GIFT OF Estate of Florence Walr MORE POWER TO YOU MORE POWER TO YOU FIFTY EDITORIALS FROM EVERY WEEK BY BRUCE BARTON NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1922 Copyright, 1917, by THE CENTURY Co. Copyright, 1915, 1916, 1917, by EVERY WEEK CORPORATION Published September, 1917 Printed in U. S. A. To come down to the office in the morn- ing and find letters from friends whom one has never seen, but who prove by their letters how very real is their friendship To have the privilege of visiting in the homes of hundreds of thousands such friends every week, and saying frankly whatever happens to be on one's mind, with no fear of being misunderstood This is almost more wealth than any one man ought to enjoy. I am very grateful. I wish I could say it more convincingly so convincingly that every one of the readers of " Every Week " might feel that to him, or to her, personally, I have dedicated this little book. -19801 CONTENTS CHAPTER PACE ^ I "No ROOM IN THE INN" .... 3 II THE FABLE OF A CERTAIN KING WHO SOUGHT A NEW PLEASURE ... 6 III YOUR BODY MAY LIVE IN A CELLAR; BUT IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT IF YOUR MIND LIVES THERE n IV CUT DOWN YOUR NECESSITIES AND You WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD A FEW LUXURIES 16 V Do You BORE YOURSELF? .... 20 * VI ABOUT MAKING MONEY 25 VII SHOULD WE BE SENT TO JAIL FOR EATING THE WRONG FOOD? ... 29 VIII Do You LIVE IN A HOME OR ONLY IN A HOUSE? 33 - IX BEING A REAL PRODUCER .... 36 X PERHAPS You DON'T DREAM ENOUGH 39 XI A LESSON FROM LUICI 44 XII I WOULD IF HE WERE MY BOY . . 48 Contents CHAPTER PAGE XIII Music Is NOT MERELY ENTERTAIN- MENT: IT Is ALSO MEDICINE ... 53 W * XIV A FEW KIND WORDS FOR BUSINESS . 57 XV SOME POOR BLIND FOLK HAVE NEVER SEEN A MIRACLE 62 XVI I REASSURE A MOTHER 66 XVII IF You WANT TO KNOW WHETHER YOUR BRAIN Is FLABBY, FEEL OF YOUR LEGS 70 XVIII Do BABIES LIKE You? THAT'S A PRETTY GOOD TEST 74 XIX Now WILL You STOP THAT SUNDAY WORK? 78 sf XX ASK ANY SUCCESSFUL MAN . . . 82 XXI IF You CAN GIVE YOUR SON ONLY ONE GIFT, LET IT BE ENTHUSIASM 86 XXII HAVE You CEASED TO STUDY? IF so, GOOD NIGHT 90 XXIII A MAN ASKS, "WHAT Is YOUR FAV- ORITE BOOK?" 94 XXIV THIS HOARY-HEADED FALSEHOOD HAS LIVED LONG ENOUGH 99 XXV IN APPRECIATION OF MOTHERS . . .103 */ XXVI THE LESSON OF A FAILURE . . . . 108 Contents CHAPTER PAGE XXVII WHEN A BOY KNOWS MORE THAN His FATHER m XXVIII BUILDING MATERIALS FOR CASTLES IN SPAIN HAVE NOT ADVANCED AT ALL 116 * XXIX Too MANY MEN STILL BELIEVE IN PERPETUAL MOTION 121 XXX YOUR OWN LITTLE BED Is YOUR BEST M. D 126 ^ XXXI THERE Is A GREAT DEAL OF ENCOUR- AGEMENT IN HISTORY FOR MOST OF Us 131 XXXII You SHOULD NOT WORRY . . . .135 XXXIII THOUGHTS ON LYING ON MY BACK AND READING A SEED CATALOGUE . . .138 XXXIV ON TAKING MY OLD FISHING-POLE OUT OF WINTER STORAGE . . .143 XXXV IT'S A GOOD OLD WORLD IF You KNOW How TO BREATHE 148 XXXVI WM. HOHENZOLLERN, LOCK Box i, BERLIN 153 XXXVII GENERALLY SPEAKING, A JOB Is GOOD IN PROPORTION TO THE AMOUNT OF STUDY REQUIRED TO MASTER IT . .158 XXXVIII THE TIMES THAT TRY MEN'S SOULS . 163 XXXIX "THEREWITH TO BE CONTENT" . . 167 Contents CHAPTER PAGE ^ XL "THE BUSINESS ... Is UNDRA- MATIC" 171 XLI SOME MEN LOSE FIVE MINUTES EARLY IN LIFE AND NEVER FIND IT AFTER- WARD 176 XLII THE IMMORTALITY OF INFLUENCE . .181 XLIII SOME DAY YOUR EMPLOYER WILL WANT TO KNOW WHY You Do NOT PLAY MORE 186 tf XLIV A LETTER TO A YOUNG MAN WHO WANTS A BETTER JOB . . . .190 XLV IF You WERE TO WRITE YOUR OWN EPITAPH, WHAT COULD You HON- ESTLY SAY? 195 XLVI IF You WANT TO KNOW How MUCH You OUGHT TO GET, FIND OUT How MUCH You HAVE TO GIVE . . .199 XLVII DOES YOUR RESPECT FOR FOLKS GROW GREATER OR LESS AS You Go ALONG 204 XLVIII OF COURSE THERE Is A SANTA CLAUS 209 XLIX "I DREAD THE END OF THE YEAR" . 213 L " IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?" 217 MORE POWER TO YOU MORE POWER TO YOU " NO ROOM IN THE INN " DID you ever stop to think of the tra- gedy of the little hotel at Bethlehem in Palestine the " inn " ? The parents of Jesus of Nazareth knocked at its doors, and could not come in. It might have sheltered the greatest event in the history of the world : and it lost the chance. Why? Why was Jesus of Nazareth born in a stable? Because the people at the inn were vicious or hostile? Not at all. But the inn was full every room was occupied by people who had money to pay and so must be served it was full of Business. There was " no room in the inn." 3 4 More Power to You I know men whose lives are like that inn. " Arnold's heart is broken," said one man to another recently; " his son is a failure and a fool." " What can you expect?" the other an- swered. u Arnold has not given his boy a minute's time for ten years." Arnold thinks he is a good father: he has often told his friends that he is work- ing night and day in Business for his wife and boy. As a matter of fact, his Business is working him. There is no room in his life for anything else. And his son is a fool. " You had quite a