GIFT OF 
 Class of 1900 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/creativeabundancOOruggrich 
 
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Copyright 1921 
 By BERNARD C. RUGGLES 
 
 Oakland, California 
 
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 Ten years ago a business friend gave me a typewritten 
 copy of The Twelve Rules for a Successful Career, which 
 Marshall Field had defined. They are simple phrases, 
 brief, direct and dignified. Each one is a self-evident 
 truism. At the same time they constitute a profound phil- 
 osophy of life. 
 
 I set them down herewith as they came to me. 
 
 1. The Value of Time. 
 
 2. The Success of Perseverance. 
 
 3. The Pleasure of Working. 
 
 4. The Dignity of Simplicity. 
 
 5. The Worth of Character 
 
 6. The Power of Kindness. 
 
 7. The Influence of Example 
 
 8. The Obligation of Duty. 
 
 9. The Wisdom of Economy 
 
 10. The Virtue of Patience. 
 
 11. The Improvement of Talent. 
 
 12. The Joy of Originating. 
 
 These statements have been in my mind these many 
 years. I have applied them to my own business. Still more, 
 I have gained a deep insight into the psychology of them. 
 Their development and use in the great field of mental 
 science has finally created a well thought out and success- 
 fully applied philosophy. So a book based upon these 
 twelve rules has been the inevitable result. 
 
 In the writing of this book I have purposely avoided 
 all technical terminology. An advanced student of psy- 
 chology, yet I have seen the wisdom of giving my knowledge 
 
in this field as it applies here, in the simple, plain, unvar- 
 nished English. A deep student of metaphysics, I have 
 refrained from the particular phraseology of this entrancing 
 field. I am thinking of men and women of all shades of 
 thought and opinion, who should enjoy and profit by a 
 method of every day living which has opened up immeas- 
 urable satisfaction to me. 
 
 So I send this forth into the world, that it may lead men 
 and women out of bondage into the joy and freedom of true 
 self-expression. If the lessons herein given shall do one- 
 tenth the good that I have gained in producing them, I shall 
 feel that my urge to give forth this working philosophy shall 
 not be in vain. 
 
 In the new phrasing which I have given these state- 
 ments, in the twelve chapters of the book, I have modern- 
 ized the expression. Also the titles tend to suggest to the 
 reader the far-reaching wisdom, the depth of philosophy 
 which those original terms have in them. In calling this 
 book Creative Abundance, I have named it according to the 
 way the personal application of these twelve keys has 
 opened up the doors of opportunity, of ability, and of plenty. 
 
 In perusing the chapters of this book, I beg the reader 
 to constantly realize that he is reading, not theory, but prac- 
 tical and successful application. If each one who studies 
 the book will also master the principles set forth, in his 
 own life and expression of himself, I promise that he, too, 
 will realize that these chapters are indeed The Psychology 
 of Ability and Plenty. 
 
 The Author. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 The Time Element Page 13 
 
 Its Psychology. 
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 Successful Plodding Page 21 
 
 CHAPTER three 
 
 Peptomism Page 27 
 
 What it is and how to have it. 
 
 chapter four 
 
 Specialism Page 33 
 
 A coined word and what it will coin for you. 
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 Your Biggest Asset - Page 39 
 
 How to figure in yourself. 
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 Personal Magnetism Page 45 
 
 The one way to develop it. 
 
 CHAPTER seven 
 
 Unconscious Influence Page 51 
 
 A study in telepathy. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 Duty-Plus Page 59 
 
 A clue to self-mastery. 
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 Unearned Increment Page 65 
 
 The surplus from a Divine use of what you have. 
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 
 Velvet Souls Page 75 
 
 The expression of a successful serenity. 
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 Hidden Energies Page 83 
 
 How to tap your talents. 
 
 chapter twelve 
 
 The Secret of Originality Page 89 
 
 The Magic Key to Ability and Plenty. 
 
CHAPTER' Or^E '" 
 
 tlTfje i;ime Clement 
 
 APOLEON won his battles on the turn of the 
 quarter hours. The wisdom which he revealed 
 in the use of a few minutes of time is the key 
 to victory in the struggle of any individual. In 
 ^ the accumulated power of moments of time lies 
 the secret of all great achievement. 
 
 The time element in life has a wonderful psychology. 
 It deals with a type of mental reactions. There is a char- 
 acter analysis which comes from observing the way in which 
 individuals use spare moments. A history of the idle hours 
 of average folk would be as interesting as the stories we get 
 of the notables and how they play. The way in which they 
 react to spare time is a great clew to their characters as you 
 may learn. 
 
 Before we can gain any ability we must know how to use 
 our shining hours. Given the right perspective and gaining 
 poise with relation to time and we can find the secret to any 
 gift which man possesses. We probably credit as innate 
 genius what has only been uncommon canniness in saving 
 and using golden moments. It has been given some men 
 to know how "to dream and not make dreams their master." 
 Also how to bend their talents to the stern demands of time 
 and not be slaves. It is in this happy adjustment of the 
 time element that great careers have been fashioned. 
 
 The first essential in life is to realize the timelessness of 
 what we call time. Any man who goes through his days 
 under the feeling of the Hebrew Psalmist that our years are 
 three score and ten or if by reason of strength they be four 
 score yet they are full of labor and sorrow, will get just that. 
 He will whip himself through the hours like a galley slave. 
 He will be forever borrowino; sorrow from the morrow. 
 
14 CREApiVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 Always? i)9f^>r3 birniwll b^ the feeling that life is full of 
 pressing cares and there is scarce time to compass them. 
 
 Such a man's life will be like the Irishman frantically 
 slapping the paint on the side of a house. A friend coming 
 along said: "Why the wild rush, Pat?" "Begorra," said 
 Pat "and I want to get the house done before the paint runs 
 out." Life is the house and time is the bucket of paint. A 
 limited concept with relation to both will never finish any- 
 thing in life with any degree of satisfaction. 
 
 The first satisfaction in life is to be able to give yourself 
 the sense of leisure. If you can feel with Emerson. "I am 
 the owner of the sphere, of the seven stars and the solar 
 year," you give yourself the sense of power to perfect an 
 ability in you. Just the lazy, lengthening days of sunmier 
 bring fruit to maturity because nature has the sense of 
 infinite leisure, so you can mature your fruits of mind and 
 soul only as you submit to the same spirit. 
 
 It is indeed a very good thing to be like the English 
 tourists whom a friend of mine encountered in Manitoba, 
 Canada. There was only one train a day in that section 
 and they were leisurely moving to take it from the hotel, 
 although it was ready at the station. Suddenly one of them 
 set down his grip and said, "Look, the bally thing's a 
 moving!" Whereupon the other drawled, "Well, why 
 should we care? We don't own it." They had all of the 
 time there was and they did not let the mere loss of a train 
 disturb their sense of leisure. 
 
 If a day or two does slip by in which you have not lived 
 to the schedule, what should you care; you don't own time. 
 Neither let time own you. Know that you belong to the 
 aeons of Infinite Being. Feel like God does, that a thousand 
 years is but as a watch in the night. Likewise that a day 
 is your guest, to be given the best possible expression. A 
 guest feels the best when set most at ease. So treat your 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 15 
 
 days. The highest satisfaction is here. You will learn to 
 link your life with the ceaseless cycles. You will know that 
 time is just a sample of Eternity. You could never enjoy 
 Eternity until you can encompass the moments of time with 
 satisfaction. In short, Eternity can never be until time can 
 express through you easily, beautifully and completely. 
 
 The second essential is to fill "each unforgiving minute 
 with sixty seconds' worth of distance run." In other words 
 while not under dominion to time, yet to feel some definite 
 gain out of the moments as they pass. This simply insures 
 us against any possible outcome such as a dyspeptic writer 
 called the evil days, when you should say, "I have no 
 pleasure in them." 
 
 It is right here that the truest psychology of the indi- 
 vidual unfolds. If I can know how a person regards the 
 idle moments, whether or not they kill time or fill time, I 
 can give you the first characteristic. Many other interesting 
 traits will flow out of the dancing hours. 
 
 Employers are now able to measure the ability of 
 employees by these traits. There are many institutions of 
 large affairs, where great responsibility is demanded and 
 ultimately great prizes fall, that have a method of putting 
 prospectives under observation. There are unique and also 
 matter of fact experiments which come to these. All are 
 psychologically observed. The way the individual reacts 
 to a given moment is part of a subtle analysis now reduced 
 to a science. It is all in the field of psycho-analysis, and 
 yet a student of this phase of psychology does not know 
 the details of it. It cannot be given publicity. Its power 
 lies in its secret use. 
 
 Here is one way a business expert observed two men: 
 Two young salesmen, mere youngsters in the commercial 
 game, were waiting for a train. One went over to a news 
 counter and bought an evening paper. He turned straight 
 
16 CREATIVE ABUNDANC/. 
 
 to the sporting page. For the next fifteen minutes he read 
 nothing but sports. This done, he yawned wearily, pulled 
 his hat down over his eyes and dozed. The other fellow 
 sat alert for a few moments — then opened his suit case and 
 pulled out a neat little volume. It was noted and the title 
 secured by a subterfuge. It was on Commercial Efficiency. 
 That finished the analysis right there as far as those two 
 fellows were concerned. It was easy to pick the winner. 
 
 Analyze yourself. How do you react to the idle time 
 which street cars or trains or ferries force upon you? It is 
 not a matter of deliberately dividing off each moment of 
 this unused time. Do not be tyrannized into an enforced 
 routine of such and such reading at this spare time and 
 such at that. I know of one man who used a certain waste 
 time for manicuring his finger nails, another for so many 
 pages of Emerson or some cultural channel, and so he 
 charted his time and enslaved himself. He took no time 
 for reflective moods — to dream and drift in the uncharted 
 sea of beautiful imagination. 
 
 The wise man will find that a schedule for unoccupied 
 time is not essential. He will find that the philosophic 
 attitude is vital. He will leave the business of the day on 
 the desk or out of mind long enough to give his mind its 
 great rebound. He will put the unemployed time to some 
 happy, beautiful or useful end. He will vary the order. 
 He will play some of the time. He will play purposefully 
 but not deliberately. Queed, in Harrison's novel by that 
 name, made a scheduled automaton of himself. One has 
 many a laugh at this absurd, methodical little egoist. And 
 one will become laughing stock who so Quixotically fashions 
 time. Be human — not machine-like, but regard time as 
 only pleasurable as it yields a definite, pleasurable satisfac- 
 tion — cultural, physical, or spiritual. 
 
 In the psychology of time — you have certain definite 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 17 
 
 elements — these compose the key to the values which it 
 holds. 
 
 I. First there is the value of patience. The fever for 
 quick returns is in the blood. We are constantly feeding 
 those twin imposters who masquerade as superior to time. 
 I mean Hurry and Worry. Until we can cope with them 
 and make them powerless in the fruition of good results, 
 we shall be a shoddy, superficial race. In fact, we will 
 continue to be regarded as a race of neurotics. We may 
 glory in quantity production but never in quality pro- 
 duction. 
 
 Emerson, in his essay on English traits, says: "This 
 highly-destined race, if it had not somewhere added the 
 chamber of patience to its brain, would not have built 
 London. I know not from which of the tribes and tempera- 
 ments that went to the composition of the people this tenacity 
 was supplied, but they clinch every nail they drive. They 
 have no running for luck and no immoderate speed. They 
 spend largely on their fabric, and await the slow return. 
 Their leather lies tanning seven years in the vat. At Roger's 
 Mills in Sheffield, where I was shown the process of making 
 a razor and a penknife, I was told there was no luck in 
 making good steel, that they make no mistake, every blade 
 in the hundred and in the thousand is good. That is charac- 
 teristic of all their work — no more is attempted than is 
 done." 
 
 There is no surer power of victory than in the patient 
 use of time. You can figure your assets as certain. The 
 man worth while is the man who can use the while with a 
 smile. He will come into his own. An old Yankee said: 
 
 "There are some things besides eggs that if you set on 
 them long enough they will hatch." 
 
 n. The time element must be regarded as opportunity 
 for observation. Every idle moment is big with meaning. 
 
18 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 There is an education for the eye at every angle. You can 
 observe the activity of others. The way in which men do 
 their work is in itself a course in psychology. Study the 
 technic of efficiency. Compare action with probable motive. 
 By watching a man take off a tire and change a tube, I 
 learned in an idle hour the lesson of my own need when I 
 had to change a tire. With no previous instruction except 
 what came through observation, I was able to repeat the 
 process with assurance. 
 
 In your rest hours study the stars, catch the changing 
 colors of sunset, note the delicate leaf traceries and picturize 
 the shadows and the swift changing clouds. As you are 
 upon street cars and trains, without impertinent stare, but 
 with sly observation, note the social actions of people. See 
 how they treat each other. Mark the true gentleman or 
 lady. Study their use of time. Thus by example through 
 eye training a great mass of wisdom will come. 
 
 I have read of a girl without any education to speak 
 about, who gained broad culture through observation. She 
 studied different neighborhoods and gained social science. 
 She went window shopping and developed aesthetic taste. 
 She browsed in book stores and gained the first key to 
 love of books by acquaintance with them. She found a 
 hundred ways to a free education, and she gained it. We 
 need not go mooning through our idle moments. We had 
 best keep our eyes open and be entertained and educated 
 by what we can see. The amount we can thus learn to 
 observe in a moment is the surest test of concentrated power. 
 You cannot possibly estimate what this ability is worth 
 to you. 
 
 III. The supreme fact is to preserve a sense of propor- 
 tion. Into a wise diversion of time the highest skill can 
 always go. The most efficient people are so because they 
 know how to use time in an effective ratio. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 19 
 
 The sweet by and by spirit will never help you. The 
 beautiful here and now is the song of achievement. Into 
 moments of time as they arrive there must be poured the 
 attention which they deserve. The waste of time in profit- 
 less pleasure is the saddest word of tongue or pen. There 
 are times to let go, but never time to be a vacuum. If this is 
 done, you will find it increasingly easy to be empty. If you 
 cannot enjoy time profitably, you will find eternal life an 
 eternal torment. 
 
 As one grows in appreciation of moments of time and 
 fills them with something worth while, they will find life 
 becoming increasingly attractive. Each hour will hold its 
 wonder and its enjoyment as an instrument of mental and 
 spiritual growth. 
 
 There is nothing which can better or more completely 
 express this supreme principle as this translation from the 
 Sanskrit — The Salutation of the Dawn: 
 
 Listen to the exhortation of the Dawn! 
 Look to this Day! 
 For it is life, the very life of life. 
 In its brief course lie all the verities 
 And realities of your existence. 
 The glory of action, 
 The bliss of growth, 
 The splendor of beauty — 
 For yesterday is but a dream, 
 And tomorrow is only a vision, 
 
 But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream 
 of happiness. 
 And every tomorrow a vision of hope. 
 Look well, therefore, to this day! 
 Such is the Salutation of the Dawn. 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 
 ESOP gave us the familiar fable of the race 
 between a tortoise and a hare. At the finish 
 the slow -moving tortoise was the winner. B'rer 
 Rabbit indulged in so many side issues, as- 
 ^ sured of his power to win, that he lost sight of 
 his objective. Mr. Tortoise was very thick and got only 
 one idea at a time through his shell. He knew there was 
 a race and a goal to win, and he gave himself to the winning. 
 He had a single track mind and he proved the power of 
 one idea held with firmness. He is a good example of a 
 type of persistency which is commendable. He proved the 
 value of plodding. 
 
 There is a psychology of intelligent persistency. Every- 
 one needs to realize it, to see the elements of it and how to 
 use these elements successfully. 
 
