the storm bursts there will be no time to set the 
 masts or hang the rudder. Opportunities are sure to come 
 which we shall most earnestly wish to employ to the utmost. 
 Our actual use of them, however, will depend not on what 
 we wish, but on what we are." 
 
 While the whole country was resounding with the praises 
 of his reply to Hayne, Mr. Webster seemed almost unmoved 
 by them, and to be scarcely conscious of the great forensic 
 victory he had achieved. In reply to a letter congratulating 
 him, he wrote as follows on the 8th of March 1830: "I 
 thank you for your friendly and flattering letter. Your 
 commendation of my speech was measured less by its merits
 
 OPPORTUNITY. 269 
 
 than by your bounty. If it has gratified my friends at 
 home, 1 am rewarded for any little trouble it has cost me. 
 The whole debate was a matter of accident. I had left the 
 court pretty late in the day, and went into the Senate 
 with my court papers under my arm, just to see what was 
 passing. It so happened that Mr. Hayne rose in his first 
 speech. I did not like it, and my friends liked it less. I 
 never spoke in the presence of an audience so eager and so 
 sympathetic." 
 
 However useless it may appear to you at the moment, 
 seize upon all that is fairly within your reach ; for there is 
 not a fact within the whole circle of human observation, 
 " nor even a fugitive anecdote that you read in a newspaper 
 or hear in conversation, that will not come into play some 
 time or other ; and occasions will arise when they involun- 
 tarily present their dim shadows in the train of your thinking 
 and reasoning as belonging to that train, and you will regret 
 that you cannot recall them more distinctly." How strange 
 is that law of the mind by which an idea, long overlooked 
 and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles 
 out in a new light as a discovered diamond ! One thing is 
 certain : unless one is thus prompt to seize and fix the fact 
 or incident which interests him as he comes upon it in his 
 reading, or to look up, from time to time, points suggested, 
 he will have occasion again and again to regret it. Who 
 cannot bear witness to this, as he has sat trying vainly to 
 recall some fact or illustration which now looms before his 
 recollection dim and nebulous and undefined, which he feels 
 sure is just what he wants, but cannot get? The tendency 
 of human nature is to inertia. One hates to be disturbed or 
 interrupted. He will go on with his reading to-day, and make 
 the note to-morrow. He discovers his mistake, and repents 
 too late, when the illusive thought evades and defies his 
 capture. The same is true of the fleeting impulse to clear 
 up a doubtful point or to add to one's stock of information.
 
 270 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 Wirt hits it exactly when he says, " Seize the moment of 
 excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts ; for if 
 you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may 
 remain in ignorance." 
 
 A well-known journalist recently advised all boys and 
 girls to begin at once keeping a scrap-book, in which they 
 should set down descriptions of any noteworthy place or 
 scene which comes in their way; also accounts of any re- 
 markable person whom they meet, with their photograph, 
 and any personal details. " In thirty years," he says, " such 
 a book will be invaluable to the owner, especially if he be 
 a journalist or literary man." The most trifling details, it 
 has been observed, in such a book as Pepys' Diary, or the 
 Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, are read now with keen 
 interest, as they make flesh and blood of historical characters 
 who otherwise would be but shadows to us. 
 
 It may seem trivial, but it is a suggestion of no less a 
 personage than the late Bishop of Oxford, that if in the 
 course of your writing a good thought or illustration comes 
 into your mind which will come in well in some other part 
 of your discourse, for instance, do not think you will cer- 
 tainly remember it; stop and write it down at once, and 
 when you come to that part where you need it, work it in. 
 " Some years ago, if not now," says a visitor, " the studio 
 of Story, at Rome, presented the following appearance 
 around the walls were shelves filled with small clay models, 
 single figures and groups. The sculptor explained that 
 often as he worked some splendid subject for a marble 
 figure or group would suggest itself. There was little or 
 no use in trying to remember it ; so he would at once turn 
 aside from the work in hand and put his idea into a model, 
 small indeed and hastily shaped, but he had all that he then 
 needed namely, the conception. At any time it could be 
 worked up." 
 
 Lord Oxford's maid-servant relates that in the dreadful
 
 OPPORTUNITY. 271 
 
 winter of 1740 she was called from her bed four times in 
 one night to supply him with paper lest he should lose a 
 thought ; and it is told of Bossuet, that if while he was in 
 bed his sleep was delayed or interrupted, he used to avail 
 himself of it to commit to paper any interesting thought 
 which occurred to him. Eginhard, his secretary, tells us of 
 Charlemagne that he had always pen, ink, and parchment 
 beside his pillow, for the purpose of noting down any 
 thoughts that might occur to him during the night; and 
 lest upon waking he should find himself in darkness, a part 
 of the wall within reach from the bed was prepared like the 
 leaf of a tablet, with wax, on which he might indent his 
 memoranda with a stylus. In like manner, we are told of 
 that indefatigable pursuer of literature, Margaret, Duchess 
 of Newcastle, that some of her young ladies always slept 
 within call, ready to rise at any hour of the night and take 
 down her thoughts, lest she should forget them before 
 morning. 
 
 Many an immortal production, as every one knows, has 
 emanated from prison and the dungeon. Not to mention 
 the familiar instance of the famous allegory written in 
 Bedford Jail, we find that one of the best poems which 
 British poetry can boast between the death of Chaucer and 
 the accession of Henry VIII. was penned by James I. while 
 a captive in Windsor Castle. The same is true of some of 
 the most pleasing of Lord Surrey's poems and Sir Walter 
 Raleigh's " History of the World ; " and the list might be 
 greatly extended. Many, too, have been the works pro- 
 duced while their authors were in exile. It was in exile 
 that Thucydides composed his " History of the Peloponne- 
 sian War," and Xenophon his Anabasis. That sleep should 
 possess creativ? power is remarkable ; and yet Burns tells 
 us that he dreamed one of his poems, and that he wrote it 
 down just as he dreamed it. Voltaire informed one of his 
 friends that the whole of the second canto of the " Henriade"
 
 272 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 was composed by him in his sleep. Coleridge always said 
 that he dreamed "Kubla Khan;" and if one may rely upon 
 internal evidence, it can hardly be doubted. Campbell de- 
 clared that he was indebted to the same source for the best 
 line in " Lochiel's Warning. " It seems he was visiting at 
 Minto, and one evening went to bed early, his thoughts full 
 of a new poem. About two in the morning he suddenly 
 awoke, repeating, 
 
 " Events to come cast their shadows before." 
 
 Ringing the bell sharply, a servant obeyed the summons, to 
 find the summoner with one foot in bed and one on the 
 floor. "Are you ill, sir?" inquired he. "111!" cried 
 Campbell; "never better in my life. Leave me the candle, 
 and oblige me with a cup of tea." Seizing his pen, he 
 promptly set down the happy thought, changing " events to 
 come" into "coming events," and over the non-inebriating 
 cup completed the first draught of " Lochiel's Warning." 
 
 Hardly anything is more remarkable than those instances 
 in which the soul, as if by instinct, seems to recognize its 
 opportunity for relieving itself of a great burden, or of the 
 anguish which perchance has long been tugging at the heart. 
 How little the public realize, at times, when thrilled by the 
 sudden burst of eloquence or song, that some secret anguish 
 is voicing itself, or that the burdened soul, after long neglect 
 and seemingly hopeless struggle, has suddenly been lifted by 
 the spell of a great inspiration, born of the memory of past 
 defeat, into such marvellous achievement as compels the 
 long-delayed recognition and conquers its place ! Many a 
 recognition, doubtless, has come thus on the wings of this 
 cry of the soul. How many, think you, comprehended fully 
 all that went to make up Rachel's "Helas"? In the 
 " Marble Faun," Hawthorne makes Miriam, the broken- 
 hearted singer in the midnight song that went up from the 
 Roman Coliseum, put into the melody the pent-up shriek
 
 OPPORTUNITY. 273 
 
 that her anguish had almost given vent to a moment before. 
 "That volume of melodious voice was one of the tokens of a 
 great trouble. The thunderous anthem gave her an oppor- 
 tunity to relieve her heart by a great cry." 
 
 It is also one of the characteristics of greatness to hide 
 itself, and take refuge in commonplaces until its opportunity 
 comes. Moreover, this opportunity which the soul some- 
 times finds for the utterance of its great secrets when sur- 
 rounded by the multitude gives occasion for revelations 
 often very beautiful. " I have known shy, reserved men," 
 says Phillips Brooks, "who, standing in their pulpits, have 
 drawn back before a thousand eyes veils that were sacredly 
 closed when only one friend's eyes could see. You might 
 talk with them a hundred times, and you would not learn 
 so much of what they were as if you once heard them preach. 
 It was partly the impersonality of the great congregation. 
 Humanity, without the offence of individuality, stood there 
 before them. It was no violation of their loyalty to them- 
 selves to tell their secret to mankind. It was a man who 
 silenced them. But also, besides this, it was, I think, that 
 the sight of many waiting faces set free in them a new, clear 
 knowledge of what their truth or secret was, unsnarled it 
 from the petty circumstances into which it had been en- 
 tangled, called it first into clear consciousness, and then 
 tempted it into utterance with an authority which they did 
 not recognize in an individual curiosity demanding the details 
 of their life. Our race, represented in a great assembly, has 
 more authority and more beguilement for many of us than 
 the single man, however near he be. And he who is silent 
 before the interviewer pours out the very depths of his soul 
 to the great multitude." 
 
 The same is doubtless more or less true in literature. 
 
 How unmistakably behind the thin veil of " Copperfield," 
 
 for instance, one discerns the personality of Dickens as he 
 
 by a thousand delicate touches reveals to us the story of his 
 
 (79) 18
 
 274 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 life ! And can any one doubt that the gentle soul of Irving 
 is embalmed within his serene and sunny pages'? In Good- 
 rich's account of Webster's defence of his Alma Mater, he 
 tells us that after closing his masterly argument, Mr. Web- 
 ster stood for some moments before the court, while every 
 eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing 
 the Chief-Justice, after a brief reference to the far-reaching 
 influence of an adverse decision as affecting every college in 
 the land, he continued: "It is, sir, as I have said, a small 
 college, and yet there are those Avho love it " Here the 
 feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down 
 broke forth. His lips quivered ; his firm cheeks trembled 
 with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears; his voice 
 choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to 
 gain that mastery over himself which might save him from 
 an unmanly burst of feeling. " I will not attempt to give 
 yu," says Goodrich, " the few broken words of tenderness 
 in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the col- 
 lege. TJie whole seemed to be mingled throughout with recollec- 
 tions of father, mother, brother, and all the privations and 
 trials through which he had made his way into life. Every 
 one saw that it was wholly unpremeditated a pressure on 
 his heart which sought relief in tears. Having recovered 
 his composure, after a few intense, concluding words, he sat 
 down. There was a death-like stillness throughout the room 
 for some moments. Every one seemed to be slowly recovering 
 himself, and coming gradually back to his ordinary range of 
 thought and feeling." 
 
 In closing this chapter, too great stress cannot possibly be 
 laid upon the importance of being ready when one's oppor- 
 tunity comes. There was just one fleeting moment on which 
 hung the fate of England's early king, imprisoned in his 
 dungeon, while the faithful Blondel, harp in hand, awaited 
 his response without. Had it passed unfruitful, the fate of 
 the king had been sealed. Some one has well said that
 
 OPPORTUNITY. 275 
 
 lost opportunities are so many funerals. The golden oppor- 
 tunity 
 
 ' ' Is never offered twice ; seize then the hour 
 
 When fortune smiles, and duty points the way : 
 
 Nor shrink aside to 'scape the spectre fear ; 
 
 Nor pause, though pleasure beckon from her bower ; 
 
 But bravely bear thee onward to the goal." 
 
 When once the chase is " in " and hounds are loosed, when 
 once you realize that the great moment is full upon you 
 that one vital hour, the lord of time, on which all other 
 hours have waited let nothing divert you from your aim 
 until your point is gained. Carry it by storm, even if it 
 task you sorely and demand the acquired strength of years. 
 If it take all there is of you, carry it. There will be 
 enough of the uneventful, enough of monotony and common- 
 place coming after, to afford ample leisure for rest and 
 recuperation when the crisis shall have been safely passed. 
 