taste for literature when you left college, didn't you?" I asked another man. " Oh, yes," he answered sadly; "but I had to give all that up. A man can't be in Business and find room for anything else." " I hear Simpson's wife has left him," I heard a third man say; and his compan- ion replied; "No Room in the Inn" 5 " She got tired spending her evenings alone, probably. You know, Simpson al- ways says Business comes first." In a little village church-yard in Eng- land there is this inscription: Here lies Peter Bacon, born a man ana died a grocer. Take care that it be not written over you, " Born a man and died a Business man." Make good; but do not sacrifice, in making good, the gifts of life that are best Take care to have time for something besides Business for your family, for good books, for an occasional hour when you merely walk under the stars and think. For in Bethlehem, two thousand years ago, there stood a little inn. And behold, it was so full of Business that the great- est event in the world knocked at its doors and could not come in. II THE FABLE OF A CERTAIN KING WHO SOUGHT A NEW PLEASURE NOW, in a great country there lived a certain King who ruled over vast possessions. He had one daughter, a beautiful princess. And behold, though the King possessed everything that money could buy, houses and lands and cattle and servants and automobiles, he was weary of life. For he said, There is no pleasure in it. And he wrote a proclamation, and caused it to be published in his dominions, that whoever would invent a new pleasure for his amusement should receive the hand of his daughter in marriage. Thereupon appeared a young man who bowed low and said: " O King, live for- 6 The Fable of a King j ever. I have invented a new pleasure; but to enjoy it you must do precisely as I say." Whereupon the King's heart was very glad. He smiled upon the young man and promised. The next morning the young man was early at the palace, and had the King out of bed before daybreak, and the princess and all the little princes. Together they journeyed a long way by foot and street-car into the country. They saw a wonderful sight in the sky, and the young man explained to the King that it was called a sunrise. They passed brooks, and the princes took off their shoes and stockings and waded in them. They wandered through cool woods and picked flowers. Finally, at about the middle of the day, the King said: " I have a strange feeling under my belt which I have never felt be- fore. 7 ' And the young man answered and said: * That, your Majesty, is called hunger. You have never had it because you never 8 More Power to You got enough fresh air into your system be- fore to create it." And the little princes, too, began to cry out that they also had queer feelings under their belts. Whereupon the young man produced a large basket covered with a white cloth, and opened it. And behold, there were sandwiches, and fruits, and olives, and cold chicken, and coffee in a tin bucket, and cake, and divers other foods, all daintily packed. And the King could not restrain his hand, but dove in and ate for half an hour or more ; and then lay under the trees and looked up at the sky and smoked. And the princes raced about the woods and played Indian, and no one watched over them or bade them nay; for there was nothing they could possibly harm. And toward nightfall they journeyed back to the palace; and the little princes, who had always to be pampered and read to at night to get them to sleep, fell asleep on their beds with their clothes on. And the King, having had a bath and a The Fable of a King 9 rub-down, settled back on the royal piazza with a fifty-cent cigar in his mouth, and smiled for the first time in months, and called for the young man. And the young man appeared and said : * Your Majesty, it was some day, was it not? " And the King admitted that it was. 4 Thou hast made good," saith the King, " and my daughter, the beautiful princess, is inside at the piano. But, first, give me the bill for this wonderful new pleasure; for I will pay for it." And the young man handed him a bill for one dollar and twenty-three cents. Whereupon the King was exceeding wroth, and cried out: " Dost think I am a cheap skate? Is a pleasure that costs only one dollar and twenty-three fit for a king?" And he called the Captain of the Guard and ordered that the young man should be shot at sunrise. Moral: You and I had some bully times, when we were kids, on those old picnics with sandwiches that the ants io More Power to You crawled over and coffee full of pine needles. But we would n't dare take our kids on a picnic perish the thought! The neighbors would think we were cheap skates. Pack up the dinner-coat, mother. We 're off to Atlantic City with the year's savings. Ill YOUR BODY MAY LIVE IN A CELLAR; BUT IT 'S YOUR OWN FAULT IF YOUR MIND LIVES THERE THE other night my friend Ferrero and I spent a few years with JulitJs Caesar in ancient Rome. We went with him on his campaigns in