 I do not expect to see the average man of average ability, 
 who will not plod, succeed in even the average fashion 
 or in a large way. The measure of his success will depend 
 on the way he takes the plodding and makes it. Too often 
 we submit to the routine of the same thing over and over 
 again as an irksome necessity. We reduce a job to slavery 
 and our life to that of a drone or a drudge. This is a com- 
 mon failing. But no success will ever come by merely 
 sticking to a thing with dogggedness when there is not satis- 
 faction in the daily repetition. 
 
 Rowland Sill sensed the psychology of the average man 
 when he wrote these lines: 
 
 "Forenoon and afternoon and night 
 The weary song repeats itself — 
 What, no more? Age, that is life." 
 
22 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 Just the repetition of the daily activity with the time 
 element is what we all face. He couched the solution of 
 it in these terms: to make the forenoon a song, the afternoon 
 a psalm, the night a prayer, and you will conquer time 
 and win your crown of life. 
 
 In the letters of Gustave Flaubert, the noted French 
 writer of an exquisite style of composition, he confesses 
 to the power of a persistent devotion to composition. He 
 troubled himself little about moments of inspiration, the 
 waiting for which he felt was a cause of sterility. He 
 believed in working along until a ray of the heavenly 
 light came. To a friend he wrote: "Neglect nothing. 
 Labor ! Do the thing over again, and don't leave a task until 
 you feel convinced you have brought it to the last point of 
 perfection possible for you. In these days genius is not 
 rare. But what no one has now, what we should try to 
 have, is the conscience of one's work." 
 
 In these words Flaubert leads up for us to the psychology 
 of persistency. Analyzed into its mental elements, and I 
 find these facts will produce a plodding which will be 
 successful and satisfactory. 
 
 First, there is the element of conscience. Personally, I 
 am sure of the value of this. I am boss of my own time. 
 I have the right to use all of my time as I personally 
 desire, but I have a most sensitive conscience of my work. 
 I feel under the conviction of rendering a definite amount 
 of service. Somehow the "Well done, good and faithful 
 servant" only comes as a peaceful satisfaction as I feel a 
 day well filled with activity." 
 
 The same element enters into every occupation. If you 
 can feel the conscience of your work, that your task is the 
 thing to which you wish to be sensitively faithful, you will 
 find the importance of it growing upon you. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 23 
 
 Magnify to yourself the importance of your work. No 
 task is small, only the person that fills a place can be 
 small. A task meanly done reflects not the labor, but the 
 laborer. We forget that fact. The business to which you 
 choose to give the routine of your best activity is a mirror 
 reflecting to the world the sort of a body that you are. The 
 character of an individual shines through his task. That 
 is why Emerson spoke of the fact that a better mouse trap 
 will catch not only mice but men. They will be drawn 
 by the superiority which comes out of intelligent plodding 
 and so of perfecting. 
 
 Many people diff'er as to the value of inspiration or of 
 technique. I knew two exceptional dramatic readers. One 
 was the master of technique, the other was obedient to the 
 inspiration. They never agreed as to presentation. One 
 always claimed the picture in words should be given 
 dramatic expression as the mood of the hour. After seeing 
 them both in operation for a length of time, I found out 
 that sometimes the mood failed, but the technique never 
 did. And often the situation in a drama was saved because 
 the plodder had learned a way which always got over. He 
 was not the flashlight of genius — he was the unfailing light 
 of patient perfecting of his art. 
 
 Conscience of one's work will lift any task into ever 
 increasing value, and that value reflects upon the worker. 
 You will never find any mental magic which will transform 
 your place in a moment. But as you expand, the niche you 
 fill also expands. Or you burst it open and get out like the 
 chick out of the shell. There is nothing which can keep a 
 man of conscience in creative activity from his own. He 
 has made himself in terms of sincerity, unrestrained and 
 ungrudging service, and if he is faithful, he will find his 
 reward as Flaubert found his. Today this Frenchman is a 
 model of literary style in French letters. 
 
24 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 Conscience in work is the essence of divine satisfaction. 
 It makes one feel as God felt when He fashioned this world. 
 He looked upon it and pronounced it good. When you are 
 a workman needing never to be ashamed, you have made 
 good. 
 
 II. The element of enjoyment is to be found in success- 
 ful plodding. No man can have a success which he will 
 enjoy after he gets it unless he enjoys getting it. Half of 
 satisfaction in any achievement is reminiscence. The de- 
 lights of a fine trip are the remembered moments of it. 
 Every soldier fights his battles over with greater zest. Many 
 a man of great action enjoys preparing his autobiography. 
 Life has its chief pleasure in relating how it came to pass. 
 
 So many people imagine that it is enough to turn the 
 crank from day to day, to do the same old thing in the same 
 old way. There is a penalty prepared for sodden and 
 sombre work. It is the inability to enjoy the unusual when 
 it comes along. If you cannot find joy in the routine you 
 will never find it in the hour of greater achievement. Keep 
 your zest for the job. If it seems stale, season it with a bit 
 of song, a highborn dream, a noble thought. Gild the 
 edges and frame your work as a masterpiece in God's 
 gallery of Patient Plodders. 
 
 Great is the power of enthusiasm. It glorifies every dull 
 day. It gives the prosaic a new slant. It dresses up the 
 commonplace and illumines it. After all, your work will 
 reflex upon you as you reflex on it. If you can find zest 
 in it, it becomes a place of desirable aspects to others. 
 
 Read again that classic bit of humor by Mark Twain of 
 how Tom Sawyer whitewashed the fence^a detested, fun- 
 thwarting job, yet he put enthusiasm to the task. He made 
 it an envious thing. The artistry that he exhibited, the 
 superior skill he assumed finally brought all his playmates, 
 each beseeching a hand at the brush. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 25 
 
 If you can put the enthusiasm into the plodding, it will 
 soon prove to be a thing of joy to all who regard it. 
 
 Don't petrify the feelings. Refuse to allow the dullness 
 of duty to be ever so spoken of. Make of tomorrow an 
 action fine, give your position the vision splendid, and 
 put the lilt of a song into the labor. 
 
 Tommy is a merry lad next door. I was manipulating 
 the washing machine. Finally Tommy said: "My, but you 
 get a lot of fun out of work. You sing and whistle as if 
 you liked it. It would make me sick to have to do it." 
 I told Tommy that any job was fun if you took it right. 
 God gave you joy. A bird has to hustle hard in the same 
 old way every day for food. But he sings as he begins and 
 he twitters as he settles down to rest. Consider the birds 
 and be wise. Give your Job the joy-cure. See what a 
 healthy, man-sized thing it becomes. Study it as an im- 
 provable affair. 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 
 F I should write the two words, pep and opti- 
 mism, upon a blackboard, you would see how 
 they can be fused into one new word, "pepto- 
 mism." So you understand that peptomism 
 means putting "pep" into optimism. There is 
 no more vital word for our times than this new one which 
 has been coined. It covers a world of possible ability and 
 power. 
 
 Optimism is a much misused word. It has lost its 
 virility through association with the wrong sort of people. 
 Any Sunny Jim can pass for an optimist. We only ask for 
 a two-cent grin and we call it optimism. But the original 
 force of the word must be retained. We redeem it when 
 we make it mean something big, brave and hopeful. We 
 give it vitality and lift it into dignity and worth. Better 
 still, we add "pep" to it and let it have a new and larger use. 
 Peptomism is a word with a wealth of meaning. It is 
 not enough to know the derivation of a word. Its scope and 
 its potentialities are most important. Here you will find 
 the psychology of the right attitude to your work and the 
 way to increase your powers of enjoyment and achievement. 
 This will enlarge your consciousness and give you a diviner 
 perspective. Things can no longer look small, mean or 
 contemptible in your scope of action. 
 
 What you are and do is qualified by your mental atti- 
 tude. When you change your viewpoint, get a new slant 
 on things which you constantly face, life takes on a more 
 joyous aspect. When you look at a Cubist or Futurist 
 painting, you wonder how on earth any one could see 
 things that way. Well, they do, and artists assure us the 
 
28 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 picture is the result of a certain angle of vision. That is 
 what peptomism does for you — it gives you a new mental 
 angle and a spiritual vision to meet your world and your 
 work in a larger way. 
 
 1. A peptomist is one who not only sees a bright side 
 but cheerfully rolls up his sleeves and gets busy helping 
 God to bring a brighter day. Your social pessimist will 
 tell you what a mess the world is in He is worried, learn- 
 edly worried. But a peptomist will courageously meet the 
 trying ordeals and work until he sees improvement come 
 smiling through. He senses God at work in the scheme of 
 things and so lends his best skill as a co-laborer with God. 
 
 I have faith that we will wobble along. I do not believe 
 with a University of Chicago professor that "our demented 
 world may have no future." The world is not crazy — it is 
 only groping in a dim mental condition. The mass mind is 
 dazed and hazy as yet. But the world is to have a future, 
 a nobler future. Every crisis always brings a full crop of 
 wise pessimists. Better an inane optimism than a hopeless 
 pessimism. Better still to feed a budding hopefulness which 
 stirs one to get busy and better the little world in which 
 one lives. That is the first step toward peptomism. 
 
 So I am going to take the gravity of things in our world 
 as a peptomist. I will start with faith, courage, wisdom and 
 a soul-deep smile. I will put myself in the Divine Work- 
 shop and be about the All-Father's business of bettering 
 the world. Chiefly that bettering will go on inside of me. 
 Since that is God's Workshop, I am helping Him, as I am 
 "a workman that needeth not be ashamed, handling skill- 
 fully the Truth of Life," which is, that good is, because God 
 is. I shall laugh and sing as I work and plan I shall 
 encourage and cheer as I lift and redeem. I shall keep 
 bright and sweet as I face hard problems and grave situa- 
 tions. Then I will be a peptomist, at work with God; 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 29 
 
 serene, hopeful and constructive, building in thought and 
 dream, the Kingdom of The Better Day. 
 
 I will become a divine asset when I do this. And he 
 who is valuable to God is thrice so to man. So it pays to 
 be a peptomist. It gives you a healthy-minded attitude to 
 the world and it furnishes you with greater creative powers 
 to bless life. A world without a goal of increasing good- 
 ness will never give you comfort, peace or joy. Unless I 
 knew that the world would wag on and right itself, just as it 
 has done before, I would not dare to smile. But it will 
 come right and I have a cheerful desire to help God to 
 harmonize it. And just this spirit will put the sinews into 
 me for any aspect of life. I shall not worry about the world. 
 If there is any to be done, I will leave it to the Creator. 
 He made it and He knows how it will end. He called it 
 good to start with and His last word will be the same. He 
 has the plans. Therefore I shall laugh and love and lift. 
 And that is what peptomism means to you in any dark hour 
 of the world's life. 
 
 2. Bring it close to your own life. What do you need 
 most of all? Is it not that you wish to keep life fresh and 
 your work full of zest? We do not wish to go stale. There 
 is no agony so great as the ennui which uncongenial work 
 can bring. Many people are in this state. A galley slave 
 could not be more pitied. Yet the ease of escape from this 
 condition is considered foolishness by many. If you should 
 say, "Be a peptomist," to the average victim of a distasteful 
 work you would be considered mentally unsound. Say it in 
 your own way when you have tried the system. 
 
 There is not an alluring job in the world which does not 
 have its drawbacks. A hero in a novel who had a throne 
 wished upon him came to the time when he said: "This 
 king business isn't what it is cracked up to be." I have 
 myself what one could term an ideal work in the world. 
 
30 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 I have a fine range of variety. It offers so much of fresh 
 and original expression. Yet did I so permit it, the element 
 of staleness and ennui could creep in and I could easily 
 envy some other evidently attractive labor. To my task in 
 its stale hour I bring "peptomism." Then a change becomes 
 evident and a new zest carries me forward. 
 
 There is an art of enthusing yourself. That is, you must 
 learn to sell your job to yourself, over and over again. 
 Here is a great exercise in psychology. Detach yourself or 
 rather divide yourself. Then let this active side of yourself 
 put forth all the attractions of this position. In this play 
 you will find enthusiasm growing. The horizon of the task 
 widens. It takes on greater importance. You feel a new 
 zest for it creeping in. Then before you know it, the love 
 of your work will burst full upon you and you take the 
 position as if it was a new one. 
 
 Again and again I have done this. Then I have gone 
 further. I have felt its relation to the Divine Plan. I have 
 come to feel that the work must be expanded, and so my 
 consciousness of its scope has brought me a new vision. 
 Thus every time you slacken, you can picture yourself into 
 joy and power again. 
 
 In a book, The Harbor, the author gives you a great 
 clew. He pictures himself as hating the harbor, the source 
 of his livelihood. Then one day he goes up into a great 
 city engineer's office, in the top of one of the tallest build- 
 ings. From it the full panorama of the harbor is unfolded. 
 Distance lends it enchantment. Then the vision of the great 
 engineer comes in. He pictures the improvements to be 
 made, so that this harbor shall be the first port of the 
 world. He shows the ships of the world docking there, the 
 ease with which they load and unload — the efficiency, the 
 smoothness with which commerce will move. And when this 
 lad goes back to the harbor, after that ideal hour, it is no 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 31 
 
 longer a dingy, foul and ugly thing. He brings the beauty 
 of the dreamer who is a doer — the peptomist — down to the 
 piers and docks, and begins his work there with a vision 
 splendid in his soul. 
 
 That is life. Your life is a harbor from which duties 
 done go forth and obligations come in. Shall it become to 
 you a sordid thing? Shall duties find execution dull and 
 hard? Shall obligations be given scant attention? If this 
 mood comes, or when it comes, detach yourself. Get away 
 from it. Go up with the dreamer into a high place. See it 
 anew, in a dim perspective. Every one comes back from a 
 real vacation with a zest for their work. They have had a 
 chance to see it further removed. So the aspects which 
 had taken on distasteful outlines were blotted out. That is 
 part of peptomism. You get a new hopefulness for your 
 work and then you come back to it with a laugh and a song. 
 
 Still further you must relate it to The Great Plan. You 
 must see it as co-ordinated to a vast mechanism. Study a 
 piece of very intricate machinery. You will find how very 
 important a pin bolt can be to the whole operation. It 
 cannot function fully until the smallest part is in working 
 order. And you have been abusing your job! You have 
 been giving it contempt, neglect and scant action. Then 
 you wonder why the world is askew! Did you ever realize 
 that Divine Intelligence has organized life through man? 
 You have a pin bolt job? Ah, but the flywheel of high 
 finance cannot turn without you. All the processes of pro- 
 duction wait on you. God planned a big place in life and 
 you only saw the size of the pin bolt. That is the way to 
 talk to yourself. After you get through, you will go back 
 to your position with a knowing smile. 
 
 Peptomism does not jolly you into contentment with 
 injustice or unfairness, if these are existing in your work. 
 It simply keeps you sweet and steady and gives you the clue 
 
32 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 to a way out. How does it do this? Simply by keeping your 
 window bright and clean. Smoked glass is all right for 
 looking at the sun or to soften its reflected glare. But it was 
 not meant for your life. The pure in heart see God. The 
 mind is a window. The clearest thinking brings God near- 
 est. It also brings the truth of life closer. It reveals 
 things as they are. Injustice and unfairness are found, if 
 there. But more is found: aspects of life unusued, big 
 enough when developed to overcome these things which 
 rankle. When you get big enough, large minded enough, 
 petty things cannot affect you. Instead, you affect them. 
 You wipe them out, cheerfully and resolutely. 
 