 " A thousand years a poor man watched 
 
 Before the gate of Paradise ; 
 But while one little nap he snatched, 
 It oped and shut. Ah ! was he wise ? " 
 
 Above all things, let there be preparation. "Get thy 
 spindle and distaff ready, and God will send thee flax." 
 Thus one waits calmly, as one refreshed with slumber and 
 awake betimes awaits the sure approach of day. No thought 
 is so inspiring to a man as to feel that possibly just before 
 him, in the dim and unforeseen to-morrow, lies his great 
 opportunity awaiting him. Nothing could be more sublime. 
 Did you ever note the coming of the dawn? From the time 
 when first " the casement grows a glimmering square " to the 
 full tide of the morning's glory, the gradual approach of light 
 is wondrously beautiful. Up from the eastern horizon steals 
 at first a faint glimmer ; sudden breezes stir the rustling 
 leaves; clouds and the night-rack go scudding, like fugitives,
 
 276 OPPORTUNITY. 
 
 athwart the sky; the birds are astir; and ere you have 
 noted the thousand indefinable influences which come to you, 
 already broad streaks of light are growing apace in the 
 heavens. The gradually glowing east is seized with sudden 
 tremulousness, and you feel instinctively that something is 
 impending ; the trees sway more perceptibly in the breeze ; 
 flashes of red shoot up towards the zenith ; and now, above 
 the dark rim bounding the horizon, the grand old sun uplifts 
 himself, rears upward on his mighty shoulders the ponderous, 
 dreary burden of the dark, kisses the hills into sudden glory, 
 and day is born ! So, if you are ready and waiting, out 
 from the darkness and gloom of adverse circumstances shall 
 come the dawn of opportunity and the day's risen splendour 
 of triumph and success.
 
 XL 
 
 Genius. 
 
 " It is no task for suns to shine." 
 
 From my youth upward 
 My spirit walked not with the souls of men, 
 Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes ; 
 The thirst of their ambition was not mine, 
 The aim of their existence was not mine ; 
 My joys, my griefs, my passions and my powers, 
 Made me a stranger. BYRON. 
 
 Genius is greater than man : 
 Genius does what it must ; talent does what it can. 
 
 OWEN MEREDITH. 
 
 IN reviewing the life and works of Edgar A. Poe, Lowell 
 says of him : " He had that indescribable something which 
 men have agreed to call genius. No man could ever tell us 
 precisely what it is, and yet there is none who is not inevitably 
 aware of its presence and its power. Let talent writhe and 
 contort itself as it may, it has no such magnetism. Larger 
 of bone and sinew it may be, but the wings are wanting. 
 Talent sticks fast to earth, and its most perfect works 
 have still one foot of clay. Genius claims kindred with the 
 very workings of nature herself, so that a sunset shall seem 
 like a quotation from Dante or Milton, and if Shakespeare 
 be read in the very presence of the sea itself, his verses shall 
 but seem nobler for the sublime criticism of ocean. Talent 
 may make friends for itself, but only genius can give to its 
 creations the divine power of winning love and veneration
 
 278 GENIUS. 
 
 To the eye of genius the veil of the spiritual world is ever 
 rent asunder, that it may perceive the ministers of good and 
 evil who throng continually around it. No man of mere 
 talent ever flung his inkstand at the devil" 
 
 It is curious to note the attempts of men to define this 
 subtile faculty. One has caught a certain fugitive phase of 
 it and spoken of that ; another has given his impression from 
 another point of view ; but few, if any, seem to have defined 
 it fully. The artist catches the evanescent hue of emerald 
 from the crested wave as it breaks upon the strand, and with 
 rare skill fixes the sudden gleam for ever on his canvas ; but 
 let one attempt to capture this, and reveal its secret, and it 
 eludes him. The Greeks, as we know, gave it the name of 
 demon, from their word signifying a spirit or immaterial 
 being of an intermediate nature between the divine and the 
 human. This being, they thought, hovered over them and 
 suggested their finest thoughts. Socrates believed this. 
 
 But let us note a few of these definitions. Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds declared it to be "a power of producing excel- 
 lences which are out of the reach of the rules of art, a 
 power which no precepts can teach and which no industry 
 can acquire." This is doubtless true. Something is "breathed 
 into a man at his birth a divine fire, a gift of God." This 
 makes great things possible to him which may be for ever 
 denied to his brother in the next cradle. It is undeniably 
 a gift, and usually where most manifest to the beholder, 
 there is a most delightful unconsciousness on the part of its 
 possessor. Like beauty and childhood, it is unconscious of 
 self. " When a child enchants us by his innocent smile," 
 some one has said, "he does not know that it is innocent; 
 but does this detract from its charm?" In illustration of 
 what we have said, could anything be more delightful and 
 ingenuous than the remark made so naively by Jenny Liixd 
 when at the zenith of her fame to one of her friends : " Isn't 
 it beautiful that I can sine so 1 " " Some one once showed
 
 GENIUS. 279 
 
 Corneille certain obscure verses of his own composition," says 
 Legouve, "asking for an explanation. 'When I wrote 
 them,' was his artless reply, 'I understood them perfectly, 
 but now they are as vague to me as to you. You see that 
 there are certain things in the works of the masters insol- 
 uble even by themselves. In the fire of creation they instinct- 
 ively use expressions which they do not realize, but which 
 are none the less true.' " 
 
 But the gift granted, fuel must be furnished ; and what 
 more remarkable than the prodigious industry of our greatest 
 men 1 ? One element, at least, seems absolutely essential 
 namely, growth. " A man of genius," says Gilfillan, " is 
 always a man of limitless growth, with a soul smitten with 
 a passion for growth, and open to every influence which 
 promotes it ; one who grows always like a tree, by day and 
 by night, in calm and in storm, through opposition and 
 tli rough applause, in difficulty and in despair. With the 
 dying Schiller he can say, ' Many things are becoming plain 
 and clear to me now.' " 
 
 But to return to definitions. De Quincey declares genius 
 to be mind steeped and saturated in the genial nature. 
 Others have declared it to be impassioned truth, thought 
 become phosphorescent ; while some have even defined it as 
 simply great patience. Perseverance is genius, several have 
 declared, whose position would seem to entitle them to a 
 hearing. But this would appear to be manifestly inadequate, 
 to say the least. This capacity for taking infinite pains, and 
 of unwearying patience until its end is gained, seems indeed 
 ever present where genius is found, but it is by no means the 
 thing itself. Perhaps Owen Meredith hits nearest the mark, 
 or at least as near as any broad generalization could be ex- 
 pected to come, in the striking line : " Genius does what it 
 must; talent does what it can." In its real essence it is 
 doubtless "the unsearchable and .subtile result of a combi- 
 nation of rare faculties with rare temperament." Where this
 
 280 GENIUS. 
 
 combination is finest we have a Shakespeare or a Longfellow, 
 a Rachel or a Gerster. 
 
 One thing is certain : no law is competent to explain the 
 miracle of the rise and action of these gifted souls. Moses 
 is the divine lawgiver for all coming time. He appears 
 among an enslaved and half-savage people. Praxiteles is 
 still unsurpassed, Raphael still the inimitable, and Shake- 
 speare remains for ever the universal, the " happy poet by no 
 critics vexed." But whenever the great soul appears, men 
 know it. Envy or hate may obscure it for a season with 
 clouds of detraction ; it matters little. A man of real power 
 is, like Homer's laughter of the gods, "inextinguishable." 
 Moreover, the great always recognize one another. Genius 
 has the fine and subtile power of reading between the lines. 
 It is the single stroke of Apelles upon the panel of Protogenes. 
 It is Napoleon at the tomb of the great Frederick, rebuking 
 the fulsome flattery of his courtier, and saying, "I wish I 
 had known Frederick the Great. I think we should have 
 understood each other ! " The revelation comes. The chords 
 of its inmost soul begin to vibrate. Its infinite heart 
 responds 
 
 ' ' Responds, as if with unseen wings 
 An angel touched its quivering strings ; 
 And whispers, in its song, 
 ' Where hast thou stayed so long ? ' " 
 
 Of course we are familiar with its counterfeit, " the con- 
 tortion of the Sibyl without the inspiration." But men are 
 not deceived. Young England with its turned-down collars 
 and dishevelled hair is in reality as far removed from its 
 great idol as ever. Samson's strength is not acquired by 
 simply cutting off the locks of his head, nor the secret of 
 genius discovered by gazing on its clothes. As well might 
 one hope to appropriate the fine qualities and accomplish- 
 ments of a man after the manner of certain South Sea 
 Islanders, by eating him. " We can examine," says a
 
 GENIUS. 281 
 
 recent writer, " the meat upon which our Csesar fed, the 
 stupidities he had to explode, the malaria into which he 
 drove his ozone ; but when we have done all this, what have 
 we got ? We have got a plexus of causes which operated on 
 a thousand other minds as well as his, and we have missed 
 the invisible chemistry which created in him and in him 
 alone the personal endowment that enabled him to do his 
 work. Explain and analyze as we will, there is always in 
 the greatest men an unexplained residuum of personal power. 
 We do not say that it must for ever be inexplicable. We 
 only say that it is thus far unexplained, and is pretty likely 
 to remain so until the fundamental riddle of psychology is 
 solved. We may then anatomize our Hercules as much as 
 we choose ; we may examine the marshy habitat of his mon- 
 sters, and survey the forest from which he got his club ; but 
 we need not forget, in doing that, that there is, after all, be- 
 tween Hercules and Cacus a difference worth accenting, and 
 that the only way of accenting it to any purpose is by means 
 of the old-fashioned ' Bravo, Hercules ! '" 
 
 The unexpected way in which this strange gift reveals 
 itself at times is not a little remarkable. It turns up in 
 most unlooked-for quarters. Like the cereus from its homely 
 stalk, it appears amid most untoward surroundings ; but the 
 common air is at once surcharged with fragrance. Amid 
 the plain prose of everyday life there it stands, " a joy 
 for ever." Take the case of Gerster, for instance, her fame 
 and fortune made in one night, the night of her first 
 appearance in opera. Hitherto an unknown Hungarian, 
 she jumped from obscurity to popularity and wealth in less 
 than a week. Like Erskine's famous leap in that one great 
 speech of his before Lord Mansfield, it was at once seen that 
 a great star had appeared. The immortal fire had been 
 slumbering in silent depths, awaiting only the breath of 
 great occasion to fan it into flame. Charlotte Cushman's 
 experience was very similar. She somewhere tells us of the
 
 282 GENIUS. 
 
 astonishment of the audience, as well as of the performers, 
 when she first made her wonderful entree as Meg Merrilees. 
 Miss Cushman was then simply a "utility" woman. "Guy 
 Mannering " was running, and the artist who acted the old 
 witch, and who did it in the ordinary stage manner, being 
 ill, Miss Cushman was called upon to take the part. It 
 suddenly flashed upon her that she might make a hit, so she 
 rushed on the stage and assumed the pose which is now so 
 well remembered in connection with her assumption of the 
 part. To her must be accredited the creation of this striking 
 picture. The marvellous performance, for downright power, 
 has never been surpassed. 
 
 Then, too, the apparent ease with which genius accom- 
 plishes its tasks, however difficult, is noteworthy. How 
 simple its products appear when seen as accomplished 
 results ! What wonder that many are deceived by this, 
 and led to think the same achievement possible to all ! Not 
 till the attempt is made is the mistake discerned. The 
 struggling aspiration of a thousand hearts is crystallized 
 into felicitous speech. A thousand had the thought ; it 
 remained for genius to coin the waiting phrase and put its 
 stamp upon it. " I will frame a work of fiction upon 
 notorious fact," says Horace in his "Art of Poetry" as 
 quoted by Reade, " so that anybody shall think he can do 
 the same ; shall labour and toil attempting the same, and 
 fail such is the power of sequence and connection in 
 writing." There is ever a certain indefinable something 
 present in the works of genius which even the highest talent 
 cannot attain to, although the work of the latter may be far 
 more perfect as regards detail. In illustration of this, it 
 is related of a certain French sculptor who had erected an 
 equestrian statue to Peter the Great at St. Petersburg, that 
 once, while lecturing to a class of students, in criticising 
 works of art he called attention to the celebrated equestrian 
 statue of Marcus Aurelius at Rome. He pointed out a great
 
 GENIUS. 283 
 
 number of anatomical faults in the figure of the horse, all of 
 which, as he called the class to note, were avoided in the 
 horse which he had modelled. And yet, after noting all 
 this, he frankly declared, " Notwithstanding, this poor beast 
 is alive, while mine is dead !" 
 