 Peptomism is just the joy that a man can put in and 
 take out of the hardest job, the most trying situation. The 
 measure of a man is found in the amount of joy he incor- 
 porates and extracts. And this quality is the superiority of 
 life. Super-men are simply superior men. Superior men 
 are those who can smile and work along when everything 
 goes dead wrong. It is not the work but the spirit which 
 counts. A king can never be royal until he can be bigger 
 in spirit than any subject. You are a peptomist when you 
 put joyous superiority into a trying situation. And there 
 is kingship ahead. 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 pttiali^m 
 
 |HERE was once a man who said: "One thing I 
 know." That man was both very narrow and 
 very broad. He specialized on one thing and 
 then had sense enough to let everything else be 
 grist for his mill. Akin to him was another 
 man in Bible times who said: "One thing I know, whereas 
 I was blind, now I see." That man was a beggar whom 
 Jesus had healed. In answer to the Master's critics, who 
 were trying to incriminate Him, the beggar made this 
 answer. He had gained, not only eyesight, but also the 
 greater gift of insight. We all have a sight, a gift. One 
 thing we do know, but when we can add insight, we get 
 a broad aspect of a narrow field. 
 
 Specialism has its value only as this happens. It is a 
 noble narrowness when it leads us to gain the widest possible 
 knowledge of a particular field. You cannot master every 
 man's business, but you can know what he does and how 
 he does it. We get our broadest education by exchange 
 of ideas. Everyman is your teacher. He sheds a peculiar 
 sidelight on your own problem. He furnishes you fresh 
 inspiration to do your work. The danger in specialism is 
 an ignoble narrowness which comes from not listening. 
 When you are sure you know it all, why should you give any 
 attention to a new idea? Where ignorance is bliss, there 
 is nothing new which can win a look. The ostrich is hidden 
 when his head is in the sand. Why should one see who is 
 willing to be blind. "If the light in thee be darkness, how 
 great is that darkness." 
 
 The supreme ideal of specialism is to know life. No 
 man carries his specializing too far who devotes himself 
 to this simplest yet most profound fact in the universe: the 
 
34 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 reach of wisdom from the simple cell to the complex human. 
 "The proper study of mankind is man." It does not matter 
 what is your particular field, the one source of success lies 
 in knowing life, in its completeness of personal manifesta- 
 tion and social expression. Or in the words of that remark- 
 able Southern business man, Fuller E. Callaway, "You've 
 got to understand psychology and human nature. All 
 through there has been less horse sense in getting human 
 beings to work than there has been in handling animals. 
 When you have a pedigreed cow you know you have got to 
 feed her well and treat her fairly. You can't expect four 
 gallons of milk if you kick the cow. If you are working 
 with cows you even have to think like cows. If you are 
 working with men you've got to think like them. And you 
 must never expect them to do anything that isn't human." 
 To first specialize on human nature, then, is to know hovr 
 to relate your work to life. Add to this a mental analysis 
 of your relation to your labor and you will have the 
 psychology of skill. 
 
 It is the first business of every individual to know him- 
 self. Hindu yogis, seeking for the end of all wisdom, 
 found the secret of knowing in their dictum: "Know thy- 
 self." This is our most difficult job. Many of us delegate 
 it to another, to a mental analyst. But no one can dig 
 or probe as deep as you who know all of the secret things 
 of your inmost being. How they affect your life and relate 
 to your work is at once the aim and end of all your living. 
 
 The difficulties of knowing one's self lie in the contradic- 
 tions and inconsistencies which crop out. There are times 
 when we cannot account for ourselves any more than our 
 friends can. Now the one general weakness in the attempt 
 to know self is our temptation to always emphasize our one 
 general weakness to ourselves. We will specialize on our 
 failings and then wonder why we fail. No man ever can 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 35 
 
 understand his inconsistencies, but he ought to emphasize 
 to himself his consistencies. Let me illustrate: 
 
 A steamboat was at New Orleans and a man applied for 
 the vacant post of pilot, saying he thought he could give 
 satisfaction if they were looking for "a man about his size 
 and build." "Your size and build will do well enough," 
 said the owner, surveying the lank form of the applicant 
 with some amusement, "but do you know about the river, 
 where the snags are, and so on?" "Well, I'm pretty well 
 acquainted with the river," drawled the Yankee, with his 
 eyes fixed on the stick he was whittling, "but when you 
 come to talking about snags, I don't know exactly where 
 they are, I must say." "Don't know where the snags are!" 
 said the owner in disgust; "then how do you expect to gel 
 a position as a pilot on this river?" "Well, sir," said the 
 Yankee, giving the owner a keen pair of eyes and a whim- 
 sical smile, "I may not know where the snags are, but you 
 can bet your bottom dollar I know where they ain't, and 
 that's where I calculate to do my sailin'." 
 
 It is no different with the life stream. If you aim to 
 sail along where the inconsistencies don't crop up, you will 
 have gained the first lesson in knowing self. 
 
 This search for self-knowledge brings out the fact that 
 if we cannot explain our actions sometimes, neither can we 
 credit our abilities. There are periods when the divmest 
 power wells forth from out of a barren stretch of effort. 
 A writer's pen will drop heavenly wisdom, a musician will 
 be touched by the angels of St. Cecilia and the morning 
 stars will sing a symphony to his soul. That which is 
 immortal in beauty and power has cropped out of the 
 common devotion to some solitary task. Strange to many 
 also is the fact that this divine consciousness is not retained 
 through extended periods. We all know how we trudge 
 through deserts of the commonplace and that these sky-born 
 outbursts are as an oasis in the order of our ways. 
 
36 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 But today we do know the service of these sudden out- 
 croppings and the psychology of them adds the knowledge 
 of skill to our special task. 
 
 Back of our conscious mental life we sense a reservoir 
 of rich powers. George McDonald has a book called Sir 
 Gibbie, dealing with a wonderful little city waif who sought 
 the freedom of the country. He hid in a hayrick by day 
 for a time and in the earliest morning hours used to steal 
 out and perform the duties of kitchen and barn to the 
 consternation of the maid and the chore boy. They were 
 sure that some fairy was ministering to them. And he 
 proved even more wonderful when they had discovered him 
 for what he was. So we have this hitherto unpublished 
 self stealing forth by night to control our bodies in sleep 
 and to carry forward our activities and functions. By day, 
 it carefully stores up the incidents and impressions of our 
 conscious life, and from out this treasure house at times 
 delivering the expressions or interpretation of these in the 
 form of ideas or abilities. You all know this for what we 
 call it now, our subconscious mental life. 
 
 To know how to impress this life, how to train it and 
 how to make it serve your special gift is the secret of skill 
 and excellence. I have personally so far trained myself that 
 I do all my work within this formative source of ability. 
 I here develop lectures, prepare articles, sense how to deal 
 with individuals in the social contact of business or religion. 
 By constant emphasis and reliance I can even let it control 
 my actions in crisis hours, as when walking in congested 
 places or driving a car in trying situations. It becomes the 
 errand boy, the policeman, the author, composer and all 
 things for the one particular thing I know and do. 
 
 How to understand this self and to develop it I will deal 
 in a later chapter, "Hidden Energies and How to Tap 
 Them." This hints of one phase of self-knowledge which 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 37 
 
 contributes largely to your skill in your labor. When 
 we shall know this inner self better, we shall know our 
 abilities better. 
 
 The way opens through knowledge of the conscious self. 
 What we call the objective mind in psychology — ^the part 
 which thinks aloud — is the source of our subconscious 
 education. It is here that we see how we are educated by 
 contact. A man with a highly specialized field of work 
 will often have little by way of established knowledge to 
 guide him. In his research and progress he must bring it 
 out for himself. His conscious mind needs contact with the 
 widest field of contributory information. For instance, this 
 lesson on Specialism is restricted in my own consciousness 
 to the fact that I am a specialist. One thing I know. How 
 shall I furnish inspiration to the subject and give it a com- 
 prehensive treatment? By recalling every specialist I have 
 known and how he worked. By reading the wide range of 
 literature upon specialization. It is thus that I consciously 
 experience the breadth of my theme. Then I leave this 
 mass of food to be digested and prepared subjectively. 
 When needed it will come forth in conclusions and in logical 
 sequence, as it is demanded. 
 
 By repeated conscious demand I am able to draw out 
 the material for a specialized field. So it is that I shall 
 furnish new angles of approach to everyman with a problem 
 or a position to better. Most of the important contributions 
 to the sciences have come from men who have made original 
 research. It has often been done by the urge, indefinable 
 yet inescapable, which has pushed men out of beaten paths 
 of professional procedure. The silent and insistent demand 
 to find the thing felt or sought has opened a new world. 
 
 Just now Thomas A. Edison proposes to do away with 
 all established methods of spirit communication. He will 
 develop an instrument or process in his own way without 
 reference to any accepted system of seeking to contact with 
 
38 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 those who have passed on. His method is exactly the ideal 
 for the gaining of new knowledge. 
 
 Carry this into your own work. If you feel or see 
 possible improvement, make that a conscious assertion. 
 Feed your mind upon every vitalizing thing which will seem 
 of value in your direction. By this constant, conscious 
 expression of a better way and a wider knowledge, some 
 day you will step out, a specialist of specialists, in your 
 field of action. 
 
m 
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 §our Piggesit ^gget 
 
 HE Great Teacher drew a striking lesson from 
 His story of the man who was figuring up his 
 assets. He figured that he did not have room 
 for all of his goods. At this juncture a divine 
 voice said to him — probably the Angel of 
 Death, "Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul required 
 of thee. What are all of these goods to thee now?" And 
 the Teacher said "So it is with all who, in figuring up their 
 assets, leave out God and do not see that God in the soul is 
 the biggest asset." 
 
 This parable vividly reveals one of the twelve great 
 phases of these lessons — "The Worth of Character." Upon 
 this foundation every business in life must be built if it is 
 to endure. It has been my privilege to know many men 
 who could borrow all the money they needed at the banks 
 without collateral security. Their biggest asset was their 
 personal character. In fact, I happened to be the son of 
 one such individual. And my father's favorite motto has 
 been, "I have not lived to see the righteous forsaken." 
 Always he has proved that character was the best collateral. 
 
 John Milton tells us, "There is nothing that makes men 
 rioh and strong but that which they carry inside of them. 
 Wealth is of the heart, not of the hand." We can go a step 
 farther and say that wealth of the heart rightly expressed 
 will insure wealth of the hand. An analysis of the traits 
 which will make character your oiggest asset are both essen- 
 tial and vital. Character works with or without consent, 
 but how it may work to definitely secure and safeguard your 
 material well-being is the thing worth knowing. Your 
 personal worth lists certain securities. 
 
40 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 I. First of these are aspirations and ideals. The secret 
 of all great and true men is found in their vision hours. 
 Across the interval of the years they have built a pontoon 
 bridge toward the castle of their dreams. They have selected 
 the material with care, they have measured their spans of 
 effort in terms of conscience. Always within themselves the 
 superior souls find their material. From here they have 
 drawn the patience and the skill to fashion a sure way to 
 the higher things. 
 
 Dr. Hillis portrays the great aspiration which came to 
 John Milton — a boy of twelve, waking at midnight in his 
 bleak garret. Before him rose the dream of writing a poem 
 which the world would not ever allow to die. He knew 
 whoever wrote such a poem must live a life of imperishable 
 power. From that hour the youth followed the ideal that 
 led him on. He studied unceasingly, leaving Cambridge 
 beloved of all the good and without stain or spot upon his 
 life. He went to Italy for further culture. Hearing of the 
 civil wars in England, he put aside his ambition for the time 
 and returned to share in the struggle for liberty. When he 
 resisted a brutal soldier's attack, who said, "I have power 
 to kill you," the scholar replied, "And I have power to be 
 killed, and to forever make my murderer miserable." Age 
 came, and with it blindness, but out of it came the immortal 
 poem, "Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained." Dying, he 
 held to his ideal, moving into the valley of the shadow, 
 whispering, "Still guides the heavenly vision." 
 
 Here is the secret of all achievement. In the measure 
 that you aspire and dream and measure up to your ideals 
 and aspirations, shall it come forth. Never yet has a 
 worthy thing come from the unworthy. The good man will 
 produce a good thing. The man who successfully runs 
 himself in terms of mastery and integrity will find a sue- 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 41 
 
 cessful issue to his venture. There is a poet in my family 
 who has said: 
 
 "If you know you are great, you will do great things; 
 
 Your thoughts will soar on eagle's wings; 
 
 Your life will reach its destined goal, 
 
 If you know the way to set your soul." 
 
 It is the sort of aspirations which you possess which sort 
 you off to your place in life. You cannot be a low-flying 
 soul unless your aspirations are earthward. It seems hard 
 for the average man to find time to aspire. But no man 
 ever dreamed of greater comfort for his family, the joy of 
 home of his own, who did not find that the dream lightened 
 the task and added joy to his labor. 
 
 Your mind is a draughting room. Upon the walls of 
 imagination you draw the dimensions of your life. Men 
 can sketch large or small, dim or clear. A striking picture 
 cartoon shows that Success and Failure possess the same 
 number of letters. If you have written failure, over it you 
 can superimpose, with clearer, bolder letters, success. 
 Letter for letter, it will bring the same amount of space. 
 You can see then that success and failure are twins. Kipling 
 calls them twin imposters, and they do become the lesser 
 factors when one has come to a greater development. When 
 this has been given, we see the success of failure and the 
 failure of success. 
 
 Only the aspirations and dreams that fill out life and give 
 it divine satisfaction should express a true success. No man 
 who has stood with integrity intact, conscience inviolate, 
 has every tasted a defeat that was not a victory. When he 
 has had his ideals to beckon on, each and every obstacle has 
 been the happy intervention to test the rising power of the 
 individual. 
 
 II. The force of your character rests also upon the 
 
42 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 habitual attitude you let your thoughts take. You have 
 initial force to send you higher when you are headed that 
 way. A rocket will do its duty and ascend, describe its 
 parabola, and send forth its constellation of beauty, when it 
 is pointed right. It has all the elements at hand with which 
 to make its glory shine. 
 
 You are sure to shed your radiance if you keep pointed 
 right. Character has given you the qualities which shine. 
 If you point your thought toward achievement, there is 
 surety of arrival. The impetus here is immense. A fine, 
 clean-spirited man equipped with the science of right think- 
 ing is an invincible force in the world. 
 
 It has been my privilege to see several men who had 
 been in the ministry step out into business and succeed in a 
 dazzling degree. Why was it? Because they had the char- 
 acter capital to start on, and there was the impetus. They 
 added to that a constructive mental attitude. Their clean 
 life was a sure foundation. Then they built a fortune as 
 they had been building a life, and, of course, they succeeded. 
 And this is the sure guarantee for any man. 
 
 Character is your biggest commodity. If a man will add 
 to his merchandise the right method of selling, he can 
 always win. And that right method is, first, the right 
 attitude in himself. I once knew a man who wanted a 
 striking slogan with which to sell a certain line of fine 
 shirts. He thought the phrase "We are back of our shirts" 
 was a telling phrase. His publicity man replied, "It is 
 clever, to be sure, but you do not have to advertise your 
 character, when you have one." Again and again I have 
 heard people enquire about a merchant before his goods, 
 or heard him recommended because of the man that he was. 
 
 Knowing the impetus which personal worth gives, you 
 can add to your life as you will, when you think as big of 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 43 
 
 your business as you wish it to become. There is no man 
 who can fail in the world's sense, who has character and a 
 big consciousness. Faith in what he is doing is aided by 
 faith of others in him. His vision inspires confidence 
 because he inspires confidence. Others will willingly see 
 and believe in what he believes in. So each day holds its 
 income as he lets his personal power work through his 
 hopeful thinking. 
 
 III. Then character brings the next step — ^the science 
 of living with men. We often speak of the point of contact. 
 It is the easiest thing to contact with a four-square man, 
 for he can be approached from any side. It is always 
 within our power to live easily, smoothly and successfully 
 with each other. When we have built along the right ethical 
 and spiritual lines, we become big enough to look beyond 
 the follies and weaknesses of men to their possible strength 
 and nobility. We are tall enough to overlook the prejudices 
 and peculiarities to the agreeabilities and harmonies which 
 are latent. And we can look through their faults and evoke 
 good from even the meanest and wickedest of men. 
 
 Character prepares a way for you of deference and 
 respect. It opens fast closed doors. It knocks at the heart 
 of humanity and opens up graces and arts untouched by 
 coarser hands. 
 
 It lends a subtle influence. You may know the art of 
 hypnotism and wield a magic power. You may possess a 
 clever knowledge of the weak side of men and know how 
 to take the unfair advantage. But that sort of power will 
 finally be the undoing of the one who practices it. It is 
 when integrity walks in the market place that men are 
 drawn together. Such a one controls and influences his 
 fellows with mighty power, but he always leaves a blessing 
 behind him wherever he goes. 
 
CHAPTER SIX 
 
 pergonal jUagnetisfm- 
 llotu to #et 3t 
 
 'N James Barrie's delightful play, "What Every 
 Woman Knows," Maggie Wylie does not have 
 good looks, but "juist charm." Of this quality 
 it is said, "If you have it, you don't need any- 
 thing else, and without it, everything else doesn't 
 
 count." Charm is another name for magnetism. It is 
 
 charm in a woman and magnetism in a man. 
 
 Sometimes we speak of a pleasing personality. This is 
 still another term which defines that almost indefinable 
 essence which is the soul's atmosphere. It is a tribute to 
 a plus of power in a person which proves that his speech 
 or his learning, his culture and his polish, are but a tithe 
 of the subtle spirit which wraps him about as in a mantle. 
 
 It has been the secret of all of the leadership and 
 achievement in life. Garibaldi sent forth a spirit of free- 
 dom mightier than his words. He turned an Italian mob 
 into a conquering army. Henry Ward Beecher does not 
 read particularly well at this late day. But in his presence 
 the dramatic power of the man drew, fascinated, conquered. 
 Phillips Brooks was even more persuasive. Something of 
 his atmosphere lives on in his books.In his pulpit he moulded 
 by the manliness, the Christliness, the saintliness of a mar- 
 velous spirit. His words were golden, his spirit set them 
 with diamonds and rubies. And back among the ancients, 
 Socrates. Of him the dissolute Alcibiades said: "The 
 chains of passion which so often enthrall me melt like snow 
 before the sun. I tear myself away by force lest I grow old 
 
46 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 sitting by Socrates' side." Thus everywhere the powers of 
 the inner man furnish the secrets of winsome and compel- 
 ling personalities. All this is evidence of a magnetic 
 quality which overtops brain, brawn, cunning, and skill. 
 
 With many it is innate. With others it is necessary of 
 cultivation. But none of us may be wholly lacking, and if 
 we will pay the price we can possess and express this power 
 which is the key to personal and social helpfulness. 
 
 I. It first begins its development through the growth 
 of the spirit of love. A great scientist tells us that love is 
 not only the supreme human emotion but also the one 
 positive force of the universe. He says it expresses itself 
 in the physical world under the guise of adhesion, cohesion, 
 gravitation, crystallization, magnetism. There you have it. 
 You see that the pulling power of the magnet is born of a 
 force we call electricity. But others call it love. 
 
 As love grows in your heart, it radiates from you. 
 
 a. It first shines through your face. Good nature 
 begins to be evident. It reacts as a bright, warm day does 
 on a fog-bound country. That is the first reaction of the 
 thought spirit. Your genial expression invites, attracts. 
 Then as you gain in good nature, whether you smile or not, 
 a pleasant cast is given to your features. You send forth 
 more and more charm from within. 
 
 To feed this genial nature, you must get the habit of 
 thinking charitably and good humoredly of people. If an 
 irritating situation can make you smile, it will put oil on 
 the waters. 
 
 Then you must turn your clouds as they come. The 
 habit of seeing silver linings tends to give the mind a 
 pleasant set. Thus each dark circumstance has a redeem- 
 ing trait for you. 
 
 b. From you a kindly spirit will finally steal forth 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 47 
 
 insensibly. People will feel your friendliness. They will 
 know your heart is full of love. To gain this spirit, you 
 have kept it full. You have had a big, true sympathy for 
 others. You have fed a downright, whole-souled interest 
 in them and their lives. Wherever you go it will be of you 
 as the Greek poet thought of a certain goddess when she 
 came to Thebes. Passing by a tree blackened by a thun- 
 derbolt, she stayed her step and lo! the woodbine sprang up 
 and covered the bare branches. She lingered by a stagnant 
 pool and it became a flowing spring. She rested upon a 
 fallen log and there came moss, the snowdrop, the anemone, 
 to cover the death and decay. At the crossing of the brook 
 were her footprints, not in mud downward, but in violets 
 that sprang up in her pathway. Thus does this kindly spirit 
 react on all the surroundings. 
 
 The test of this love power will come from little chil- 
 dren. When it is strong enough in you, they will come to 
 you with outstretched arms, even though you are a total 
 stranger. As it draws children's aff"ection, it will draw 
 grov/n-ups' attention and interest. And each gain in grace 
 will mean a new unit of power. So mighty did it become 
 in the Master that His very presence made bad men good. 
 
 II. For complete magnetizing of your life, you must 
 bring yourself in intimate contact with the Central Source 
 of all power. Christ sensed it so fully that he knew his 
 ability to draw all men would flow out of one-ness of life 
 with God. 
 
 Somehow we seek so far afield for what is ever so near. 
 The bird seeking the glorious air, insensible to its life 
 there; the fish crying to know the sea, while immersed there; 
 this is a parable of our desire for the magnetic field, in 
 which we live and move and have our being. 
 
 When we were experimenting in physics with electricity, 
 
48 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 we learned how to make a magnet by wrapping a coil of 
 insulated wire around an iron bar. Then by passing a 
 current of electricity through it, we were able to induce the 
 power of attraction. This is an analogy of how every 
 individual can wrap himself in the consciousness of an 
 All-Pervading Love. Through this sense of Omnipresence 
 will actually flow the current of Divine Life and of a day, 
 a man, genial and great-hearted by his love-thoughts, will 
 realize the magnetic power of his life. 
 
 The magnet was first known as a lodestone. A black 
 rock formation was found in Magnesia, in Asia Minor. 
 This was discovered as possessing magnetic qualities, that 
 is, it had power to attract certain mineral particles. From 
 Magnesia it got the name of Magnet. Afterwards men 
 found the secret of making magnets easily and of great 
 power. Here again the spiritual forces parallel this scien- 
 tific fact. 
 
 There was a time when we thought the magnetic life 
 was a peculiar possession. We credited a certain region 
 as the possessor of it. We said it was quarried from the 
 Rock of Ages and became the lodestar of Bethlehem. 
 Now we know the secret of the compelling power of the 
 Christ personality. We have discovered the way to duplicate 
 that Divine Magnet. By bringing a small piece of iron in 
 contact with a highly magnetized piece, you can very read- 
 ily charge the small piece. That is also the method of 
 magnetizing your life, by constant contact with Omnipotent 
 Love you will be charged with power from on high. As 
 often as your piece of iron weakens in pulling power, as 
 often can you re-charge it. As often as your power to 
 attract your good diminishes so often may you turn your 
 thought and your faith unto God, the All Good, and receive 
 fresh impulsions. This was ever the method of Jesus. 
 Each withdrawal to desert place or mountain top was the 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 49 
 
 evidence of recharging of his life with the Invincible 
 Energy. 
 
 The supreme example of attraction and influence is the 
 Christ. Wherever He moved He drew men as unresistingly 
 as the Pied Piper drew the children of Hamlin. It was not 
 the power of beauty, compelling genius or magic craft. It 
 was a spirit like the sun, drawing the moisture from the 
 earth, the sea, the air, and distilling it again in the refresh- 
 ing rain. So the Son, illumined by "the Father of Lights 
 in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," 
 draws mind, heart and soul of man. And we as sons may 
 in turn grow like that which we love. 
 
 Fasten your mind on just and generous thoughts, 
 thoughts of good, not of evil, to all. Fasten your heart on 
 Love, a Love that will feel assured of goodness and mercy. 
 Fasten your soul on Truth, the Truth that your life is 
 inherently dynamic with power, potentially capable of 
 drawing unto you your good. Above all, fasten your faith 
 on Him who is the Perfection of your possible power, and 
 know that you can also as you are uplifted, draw all men 
 to you. 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 Wintomtioni influence 
 
 |NE of the greatest sources of selling power in 
 the business world is personality. The same 
 power persuades in every other field of activity 
 as well. There is a persuasion to personality 
 which works with or without consent. By 
 personality I mean the accepted definition of Webster, "the 
 personal characteristic or quality of mind." Robertson, 
 the great English preacher, defines it thus: "Personality is 
 made up of three attributes — character, consciousness, will." 
 The activity of these attributes, the quality of character, 
 the intensity of consciousness and the fixity of will, make 
 up that sweep of individuality which is immeasurable. 
 
 One can take extensive courses in business phychology 
 or can get a selling method based upon a shrewd manipula- 
 tion of human nature. But alas! too often the quality of 
 the method does not bear the test of time or insure the per- 
 manent good will of the victim. But personality persuades 
 by the force within itself. It unlocks energies, stimulates 
 faculties and lends an irresistible appeal to the contact. 
 History teems with these lovable souls who have "sold their 
 idea" — as the business world puts it — by no other method 
 than the quality of their character, their reach of high 
 consciousness. 
 
 There is an incident in the New Testament which is 
 very valuable. Peter and John came to the tomb of Jesus. 
 Peter stooped and looked in and saw the grave clothes 
 lying. He went in and the unconscious influence of this 
 impetuous Peter was so powerful that the other disciple 
 entered also into the tomb. Horace Bushnell made a great 
 message out of that incident, the telling power of your 
 personal influence. By it you can sway kings, conquer 
 
52 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 kingdoms, capture citadels of trade and open doors hard 
 locked by iron-ribbed men. For the gaining of this you 
 have much to develop and intensify in your inner nature. 
 
 You must keep the emotional content of your life active 
 and constant. To do this, intensify the humanities. Few 
 men realize early enough how much of great value lies 
 in keeping the common touch. The average man of am- 
 bition will first rely upon his technical training, then upon 
 his natural ability and finally upon his experience. Very 
 often he will be far along in the game of life before he 
 will realize that the biggest thing is sympathetic touch 
 with humanity. Agreeability, the instinctive tendency to 
 say a kind word or do a friendly deed — these things, easy 
 of expression, are generators of unconscious influence. Out 
 of them grows a radiant personality. Unknown and un- 
 sensed by us is the kindling ray which our presence sheds. 
 Wherever we go, without a word spoken, our personality 
 precedes us. 
 
 There is actual telepathic transference. Long before 
 you appear you are being received. When you come in the 
 flesh, the reception will be according to the spirit of your 
 life. One of the most successful salesmen whom I know 
 was so, because he was a great heart. Instinctive with him 
 was his genuine interest in the personal life of his customers. 
 When on his way to see and sell one of these he didn't 
 begin "psychologizing" himself, to be sure of a good sale. 
 Fact is, he had little technical knowledge of this sort of 
 salesmanship. He confessed to me that he had a natural 
 liking for his clients and somehow he was thinking lovingly 
 of them as men rather than as prospects. And this was not 
 a sales method, but because he couldn't help it. In later 
 years he often wondered why he had been so successful for 
 one who had little, if any, knowledge of psychology or 
 modern methods of salesmanship. Let me analyze his 
 case for you and you will see his secret. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 53 
 
 There was a telepathic power going forth from his 
 personality. A warm, glowing wave, active and positive, 
 was radiating from him and touching the spirit of the man 
 he was to interview. Generally the man greeted him with 
 a genial smile and glad hand shake of real welcome, 
 remarking: "Fminy thing, but I have been thinking about 
 you within the last hour or so, although I didn't know 
 that you were in town. And out of that contact in due 
 course came a good sale. More valuable than his training, 
 bigger than his ability, more effective than his experience 
 was that salesman's natural love for humanity. I grant 
 you that he might have added somewhat to his art of 
 selling by a wider knowledge. But innately he had the 
 true psychologic approach, only he was not aware of it 
 as such. He was great in his business of life because he 
 was so true and genuine in his sympathetic oneness with 
 men. He had the consciousness, that spiritual sense of 
 brotherliness which makes for unity and harmony in every 
 human relation. 
 
 Before you ever come into the presence of another, you 
 have your opportunity to do your work with or for that 
 one. You do not need at first to definitely speak the word 
 for adjustment or accomplishment of a desired object. You 
 do need, however, to get yourself, your emotional content, 
 unified by the feeling of love and good will. A com- 
 passionate spirit must possess you, the assurance that you 
 are in loving oneness with any and all men. Then on 
 wings of light an influence has sped before you. Just as 
 the sun's rays open the flower before you come to claim 
 it, so does your spirit of life blossom the flowers of your 
 opportunity. 
 
 I want every salesman who reads this to become a 
 clever salesman. I desire every business man and woman 
 whom this interests to achieve a keen ability. And for 
 
54 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 every one in any other business of life these words are 
 written with a wish for their instruction and uplift to 
 planes of superior advantage. But I wish to impress each 
 and every one with the fact that life is the first and last 
 business, the chief and sole commodity. And whoever will 
 touch life, each and every life with sympathy, with loving 
 thought and service, will actually charge the whole being 
 with an unconscious influence, going forth to prepare a 
 warm welcome and a true opportunity for you. 
 
 To this you must add an awareness of your own life 
 as supremely essential in its peculiar field of activity. It 
 is a great thing to have it said, "He is an expert in his 
 line." Fact is, every one is a potential expert in his own 
 field. The one defect is our failure to recognize the latent 
 capacity. We may not be expressing through the right 
 channel. There are square pegs in round holes. But all 
 are capable of change when we become more conscious of 
 our powers. Chance or luck often drops us where we 
 belong. Misfortune soemtimes acts as a nieans of self- 
 discovery. Sometimes we know where we should function. 
 This is the big problem of every boy and girl : to find their 
 niche. It is here that a knowledge of higher psychology 
 becomes imperative. 
 
 There are men who have gone so far in their experi- 
 ments along the lines of vocational psychology that they 
 have developed an almost invariable accuracy in guiding 
 boys and girls into their niches in life. But the period of 
 change is never fixed. We are, many of us, advanced 
 in years and we feel almost hopelessly tied to what we are 
 doing. Unusual conditions often jar us loose and leave us 
 without moorings. To guide us into a channel where we 
 can successfully and happily work in line with our native 
 talent is the great hunger and desire of countless people. 
 
 To dwell upon the assurance: first, that you are capable. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 55 
 
 then to keep your mind flexible, and finally to fight the 
 fear of a change of occupation, are first steps. Go deeper; 
 know that the Mind which made you of Itself left in you a 
 capacity to seek and to find that radiation or expression of 
 being which is your superiority. Every emphasis upon your 
 God-given powers, every reliance upon the truth — "the divine 
 in you doeth the work" — will make you dynamic. 
 
 A colored man wanted a turkey for his Christmas din- 
 ner. He prayed to the Lord thusly: "0 Lord, send a 
 turkey to this needy servant of Thine. But if You can't do 
 that, then send him to a turkey." This illustrates the 
 unconscious influence of your consciousness of capacity. 
 There will go out from you, with or without your consent, 
 a positive telepathic wave which will, in time, either bring 
 the right thing to you or take you to the right thing. And 
 this is what every one needs to know and to re-know. 
 
 John Burroughs gave us the truth in his poem, "I know 
 my own will come to me." Do you know that? Do you 
 believe it when your own seems indefinitely delayed? With- 
 out naming a specific need, if you will reiterate that fact 
 actively as well as passively, you can aff^ord to rest easy 
 as to the whence and the when. Just to sit down and wait 
 is poor practice. To be active and yet passive, as far as 
 trying to force "mine own to come to me," is the sure 
 method. Activity keeps faith vigorous. Passivity keeps it 
 controlled. And from this awareness, a light unknown 
 by you, shines forth to guide your good to you. 
 