 How readily, too, it transports itself at will from the cold 
 hard facts of the present, from its frowning realities, to its 
 own ideal world. Another sun rises on its dominions. 
 Another moon with serene, unearthly splendour illumes its 
 weird and silent nights. Scorned, it may be, and insulted 
 in the market-place, it goes home and recounts its treasures, 
 like Zaccheus, all undisturbed. What pranks it plays ! Let 
 its foes lie in wait all night and seek to slay it, and like 
 Samson it will arise betimes and carry off in triumph the 
 gates of Gaza upon its shoulders. Its horizon is boundless. 
 Heaven and hell are open to it. A beggar's garment is 
 transformed to a prince's robe. The abode of poverty is 
 transfigured. The worn rug assumes the beauty of Brussels 
 or Axminster. The thatched roof is glorified with a name- 
 less charm. How it idealizes ! In the rude and uncouth 
 architecture of the quaint old village church it finds sugges- 
 tion of the " long-drawn aisle and fretted vault," and in the 
 wheezy organ still hears the lofty diapasons and wailing 
 symphonies of grand cathedral tones. It weaves its woof of 
 golden threads into the warp of homespun circumstance, and, 
 lo ! there emerges a rare and costly fabric from its mystic 
 loom. It thus possesses the fine power of transmuting com- 
 mon things to gold. It can seize upon suggestions from 
 passing life and common events anywhere. Thorwaldsen 
 was famous for this. He sees a young labourer for a 
 moment in an unusual but natural posture. A new statue 
 stands before his imagination. He hurries home, and pres- 
 ently his " Mercury as the Slayer of Argos " appears, long 
 known as one of his finest works. Like others of his class, 
 he had his seasons of unproductiveness. At such times he
 
 284 GENIUS. 
 
 was moody and dejected, and had no energy. Except super- 
 vising the work of his assistants, he would be thus idle or 
 unproductive for weeks and months. His two figures 
 " Night " and " Day," so universally admired, were the 
 work of a single day, a day of gloom and dejection. The 
 same was true of Irving. For weeks he would not write a 
 word ; then, catching a sudden inspiration, he would turn 
 off page after page of most brilliant work. It is interesting 
 to think of those periods when, after prolonged and mono- 
 tonous ebbing, at length the tide comes in. The eagle upon 
 the earth is but a dull and drowsy-looking bird, moving 
 about seemingly dejected and with drooping pinion ; but let 
 once the inspiration of his native heaven come over him, and, 
 lo ! on tireless wing he cleaves the sky. This tendency to 
 seasons of indolence may well be regarded as one of the safe- 
 guards of genius. Who can doubt that but for this the heat 
 of the furnace and fierceness of the flames might often en- 
 danger if not destroy the earthen vessel 1 
 
 What could be finer than its rare power of incarnating 
 itself, and wreaking its thought upon expression on the im- 
 mortal canvas or in the imperishable stone? Da Vinci 
 spends four years upon that marvellous head of Mona Lisa 
 in the Louvre, and leaves a thought there for all coming 
 time ; the depth of expression in the face being at once the 
 wonder and despair of artists. Roebling, the living martyr 
 to his own great enterprise, gazes from his invalid's pillow 
 upon the completed towers of that majestic bridge now 
 spanning the East River, and exclaims with the enthusiasm 
 of a child, " Ah ! that's just as I expected to see it !" The 
 dream of the great engineer is realized. The lonely, recluse 
 genius of Hawthorne toils away untiringly at its self-imposed 
 tasks unrecognized for twenty years. At length the fitting 
 recognition comes. 
 
 There are certain wiseacres who pride themselves on being 
 practical, matter-of-fact individuals. In their estimation men
 
 GENIUS. 285 
 
 of genius are visionary and their projects "moonshine." 
 Physical activity is considered by many very sincere people 
 the chief end of man. Unquestionably there exists a very 
 general impression that " the study lamp of the student 
 shines on an idle dreamer, a drone in the great hive." 
 The favourite and ever-recurring challenge of these utilitari- 
 ans seems to be, "Will it bake bread?" and that it will not, 
 is sufficient condemnation in their eyes. As if the "Apollo," 
 or the "Transfiguration," or the " Paradise Lost" were con- 
 cerned with a wheaten loaf or questions of the pantry ! 
 Such, doubtless, have forgotten that it is written, " Man 
 shall not live by bread alone." 
 
 Holland, indeed, has conclusively shown the fallacy of 
 such ideas, and one of the profoundest of English philoso- 
 phers has declared : " It would not be difficult by an un- 
 broken chain of historic facts to demonstrate that the most 
 important discoveries in science and improvements in the 
 mechanic arts had their origin, not in the cabinets of states- 
 men, nor in the practical insight of men of business, but in 
 the visions of recluse genius." This suggests, naturally, the 
 associated thought of the pecuniary rewards of genius. In 
 our day, at least, these are not unworthy of note. The 
 profits of authors, for instance, is an interesting subject. 
 Here, as elsewhere, we find genuine material always in 
 demand. For the " Hanging of the Crane " Longfellow 
 received four thousand dollars, twenty dollars per line. 
 Tennyson received, we are told, three guineas a line from 
 the Comhill Magazine for his " Tithonus," and nearly twice 
 that for the " Revenge." The Harpers paid as copyright to 
 Motley about sixty thousand dollars ; to Jacob Abbott, about 
 fifty thousand dollars ; and to Professor Anthon, about one 
 hundred thousand. In the " Life and Letters " of Macaulay 
 we are told that twenty-six thousand five hundred copies of 
 his History had been sold in ten weeks. Longman, his 
 publisher, one day came to him, and said they were over-
 
 286 GENIUS. 
 
 flowing with money, and proposed to pay him 20,000 the 
 following week. The cheque is still preserved as a curiosity 
 among the archives of Messrs. Longman's firm. " I went 
 into the city," says Macaulay, "to give instructions, and was 
 warmly congratulated on being a great moneyed man. I 
 said that I had some thoughts of going to the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer as a bidder for the next loan." Scott re- 
 ceived 8,000 for " Woodstock," and George Eliot the same 
 amount for " Middlemarch." For receipts from actual writing, 
 indeed, it has been affirmed that no one has yet approached 
 Scott, whose income for several years ranged from 10,000 
 to 15,000, mainly drawn from this source. He was paid 
 110,000 for eleven novels of three volumes each and nine 
 volumes of "Tales of my Landlord." Lord Beaconsfield 
 received 12,000 for his last novel, which it is believed re- 
 presents the largest amount ever given in England for any 
 single work of fiction. Beaconsfield 's earlier novels, notwith- 
 standing the success of the first, " Vivian Grey," had a very 
 limited sale. He is said to have made by his pen, in all, 
 30,000. The "Curiosities of Literature" of the elder 
 Disraeli must have produced a large sum of money. It 
 forms a part of every good collection of English books, and 
 has passed through many editions. Byron is said to have 
 earned by his pen 23,000. Thiers and Lamartine received 
 nearly 20,000 each for their respective histories. Lord 
 Lytton made 80,000 by his novels, and Trollope in twenty 
 years made 70,000. Dickens, it has been computed, ought 
 to have been making 10,000 a year for the three years prior 
 to the publication of " Nicholas Nickleby." He left 80,000, 
 and a considerable slice of this came from books, but it 
 was his " Readings " which made him affluent ; and so too 
 with Thackeray. Richardson, it is said, was the first 
 Englishman who made a really good thing out of writing. 
 Miss Braddon's receipts from writing are estimated as among 
 the half-dozen highest of writers of fiction. It has been
 
 GENIUS. 287 
 
 noted that many of those books which pay so well are the 
 last which would occur to persons as being lucrative. Thus 
 " Thornton's Family Prayers " has been a mine of money to 
 an English family ; and Marcius Willson received a surpris- 
 ingly large sum as copyright from the Harpers for his series 
 of school readers. These figures certainly would seem quite 
 sufficient as a hint and incentive to those about to enter upon 
 literature as a profession. Turning to the stage, we find 
 Edwin Booth in a single tour through the South realizing 
 fifty-two thousand dollars, and Patti receiving five thousand 
 dollars a night for her singing. 
 
 On the other hand, I suppose a record of the sorrows and 
 misfortunes of the sons of genius would suffice to fill many 
 a volume. We remember that Milton and Addison were 
 secretaries, and that Byron was a peer ; it is hard also for 
 us to conceive of Homer as a beggar, and to realize that 
 Cervantes died of hunger, and that the " Vicar of Wakefield " 
 was sold for a trifle to save its author from the grip of the 
 law. And yet, after all, may it not well be questioned 
 whether men have not oftener been indebted to the frowns 
 than to the smiles of fortune ? True, a man need not be 
 useless because he happens to be rich ; and yet had Shake- 
 speare been a member of the British aristocracy, how much 
 might the world have lost ! Scott's motto for life seems to 
 have been, as he says in his journal, 11 faut d'argent (" I 
 must have money "). To come nearer home, take the testi- 
 mony of one of the most famous of young American authors 
 in a recent conversation concerning his motive for writing. 
 He made no secret of it. "As I tell the publishers," he said, 
 " the love of money is the root of all literature." 
 
 But beyond all this, high genius invests its possessor with 
 a power which cannot be measured by pecuniary values. 
 Angelo, incensed with the Pope, indignantly leaves Rome 
 for Florence. Even the threat of excommunication cannot 
 bring him back. Appeased by the proposal of his Holiness
 
 288 GENIUS. 
 
 to meet him half-way and escort him into his own domin- 
 ions, he returns. Some of the courtiers having proposed 
 the punishment of such insolence with death " I will," re- 
 plies the wily pontiff, "if you will first find me another 
 Michael Angelo ! " At the end of the Seven Years' War 
 D'Alembert went to visit the great Frederick at Potsdam, 
 and spoke of the glory he had acquired in the war. " The 
 king," writes D'Alembert, "answered, with the greatest 
 simplicity, that a large deduction should be made from the 
 glory due him, and that chance had much to do with it. ' I 
 would,' said Frederick, 'much rather have written "Athalie" 
 than be the hero of the Seven Years' War.' " No less strik- 
 ing is the well-known tribute of General Wolfe to the 
 "Elegy." Receiving a copy on the eve of the assault on 
 Quebec, he was so struck with its beauty that he declared 
 he would prefer being its author to being the victor in the 
 projected attack, in which he so gloriously lost his life. The 
 secret of it all may doubtless be discovered in the observa- 
 tion of Charles II. to a courtier as he picked up Titian's 
 mall-stick : " A king you can always have ; a genius comes 
 but rarely." 
 
 It is curious to note, though, among those who have 
 achieved permanent fame, how small is the parcel which 
 this one or that is seen to be carrying with him down the 
 ages. A single effort, however, has often sufficed to im- 
 mortalize one. The " Marseillaise," for instance, was the 
 one effort of its author, Rouget de 1'Isle. The " Elegy " 
 is about the only production which the masses, at least, 
 associate with Gray. Swift is remembered principally as 
 the author of " Gulliver's Travels," De Foe as the author 
 of "Robinson Crusoe." Southey's fame rests on his Lives 
 of Nelson and Wesley. Bunyan is generally known as the 
 author of the " Pilgrim's Progress " only. Steele lives 
 chiefly as the friend of Addison. Lady Ann Barnard never 
 wrote anything but " Auld Robin Gray ; " but then that is
 
 GENIUS. 289 
 
 probably one of the most beautiful and pathetic songs ever 
 written. 
 
 A chapter concerning the great, en deshabille, showing 
 how they relieved the strain and tension under which they 
 have worked, and sought to unbend themselves, could hardly 
 fail to be vastly entertaining. It has been justly observed 
 that a bow need not always be strung an acrobat is not 
 always on the tight-rope. Those who have known the 
 world best have told us that there is far less radical and 
 intrinsic difference between one man and another than the 
 uninitiated would suppose ; that there is, running through 
 nature, an all-levelling principle, which permits no Titans 
 except those which credulity would create. Oxenstiern was 
 no cynic when he turned and said with a sigh to his son, 
 " Ah, my child, you know not how little wisdom is required 
 for governing the world." " I remember," says Bolingbroke, 
 in one of his letters to Swift, "to have seen a procession at 
 Aix-la-Chapelle wherein an image of Charlemagne is carried 
 011 the shoulders of a man who is hid by the long robe of the 
 imperial saint. Follow him into the vestry, and you see the 
 bearer slip from under the robe, and the gigantic figure 
 dwindles into an image of the ordinary size, and is set by 
 among the lumber." And such, in his opinion, are those who 
 make history. Lord Waldegrave, in his memoirs, writes : 
 " I must not lift up the veil, and shall only add that no man 
 can have a clear conception how great personages pass their 
 leisure hours who has not been a prince's governor or a king's 
 favourite." It has been truly said that man is what he is, 
 not by nature, but by effort ; and as it is by artificial means 
 that water is raised above the level of the original fountain, 
 so it is by artificial means that man raises himself above the 
 level of ordinary humanity. "Nature has, it is true, her 
 favourites, but she is more impartial than we give her credit 
 for. The life of what we call a great man is a continual 
 struggle ; and it matters little what character on the stage of 
 (79) ]9
 
 290 GENIUS. 
 
 the world he is supporting, whether he be a poet or a states- 
 man, a Napoleon or a Michael Angelo it is equally arduous, 
 it is equally incessant." Swift, we are told, relieved his 
 tense and tragic moods by harnessing his servants with cords 
 and driving them up and down the stairs and through the 
 rooms of his deanery. Peter the Great sought to unbend 
 himself by being wheeled over the flower-beds and parterres 
 of his host's garden in a wheel-barrow, as poor Sir William 
 Temple found to his cost. Cardinal Mazarin is said to have 
 been fond of shutting himself up in a room and jumping over 
 the chairs, arranged in positions varying according to the 
 degrees of difficulty in clearing them. Of this weakness on 
 the part of his Excellency an amusing anecdote is told. On 
 one occasion, while engaged in these athletics, he forgot to 
 lock the door. A young courtier, inadvertently entering the 
 room, surprised the great man in his undignified pursuit. 
 It was an embarrassing position, for Mazarin was, he knew, 
 as haughty as he was eccentric. But the young man was 
 equal to the crisis. Assuming the intensest interest in the 
 proceeding, he exclaimed with well-feigned earnestness, "I 
 will bet your Eminence two gold pieces I can beat that 
 jump." He had struck the right chord, and in two minutes 
 he was measuring his leaping powers with the Prime Min- 
 ister, whom he took care not to beat. He lost his two gold 
 pieces, but he gained, before long, a mitre. Samuel Clarke 
 was accustomed to seek relaxation in the same way ; and on 
 one occasion, seeing a pedantic fellow approaching, said to the 
 pupil who was sharing his amusements, " Now we must stop, 
 for a fool is coming in." Old Burton, the author of the 
 " Anatomy of Melancholy," the only book, we are told, 
 which got Dr. Johnson out of his bed two hours before he 
 intended to rise, found his chief recreation in going down to 
 Folly Bridge at Oxford and listening to the ribaldry of the 
 bargemen ; " which did cleare away his vapoures, and make 
 him laugh as he would die." Sir Robert "Walpole "could
 
 GENIUS. 291 
 
 never enjoy a dinner without lively conversation going on 
 around him. If the company were dull, he would send to 
 the circus and order musicians and actors to come across and 
 enliven them. At other times he would summon story- 
 tellers and anecdote-mongers, or set two philosophers by the 
 ears that he might listen to their argument. Goldsmith, 
 Shelley, and Macaulay would idle away whole days in romp- 
 ing with children." Machiavelli and Burke delighted to 
 forget politics by sharing the labours of their farm-servants ] 
 and even the stately Bolingbroke, as Pope tells us in one 
 of his delightful letters, was not above shouldering a prong. 
 How true it is that there is but a step between the sublime 
 and the ridiculous ! It has been well observed that the 
 famous saying that no hero is a hero to his valet was, un- 
 happily, not refuted by Goethe, when he asserted in his 
 magnificent way that a hero is a hero, and a valet is a valet. 
 " How Howard's servants and family must have smiled 
 when they read Burke's magnificent panegyric on the great 
 philanthropist ! We wonder what Antonina thought of the 
 Conqueror of the World, and the Duchess of Marlborough 
 of the ' Scourge of France.' The one, if we are to believe 
 Procopius, was an abject slave of his contemptible consort; 
 the other, it is well known, never durst wag a finger in 
 opposition to his wife." But the contrast between a great 
 man as he appears to the world and as he appears in private 
 life was never more strikingly illustrated than in the case of 
 the younger Pitt. Lady Hester Stanhope tells us that when 
 he was at Walmer he used to go to a farm where hay and 
 corn were kept for the horsea He had a room fitted up 
 there with a table and two or three chairs. " Oh, what 
 slices of bread and butter I have seen him eat there, and 
 hunches of bread and cheese big enough for a ploughman ! 
 He used to say that whenever he could retire from public 
 life he would have a good English woman-cook. To see him 
 at table with vulgar sea captains and ignorant militia colonels
 
 292 GENIUS. 
 
 with two or three servants in attendance, he who had been 
 accustomed to a servant behind each chair, to all that was 
 great and distinguished in Europe, one might suppose dis- 
 gust would have worked some change in him ; but it was 
 always the same." 
 
 " We must take men, however," observes a clever essayist, 
 "even the greatest, as we find them. When the late Lord 
 Westbury remarked of one of his contemporaries that he had 
 not a single redeeming vice, he made an observation which 
 was far less cynical than it would at first sight appear to be. 
 To expect a human creature to be all genius, all intellect, all 
 virtue, all dignity, would be as absurd as to expect that 
 midnight should be all stars. Curiosity about the minor 
 incidents in the lives of great men is to a certain extent 
 legitimate, and even profitable. To find the great on a level 
 with ourselves may gratify our vanity, but it sometimes may 
 lead to very erroneous conclusions. We have often been 
 struck," he continues, " with the significance of an anecdote 
 which Mr. Hookham Frere once related to his nephew about 
 Canning : < I remember one day going to consult Canning on 
 a matter of great importance to me, when he was staying at 
 Enfield. We walked into the woods to have a quiet talk, 
 and as we passed some ponds I was surprised to find that it 
 was a new light to him that tadpoles turned into frogs. 
 "Kow, don't you," he added, "go and tell that story to the 
 next fool you meet.'" Canning could and did rule a great 
 and civilized nation ; but people are apt to fancy that ' a 
 man who does not know the natural history of frogs must be 
 an imbecile in the treatment of men.' " 
 
 There is one trait which every truly great genius seems 
 to possess, and that is a certain playful, almost childlike 
 simplicity of character. It was true of Chalmers; and we 
 all know how genial and sunny a companion was good Nor- 
 man Macleod, the beloved and honoured chaplain of the 
 Queen. As has been finely said of Shakespeare, " the spirit
 
 OENIUS. 293 
 
 that could conjure up a Hamlet and a Lear would have 
 broken had it not possessed, as well, the humour which could 
 produce a Falstaff and the ' Merry Wives of Windsor.' " 
 If it be true, as doubtless it is, that there exists a widely 
 prevailing tendency to hero-worship among men, one occa- 
 sionally meets with instances which reveal the fact that 
 some, at least, are exempt. At the Radstock station on 
 the North Somerset Railway two rustics met. Said one, 
 " Hast been to Vroom to-day?" "Ay," replied the other. 
 " Didst hire Gladstone speak ? " " Noa," rejoined the second. 
 " Ee be no moar than any other man ; why should I go to 
 year ee speak ? What be ee moar than thee or I ? " It re- 
 minds one of the remark of one of his countrymen concern- 
 ing Shakespeare. " Eh, man," said the worthy bailie, " he 
 maun hae been a wonderfu' man, that Shackspear. There 
 war things cam' into his heid that wad never hae coom into 
 mine ava." "Even Wordsworth," said Charles Lamb, "one 
 day told me he considered Shakespeare greatly overrated. 
 ' There is an immensity of trick in all that Shakespeare 
 wrote,' he said, ' and the people are taken by it. Now if I 
 had a mind, I could write exactly like Shakespeare.' So 
 you see," proceeded Lamb quietly, " it was only the mind 
 that was wanting." 
 
 The absent-mindedness of genius is proverbial. A de- 
 cidedly entertaining volume might no doubt be written 
 recounting the laughable illustrations of this alone. Who, 
 indeed, can picture to himself without smiling Sydney Smith 
 rapping at the door of his friend's house and suddenly dis- 
 covering, with confusion, that he has actually forgotten his 
 own name? The drollest of all, however, it seems to us, 
 belongs to Lessing. In his old age he was subject to ex- 
 traordinary fits of abstraction. On his return home one 
 evening, after he had knocked at his door, his servant looked 
 out of the window to see who was there. Not recognizing 
 his master in the dark, and mistaking him for a stranger,
 
 294 GENIUS. 
 
 he called out, " The professor is not at home ! " " Oh, very 
 well," replied Lessing. "No matter; I'll call at another 
 time." 
 
 However men may seek to define this rare, mysterious 
 gift, one thing is certain we never fail to recognize its 
 presence. Whenever great genius appears, castle gates at 
 once fly open. The patronage of kings and princes is as- 
 sured. From newsboy to royalty comes spontaneous and 
 willing tribute. In presence of its great achievements we 
 inevitably feel within us the throbbings of a noble joy. The 
 subtile spell is upon us a power which we instantly recog- 
 nize and gratefully confess. What wonder, then, its pos- 
 sessors should be both envied and adored ?
 
 XII. 
 
 /l&asters of tbe Situation. 
 
 Men who have taken the giant world by the throat, and thrown him. 
 
 PHILIP JAMES BAILEY, Festus. 
 
 To be great, one must know how to profit by the whole of one's fortune. 
 
 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 
 
 There are no circumstances, however unfortunate, that clever people 
 do not extract some advantage from. Ib. 
 
 11 Something in fires depends upon the grate." 
 
 IT has been our aim in this volume to bring out in as strong 
 a light as possible some of those qualities which have proved 
 to be secrets of success and power in the careers of those 
 who have attained to fame and exalted station in the various 
 walks of life. We have seen how men have risen on these 
 sure stepping-stones to the highest places. We have found 
 them, thus equipped, organizing victory out of defeat, and 
 proving themselves, even amid circumstances most adverse, 
 masters of the situation. 
 