 This is a fact of constant expression in my own experi- 
 ence. Very often a person comes to me in a panic because 
 a thing which must come to pass does not show signs of 
 appearance a few days before the time when it is needed. 
 To clear the channel so it can come is the first step. To 
 keep it clear by active labor in some diverting field and 
 by passive assurance in idle hours is the second step. To 
 
56 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 rest in the fact that each thought and feeling of quiet 
 knowledge is opening the gate of your good and preparing 
 the way for its entrance is chiefest and best. Forth from 
 you will flow an unseen stream, magnetic and sure in its 
 influence. 
 
 To complete the outflow of influence you must educate 
 the will. And my meaning is that you must cultivate the 
 affirmative attitude. The power of will may call to mind 
 the pictures advertising a book of that title. It showed a 
 high power automobile thundering along. There is some- 
 thing rough and relentless in will power of this type. It 
 represents the iron heel, the crushing determination of 
 self-centered progress. I am asking for an education of 
 your positives, to know how to say "Yes," to be able to 
 think white instead of black. It means the habit of seeing 
 happy endings and of looking for successful issues to each 
 and every venture. 
 
 The influence flowing from such a spirit is magical. Let 
 a man possessed of such an attitude step into a negative 
 atmosphere. Instantly, and almost unconsciously to him, 
 there is a sudden change. Shadows fade out and hopeful- 
 ness comes in. Faltering and timid people begin to brace 
 up. The nerveless and supine begin to act as if a stimulant 
 had been administered. And from the chill of the tomb one 
 passes to the sunlight of hope. This has been the uncon- 
 scious influence of one man without any outward eff^ort 
 being put forth. 
 
 When we begin to know of the force pent up in an 
 atom of energy, we will begin to sense the power latent 
 in each positive thought. Then we can see how a man 
 who has always thought affirmatively becomes a dynamo 
 emitting power. He breathes assurance out of every 
 pore of his body. His presence becomes the seal of success. 
 And the world seeks out such men and says, "You must 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 57 
 
 lead!" It believes because of the way it feels. It has 
 come under the sway of a spirit of life which will not 
 countenance evasion. 
 
 God put the capacity of divine power in each one. 
 If we began in the cradle to teach affirmation and to wipe 
 out hesitation, we would rear our supermen. Meanwhile 
 each man, aware of his divine endowment, can do no 
 better than begin now. Let each day find you in this 
 mathematical mood that whenever you see or feel a minus 
 sign you will plus it. Approach each duty as a something 
 added. Of that I will deal more in detail. Conunit yourself 
 to the habit of seeing the best side of everybody and 
 everything. Or, if Scripture will help, "Search all things, 
 hold fast (positively) that which is good." And so from 
 you the influence of powerful persuasion will surely flow. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 OW do you tackle the task that is not to your 
 taste? Watch yourself the next time something 
 irksome confronts you. Your reactions to it 
 are clues to your power of self-mastery. And 
 it is in this mastery of what we term disagree- 
 able that true ability lies. 
 
 Few realize soon enough that every experience is a 
 teacher. There is not a duty which is not an opportunity. 
 Someone has counseled substituting the word privilege for 
 duty. That is in line with our thought of plus-ing it. 
 Duty has been made a distasteful word. We have put it 
 under bondage. It belongs in common thought to the com- 
 pulsory. So the freedom of expression which comes out 
 of the right attitude must be returned to the spirit and 
 action of it. 
 
 Jesus gave the world guidance in his Gospel of the 
 Second Mile. He said that if a man force you to go a mile 
 with him, add a second one; if he take your coat, give the 
 cloak also. In other words, do a little bit more than it is 
 your duty to do. Show your superiority by a surplus. 
 Give evidence that you have passed from compulsion to 
 free and joyous expression. Let good will come out of a 
 bitter experience. In this wise we would give counsel. Let 
 me bring you a new and higher understanding. Here is a 
 method for the distasteful which will make it delightful, 
 a thing divine and holy: 
 
 There is not a duty which confronts you that is not 
 essentially beautiful and satisfying. Someone does that 
 thing as a livelihood and gets joy out of it. That removes 
 it from any inherent odium. It reflects back upon you. 
 Someone can do this and delight in it. Therefore, it holds 
 
60 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 a higher element. Unless you see that and extract it, you 
 cannot approach it with anything like superiority. 
 
 Super-men are rated by the ease and calm with which 
 they go through a way beset with the distasteful. It is 
 the pebbles which trip us. We may stub our toe on a 
 rock, but rolling stones may cause dignity to descend. I 
 like to see a big, strong man do the dishes for his wife. 
 I believe that if he can whistle and sing at such a task, so 
 endless and hopeless as some housewives conceive it, he 
 has the elements of self-mastery. Yet even in this house- 
 hold humdrum we have those who lift it into an art, with 
 joy. Family washing was once the bugaboo of women. 
 But someone knew there was a mastery of this godly yet 
 hardly welcome task. So now we have families which 
 actually quarrel over the privilege of running the electric 
 washing machine. 
 
 And this is a hint of superiority. When a man or 
 woman has the God-given inspiration to give a duty a plus 
 of pleasure, it proves the duty has that power itself. And 
 the one who has found the new and beautiful way for that 
 duty to function has, by that action fine, made himself 
 more divine. God is lurking in every shadow. "Cleave 
 the rock and you will find Me." He is your clue. Approach 
 the thing which you irk, and peer with the Inner Eye into 
 the meaning of it. You will find there a Divine Spirit, 
 like the Genii in the jar, ready to rise and transform the 
 surroundings. 
 
 Train yourself to the fairy book method. Pretend there 
 is a kind fairy lurking in the ledger. Find the genii in 
 the pots and pans. Look for the nymph in the routine order 
 of swinging a tool. We let our imagination get sodden 
 because a thing is repetition. Blessed be the boy in 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich's "Being a Boy," who made hoeing 
 weeds a great crusade. He was a knight in shining armor 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 61 
 
 and he mowed down his foes in marvelous fashion. Wlien 
 he came out of his dream the garden was free from every 
 pest. 
 
 Every pest, as the gardener calls it, may be the source 
 of a useful or beautiful creation to bless human life. Talk 
 with Luther Burbank. Let him tell you what he has done 
 to raise roadside weeds to a place in the gardens of princes. 
 It is a miracle work. Every little trying duty is a weed 
 in the common eye. But there is a spirit in Man, the Eye of 
 Divine Understanding can see the divinity lurking there. 
 Let that Wisdom lift your burden and plus your begrudged 
 duty. 
 
 Another angle for mastery is the way in which you 
 anticipate the onerous task. Do you fix it in consciousness 
 as onerous? Are you cheerful about it, or unmindful of 
 it? Do you meet it when you come to it? Or do you send 
 forward a blessing to it? We need this training most of all. 
 
 Before ever a day is begun, you should prepare it for 
 yourself. Learn to affirm, "This is my day to know the joy 
 of living. Every task which comes to me was meant for 
 me. It is my child. I shall love it, care for it tenderly and 
 completely. I shall send it forth with blessing to serve the 
 world." Not a hard thing to do. Quite as easy as to con- 
 demn it or even swear at it, as men are sometimes wont to do 
 with a thing which they consider boresome. Bless the 
 things which have persecuted you. Do good to the thing 
 disagreeable to you. You will pass out of persecution and 
 dread into anticipation and joy. 
 
 When you thus plus a duty, you have really plus-ed 
 yourself. You have shown yourself bigger than the little 
 thing which once depressed you. You are no longer an 
 unprofitable servant, doing monotonously what comes your 
 way. You have passed out of routine into life. 
 
 The pay for this procedure is peace of mind. In the 
 
62 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 August Thomas play, "As a Man Thinks," one of the 
 characters refers to the parable of the workers in the 
 vineyard which Jesus used. The men who came the last 
 hour were paid as much as those who had toiled all day. 
 "The eleventh hour men worked only one hour, but they 
 worked the last hour. You get peace of mind whenever 
 you do your duty, whenever you do something, and the 
 splendid thing is, it is never too late to do it." 
 
 There is a wonderful peace of mind which comes to 
 you after you have accomplished a task which has been 
 teasing or tormenting you. This is a common symptom. 
 Now, then, let us reverse the order. Begin with peace of 
 mind and see with what calm and superior power you 
 will approach the task. Note the ease and celerity with 
 which you do it. And mark the aftermath. At that end 
 you will find the Peace Passing All Understanding. 
 
 We arrive at duty-plus when we sense the divinity of 
 duty. There is, as we indicate, no merit in the conscientious 
 discharge of inevitable obligations. It is, only as we lift 
 our action into that divine impulse where it is as glorious 
 to do the prosaic and usual thing as though it were the 
 sublime and unusual. We have come to this divinity 
 when the arduous or irksome is met with quiet and easy 
 confidence. 
 
 So there is no merit in paying your debts. Yet with 
 what self-congratulation many people proclaim the discharge 
 of this unavoidable obligation! The Pharisee in business 
 is the man who assumes great credit because he is scrupulous 
 in the discharge of his debts. He pays a bill as if con- 
 ferring a favor or bestowing a library. One is reminded 
 of the man who dropped a nickel in the blind beggar's 
 hat with great show and said in benevolent tones: "There, 
 my poor fellow, is a quarter for you." A friend, asking 
 him why on earth he tried to convey such benevolences. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 63 
 
 he answered: "Oh, just to cheer him up a bit." So the 
 man who parades the payment of his debts is merely patting 
 himself on the back and telling himself what a fine fellow 
 he is. This isn't even a decent discharge of a common duty. 
 Then there is no credit in a man saying he is honest. 
 That is an arrogant assumption. It presumes that honesty 
 is unusual. I like the character of an old shoemaker whom 
 George McDonald portrays, resenting the reward which a 
 lady offered him for the return of a diamond found in her 
 shoe, by saying: "I don't have to be paid to be honest." 
 Yet that is the negative attitude taken by the world, as if it 
 is something which must be fostered from its lack. 
 
 While there is no merit in a man asserting his honesty, 
 it is a big thing for a man to say, "I am honest." It 
 involves a wide responsibility. It takes in the whole world 
 of thought and action. It covers all conduct and character. 
 It leaves a man without refuge. In all of his thinking and 
 acting on every plane he must never be guilty of any subter- 
 fuge or evasion. But true honesty isn't a matter of policy; 
 it is an inherent duty. It is a man's response to the Divine 
 Image in which he is cast. When it becomes a matter of 
 instinct to always act, think and speak with unvarying 
 sincerity, and when a man does this without calculation or 
 self-emulation, then is the duty to be honest, given its God- 
 cast, and we go the limit in love for honesty. 
 
 Some men are content if they do any of these things 
 under compulsion. Other men are proud because they do 
 them on their own initiative. Still others, raised in con- 
 sciousness, never give these attiudes a thought and are not 
 content until they are superior to all conventional standards. 
 They are kin to a great teacher, Edward Bower, of Harrow, 
 England, of whom it was said: "The desire to make good 
 better and better best was, with him, an instinct." He did 
 not wish to be known and remembered by men; but he 
 
64 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 wished to be loved by many friends. Above all, he thought 
 to serve; since to serve is life's divinest duty and to be 
 loved was the unsought and unthought of reward. 
 
 The divinity of duty is the evidence of a superlative soul. 
 If you only do what is required, you give no proof that you 
 are capable of more. Employers watch for men who do 
 not watch their watches. Men who do the extra bit out of 
 interest in their work reveal the extra in themselves. That 
 is the index of their capacity for greater things. Your 
 measure is of your own making. God has given you un- 
 limited capacity, but its expansion rests upon your ability 
 to give the common task the uncommon expression. 
 
 Coningsby Dawson tells us that in the war men were 
 forced into heroisms of which they did not dream them- 
 selves capable. That is the revelation of God. He permits 
 the eternally capable Self within us to slumber, until 
 we put the extra into our effort, then there is a surge 
 of soul, a surplus of power and we do beyond our dreaming. 
 If we are to be as Gods, we must take the duty that presses 
 out of the moment, however wearisome it may have seemed, 
 and lend to it such an expansion of power that the sense 
 of the task shall be a revelation of what we really are. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 
 
 Wimavnth Sntrement 
 
 N this chapter we connect ability with plenty more 
 closely, and bring this psychological pair nearer 
 perfect union. As ability is merely the plus of 
 duty, so plenty is simply the surplus of your 
 present status. 
 
 Ruskin says, "There is no wealth but life." It is a world 
 of truth. Conversely the only poverty is a lack of life. 
 No one knew this better than Jesus. There is a newer and 
 truer version of His well known words: "I am come that ye 
 might have life and have it more abundantly." Here it is: 
 "I am come that you might have life and that you might 
 have abundance." So you see poverty and lack of life go 
 together. The trend of His teaching was freedom through 
 the Truth and the enrichment of life through realization of 
 the Kingdom of Good within. The true source of plenty is 
 in the surplus which the life within you holds. If I can 
 make every man and woman who reads this see this truly 
 and completely, they need never confess to lack again. 
 
 Money, or material substance, is merely compressed 
 force. As a medium, it represents power in expression. 
 All the abundance which human life may know is all 
 around us in solution, and the right reactions of mind 
 and spirit can precipitate it. Just as a Seattle lad has 
 learned how to take electrical energy directly from the 
 air, we can call into active service the spiritual forces 
 which express in substance for daily need. For no other 
 reason did Jesus turn directly to God and say, "Give us 
 this day our daily bread." He went directly to the Source.. 
 There is need just now for this realization. A sense of 
 
66 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 lack, or the pressure of inflated value, weighs heavily upon 
 the average individual. It is the most unselfish service we 
 can render to convert the want of the world into the wealth 
 of the world. This is only a matter of giving existing abun- 
 dance the right expression. 
 
 As one of the unerring facts of God's universe, I believe 
 that somewhere there is ample sufficiency for every human 
 need. I believe it as much as I believe there is food enough 
 in the world to keep famine or hunger from every door, if 
 we had the right social system and proper economic distribu- 
 tion. So I know there is a surplus possible, an increment 
 which earns itself, when we have done our part. There is 
 an attitude, an approach, an application of principles 
 whereby this comes to pass. It is neither magical nor 
 mysterious. No amount of lessons or lectures will give 
 you a golden key. After all your lessons and lectures, it 
 rests with the content of Ruskin's dictum, "There is no 
 wealth but life." 
 
 First and chiefly, this means a certain kind of life 
 which you must live and use. However you may dream 
 of plenty, the pledge of it in your case rests with a knowl- 
 edge of life. This, in the largest sense, avails more than 
 all else. No amount of mental jugglery can turn the trick. 
 No path of prosperity, however magical, will get you any- 
 where if it leads you away from the facts of life. 
 
 One man with a knowledge of life, chiefly insight of 
 human nature, uses his knowledge for purely personal gain. 
 His way becomes one of ruthless selfishness. Jesus points 
 out his ultimate poverty of soul. Many a man with a pas- 
 sion for material comfort repeats the parable. Many a man 
 with ideals leaves his idealism for a realism which, alas! 
 becomes some day very evident to his soul. Seeking for 
 mere material gain, he comes to learn that is all he gets, just 
 money. Many with insight of life profit by the credulity of 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 67 
 
 the mass. So Barnum gave us the famous axiom, "The 
 American people like to be humbugged." But this use of a 
 large knowledge of life leads one into final disillusionment. 
 Self is the final commodity, and of self one can become 
 very sick and very tired. 
 
 A true knowledge of life will lend you balance. It will 
 open up the full content of life. You will see its diviner 
 aspects, its limitless potencies. You will find the sources 
 of permanent enrichment. Life in the sense we mean is 
 universal life, comprehending and encompassing all things. 
 You gain reach of understanding and are saved from perver- 
 sion of viewpoint or loss of perspective. Lack of perspec- 
 tive is what creates all other lack in life. It is the most 
 common of defects. 
 
 True knowledge of life means extension of conscious- 
 ness. That means insight, grasp of the full content of life 
 and a proper valuation of your advantages and opportuni- 
 ties. We marvel at the deep reach of understanding which 
 Jesus displayed. This was due to depth of divine insight. 
 It was so extended in Him that he could anticipate the divine 
 procedure and read the souls of men. This penetrative 
 power can come to others as it came to Him. It will protect 
 you from dishonesty and the designs of the unscrupulous. 
 Just as the spectroscope analyzes the substance of planets 
 by the radiations of light, so we can sense and analyze the 
 feelings of our fellow-men. Thus are we guarded and 
 guided in the realization of a larger good. 
 
 This extension of our knowledge of life broadens our 
 vision, deepens our sympathy and develops confidence and 
 courage. It does not allow you to be cramped, limited or 
 fearful in spirit. As the Roman was at ease, content wher- 
 ever he saw the flash of the Roman eagle or the tramp of 
 Roman legions, so we must find in the beneficence and 
 bounty of the universe a sense of assurance and confidence. 
 
68 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 Out of this spirit will come the power to appropriate and 
 develop untapped resources for our ease and well-being. 
 
 An extension of consciousness is simply an enlargement 
 of your mental attitude. You begin to think in terms of 
 divine resource, commanding confidence, conquering cour- 
 age, keener judgment and vaster shrewdness. So many 
 lose sight of the main fact. They get the idea that if they 
 gain "a wisdom above the wisdom of this world," they will 
 immediately step into affluence. Extension of consciousness 
 does not exclude the wisdom of this world, good common 
 sense, but includes it. It simply expands your faculties 
 and gives you finer weapons with which to work. It enlarges 
 business sense and opens new eyes of advantage and oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 This is the way to train yourself for the reign of plenty. 
 You must be big enough in vision to desire and see abun- 
 dance for all, not simply for self. In this is the only hope 
 of acquiring plenty. 
 
 Plenty also depends upon the expansion of sympathetic 
 appreciation of others. We must see the economic depend- 
 ence of all on each and of each on all. We are all in this 
 world together. It takes all of us to make it a world. W^e 
 cannot afford to allow any large per cent to suffer or 
 come to the pinch of undeserved poverty. We are seeking a 
 world where democracy is safe. Democracy means liberty 
 and justice for all. A noted speaker raised the question, 
 "Have we achieved liberty?" He showed how we had 
 religious liberty. Each is free to worship God in his own 
 way. We have passed beyond the Puritan whom Josh 
 Billings said came to America to enjoy religious liberty 
 and prevent everyone else from doing the same. We now 
 have full freedom of religious faith. 
 
 We have nearly achieved political liberty. The passage 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 69 
 
 of the Universal Suffrage bill by Congress brings us close 
 to the ideal in that respect. 
 
 Now we must secure industrial liberty, was the main 
 contention of our authority. We must so organize industry 
 that its fruits shall be accessible to all. The attempt to 
 throttle avenues of economic opportunity must be branded 
 as lawlessness. Liberty means a land of free people. The 
 land must be freed as well as the people. The public 
 domain must be further developed. Waste lands by the 
 millions of acres can be made accessible to people crushed 
 by the crowding and competitive life of today. 
 
 Justice must also come. Justice will come when the 
 curse of covetousness is gone. Greed breeds injustice, the 
 spirit of insolent disregard for the poor and downtrodden. 
 Greed has actually made a travesty of justice. Remove the 
 greed and you bring fair playing and square dealing. 
 
 This hideous nightmare of greed flies athwart our civili- 
 zation. We are at the mercy of it as the ancient king was 
 at the mercy of great foul birds called harpies, which flew 
 into his banquet room and devoured the food. It has given 
 us the mad scramble, the clutching hand, the itching palm. 
 So we need to be purged. Purge us of covetousness and 
 we will deal justly and love mercy. 
 
 Justice ivill give to every man a square deal and a 
 sure meal. 
 
 Justice will give to every woman fair play and a rose 
 pathway, with no fear of a primrose way. 
 
 Justice will give to every child the right to joy and the 
 reign of plenty. 
 
 Toward such an industrial democracy as this, we must 
 think, work and pray with head, heart and hand. 
 
 Plenty rests upon delicacy of perception. If each was 
 
70 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 keen and quick to discern the wayside wealth, we could 
 pluck our good as we pick wayside flowers. The soul of 
 man was meant to be like a seismograph, able to detect 
 earth tremors thousands of miles away. Such delicacy of 
 perception could redound to great good even in the market 
 place. There is no market commodity like keenness and 
 shrewdness. The cunning of trade, however, must be spirit- 
 ualized, otherwise it is simply refined hoggishness. Keen- 
 ness, as ability to see advantage, must come not as a 
 weapon of competitive destruction, but of co-operative help- 
 fulness. It must be ability to see the good of a brother as 
 best for both. It must be communal, not personal. 
 
 Jesus commended the practical man who was rich toward 
 God. So our modern man must see business from the man 
 end, rather than the money end. Then he will begin to see 
 sources of real wealth. I would rather be Henry Ford than 
 any man of money that I know. He has proved that there 
 is enough for all, and the fun of creating is in making finer 
 manhood, more comforting womanhood, and happier child- 
 hood. He has put the light heart and free soul into thou- 
 sands. He has been very keen, very shrewd for God. 
 
 This delicacy of perception of the real road to plenty 
 comes out of two things: 
 
 1. Love gives breadth of perception. We fail to under- 
 stand each other in business because we fail to connect cause 
 and eff'ect. So many do not see the man at the other end of 
 a bargain, as Oscar Strauss said. Then we measure men 
 wrongly. We call one rich, another poor. The reverse may 
 be true. Life and love are ultimate sources of wealth. The 
 love side is the winsome, winning side. Jesus pronounced 
 the gift of a sinning woman priceless because she loved 
 much. We must see the end of the way and know that when 
 all things fail, that love can remain, if we have it to begin 
 with. So place value where it belongs. See that lack of 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 71 
 
 love is the only poverty. Fullness of love is the only plenty. 
 Love will keep us all from lack. 
 
 2. Truth gives length to perception. A reach of insight 
 comes to the soul of integrity. To the soul of truth earth 
 teems with bounty. With the eye of truth one surveys all 
 the facts of life. One may see that though he never becomes 
 affluent, yet he may be mighty rich. My work is my wealth. 
 Labors of love are my luxuries, not because they are infre- 
 quent, but because I have so much of one that I can always 
 have enough of the other. Thus truth gives me perspective. 
 It has opened my eyes to the real values. I know how to 
 abound. I ever see my ample good. So I am stimulated 
 on the earth side. I have no fear of want, thus I am full of 
 confidence and have fresh initiative and enthusiasm ever at 
 hand to win my need. My dividends grow out of this diviner 
 insight, and so I live in the kingdom of plenty, because 
 truth has given me a sense of values. 
 
 Take these two divine qualities as the gold and silver of 
 life. Give them a place in everyday life, in your business 
 transactions, your industrial relations. By a strange alchemy 
 they will change into the currency of the realm and you will 
 have both material and spiritual plenty. 
 
 Your surplus is always sure when you add to this, spir- 
 itual mindedness. That is, you must extend your conscious- 
 ness of God until you anticipate the divine procedure. 
 
 The very best farmer in the world is the one who is most 
 familiar with the natural processes. He anticipates the 
 divine order in plant life. He uses insight, foresight and 
 faith. He has knowledge of the ways of God in the vege- 
 table kingdom. When he has evolved high enough he 
 becomes a Burbank. He lays hold of hidden forces and 
 brings them out. He makes two apples or plums, and 
 superior ones at that, grow where one grew before. Men 
 call him a wizard, when he is only divinely attuned and 
 conscious of the higher ways of plant life. 
 
72 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 The very best miner in the world is not your happy- 
 go-lucky prospector, who may stumble on to a pay strsak. 
 He is the man who has studied the strata of the earth as 
 the pages of a Bible of God, in which are all the secrets, 
 the gems of fairest ray serene. He applies himself to the 
 law of the Lord in the mineral kingdom and comes to a day 
 when he can pick up a rock and take out a gem. Then he 
 becomes a Sir Ernest Rutherford, who solves the riddle of 
 transmutation of metals and creates gold out of baser sub- 
 stance by his knowledge of radio-activity. 
 
 This is but parallel to a state of mind which all men 
 must come into. The supreme laws are spiritual, and the 
 mind to discern these shall gain a supreme consciousness, 
 able to anticipate the divine procedure. 
 
 How did Jesus multiply the five loaves and two fishes? 
 I used to have a way of explaining that which was very 
 pleasing to my intellectual vanity. It explained it away, but 
 it showed no spiritual comprehension of it. Now I begin 
 to see the truth of it. I know Jesus as the Master Mind 
 who could anticipate the divine procedure. He could accel- 
 erate the natural process of fish from eggs and of bread 
 from grain. He went back of the snowy loaf, back of the 
 wheat and the flour, back to the source of limitless abun- 
 dance and drew directly upon the Great Giver. He par- 
 alleled by spiritual knowledge what the boy in Seattle does 
 by electrical knowledge. He drev/ from out the Infinite 
 Substance that which was needed for the hour. 
 
 Many may feel that nothing follows from this for them. 
 Yet Jesus assured His disciples of what might follow if they 
 would measure up to their possible God-hood. If we will 
 pay the price, the secret will be given. It cannot come to 
 one who knows not the higher law. You cannot pull elec- 
 tricity directly from the air to run your vacuum cleaner. 
 Your technical knowledge of electricity may be as far 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 73 
 
 removed as if you were a vacuum. But did you master the 
 electrical law you might have been the one to do the supreme 
 thing such as the Seattle lad accomplished. 
 
 Here is the heart of divine truth. If we will give our- 
 selves adequate spiritual knowledge, train our souls in love; 
 love of truth, wisdom, love; if we will seek continuous, 
 harmonious relations with all men and all conditions, we 
 will be given an instrument of spiritual insight. How will 
 that work for abundance? 
 
 It will make you mentally aware and vitally conscious 
 of divine opportunities for the creation of substance. 
 
 It will make you more humanly keen and more spirit- 
 ually sensitive to the ways in which bounty flows. 
 
 It will make you more discerning yet more ethically 
 thoughtful that your gains do not come at another's loss. 
 This is more necessary than most men know. "Thou shalt 
 not steal" applies to a thousand methods and means. The 
 right sensitiveness of mind and spirit will give you the 
 right hunches, endow you with superior insight — in fact, 
 make your soul just such a spiritual machine that it can pull 
 into substance the bounty of God, now in solution. 
 
 This secret of abundance only comes in fullness by 
 fullest surrender. You must become as delicate in fore- 
 sight and insight as a seismograph, which can record an 
 earthquake that is thousands of miles from you. One can 
 really get sub-conscious penetration. You can come to 
 where you can actually shut out conflicting human opinion 
 or thought influence and see your way clear to your fulfilled 
 desire. It will be as if a voice in your ear said: "Choose 
 this thing; act that way; follow that lead." It will never 
 go wrong, if you see to it that there is not a speck of dust 
 on the divinely delicate bearings of your spiritual con- 
 sciousness. 
 
74 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 Dust? Yes, the dust of Doubt, damning, deadening 
 doubt, which clogs and corrodes. Until you can keep your 
 mind clear of this, you will always find a grinding and effort 
 in your operations. You can never swing into the rhythm 
 of right action and sure achievement until all doubt is out. 
 
 Fear ! This is the grit which is not sand, but soot. Fear 
 has no sand in it. Fear never did have any sand and never 
 will. You have never seen a fear-filled soul that had any 
 sand or grit. A soul of fear is just a smudge upon the 
 fair face of a possibly perfect Faith. Keep clear of fear 
 and your soul will sing and swing out into the use of untold 
 energies of God. 
 
 Hesitation! This is a lint which gets into the gears. It 
 is a fluff stuff, so slight that we often ignore it. But it will 
 add to itself, will wind itself around a high geared soul and 
 catch up dust and soot, and then soon, out of gear, out of 
 action, out of luck, out of pocket. Truly "he who hesitates 
 is lost." Only in doubtless, fearless action. shall you find 
 power to pull your good out of the everywhere into the here. 
 
 Just by these methods of thinking and acting your 
 surplus will come forth. Somehow, when the Life is 
 adjusted, it becomes capable of working and expressing in 
 terms of its own richness and fullness in every plane. All 
 planes are parallel and move truly along one, and you are 
 always evenly adjusted to all others. There is everywhere 
 ample store. There need never be any further lack if you 
 will study and impress this chapter upon your very soul. 
 You will have the psychology of plenty well on its way to 
 complete expression. A personal enrichment will come, a 
 richness of spirit and a capacity to react to every situation 
 serenely and successfully, as we will show you in the next 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER TEN 
 
 ^etoet ^ouljf 
 
 ^S^^^S HIS phrase, velvet souls, gives life a certain 
 wijKJ^^ texture. It creates a kind of soul altogether too 
 VPl^lifL ^^^^ ^" these hurly-burly times. It weaves a 
 ^X^^ff/ character which has a grace, a smoothness, a 
 finish at once shimmery and wholesome. The 
 kind of folk who have it do innumerable good deeds softly. 
 They have a moral fiber almost grim in its grip, yet refining 
 to life. They belong to a type of whom Lafcadio Hearn 
 speaks: "Who never did anything which was not, I will not 
 say right, that is obvious — anything which was not beau- 
 tiful." He illustrates by one he knew in Japan, "The 
 sweetest little woman, not seemingly of flesh and blood, but 
 of silk embroidery mixed with soul, slowly dying amid great 
 poverty and pain, but never complaining, never breaking 
 down, never ceasing to smile nor allowing her personal suf- 
 ferings to invade her surroundings." And we call such lives 
 by the term, velvet souls. 
 
 Velvet souls simply mean the art of living smoothly. 
 We need nothing so much either in social relations or mental 
 attitude. But smoothness of living must not involve com- 
 promise with evil or surrender of principles. Peace and 
 quiet must not come through acquiescence with the wrong. 
 Only jelly hearts cry "peace" when there is no peace. Only 
 men of mush and moonshine try to get along with every- 
 body, even workers of iniquity. As long as injustice and 
 evil stalk the earth, the only people who will be undisturbed 
 are in the graveyards. The rest of us must right the 
 wrongs and make the rough places smooth. And the 
 paradox of it all is that we can be velvet souls amid the 
 
76 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 turbulence, the sordid and hideous aspects of life. In fact, 
 the looms of life which weave such souls are placed amid 
 such conditions, and that is the text of the texture. 
 
 Velvet souls are most sensitive to suffering. Their eyes 
 are far-seeing. They look for the unvarying beauty in 
 human nature. They see the wrong which lies about them, 
 but instead of bustling around, making a great hue and cry 
 over it, or going full tilt at it, they approach it in a quiet, 
 commanding, hidden way, and by force of their gentleness 
 they brush the nightmare of evil away and leave the peace 
 of God in its place. We need such souls more than we 
 need noisy reformers or self-advertised righteous people. 
 
 A velvet soul is produced by a mental atmosphere. It 
 is possible for a person to create a calm or a storm by the 
 bent of his mind. You can so charge your mind for good 
 or ill that it will make itself felt wherever you are. His 
 very presence made bad men good, was said of the Master 
 Jesus, and it is an index to the thought force of a possessed 
 spirit. Even wild beasts have been cowed and held back by 
 the calm assurance of a master miind. We cannot set any 
 limit to the compelling power of a Christ conscious life. 
 Examples which sound like fairy tales could be cited to you 
 to prove how potent this sense of dominion can be. 
 