 Unquestionably some allowance should be made for the 
 difference in men in native power, since nothing is more 
 noticeable. "One man speaks, and his words are edicts. 
 Nations run to obey, as if to obey were the only joy they 
 coveted. Another speaks, and only makes us question 
 whether the gift of speech be on the whole a blessing." 
 That was a significant remark of an ancient general when 
 about to bring on a battle. His officers endeavoured to dis-
 
 296 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 suade him from his purpose on account of the superior 
 numbers of the foe. Impatiently turning upon them, he 
 demanded, "For how many men do you count me?" It is 
 indeed true that one man may sometimes count for thou- 
 sands for or against. On the other hand, there are men 
 whose very presence seems to foreshadow defeat from the 
 start. As the discerning bishop said to the young eccle- 
 siastic, " I do not forbid you to preach, but Nature does." 
 Now nothing, as we have found, is more remarkable in 
 successful men than their strong and pronounced individu- 
 ality. Clearly all men are not masters; with some it is 
 "as though they laid a finger on the keyboard of an organ, 
 touching a note here and there. A flute voice answers, or 
 a vox humana, perhaps even a vox angelica; but they do 
 not know the instrument until the master musician sits down 
 before it, and they hear the thunder of the diapason, the 
 rush of mighty harmonies the tender strains of melody." 
 There is 110 denying that Nature herself has lavishly gifted 
 certain men, and thus placing them on vantage-ground, has 
 made achievement easier and success seemingly almost 
 inevitable. All things appear to be in league with such as 
 these. In their own province they are irresistible; you 
 cannot come upon them unawares and keep them at dis- 
 advantage; their resources seem indeed almost infinite. 
 Take Marlborough, for instance. Burton, in his " History 
 of the Reign of Queen Anne," says of him : " Unlike most 
 men of great firmness and self-reliance, Marlborough courted 
 counsel and discussion; he could conduct it with absolute 
 calmness and courtesy. On his own clear views of what 
 was to be done it had no effect, but it gained him coad- 
 jutors ; for he was, like Wolsey, fair-spoken and persuasive. 
 His patience was inexhaustible. He was cautious, but his 
 caution had its corrective in an unmatched promptitude of 
 vision. He thus never committed a rash act or missed an 
 opportunity for striking an effective blow. His fertility in
 
 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 297 
 
 resources made him less amenable to disappointment when 
 his favourite scheme was thwarted than men of smaller re- 
 sources, whose mind contains but one scheme at a time, and 
 that being forbidden, are destitute of other resource, and 
 helpless. To him, if one way were closed, there was ever 
 another opening. He felt secure in himself; be the con- 
 ditions that were to be wrought with what they might, he 
 would bring out of them results which no other man could 
 effect." 
 
 Of course the interest with which we regard such men is 
 natural and inevitable. "We admire them, and we cannot 
 help it ; it is as natural for us as breathing. Yet we must 
 not forget that such instances are rare, and that we always 
 concede to such that indefinable gift which we call genius. 
 But, after all, have we not found the most effective genius 
 to be the genius of hard work ? Have we not seen, more- 
 over, that even those whose great achievements seem 
 spontaneous have been indebted for their seemingly easy 
 triumphs to an intensity of toil and previous preparation 
 of which their admirers little dreamed? We marvel, for 
 instance, at the skill which enables a great artist to take a 
 little colour that lies inert upon his palette a little gray and 
 brown and white and presently to so "transfigure it into 
 a living presence " that our hearts throb faster only to look 
 upon it, and there come upon the soul all those influences 
 which one feels beneath the shadow of the Jungfrau or the 
 Matterhorn, or amid the awful solitudes of Mont Blanc. 
 But behind that apparent ease and skill are the years of 
 struggle and effort and application which have conferred the 
 envied power. The same is true elsewhere. Say what we 
 may, we have found that, after all, the greatest difference in 
 men consists in the cultivation or non-cultivation of those 
 qualities which we have had under consideration ; in other 
 words, in the improvement or neglect of those faculties and 
 endowments which are for the most part the common inheri-
 
 298 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 tance of all. If one aspires to distinction, he must be willing 
 to pay the price ; there is no other way. Nothing is denied 
 to well-directed energy. "The barriers are not erected 
 which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ' Thus far 
 and no farther.'" 
 
 We have discovered that numerous factors have entered 
 into all distinguished success, one of which has been an 
 unmistakable promptness the faculty of seizing at once 
 upon every circumstance which "makes" in one's favour. 
 The great herd of mankind, the fruges consumere nati, 
 pass their lives, as Wirt has said, in listless inattention and 
 indifference as to what is going on around them, "being 
 perfectly content to satisfy the mere cravings of nature, 
 while those who are destined to distinction have a lynx-eyed 
 vigilance that nothing can escape. You see nothing of the 
 Paul Pry in them ; yet they know all that is passing, and 
 keep a perfect reckoning not only of every interesting pas- 
 sage, but of all the characters of the age who have any 
 concern in them." A certain well-known writer some years 
 since published a series of articles entitled, "Thoughts as 
 they occur, by one who keeps his eyes and ears open." In 
 that very title we find one secret of their author's great fame 
 and success. On the other hand, thousands go through life 
 perpetually looking, but never seeing anything; having ears, 
 it is true, but never really hearing anything at least to 
 their advantage. 
 
 This alertness has enabled its possessors again and again to 
 cover even defeat with the semblance of victory, indeed to 
 organize victory out of defeat. Caesar, for instance, at his 
 landing stumbles on the sands. Instantly he covers his 
 mischance and hides the evil omen from his followers by 
 grasping the very sand which threw him, and holding it 
 aloft, with heroic utterance turns his threatened defeat into 
 a shout of triumph. It was the same spirit a spirit which 
 brooks no defeat which voiced itself in the utterance of the
 
 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 299 
 
 savage when he exclaimed, " Indian no lost ; wigwam lost ! " 
 One cannot hide the fact that at times there will occur, even 
 to the most gifted and successful, certain unlooked-for com- 
 binations which test most severely the finest qualities of even 
 an adept, and which require a sort of desperation to extricate 
 one's self cleverly. Yet a man of first-rate powers will 
 usually find a " happy issue " out of even these. Who has 
 not had days come to him that have led him to believe 
 most fully in what some one has felicitously called " the total 
 depravity of inanimate things " 1 In these very crises, how- 
 ever, lookers-on come to realize that, as the Greeks used to 
 say, one finished man is worth a thousand ill-disciplined and 
 grovelling ones. In order to be master of the situation at 
 all times, one must needs be, in fact, as Chesterfield puts it 
 in one of his letters, omnis homo. 
 
 "If we sometimes deceive ourselves," says Marshal Mar- 
 mont, "in judging by facts, we should deceive ourselves 
 much more in directing ourselves solely by personal know- 
 ledge of individuals. Fortune may once or twice overwhelm 
 with her favours a man who is not worthy of them ; she may 
 betray the finest combinations of genius, and humble a noble 
 character ; but when the struggle is prolonged, when events 
 are multiplied, the man of true talents infallibly conquers 
 her favours." 
 
 In order to attain this full command of one's powers, we 
 have seen, moreover, that sound physical health is indis- 
 pensable. One's reserves must be carefully looked after 
 and his resources in this direction must be always at com- 
 mand. Some men have such a fund of vitality that from 
 sheer magnetic, physical force they seem resistless and every- 
 thing bows before them. Thus, doubtless, there are families 
 that have " clutched success and kept it through generations 
 from the simple fact of a splendid physical organization 
 handed down from one generation to another." Holland, 
 indeed, maintains that the remarkable influence of such men
 
 300 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 as Hall and Taylor is clue in large measure to this fact of 
 fine physical endowment. 
 
 Then there is the influence of habit, which enters so largely 
 as a factor into all real and permanent success that it cannot 
 safely be ignored ; while, mingling itself with all one's 
 efforts, there must be that deep enthusiasm, that passion for 
 one's work, whatever it be, that makes toil easy and holds 
 one unflinchingly to his task. 
 
 Thus equipped, one may serenely bide his time, as oppor- 
 tunities, sooner or later, are sure to present themselves for 
 the fullest display of all his powers. Even if failure over- 
 take one occasionally, he need not be disheartened. Real 
 success in life does not consist, of course, in never failing, 
 in never making a blunder or mistake. Many men who 
 have succeeded have first failed, and some of them more than 
 once before achieving their success. The real wisdom con- 
 sists in not making the same blunder a second time. The 
 negroes of Central Africa have a saying that the man is a 
 fool whose sheep run away twice. There is no little philos- 
 ophy underlying this. What could be finer than that saying 
 of Macaulay's concerning Alexander the Great, " Often de- 
 feated in battle, yet always successful in war " ? 
 
 A curious society still exists in Paris composed of dra- 
 matic authors, who meet once a month and dine together. 
 Their number has no fixed limit, only every member to be 
 eligible must have been hissed. An eminent dramatist is 
 selected as chairman, and holds the post for three months. 
 His election generally follows close upon a splendid failure. 
 Some of the world-famous ones have enjoyed this honour. 
 Dumas, jun., Zola, and Offenbach have all filled the chair and 
 presided at the monthly dinner. These dinners are given on 
 the last Friday of the month, and are said to be extraor- 
 dinarily hilarious. 
 
 Few sights are more impressive than that of the incoming 
 tide. How surge after surge plunges in as if to stay ! But
 
 M ASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 301 
 
 no; the very next instant sees it disappear. Apparently 
 nothing has been gained. But stay. Behind all this sur- 
 face fluctuation, this seeming defeat, has been the awful, 
 resistless purpose of the unconquerable sea, and now it is 
 full high tide. So with successful men. Behind all else, 
 scorning disaster and defeat, has been the single eye, the 
 steady purpose of an unconquerable soul. If you are a close 
 observer, you will almost always detect in the countenances 
 of these men traces of the struggle through which they have 
 passed ; for success, wherever real and lasting, is wrought 
 out by mighty endeavour. The sculjrtor's chisel always 
 leaves its lines of power upon the statue's front. 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that the demand for the qualities 
 we have been considering is a steady one in the markets of 
 the world, and will not cease. Never was there an age 
 which offered greater incentives or grander inspirations to 
 young men than the present. The great places of trust and 
 power and responsibility are waiting for you. In a few brief 
 years they will be in your hands. It is for you to prepare 
 yourselves for them. Resolve to make yourselves masters of 
 the situation. Study great models ; mercilessly avoid and 
 ignore inferior ones. It was said of Sir Peter Lely that he 
 would never allow himself to look upon an inferior painting, 
 believing that unconsciously his brush caught a taint by even 
 such contact. The age wants men. " There is but one thing 
 which God has given us the right to claim when we are sent 
 into the world, and that is, character. We may not ask for 
 riches and popularity, but we can build up a character of 
 faithfulness, goodness, and honesty. We may send out the 
 claim, and the world will not deny the claim. For other 
 things, which are gifts, we may be thankful, but this alone 
 may we demand." 
 
 Never for a moment allow yourself to believe that there is 
 any necessary antagonism between success and downright 
 integrity of character, uprightness of heart and life. The
 
 302 MASTERS OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 long array of Christian jurists and statesmen and merchant- 
 princes which might be cited would seem to give to an error 
 like this a sufficient refutation. Amid the prevailing irrev- 
 erence and scepticisms and frivolities of the day, seek ever to 
 cherish and cultivate a reverent spirit. Remember that the 
 proudest earthly triumphs are, at best, but transient and 
 fleeting. "The fashion of this world passeth away," and 
 even the paths of glory " lead but to the grave ; " whereas 
 " godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of 
 the life that now is, and of that which is to come." 
 
 "We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."
 
 Ube /toaster's Uoucb, 
 
 In the still air the music lies unheard ; 
 
 In the rough marble beauty hides unseen : 
 To wake the music and the beauty, needs 
 
 The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen. 
 
 Great Master, touch us with Thy skilful hand, 
 
 Let not the music that is in us die ; 
 Great Sculptor, hew and polish us, nor let, 
 
 Hidden and lost, Thy form within us lie. 
 
 Spare not the stroke, do with us as Thou wilt ; 
 
 Let there be nought unfinished, broken, marred ; 
 Complete Thy purpose, that we may become 
 
 Thy perfect image, O our God and Lord ! 
 
 BONAB.
 
 ABBOTT, JACOB, 285. 
 
 Abercorn, Marquis of, 24. 
 
 Abercromby, Sir Ralph, 209. 
 
 Abernethy, John, surgeon, 182. 
 
 Achilles, 248. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 137. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, his fastidiousness, 82 ; 
 on good-nature, 214. 
 
 Adolphus, Gustavus, 17. 
 
 Agassiz, Prof. Louis J. R., naturalist, 
 119, 129. 
 
 Alcott, A. Bronson, 149. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 17 ; his rule, 29 ; in- 
 fluenced by Homer, 55; cited, 129, 300. 
 
 Alexander I., of Russia, 65. 
 
 Alexander, Dr. J. W., on Henry Clay, 
 223. 
 
 Alfleri, his habit, 158. 
 
 Alford, Henry, Dean, on important mo- 
 ments, 262. 
 
 Alison, Sir Archibald, 2.' 4. 
 
 Angelo, Michael, his familiarity with 
 works of others, 51 ; his application, 70 ; 
 definition of beauty, 120; 194, 250, 258, 
 288. 
 