 "She makes such a beautiful climate for me," said a 
 mother of her attractive daughter. That is just what a 
 velvet soul produces — a gentle atmosphere. Such a one 
 tempers the moral climate, warms its coldness, cools its 
 excessive heat, soothes its sorrows, cheers its discourage- 
 ments. And that is the function of the soul. It does not 
 fulfill its mission nor warrant the name of soul unless it 
 does. With the soul supreme, with a divine consciousness 
 dominating you, you cannot help but be a peace giver, a 
 happiness producer, a joy distributor. The soul is a process 
 of constructive thought which is centered upon whatsoever 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 77 
 
 things are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, of good report, 
 and by thinking on these things comes into possession of 
 the peace of God, a spiritual climate which transforms by 
 unconscious and conscious influence. Or to go back to the 
 figure of velvet and think of the soul as clothed, it is woven 
 of the silken threads of charity, peace, forbearance, control 
 and love. Such a soul is always pleasing to the contact 
 and has a luster which imparts a subtle grace and richness 
 to life. Long after you live down the eff^ect of somebody 
 who affected you like a piece of crash toweling, you keep 
 the haunting memory of a plush-like life which brushed 
 against you in passing. 
 
 Often in families there are lives like the old-fashioned 
 haircloth — severe, harsh, and unyielding. Such lives can 
 never be rubbed the wrong way without producing a very 
 evident irritation. On the contrary a velvety life yields 
 gently without annoyance. Haircloth never was a success, 
 either on furniture or in a family. It was tolerated, but it 
 could not be modified or changed. Lovers never loved it on 
 the sofa upon which they courted. And the tragedy of it 
 all is that the quality of it was often carried into the later 
 married life. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, great as he was, had a haircloth char- 
 acter. Early he wooed and married one of the sweetest 
 and m^ost brilliant girls of his day. As the years of their 
 married life lengthened, the harshness and severity of Car- 
 lyle's nature crept out. Irritation became the key of his 
 voice, and all gentleness went out of his nature. She 
 sacrificed her life to his dyspeptic humor, relieving him of 
 all monotonous detail, correcting his notes. One day two 
 distinguished vistors called upon Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. 
 For an hour the philosopher poured out a tirade against 
 the commercial spirit of the age. The good wife never 
 opened her lips to speak. As last the author ceased and 
 
78 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 there was silence for a moment. Suddenly Carlyle thmi- 
 dered, "Jane! Stop breathing so loud!" Long before she 
 had done everything except stop breathing. So, obediently, 
 a few days later, Jane stopped breathing so loud. A few 
 ) weeks after her death Carlyle discovered that for years she 
 had kept life smooth for him, caring for his bodily health 
 and mental peace. This velvet soul had starved and frozen 
 to death for want of the affection which he might have 
 bestowed. Too late he realized his fame was largely his 
 wife's. He paid the penalty which he deserved. For Froude 
 tells us he began to make those pathetic pilgrimages to his 
 wife's grave, where he found him broken-heartedly and 
 inconsolably murmuring, "If I had only known, if I had 
 only known!" 
 
 It is a strong hint that in the family life the velvet soul 
 must be woven. Unless the jangling and discord of conflict- 
 ing desires can be done away here in the most intimate 
 circle, we cannot hope to weave it out in the world, where 
 the forces against us are ever intruding. Out, of considerate- 
 ness as a constant mental attitude, we come to a sense of that 
 dear togetherness of family life, which we can extend beyond 
 our door to the world of our daily contact. 
 
 The crying need of every community is a larger con- 
 siderateness. A whole community can be poisoned and 
 soured by a carping, cynical spirit of a newspaper or even 
 by one bitter, biting tongue. Our need isn't the political 
 soft pedal, but a few souls with a velvety speed and action 
 and a positive spirit to change the atmosphere. It is hard 
 to remove the spirit of critcism and judgment. But it is 
 not so hard to keep the sting out of it. We ought to try to 
 be like the Caucasian bee. Now a non-stinging bee seems an 
 anomaly, but experts assert that in the Caucasus Mountains 
 there is such a species. Curiously, this bee is neighbor to 
 the Syrian species, which bears the reputation of a par- 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 79 
 
 ticularly bad temper. The Caucasian bee is most amiable. 
 While provided with a sting, as all bees worth anything, 
 it is difficult to make it sting a human being. Almost 
 nothing which a human can do will cause it to attack 
 him. The human hive needs that sort of busybodies. Let 
 them buzz and bustle all they wish, let them fuss over a 
 deal of nothing, let them have their cast iron creeds and 
 their hide-bound politics, if they will only keep the sting 
 out of their busy-ness. 
 
 Walter Pater, a classical novelist seldom read, creates 
 that type of character which moves through a community, 
 gentle minded and silently observant of the motley throng. 
 He places a velvet soul, if you please, who has instant and 
 positive influence, yet whose religion is never hurting, 
 never denouncing and back-biting, but reticent and self- 
 eff'acing, looking at the twilight spaces in life and adding 
 his silence to the great soothing silence which lies beyond 
 the bustle of life as the source of our power and possession. 
 Wherever you find this sort of a soul in a community as a 
 dominating personality, you find a congenial atmosphere. 
 Somehow or other the very air is tempered. You feel a sense 
 of hospitality, of love for the human. 
 
 There are some small communities where life is posi- 
 tively so catty that all the real felines have migrated, because 
 they cannot stand the competition. Then again you step into 
 hamlets that are for all the world like an old-fashioned 
 garden, full of sweet lavender, honeysuckle and heliotrope. 
 In such places, as radiating centers of influence, you will 
 find gracious lives, irresistible in influence, who have suf- 
 fused their surroundings with their own sweetness and 
 light. It is a matter of worthy pride that often the person- 
 ality which did this has been the product of our own 
 religious attitude. It is inevitable. Constant dwelling upon 
 the justice and mercy of an Infinite Father, who will bring 
 
80 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 all men to the light and the truth; constant feelings of 
 charity and brotherly love for all mankind, and faith in 
 the ultimate redemption of all from their suffering and 
 sinning induces a state of mind, a quality of soul at once 
 winsome, positive and sure in its effect upon the world. 
 
 I saw a city moulded by this type of a man, the heroism 
 of a gentle soul. In memory I see one who is now sadly 
 missed, where he made his light for a clean city and a 
 peaceable, harmonious citizenship. A judge he was, keen 
 and astute, but with a heart as tender and sweet as the 
 heart of a girl. More than once he tasted defeat at the 
 hands of the unscrupulous, but never once could the slimy 
 hands of the gangsters soil the robe of honest manhood and 
 clean life. He made his fight without bitterness, a velvet 
 soul, adding to the finer sense of a city a spirit of life 
 which will linger on, remembered because impressed upon 
 the youth of the place. There are such souls moving through 
 every city. They seldom, if ever, are widely spoken of in 
 public print, but they are felt subtly but surely in the 
 deeper life. The changes they make cannot be measured, 
 but they are more potent than one can estimate. Life is 
 transformed by personality, but back of the personality is a 
 principle as the motive of action and source of power. It 
 is very refreshing to know, amid all the clamor for atten- 
 tion and publicity on the part of some people, that the 
 real work of the world is done by quiet, unobtrusive folk. 
 It is something to be able to gather together substance, to 
 win out in the business game, to be aggressive enough to 
 succeed. But there is another side, and this is the real side. 
 There are people who gain without the bustle and the stir 
 that most people expend, all that the strenuous gain, yet 
 without struggle, but with a calmness of possession, a 
 smoothness amid turbulence. They take away tenseness and 
 give that restful confidence which this overanxious age so 
 much needs. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 81 
 
 It all goes to show that if we wish to improve the com- 
 munity and remove discord, we must create the atmosphere 
 in ourselves. We can legislate till doomsday, but unless we 
 have projected a velvet soul into the community and charged 
 it with the power which such a soul has, we have done next 
 to nothing. "I hope you will have a good time, son," said 
 a mother to her boy, starting out to a party. "Thank you, 
 mother, I always do, for I take it with me." That's the 
 great, big, simple secret. It tells what kind of a spirit you 
 can have in a community: the kind you carry into it. Re- 
 member, you are a center, potent and wide in influence, 
 beyond all possible estimate. You have thought forces 
 resident in you able, like a Zeppelin, to spread unseen a 
 reign of terror, or able to flood the world with sweetness 
 and life. A velvet soul is your greatest contribution to 
 help the cause of smooth living. 
 
 There are certain personal reactions which result from 
 velvet living. 
 
 It brings composure and control to the mental faculties. 
 "Better is he that keepeth his spirit than he that taketh a 
 city," is not only wisdom, but it is power. It spells a clear 
 head, a sane judgment, a sweet stomach and a good diges- 
 tion. There is no surer way to inharmony in our members 
 than our tendency to blow up every time we are crossed or 
 annoyed. Nor is there anything so generally distressing as 
 our failure to hold a mental oomSposure when we are con- 
 fronted by thoughts and problems which spell discord. If 
 we can sit on the throne and rule when the throne shakes 
 beneath us, we are not easily unseated. 
 
 Again the charitable view becomes the natural bent of a 
 velvet soul. We are apt to be creatures of impulse. The 
 tongue is a small member, but St. James made a very 
 complete statement of its power. A bit of honey is so 
 much more palatable to it than a touch of quinine. If 
 
82 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 we would only plan to hold the thought that the hasty word 
 was as quinine, which we had taken on it, and the just, 
 the generous, the kindly was honey tipped, it might help 
 to bring both the first fruit and the final grace of a velvet 
 soul. 
 
 It is the further privilege of such a life to have both 
 insight and entrance into lives which have been labeled 
 hardened or hopeless by the world. When we have come to 
 realize an Infinite Tenderness brooding over us, and know 
 that however hard the way, we have made it so; when we 
 sense that we can lift the rock and find Him, cleave the 
 stone and He is there; then we know that what we term 
 indifference of Providence is but blindness of perception. 
 It is evident that our hope of such a realization lies in the 
 posesssion of a gentle, generous spirit. 
 
 We see the Master Jesus walking the earth to show men 
 the Father and revealing a soul so soothing in its touch, so 
 soft in its blows of rebuke, so gentle and yielding, yet 
 withal so firm and strong and sure, that even the winds 
 obey His will. We see how by this calm and kindly spirit 
 the atmosphere of the world of His day changed from 
 badness to goodness, from discord to peace, and we know 
 here is the evidence that smooth living does not spell soft- 
 ness and decay, but vigor, progress, the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 A velvet soul is just a citizen of the kingdom, one who 
 has tasted the real values and has entered into a life which 
 is at once useful and beautiful. He has laid hold of true 
 serenity and can move successfully amid every irritation, 
 annoyance, crisis or calamity. The reaction to such a soul 
 is awesome. He or she has developed an asset which causes 
 as much awe as the mention of mere money does with a 
 certain type of niind. And the ability latent here is the 
 power to silently but surely tap all of the hidden energies. 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 OHN FISKE, the great scientist, saw the mental 
 and spiritual evolution of man as a parallel to 
 his physical growth. Just as man has come up 
 from lower forms of bodily existence in accord- 
 ance with the laws of nature, so he sees that 
 day when all of the ape and tiger in man shall have dis- 
 appeared. And he prophesies that in the evolution of 
 Humanity the divine spark may acquire power over material 
 conditions that man may here upon this earth survive and 
 endure forever. 
 
 We are possibly now entering the last era of the ape 
 and tiger in man. Wars may flare forth somewhat, but it 
 will be the dying embers. Already the race rises in deep 
 contrition and great longing. As never before we seek a 
 m^ental and spiritual unfoldment that shall give us control 
 over the animal tendencies and banish them forever to their 
 limbo of barbarism. We cannot undo what has been done, 
 but time is kind and will lead us into a new day. Revelation 
 has not ceased. Each day is a fresh page in God's Book of 
 Life. So we have not the past to keep us checkmated, but 
 we have a future beckoning us to a better and diviner day. 
 
 Christ has become to us the revelation of our own pos- 
 sible divine selves. He is the Spark which shall grow until 
 the Light of God fully shines in every soul. Through our 
 mental and spiritual unfoldment in terms of His spirit of 
 life a new humanity will evolve and bring us into the new 
 day of which our poets and prophets ever dream. But 
 we are not here to dream or long for it, but we are here 
 for growth. The evolutionary urge is still in us. It now 
 
84 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 has for its labors not a better body, but a greater mind, 
 such as was in Christ, a diviner spirit which will make us 
 more than Masters. 
 
 The primary operation of the law of unfoldment is the 
 stern fact of capacity or ability extirpated by disuse. That 
 is, use or lose. Everywhere in the physical evolution we 
 have manifold illustrations of this. The strength of muscles 
 or sinew depends upon exercise. The fish in the Mammoth 
 Cave, having no use for their eyes, lose them. Undoubtedly 
 our own bodies carry around remains of disused organs. 
 Maybe that little vermiform appendix is just such a vestige, 
 which is very fine not to have, the doctors are always ready 
 to assure us. The same fact runs through all the phases 
 of our lives. Faculties, arts, gifts of mind and spirit must 
 be used or the grace and skill goes from us. 
 
 The positive side of this principle is our chief concern. 
 We must practice seeing and using the hidden energies 
 within us. The more we discern the ability within ourselves 
 and others, the more light of Truth shines on all our affairs 
 and problems. To have more light we must use what we 
 have. We develop, unfold by seeing, then by using these 
 diviner graces of mind and spirit. A lady fluttered up to 
 a violinist after his wonderful work. "Ah, sir, it was so 
 wonderful! so heavenly! so divine! I would give half my 
 life to play as you do." "That is what I have done, 
 Madame — given half my life to play as I do." 
 
 So many people who are in the primary grades of 
 spiritual principles, of ri^t thinking, feel very much 
 grieved that they cannot achieve great results. They forget 
 they have not undergone great disciplines. When they have 
 given half their lives to touching the harp-strings of the 
 mind they can play their lives as harmonies and symphonies. 
 
 If you see the Christ-power but do not use it, you are 
 like a man looking as a spectator, and you must remain 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 85 
 
 so until you become a participator. So many people are 
 soft and flabby in soul because they never give themselves 
 any spiritual exercise. But we are learning today this 
 simple fact, that we must pass from Fact-Truth to Act- 
 Truth. That is, the mere contemplation of spiritual prin- 
 ciples will never get you anywhere. The operation of 
 spiritual principles is putting a backbone in your soul, 
 where you had a wishbone. 
 
 Jesus used the parable of the talents to this very end. 
 God has given of His divine largess to us all. We can 
 double, treble, magnify, glorify, or we can coddle, fondle, 
 petrify and nullify the Light of Truth which is in us. The 
 light in us can be hidden under a bushel, or it can be a 
 beacon of blessing. 
 
 There is one way to double trouble, and that is to be 
 unprepared to meet it. There is one way to sink hardship 
 in the ocean of experience, and that is to send a well- 
 directed shot from a dynamic, vibrant soul. There is not 
 a problem you face, not a difficulty you must meet, not a 
 crisis confronting you but can be met if you daily enlarge 
 your diviner powers. Truth, the Christ-mind of understand- 
 ing, does not lead you into mistakes or failures. It leads 
 you from them, knowing them for what they are. 
 
 So use the spark, fan its flame, let the light shine. 
 Gain, grow, glow and see how life will unfold in power, 
 penetration, possession. 
 
 The law of unfoldment further demands response to 
 every higher influence. Every species of present life owes 
 its existence to its conformity to environment. Failure to 
 adapt itself has meant extinction. Marvelous are the ways 
 in which nature has aided and abetted every form which 
 would conform. It made possible fins instead of feet for 
 seals, whales and manatees. It gave wings to others and 
 protective colorations to many birds and animals. Every 
 
86 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 adaptation of life to its environment has meant its per- 
 petuation. 
 
 In the spiritual evolution of man the law works in 
 opposite direction. He is not to be conformed to this 
 world, but transformed by renewal of mind. Renewal of 
 mind is open-mindedness, sensitiveness to every progressive 
 urge. It means every environment of light, revelation, 
 growth is the means of development. 
 
 The spirit of today is not that of looking backward, but 
 peering forward. All our most vital interest is in psychic 
 phenomena, what lies beyond death. The same spirit pos- 
 sesses us in other directions. We are seeking a new heaven 
 and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. We do 
 not talk of the good old times, but we are ready for the 
 better new times. Once we prized the traditional, now we 
 cherish the evolutional. We want, not to back up or bolster 
 up our civilization by ancient citation, but we want to bring 
 it into the providence of a friendly future. 
 
 If you would unfold higher powers you must be sus- 
 ceptible to higher ideas. You must cease timidity in face 
 of a truth which is unusual. If we had told Franklin to 
 quit fooling with lightning v/e would never have had elec- 
 tricity. If the world had told Robert Fulton to quit boiling 
 water to make a boat go, we would never have been globe- 
 trotters. So in the realm of mind and spirit, if you are 
 afraid of new ideas, new ways — which are coming — you are 
 not conforming to your world and must drop out of the pro- 
 cession. As for me, I am going to transform by renewing 
 my mind. With Emerson, I will change my mind every 
 day if necessary, and dare to think a bolder, bigger thought 
 tomorrow. 
 
 Once they burned men for heresy. Now they simply 
 blister them with cruel and unjust criticism. But boiled in 
 oil or blistered in bitter words, it matters not; with Paul, 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 87 
 
 I am going to press on, unfold, go from glory to glory until 
 I bring forth my divinest self, my hidden energies which 
 give me ability and plenty. 
 
 The law of unfoldment demands complete faith in the 
 untapped reservoir of your possible powers. There is an 
 ebb and flow of mental power in creative work, if you 
 operate merely from the conscious side. You will often 
 only create when the mood is just right. Much of the 
 finest work in this fashion. But this mood is the 
 fitful outcrop of an abiding ability in you, and if under 
 the law of unfoldment you must seek its expressions, I 
 advise you to continue this chapter by reading Prof. William 
 James' "Hidden Energies of Man." You will note at 
 greater length than I can give how you can unfold the 
 super-powers inherent within you. 
 
 Then there is reliance upon what we call the sub- 
 conscious processes. You can develop the habit of sleeping 
 upon matters, problems and plans. That is, you can lodge 
 and leave a matter in your sub-conscious mind to be worked 
 out. If you rely upon this procedure, you will marvel at 
 your gains in creative ability. The very fact that we have 
 had prodigies among children before their conscious minds 
 could come into constructive power is proof of the vast 
 innate abilities of the sub-conscious. Think of Mozart 
 playing the piano at three years of age and composing at 
 eight. Then there was Zerah Coburn, the mathematical 
 expert of eight years of age. There are numerous other 
 examples, but they all point to the obtruding of the sub- 
 conscious power, which is the source of all ability and 
 genius. The exceptional evidence only emphasizes a pos- 
 sible universal procedure. Lodge and leave things in the 
 sub-conscious and learn how to create in an unusual degree. 
 
 Finally, recognize the conquering power of self-confi- 
 dence. Never doubt that you have ability. Never suggest 
 a lack to yourself or confess a weakness to anoljher. 
 
88 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 Realize that you are untapped reservoirs, full of power 
 and use. "If we choose to be no more than clods of 
 clay, then we shall be used as clods of clay for braver 
 feet," is the way Marie Corelli challenges your self-confi- 
 dence. Of course this is not conscious egotism. Conceit 
 is insufferable and its own destroyer. If we will always 
 remember that we do much when we are put to it. We show 
 no lack of confidence when we are challenged by an unavoid- 
 able task. At such times we become surcharged and we 
 marshal all of our forces for the big drive. This is a fact 
 which we forget or ignore. That we prove what we can do 
 when we have to must be made the basis of the usual 
 method. We are all inclined to the line of least resistance. 
 But knowing that you are capable of immeasurable ability, 
 habituate yourself to a "woe me, if I fail of the divine 
 intention!" 
 
 Creative ability has three everyday aspects: the plodder, 
 the pusher, the perfecter. 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 Ci)e Secret of d^riginalitj* 
 
 HE creative faculty in the individual is the only 
 key to open all the doors of ability and plenty. 
 Until we trust our inherent powers and make 
 the imperative demand for the hidden energies 
 to deliver first-hand material, we remain 
 mediocre. We can never create anything of lasting value 
 or enduring satisfaction until we can uncover the streak of 
 forgotten gold which seams our souls. 
 
 The world passes through eras when it produces little, 
 if anything, that is original. These periods are marked by 
 clever imitators and skillful plagairists. But these copy- 
 book ages never leave a mark in history. They pass away 
 and are gone from the mind and memory of man. The 
 shades of geniuses hover sad and outraged over a shoddy 
 world. None suffer more than the musical composers, who 
 must endure the barbaric syncopation of their classics. This 
 is a sample of what failure to call forth the original spirit 
 brings to our time. 
 
 So long as Japan was an isolated empire, her people 
 were great. Their art of lacquer, their remarkable natur- 
 alism in painting, the weird reaches of their ceramics, their 
 metal craftmanship, were all the perfect flower of their own 
 genius. Today they have degenerated into a race of un- 
 scrupulous imitators. 
 
 All this is an appeal by the warnings of history, for the 
 culture of originality. But to begin with, what is origin- 
 ality? 
 
 Originality is the disposition and the courage to trust 
 your own thought, your own expression and to know as it 
 is true for you so it is true for the world. It leaves no 
 
90 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 place for timidity. You must believe and know that you 
 can do a thing in a way to claim recognition and appreci- 
 ation. The power of silent demand will bring forth your 
 product in lines of excellence and worth. 
 
 Emerson says, "In every work of genius we recognize 
 our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a 
 certain, alienated majesty." The one v/ho uttered them 
 merely had the faith and courage to lift up his voice. So 
 he was given the acclaim which was also ours. Sometimes 
 one comes along who discovers us to ourselves. He knows 
 we have a treasure chest of noble thoughts and sweet fancies. 
 He can cause us to bring forth the spirit-spun fabric of a 
 lofty dream. He can extract the gems of Divine Wisdom 
 which we have laid away. What a brilliant array they be- 
 come in the setting of his understanding sympathy. Would 
 that we had Christopher Columbuses enough to come to 
 the virgin shores of all these empires of our human minds. 
 
 Our self-discovery is better. The soul's Declaration of 
 Independence, as we may call the force of originality, 
 should arm us to win with our own inherent worth. There 
 is a divine consciousness within which holds unfathomed 
 resource. Relying upon it, bravely and resolutely, will 
 bring our wares to market. The world is a hard customer 
 but it cannot withstand the brilliance of that which is alto- 
 gether new and original. If your demand upon yourself 
 is big enough and your dare for your idea is indifferently 
 bold enough, the world will beat upon your back door for 
 a crust of your favor. 
 
 So we need to believe that our thought is not too be 
 despised or rejected simply because it may not conform to 
 certain rhetorical standards. Genius and grammar have 
 often been sworn enemies. At least genius spurns the petty 
 in speech, to make its thought great. If you have on over- 
 mastering thought, a burning idea, have confidence in it. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 91 
 
 Give it utterance. It may be the word for history. Even 
 crude, unlettered men have changed empires by a phrase. 
 The Hall of Fame may be any country lane where boys 
 play and portray their inborn aptitudes. We have enough 
 potential genius among our youth to make a new heaven 
 and a new earth. We ourselves could be miracle workers 
 if we called forth the gifts which slumber in the soul. 
 
 But we have the disposition today to think we can 
 only develop certain gifts by the use of props; rigid observ- 
 ance of arbitrary forms. 
 
 1. In play writing, people believe that everything de- 
 pends upon knowledge of dramatic structure. I have studied 
 Freytag and the best authorities. I wrote a successful play 
 before I did so. However my play would not be according 
 to Freytag. People enjoy it and it has all the elements of 
 dramatic action. Some of the truly great dramas have out- 
 raged every rule of so called technique. The dramatist had 
 a big, gripping theme of human interest. He knew how to 
 portray it through characters to whom he gave form, feel- 
 ing, speech and action. So the Indwelling Spirit alone 
 does the work here. 
 
 2. Today we have numberless courses in short-story 
 writing. Even our colleges have made a place for it. In 
 these, the story is dissected and its structure is analyzed. 
 Then the student is told how to build a story according to 
 the rules. But where did the first great story teller get his 
 rules? To whom did 0. Henry go for the right way to write 
 his modern popular classics? He went within and drew 
 from the creative power to see and feel the creatures of his 
 fancy as real as those about him in the flesh. Stories, great 
 stories, are created, not simply built. There is only one 
 secret, the power to draw upon the gift within to the full. 
 
 3. Preachers are raised up for our pulpits and are pre 
 pared and trained to write and deliver sermons. There are 
 
92 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 extensive courses in homiletics, the art of preaching. But of 
 what use is it all except to be boresome and wearisome, when 
 they have nothing to say. Being to the manner born, 1 can 
 testify that a man will throw his homiletics to the winds 
 when mind and soul are afire with Heavenly Wisdom. An 
 audience wants inspiration, courage, faith rather than firstly, 
 secondly and thirdly. To give them food, not courses, to 
 furnish the bread of life, is the one aim and end of all true 
 preaching. 
 
 All of this points to the one moral and applies to all 
 activity, fire away with both barrels in your way. 
 
 Originality rests upon certain attitudes of mind and 
 spirit. 
 
 Courage and fearless disregard for all brow beating con- 
 ventionalisms is to be counseled. The boy is the father of 
 the man of originality. Study a boy. See how, as Emerson 
 says, he gives independent, genuine verdict of persons and 
 things. He is fearless. He has faith in his own opinions. 
 He dares to state them in his own dogmatic way. His charm 
 is his naive scorn for standards. He is not easily squelched, 
 nor is it fair to walk rough shod over this first flowering of 
 his Divine Ego. God is letting the things which furnish 
 wings to his genius have a tryout. "Be careful with the 
 boy. You are dealing with soul stuff," aye, the soul stuff 
 of originality. 
 
 "Trust yourself," again urges Emerson. It is not original 
 to quote but I do this to show you the way a first hand soul 
 regards this one talisman. He made his choice early in 
 manhood. He cast behind him all conformity. When he 
 was back to the Source Within, then, he began to be the sage. 
 And how did he utter his innate wisdom? He blurted it 
 out in classic phrase and gave a Metaphysical Scripture to 
 our own age. He becomes the clew to self-expression. His 
 challenge to dare and his counsel to demand your own and 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 93 
 
 have faith in it, has given us the new Philosophy, the Ap- 
 plied Psychology of this present period. Be true to yourself 
 and trust the gift within you. 
 
 There are no rules for originality, for then it ceases as 
 such. I can, however, suggest things which you can do to 
 help discover and develop faith in your peculiar gifts. 
 
 It is well to meditate and commune deeply with yourself. 
 Get into the silence. Draw apart from the world and a per- 
 ception of the sensory. Peer down deep into your nature 
 as if looking down a well. Make this a practice until you 
 are able to see the spring of crystal originality, your own 
 aptitude. It will happen that some day you will definitely 
 know what you can do differently and you will dare to do it. 
 
 Observe life in your own way. Get at the soul of things. 
 Never stop with the names of things. These are merely for 
 identification. The soul is for education. This penetrative 
 power will help you to discover yourself. You may be the 
 means of furnishing some invention or improvement which 
 is valuable to industry or safety. Watts watched a tea-kettle 
 and leaped from that to the steam engine. 
 
 A lumberman in a noble forest saw so many feet of 
 lumber for the happy homes of men and women. The 
 artist saw there the corridors of time, the dim reaches of 
 Eternal Mystery. He painted the picture which adorns the 
 walls of the State Capitol at St. Paul, Minnesota. The 
 musician saw the storm-strained pines, through which all 
 the elemental symphonies of nature surge, as trees getting 
 ready to be violins! And the philosopher saw the mighty 
 lesson of the rectitude and love of God evidenced by the 
 straight trunks and the sweet, singing branches. Thus every 
 original gift to the world has come because some one took 
 notice of the common things and saw in them potentialities 
 of blessing and power. 
 
 Constantly rely upon your sub-conscious powers. Within 
 
94 CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 
 
 you are all the materials out of which poets, musicians, 
 writers, inventors and every profession, are made. Your 
 power to objectify what is in subjective solution, is the great 
 need. As you can visualize, materialize and express what 
 is latent, you cause your original powers to function per- 
 fectly. So not only trust your sub-conscious powers, but 
 talk to them. Make silent and insistent demands. It is a 
 good thing to place an order with your inner mind and then 
 quietly know it will be filled. And you will learn to know 
 just when the order is ready for delivery. This lesson is 
 written for you in this fashion. Under pressure of a multi- 
 tude of duties, this last chapter had to be in the hands of 
 the linotyper at a certain time. That time was set and so 
 the order for this in completeness was put in. And I went 
 to bed. 
 
 As I have written this on the following morning, the full 
 lesson has come pouring out faster than my pen could take 
 it. This is a concrete evidence of what reliance upon the 
 sub-conscious will do for your original powers. You come 
 to know with Emerson, "Nothing is at last sacred but the 
 integrity of your own mind." 
 
 You feed the fires of creative ability through obedience 
 to every uplift of soul. God breaks through our coarser 
 garments of sense with the Divine Fire. Illumined by it we 
 behold far reaches of ability for us to ascend. And under 
 this high-born inspiration we mount up to the unmeasured 
 powers within. So dare to obey the high call. Let out 
 that surge of soul in some concrete, constructive wo'k. You 
 can become increasingly sensitive to the finer and diviner in 
 this way and there will be no limit to your ability and hence 
 to the sources of plenty. 
 
 The last thing to observe and to conserve for creative 
 originality, is love of Truth. Truth is the all unity of the 
 mind. Truth is the great recognition that all men, animals. 
 
CREATIVE ABUNDANCE 95 
 
 plants, all created things are visible expressions of Invisible. 
 Presence, God in all. Now the further you penetrate into 
 the nature of things, the more you become absorbed in the 
 revelations of Infinite Life in infinite expression. And you 
 draw from this the final knowledge that you too bear the 
 imprint of the same capacity. So you dare to think, to 
 speak, to create. 
 
 From the knowledge that I am an instrument through 
 which Creative Intelligence can flow, has come every truly 
 satisfying achievement in life. One no longer hesitates be- 
 fore obstacles. The tremendous odds which timid men see 
 no longer exist. But armed with divine assurance, one 
 opens up the channels for the free flow of spirit. And 
 through you the streams of Intelligence flow out into visible 
 evidences of ability and plenty. 
 
 Open wide the gates of your Being. All that God has of 
 abundance is at hand. Reposeful assurance that it can flow 
 to you, opens the gates. This knowledge floods your facul- 
 ties with faith, courage and knowledge. The tides of cre- 
 ative power raise each ability to superlative power and you 
 begin to achieve beyond all standards of achievement. In- 
 deed in this knowledge and method of living, I assure you 
 there is not only unlimited originality but also super-genius. 
 It should so thrill you that you will never halt with con- 
 fessions of lack, limitation or impotence but armed with 
 high resolve, call forth your powers and do differently and 
 splendidly the work of your hands. Ability is within you. 
 Plenty will come to you, if you will let the Creative Intel- 
 ligence completely use you. 
 
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