 Anthon, Prof. Charles, his device, 98. 
 
 Apelles, painter, 51, 194. 
 
 Application, 66-108; foolish notion con- 
 cerning it, 66; its importance, 71; its 
 value, 74 ; needful to men of letters, 77 ; 
 remarkable examples of, 80, 96; its 
 value to journalists, 87; often dreaded 
 by great writers, 88; importance to 
 business men, 93 ; expedients adopted 
 by hard workers, 98; exemplified by 
 womanhood, 99, 101; characteristic of 
 great lawyers, actors, and musicians, 
 102-105; wealth and royalty not ex- 
 empt, 107. 
 
 (79) 
 
 Archias, his fatal procrastination, 82. 
 
 Arden, Pepper, 69. 
 
 Arnold, Edwin, 55, 126. 
 
 Arnold, Rev. Frederick, on signal mo- 
 ments, 18, 262, 265, 267. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 51, 118, 199. 
 
 Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 205. 
 
 Arrius, Pere, 62. 
 
 Artists, great, their application, 93. 
 
 Astor, William B., 136. 
 
 Attention, its value, 139. 
 
 Austen, Miss, 40. 
 
 Authors, would-be, advice to, 56; habits 
 of, 145-157. 
 
 BACON, Lord, 17, 123. 
 
 Badeau, General Adam, on Grant, 45, 240. 
 
 Bailey, Philip James, 91. 
 
 Balzac, his habit, 150, 155, 157, 245. 
 
 Bancroft, George, historian, his method, 
 
 146, 203. 
 
 Barnard, Lady Ann, 289. 
 Barry, painter, his prompt decision, 27. 
 Beard, Dr., on the " golden decade," 175. 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 151. 
 Beethoven, 65 ; his application, 102 ; his 
 
 purpose, 129; his habit, 143; patience, 
 
 249. 
 
 Bell, Sir Charles, physiologist, 169. 
 Bembo, Cardinal, his application, 82. 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 14. 
 Benton, Colonel Thomas H. , 137. 
 Bickersteth, Henry, his career, 246, 247. 
 Bierstadt, Albert, painter, 205. 
 Bismarck, Otto von, Prince, 200. 
 Black, William, his diligence, 103. 
 Blackle, John Stuart, on punctuality, 21 ; 
 
 on application, 92; on overwork, 162, 
 
 177 ; on enthusiasm, 189, 196. 
 
 20
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Blair, Hugh, D.D., 11. 
 
 Bodin, Jean, 252. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, 289, 291. 
 
 Books, their growth, 77; not the only 
 
 means of advancement, 94. 
 Booth, Edwin, actor, 287. 
 " Bores," 226. 
 Borromeo, Frederick, 254. 
 Bossuet, his manner, 219, 271. 
 Boswell, James, 23. 
 Boughton, George, artist, 51. 
 Bourdaloue, 62. 
 Bowditch, Nathaniel, 12; indebtedness 
 
 to his wife, 100. 
 Braddon, Miss, 287. 
 Bristed, Charles Astor, 178 ; on American 
 
 manners, 224. 
 Bronte", Charlotte, 40; her application, 
 
 82; her "Jane Eyre," 257. 
 Brooks, Phillips, D.D., on imitation, 48; 
 
 his enthusiasm, 205; on opportunity, 
 
 273. 
 Brougham, Lord, his punctuality, 16 ; his 
 
 application, 80; on recreation, 106; 
 
 167, 257. 
 
 Brown, Dr. John, 50. 
 Browne, Junius Henri, 89. 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 179. 
 Brummell, Beau, 24. 
 Brutus, 126. 
 
 Bruyere, Jean de la, 207, 214. 
 Bryant, William Cullen, his dread of 
 
 composing, 88. 
 
 Buffon, Count de, his habit, 152. 
 Bunsen, 196. 
 Bunyan, John, 289. 
 
 Burford, Countess of, her punctuality, 25. 
 Burke, Edmund, his style, 50; on Pitt, 
 
 68 ; his application, 80 ; early life, 252. 
 Burnet, Bishop, 12. 
 Burney, Dr., musician, 14. 
 Burns, Robert, his poems, where written, 
 
 154, 271. 
 
 Burr, Aaron, 238. 
 Burton, Robert, 290. 
 Busch, Dr. Maurice, on Bismarck, 200. 
 Butler, Bishop Joseph, 80. 
 Butler, Samuel, his habit, 143. 
 Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, 253. 
 Byron, Lord, 17; his preparation for 
 
 work, 53, 127 ; his " Lara," 154 ; habits, 
 
 156; pecuniary reward, 286. 
 
 CABLE, GEORGE W., his application, 85. 
 Caesar, Julius, Foster's estimate of, 31; 
 
 his fatal delay, 32; his application, 72, 
 106 ; his " Commentaries," 154 ; his 
 alertness, 298. 
 
 Calhoun, John C., 73. 
 
 Campbell, Lord, 167. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 88, 272. 
 
 Canning, George, 292. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, impression given visi- 
 tors, 63 ; on work, 69 ; advice concern- 
 ing books, 95, 124; on health, 164 ; 241, 
 257. 
 
 Cervantes, 287. 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas, D.D., 196, 255, 293. 
 
 Charlemagne, 271. 
 
 Charles II. of England, 168, 288. 
 
 Charles V., 33; his motto, 236. 
 
 Chase, Secretary S. P., his strong person- 
 ality, 59. 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 17. 
 
 Cherubini, composer, 195. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 121; last words, 160 ; 
 on manners, 212 ; quoted, 299. 
 
 Choate, Rufus, on manner of presenting 
 thought, 41; his application, 73; his 
 habit, 147. 
 
 Cicero, his application, 72; his son, 121. 
 
 Clark, Sir Andrew, definition of health, 
 170. 
 
 Clarke, Samuel, 290. 
 
 Classification, habit of, its value, 139. 
 
 Clay, Henry, his individuality, 58; his 
 application, 73 ; his naturalness, 223. 
 
 Clement XIV., Pope, 211. 
 
 Clive, Mrs., on Garrick's acting, 57. 
 
 Clothes, influence of, 207. 
 
 Coke, Sir Edward, 92, 123. 
 
 Colbert, Jean, 250. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 118; on style, 223; re- 
 mark to Lamb, 227; quoted, 272. 
 
 Collyer, Rev. Robert, on "reserves," 166. 
 
 Colton, C. C., 20, 54; on fine composi- 
 tions, 80. 
 
 Columbus, Christopher, 42, 170. 
 
 Combe, George, 132. 
 
 Comte, Auguste, philosopher, 124. 
 
 Confucius, 29. 
 
 Conway, Moncure D., 98. 
 
 Cook, Rev. Joseph, his remarkable mem- 
 ory, 140. 
 
 Copernicus, 43. 
 
 Corneille, 53, 279. 
 
 Correggio, painter, 198. 
 
 Couture, Thomas, painter, 198. 
 
 Cunard, Sir Samuel, 133. 
 
 Curran, J. P., 118.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 307 
 
 Cashing, Caleb, 58. 
 
 Cushman, Charlotte, actress, 266, 281. 
 
 DANTE, his application, 89, 194. 
 
 Daubray, actor, his application, 104. 
 
 Daudet, Alphonse, his stories, 147. 
 
 D'Alembert, 288. 
 
 Decision, importance of, 26. 
 
 Delays, dangerous, 32. 
 
 De Foe, Daniel, 288. 
 
 De Maistre, Count Joseph, 236. 
 
 Demosthenes, his application, 82; his 
 concentration, 117. 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, 49, 159, 279. 
 
 Dewey, Dr. Orville, 67. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 11 ; his personal mag- 
 netism, 63 ; his industry, 75 ; his " gol- 
 den rules," 76 ; on manuscripts, 80 ; his 
 application, 96 ; his perseverance, 131 ; 
 his plots, 147 ; bronze figures and blue 
 ink, 153; his habit, 159 ; ill-health, 163 ; 
 his overwork, 173 ; 204, 273, 286. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), 
 55, 69, 91 ; his manner, 227 ; his career, 
 243; on custom, 251, 257, 286. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, the elder, 286. 
 
 Dixon, Hepworth, 180. 
 
 Doddridge, Dr. Philip, 12. 
 
 Domenichino, painter, 98. 
 
 Drew, Daniel, 12. 
 
 Drew, Samuel, 129. 
 
 Dryden, John, 250. 
 
 Dumas the younger, his habit, 153, 157. 
 
 Dumas the elder, 158. 
 
 EDOEWORTH, MARIA, on promptness, 28. 
 
 Edward III. at Battle of Cregy, 55. 
 
 Eginhard, 271. 
 
 Eldon, Lord, 90; his advice, 92; his op- 
 portunity, 267. 
 
 Elgin, Earl of, 106. 
 
 Eliot, George, 39; her application, 85, 
 221 ; on daily life, 251. 
 
 Eloquence, its secrets early known, 42. 
 
 Emergencies, when valuable, 95. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 60; on Shake- 
 speare, 53; his writings, 53; on self- 
 reliance, 55; his application, 84, 95; 
 his habit, 146, 149; on Napoleon, 170; 
 on health, 176; on the infection of en- 
 thusiasm, 194; on Plutarch, 202; on 
 manners, 208; on true heroism, 239. 
 
 Enthusiasm, 186-205; not sentimental- 
 ism, 188 ; an attribute of greatness, 192 ; 
 contagious, 194; its absence a misfor- 
 
 tune, 196; sometimes wanes, 199; in- 
 terruptions, 202; effect of surround- 
 ings, 203. 
 
 Epaminondas, 122. 
 
 Erskine, Lord, 265, 281. 
 
 Evarts, William M., 125, 167. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 73. 
 
 FARADAY, MICHAEL, Prof., 91. 
 
 Farragut, David G., Admiral, 263. 
 
 Field, Cyrus W., ill. 
 
 Field, David Dudley, 181, 184. 
 
 Fielding, 67, 154. 
 
 Fields, James T., on sleep, 177 ; his in- 
 fluence on Hawthorne, 256. 
 
 Fisk, James, jun., 12. 
 
 Fisk, Dr. Wilbur, on promptness, 25. 
 
 Foix, Gaston de, 17. 
 
 Foss, Cyrus, D.D., 268. 
 
 Foster, John, essayist, on Julius Caesar, 
 31 ; his application, 82 ; aversion to 
 writing, 88. 
 
 Fox, Charles James, 58 ; his application, 
 83 ; remark concerning Pitt, 139. 
 
 Fox, Capt. G. V., U.S.N., 74. 
 
 Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, 42, 250. 
 
 Frederick the Great, 280; 288. 
 
 Froude, J. A., historian, 124, 151. 
 
 Fulton, Robert, 111 ; 187. 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS, painter, 134, 
 144. 
 
 Galileo, 43, 169. 
 
 Garfleld, James A., his note-books, 144. 
 
 Garibaldi, 209. 
 
 Garrick, David, actor, his individuality, 
 57; his remark on Whitefield, 220; 
 naturalness, 222. 
 
 Gautier, Thdophile, 147 ; on Balzac, 155. 
 
 Gavarni, his application, 104, 264. 
 
 Gazzaniga, ginger, 57. 
 
 Genius, 277-294 ; contrasted with talent, 
 277 ; attempted definitions of, 278 ; al- 
 ways recognized, 280 ; but thus far un- 
 explained, 281 ; revealed unexpectedly, 
 281 ; ease of accomplishment, 282 ; its 
 ideal world, 283; suggestions in com- 
 mon events, 284; how estimated by 
 certain men, 284 ; pecuniary rewards of, 
 285-287 ; its power, 287 ; its relaxations, 
 289-292; its simplicity, 292 ; not always 
 worshipped, 293; its absent-minded- 
 ness, 293. 
 
 George III., remark concerning Justice 
 Park, 138.
 
 308 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Gerster, Etelka, singer, 280, 281. 
 
 Giardlni, 68. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, historian, 12; his ap- 
 plication, 80, 82 ; his habit, 143. 
 
 GilflUan, George, on Napoleon, 111; on 
 genius, 279. 
 
 Gladstone, William E., statesman, 183, 
 293. 
 
 Goethe, on originality, 52 ; on Napoleon, 
 61 ; his application, 89 ; his habits, 157 ; 
 on weariness, 200 ; remark by, 291. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, his application, 83; 
 quoted, 140; his habits, 150, 153, 291. 
 
 Goodrich, Prof. C. A., 259, 274. 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, 91. 
 
 Gould, Jay, financier, 156. 
 
 Graham, Sir James, 167. 
 
 Grandison, Sir Charles, 218. 
 
 Grant, Sir Francis, 106. 
 
 Grant, Ulysses, resemblance to Napoleon 
 I., 31; his individuality, 44; his aver- 
 sion to war, 89 ; amount of sleep needed, 
 176 ; his decision, 184. 
 
 Grattan, Henry, 118. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 53; his application, 82; 
 his " Elegy," 288. 
 
 Great men, how they help us, 53 ; influ- 
 enced by their predecessors, 55. 
 
 Greatness, self-consciousness of, 63. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 21, 22 ; his application, 
 96 ; how he evaded interruptions, 99. 
 
 Grenville, 219. 
 
 Grove, Charles, on Beethoven, 102, 249. 
 
 Guests, literary, 229. 
 
 Guizot, M., statesman, 176. 
 
 HABIT, 130-160; its importance, 130; 
 how formed, 132-136; increases facil- 
 ity, 136; observation, value of, 141; 
 note-books, 143; of authors at work, 
 146-158; its strange power, 158-160. 
 
 Hall, John, D.D., 300. 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 81. 
 
 Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, on rest, 178. 
 
 Hamilton, on dilatory people, 12. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 17. 
 
 Hamilton, Bear-Admiral, on Farragut, 
 263. 
 
 Handel, composer, 49; his application, 
 98 ; his influence on Hadyn, 195. 
 
 Hannibal, 20, 117, 129. 
 
 Hare, Julius, on enthusiasm, 187. 
 
 Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, her manners, 
 219. 
 
 Hastings, Warren, 117, 259. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 63; his moods, 
 88; his habit, 150; "The Scarlet Let- 
 ter," 255; quoted, 272; cited, 284. 
 
 Haydn, composer, his habit, 152, 153; 
 his indebtedness to Handel, 195. 
 
 Hayne, Robert Y. , 73, 268. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 49, 153. 
 
 Health, 161-185 ; its importance, 161 ; of 
 professional men, 163-167; not physi- 
 cal strength merely, 167 ; not to be dis- 
 regarded, 169; too few holidays, 172; 
 overwork, 173 ; more sleep, 175 ; value 
 of rest, 178; home life, 180; will power, 
 181; eating and drinking, 182; "ruts" 
 to be avoided, 183 ; exercise, 184. 
 
 Heathcote, inventor, 103. 
 
 Helvetius, 2a 
 
 Henry of Navarre, 20. 
 
 Herbert, Rev. George, 209, 238, 249. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 15. 
 
 Hesitation, fatal to enterprise, 29. 
 
 Heyne, C. G., 129. 
 
 Hitchcock, Dr. Edward, tribute to his 
 wife, 100. 
 
 Hogarth, artist, 144. 
 
 Holland, Dr. J. G, 299. 
 
 Holland, Lady, 254. 
 
 Holland, Lord, his manners, 221. 
 
 Holland, Stewart, 137. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 34; on Edwin 
 Arnold, 55; his painstaking, 84; on 
 sentiment, 191 ; on the " bore," 226 ; on 
 opinions of relatives, 250. 
 
 Homer, 53. 
 
 Hood, E. P., 177. 
 
 Horace, 70; his application, 81; quoted, 
 189, 282. 
 
 Horner, Sir Francis, 70. 
 
 Hospitality, Southern, proverbial, 208. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, his charm of manner, 63. 
 
 Howard, John, his punctiliousness, 22. 
 
 Howells, W. D., on reasoning and in- 
 tuition, 31; his own instructor, 91. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, on Charles Kingsley, 
 127. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 12, 152 ; his habits of work, 
 155, 157, 158. 
 
 Hume, David, historian, his application, 
 83 ; on manners, 212. 
 
 Humility, the secret of pleasing, 230. 
 
 Hunt, painter, advice to young artists, 
 34; on " finish," 93 ; on simplicity, 125. 
 
 Hunter, John, 54, 135. 
 
 Huxley, Prof. T. H., 171. 
 
 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 17.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 309 
 
 IMPRESSIONS, first, influence of, 207. 
 
 Individuality, 36-65; not "individual- 
 ism," 36; always welcome, 36; what 
 the world wants, 39 ; knows its oppor- 
 tunity, 45; manifest in great parlia- 
 mentary leaders, 58 ; dwarfs surround- 
 ings, 62 ; its devices, 62 ; its charm, 62 ; 
 its power, 62; recognized by Haw- 
 thorne, 63 ; not easily analyzed, 63. 
 
 Inertia, cause of its prevalence among 
 young men, 10. 
 
 Inness, George, painter, 89. 
 
 Irving, Washington, his habits of work, 
 153, 284; " Sketch Book," 257. 
 
 JACKSON, ANDREW, President, 183, 184. 
 
 Jacox, Rev. Francis, 253. 
 
 James, Henry, his application, 85. 
 
 James I. of Scotland, 271. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 17, 182. 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, 49, 221, 267. 
 
 Jewell, Bishop, 12. 
 
 Johnson, Andrew, President, 184. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 14; reply to Bos- 
 well, 24; anecdote of Charles V., 33; 
 on Gray's "Elegy," 40; his style, 50; 
 on David Garrick, 57 ; on application, 
 87; his habits, 159; on external ad- 
 vantages, 207. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 85. 
 
 Joseph, Francis, of Austria, his applica- 
 tion, 107. 
 
 Journalists, need of application and much 
 learning, 87. 
 
 KANT, philosopher, 158. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, actor, 234. 
 
 Keats, John, his "Ode to the Nightin- 
 gale, 154. 
 
 Kemble, John, actor, 250. 
 
 Kingslcy, Canon Charles, 47 ; on reading 
 great authors, 49 ; dread of work, 88 ; 
 his "intensity," 127; his habits, 148, 
 183; on conversation, 224; favourite 
 motto, 260. 
 
 LABOUCHiKE,HENRY,onartcriticism,43. 
 
 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 157, 286. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 50, 68, 157, 159; reply to 
 Coleridge, 227, 293. 
 
 Lawyers, great, their application, 103. 
 
 Legouve\ Ernest W., on self-conscious- 
 ness of greatness, 63; on developing 
 the voice, 101 ; on use of the breath, 
 179, 279. 
 
 Leigh, Pemberton (Baron Kingsdown), 
 his application, 94. 
 
 Lely, Sir Peter, painter, 301. 
 
 Lessing, 293. 
 
 Lever, Charles, 149. 
 
 Leverrier, astronomer, 43. 
 
 Lewes, George Henry, on Goethe, 157. 
 
 Libraries, small, not a cause for regret, 
 106. 
 
 Lind, Jenny (Madame Goldschmidt), her 
 application, 101, 278. 
 
 L'Isle, Eouget de, 288. 
 
 Locke, John, 129; bis habit, 143. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W., 41 ; his applica- 
 tion, 84; translation of the "Inferno," 
 151; his "Wreck of the Hesperus," 
 154; on enthusiasm, 205 ; on "repose," 
 
 Louis XIV., interview with Mansard, 163. 
 Lowell, James Russell, 88, 117; on Edgar 
 
 A. Poe, 277. 
 
 Lucca, Pauline, singer, 266. 
 Lucretius, 81, 92. 
 Ludlow, Fitz-Hugh, 240. 
 Lycomedes, 248. 
 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, his application, 103, 167. 
 Lytton, Lord, the elder, 81, 286. 
 Lytton, Lord (Owen Meredith), 279. 
 
 MACAU LAY, Lord, on Dickens and 
 Wordsworth, 40; on Milton, 51; his 
 habit, 141 ; bis overwork, 174 ; on Lord 
 Somers, 254; his History, 285; his 
 leisure moments, 291. 
 
 Machiavelli, Niccolo, his habits, 153, 291. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 118. 
 
 Macleod, Rev. Norman, 196, 293. 
 
 Magnetism, personal, its power, 62. 
 
 Mahdi, El, his pertinacity, 244. 
 
 Maine, Sir Henry, 61. 
 
 Malibran, her application, 102. 
 
 Manners, 206-231 ; give an immediate 
 impression, 207 ; origin of fine manners, 
 208; attention to little things, 208 ; how 
 acquired, 211 ; neglect of, disastrous, 
 213; excess to be shunned, 215; how 
 repaid, 216; of the "old school," 218; 
 in oratory, 219 ; naturalness, 221 ; in 
 conversation, 227; a safeguard, 230; 
 not to be escaped, 231. 
 
 Mansfield, Lord, 267, 281. 
 
 Manuscripts, legible and otherwise, 79. 
 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 296. 
 
 " Marseillaise, La," influence of the song, 
 195.
 
 310 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Mannont, Marshal, 299. 
 
 Marshall, Chief-Justice, 192. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 40, 124. 
 
 Mason, Jeremiah, Webster's eulogy on, 
 105. 
 
 Massena, Marshal, 58. 
 
 Massillon, his manner, 219. 
 
 Masters of the Situation, 295-302; differ- 
 ence in men in native power, 295; 
 "genius of hard work," 297 ; numerous 
 factors, 298; alertness, 298; health in- 
 dispensable, 299; influence of habit, 
 300; occasional failure no cause for 
 discouragement, 300, 301; incentives 
 offered, 301; no antagonism between 
 success and Christian character, 301, 
 302. 
 
 Matthews, Charles, actor, his remarkable 
 memory, 141. 
 
 Maurice of Saxony, 17. 
 
 Mazarin, Cardinal, 290. 
 
 Medici, John de (Leo X.), 17. 
 
 Meissonier, painter, his application, 104. 
 
 Memory, serviceable, 139; remarkable 
 feats of, 140. 
 
 Mendelssohn, composer, 241. 
 
 Menken, Adah Isaacs, 264. 
 
 Meredith, Owen (Lord Lytton), 279. 
 
 Meyerbeer, composer, 98. 
 
 Midshipmen, duties of, 75. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, on his own training, 
 197. 
 
 Milton, John, 51, 157, 170, 250, 277. 
 
 Mirabeau, 30. 
 
 Mole', actor, 216. 
 
 Moltke, Count H. von, 240. 
 
 Montaigne, Michael de, 65, 152. 
 
 Montesquieu, Charles, Baron de, 83, 236. 
 
 Moods, waiting for, 87. 
 
 Moore, Professor, 129. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, 77; on labour, 81; his 
 application, 90. 
 
 Morse, Prof. Samuel F. B., 111. 
 
 Motley, J. L., historian, 257, 285. 
 
 Moulton, Louise Chandler, 205. 
 
 Mozart, advice to a young man, 56; on 
 work, 98 ; his application, 103. 
 
 Murray, linguist, 129. 
 
 NAPIER, SIR WILLIAM, indebtedness to 
 his wife, 99. 
 
 Napoleon I., 15; his celerity of move- 
 ment, 15; his courage, 19; perpetual 
 activity, 20 ; combination of traits, 31 ; 
 instinctive knowledge, 45 ; observa- 
 
 tions on, 59; testimony to Christ's 
 divinity, 50 ; Wellington's estimate of 
 him, 60; Napier's opinion, 60 ; Goethe's 
 observation, 61 ; Emerson's testimony, 
 61 ; a great worker, 98. 
 
 Napoleon III., 124, 249. 
 
 Naturalness, its charm, 221. 
 
 Nelson, Lord, his promptness, 15; his 
 opportunity, 263. 
 
 Newcastle, Duchess of, 271. 
 
 Newcastle, Duke of, his maxim, 34. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 43. 
 
 Niebuhr, historian, 126. 
 
 North, Christopher (John Wilson), 169. 
 
 Northcote, painter, 195. 
 
 Note-books, value of, 143. 
 
 OBSERVATION, habit of, its importance, 
 141. 
 
 Offenbach, composer, 300. 
 
 Ogilby, John, 250. 
 
 Opportunity, 261-276 ; all-important fac- 
 tor, 261 ; often neglected, 261 ; ways in 
 which it comes, 264 ; of no value to one 
 not ready for it, 265; long training 
 necessary, 268; should be promptly 
 seized, 269; compels recognition, 272; 
 a revealer, 273. 
 
 Originality, in what it consists, 52. 
 
 Oxenstiern, 289. 
 
 Oxford, Bishop of, his suggestion, 270. 
 
 Oxford, Lord, 246, 270. 
 
 PALMKRSTON, Lord, 23, 167. 
 
 Paper-making, its development in Amer- 
 ica, 105. 
 
 Park, Justice, reply to George III., 138. 
 
 Parton, James, 85, 220, 229. 
 
 Patti, singer, 182, 287. 
 
 Paul, the Apostle, 122. 
 
 Payn, James, on success in fiction, 77, 78. 
 
 Peale, James, painter, 25. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, on a certain kind of 
 eloquence, 120; his temperament, 254. 
 
 Pelham, Major, 17. 
 
 Pelopidas, 32, 122. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, 270. 
 
 Perry, Commodore Oliver H., 117. 
 
 Peter the Great, 113, 290. 
 
 Petrarch, his application, 82. 
 
 Pharos, the famous lighthouse, 108. 
 
 Philidas, 33. 
 
 Pinkney, William, lawyer, 168. 
 
 Pitt, William, his first speech, 68, 263; 
 Chancellor, 69; Fox's remark, 139; a
 
 INDEX. 
 
 311 
 
 sound sleeper, 176; his opportunity, 
 258; private life, 291. 
 
 Plato, 48; his application, 82. 
 
 Pliny, 261. 
 
 Plutarch, 32, 194, 250. 
 
 Poe, Edgar A., 277. 
 
 Pompey, 122. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 82; his habit, 143. 
 
 " Post-haste," origin of the phrase, 33. 
 
 Poverty a stimulant, 90. 
 
 Praxiteles, 280. 
 
 Precipitation to be avoided, 252. 
 
 Priestley, Dr. Joseph, 154. 
 
 Procopius, 291. 
 
 Procrastination, 9. 
 
 Promptness, 9-35; invaluable to public 
 men, 21 ; not punctiliousness, 22 ; punc- 
 tuality a debt, 25; decision necessary, 
 26; introspection disastrous, 29; hesi- 
 tation sometimes constitutional, 31; 
 delays dangerous, 32; confers calm- 
 ness, 34 ; secret of success in literature, 
 34 ; advantage in repartee, 34. 
 
 Protogenes, painter, 155, 194. 
 
 Ptolemy, 43. 
 
 Purpose, controlling, essential to success, 
 116. 
 
 QUINTILIAN, 45. 
 
 RACHEL, actress, 64, 272, 280. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 194, 271. 
 
 Raphael, his Madonnas, 17; his dying 
 thought, 55 ; his influence, 194 ; inimi- 
 table, 280. 
 
 Raymond, Henry J., his application, 96. 
 
 Reade, Charles, 10; his habits of work, 
 148 ; quoted, 282. 
 
 Reeves, Mrs., on Jenny Lind, 101. 
 
 Rembrandt, painter, 241. 
 
 Remusat, Madame de, 59, 270. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on omnipotence of 
 labour, 70; early traits, 134 ; his defini- 
 tion of genius, 278. 
 
 Richardson, Dr., 180. 
 
 Richardson, Samuel, 287. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 260. 
 
 Robertson, Rev. Frederick W., how in 
 spired for work, 53. 
 
 Rochefoucauld, Francois, Due de la, 204. 
 
 Rockingham, Lord, 252. 
 
 Roebling, Washington A., engineer, 284. 
 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 90. 
 
 Roscius, the infant, 245. 
 
 Roscoe, William, 126. 
 
 Rossini, composer, 151, 202. 
 Rousseau, J. J., 43; his application, 83. 
 Rubini, singer, 57. 
 Rudolf of Hapsburg, 254. 
 Ruskin, John, 124. 
 Russell, Lord, 76. 
 
 Ryder, John, actor, his feat of memoriz- 
 ing, 141. 
 
 SALVINI, his painstaking, 97, 249; his 
 enthusiasm, 205. 
 
 Sand, George, her habits of work, 157. 
 
 Savage, Richard, 67. 
 
 Scalchi, singer, 182. 
 
 Schiller, 21, 54 ; his habits, 156 ; quoted, 
 279. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 12, 81; his method, 
 142, 157; rejected manuscripts, 257; 
 his income, 286. 
 
 Sedie, Delle, singer, 179. 
 
 Self-consciousness to be avoided, 30, 233. 
 
 Self-possession essential to good manners, 
 226. 
 
 Self-reliance, 44. 
 
 Seneca, 87, 152, 251. 
 
 Sense, good, foundation of true polite- 
 ness, 229. 
 
 Seward, William H., his advice, 246. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 49, 53, 170, 199, 
 277, 280, 293. 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 17 ; his " Revolt 
 of Islam," 154; his habit, 156; quoted, 
 199. 
 
 Sheridan, General Philip, 32, 195. 
 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 67 ; his ap- 
 plication, 83; his purpose, 117; perse- 
 verance, 256, 259. 
 
 Sherman, General William T., letter to 
 Grant, 31, 44, 122 ; on Vicksburg cam- 
 paign, 45. 
 
 Siddons, Mrs., actress, 250. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 17. 
 
 Single eye, the, 109-130; confers rare 
 power, 111-114; how men differ, 114; 
 useless loads, 119; specialties neces- 
 sary, 120; desirable in literature, 123, 
 125 ; creates its own solitude, 126 ; its 
 sway, 128; necessary to success, 129, 
 130. 
 
 Smiles, Samuel, on importance of health 
 to professional men, 166; on Bicker- 
 steth, 246. 
 
 Smith, Bishop B. B., 168. 
 
 Smith, Rev. Sidney, 29 ; remedy for mel- 
 ancholy, 34 ; on following one's adap-
 
 312 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 tations, 41; on timid people, 42; on 
 industry of famous men, 81 ; on study, 
 116; on illusions, 187; his classifica- 
 tion, 196, 219; on "hardness," 222; on 
 shyness, 223 ; on English manners, 225 ; 
 on discouragements, 239; on labour, 
 242; his temperament, 254; absent- 
 mindedness, 293. 
 
 Socrates, 122, 278. 
 
 South, Eobert, D.D., 119, 206. 
 
 Southey, Eobert, 81, 151, 288. 
 
 Spelman, Sir Henry, 250. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, his ill-health, 163, 173. 
 
 Spinoza, philosopher, 124. 
 
 Stanhope, Lady Hester, 291. 
 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 67; on good-breed- 
 ing, 214, 215, 219. 
 
 Stephenson, George, 111. 
 
 Stephenson, Eobert, his application, 86. 
 
 Sterling, Edward, 107. 
 
 Stewart, A. T., merchant, 104, 136. 
 
 Storrs, Eev. R. S., 116. 
 
 Story, William W., sculptor, 270. 
 
 Stuart, Charles, of England, 20. 
 
 Study, real, its value, 91. 
 
 Style, in what it consists, 50. 
 
 Sully, Thomas, artist, on English man- 
 ners, 223. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, his prompt reply, 35; 
 his self-discipline, 140. 
 
 Superiority of certain products, the secret 
 of, 105. 
 
 Surrey, Lord, 271. 
 
 Swift, Dean, 210, 288. 
 
 TALMA, actor, 179. 
 
 Taney, Roger B., Chief-Justice, 168. 
 
 Tasso, his application, 82. 
 
 Taylor, Rev. William M., 300. 
 
 Temple, Sir William, 290. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 84, 89 ; his habit, 140 ; 
 pecuniary rewards, 285. 
 
 Tenterden, Lord, 159. 
 
 Thackeray, William M., manner of com- 
 posing, 87; remarks, 229, 241; his 
 " Vanity Fair," 257. 
 
 Thayer, on Beethoven, 102. 
 
 Themistocles, 119. 
 
 Thiers, historian, 286. 
 
 Thinking, hard work, 39. 
 
 Thoreau, H. D., 249. 
 
 Thorwaldsen, sculptor, 157, 283. 
 
 Thucydides, 82, 271. 
 
 Thurlow, Lord Chancellor, 90, 267. 
 
 Titian, painter, 70, 198, 288. 
 
 Todd, Rev. John, on punctuality, 16 ; his 
 rule, 21. 
 
 Tourgue'neff, Ivan, 212. 
 
 Townsend, George Alfred, his note-books, 
 145. 
 
 Trevelyan, George Otto, 49. 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, on waiting for moods, 
 87; his custom, 151; pecuniary gains, 
 286. 
 
 Twain, Mark (S. L. Clemens), his indi- 
 viduality, 37 ; his expedient to obtain 
 seclusion, 98, 249. 
 
 Tyler, John, President, 58. 
 
 VANDEKBILT, CORNELIUS, 107. 
 
 Vanderbilt, William K., 107. 
 
 Varillas, 215. 
 
 Vega, Lope de, his application, 80. 
 
 Verdi, composer, 46; his habit, 146. 
 
 Vernet, Horace, painter, 142. 
 
 Veronese, Paul, painter, 198. 
 
 Villemain, 217. 
 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, painter, 123; his 
 
 habit, 143 ; his Mona Lisa, 284. 
 Virgil, 81. 
 Voltaire, 81; on secret of tiring, 228; 
 
 composing during sleep, 271. 
 Von Bulow, musician, 102. 
 
 WAONER, RICHARD, composer, 64. 
 
 " Wait ! " 232-260 ; a most important les- 
 son, 233 ; " short-cuts," 234 ; a national 
 want ; 235 ; the waiting years most im- 
 portant, 238 ; hours of depression uni- 
 versal, 240, 241 ; courage needed, 243 ; 
 persistency triumphs in the end, 244; 
 one must "bide his time," 244-247; 
 slow growth of character, 247, 248; 
 opinions of relatives, 250-252 ; precipi- 
 tation disastrous, 252 ; famous authors, 
 257 ; great men conscious of their own 
 powers, 258 ; waiting pays, 259. 
 
 Waldegrave, Lord, 289. 
 
 Waller, his application, 82. 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, 55, 291. 
 
 Walton, Izaak, 88. 
 
 Ward, Artemus (Charles F. Browne), 175. 
 
 Washington, Mrs. George, her punctu- 
 ality, 25. 
 
 Waterloo, 65. 
 
 Wayland, Francis, D.D., 70. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, at Marshfleld, 12; his 
 promptness, 18; his study of others, 
 51; reply to Hayne, 71; eulogy on 
 Jeremiah Mason, 105; physical powers,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 313 
 
 167 ; his habits, 176 ; his accurate know- 
 ledge, 238; hie modesty, 258, 268; his 
 sensitiveness, 274. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, his rapid march in 
 India, 15; on Massena, 58; on corre- 
 spondence, 100; attention to details, 
 137; a good sleeper, 177; politeness, 
 209. 
 
 West, Benjamin, painter, 134. 
 
 West Point, superiority of systematic 
 training, 137. 
 
 Westbury, Lord, 292. 
 
 Whately, Richard, Archbishop, 104. 
 
 Whitefleld, George, 142, 220. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., on Hawthorne, 256. 
 
 Whittier, John G., 262. 
 
 Willis, N. P., 85. 
 
 Willson, Marcius, 287. 
 
 Wirt, William, lawyer, 270, 298. 
 Wise, Henry A., 58. 
 Wolfe, General James, 288. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 296. 
 Wordsworth, William, 92 ; his habit, 151 ; 
 quoted, 264; his opinion of Shake- 
 
 Workers, hard, their various expedients, 
 
 98. 
 Working-power, importance of training, 
 
 69. 
 
 XENOPHON, 271. 
 
 YOUTH, its great achievements, 16. 
 
 ZlMMEKMANN, 216. 
 
 Zola, iWle, 300.
 
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 Jack Hooper. His Adveitures at 
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 Early English Voyagers ; or, The 
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 Life and Travel in Tartary, 
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 Rise and progress described of the art 
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