Gaul. Those were wonderful battles wonderful fighters. From a hill-top we could watch the whole battle thousands of men driving at each other with their swords, hurling their javelins at short range. No smoke, no trenches; just primitive, hand-to-hand conflict. We came back to Rome. The city was in a turmoil. Our great chariots thun- dered through the streets in triumph; our captives, our spoils, our banners made a magnificent procession. The crowds cheered wildly. ii 12 More Power to You Another evening my friend Green and I had a great time together in ancient Britain. We went down to Runnymede with a group of English nobles. They were powerful men, each a petty king in his own section; but every one of them took his life in his hand on that expedition. And there we gathered around King John, and forced him, against his will, to put his name to the Magna Charta, the Great Charter which is the foundation of English liberties and our own. I had a fine time with Napoleon a few nights before. I met him when he landed in France, after the escape from Elba. Up through the southern provinces he came, gathering a few troops there, win- ning over by the force of his eloquence the regiments sent to capture him. We arrived in Paris. Hurriedly, but with supreme confidence that the Little Corporal could never fail, we got together a makeshift army and set out to strike the winning blow at Waterloo. Your Mind 13 That battle I shall never forget it. Another day I went over to old Con- cord, and spent the whole afternoon with Emerson. We talked about Representative Men. Well, well, you say, what foolishness is this? What do you mean by saying you lived with Caesar and Napoleon and Em- erson all centuries apart, all long since dead? If you do not know what I mean, then I pity you. Have you never come home tired from your office, and with a book transported your foolish little mind clear out of the present day? Have you never learned the joy of sur- rendering yourself to the companionship of the great men of the past? Have you never sat in the little London Club and heard Sam Johnson thunder his philosophy of life? Have you never sailed up and down the American coast with Captain John Smith, dodging the Indians and opening up a new continent? 14 More Power to You Are you one of the wretched, poverty- stricken souls who have never learned to escape from yourself through the blessed magic of good books? Have you contented yourself all your life with the companionship of good pinochle-players, when you might have been a familiar friend of Socrates and Milton and Napoleon and Cromwell and Washington and Columbus and Shake- speare and Lincoln and Rousseau? If so, cut out this paragraph from a great man and paste it in your hat : / would rather be a beggar y and dwell in a garret, than a king who did not love books. There are some marvelous experiences coming to you. You can in the evenings to come jar yourself out of the petty rut where circum- stance has placed you, and become a fa- miliar of the immortals. You may learn to face the world with a new confidence, a new poise, a new self- respect, because you have made yourself a citizen of the ages. Your Mind 15 Do some real reading. Do it for the joy it will give you: do it for the good it will do you. " Show me a family of readers/' said Napoleon, " and I will show you the people who rule the world." IV CUT DOWN YOUR NECESSITIES, AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD A FEW LUXURIES MOST of us do not have incomes large enough to provide both the things we need and the things we want. We are forced to choose between our necessities and our luxuries. And, very foolishly, we choose to offer up the luxuries. Thus our existence becomes dull and monotonous. We can hardly be said really to live: our lives are lived for us cut out and sewed together by the habits and customs of the class to which we belong. I have established a very good rule, which I pass on to you: Never do any- thing just because other people do it. Most of your friends live in city apart- 16 Cut Down Your Necessities 17 ments. They pay so much for the use of their rooms, and twice as much for the location and the fine marble hallway. To live in an apartment like theirs is one of your " necessities." If you cut out that necessity, and lived in the country or in an apartment where you had to stretch your legs up three flights of stairs, you would have some money to spend on luxuries. So with many other things. Every year, by cutting out a few foolish necessities, I buy myself one big, wise luxury. Four years ago I bought an automobile. Not much of an automobile. Many of my friends said they would rather not have any automobile than to have one like mine. But it was an automobile. It has done some wonderful things for me. For one thing, it has given me my little summer place up in the country. A modest old white Colonial house, with a brook running behind it, and fruit trees all around a place I had wanted for i8 More Power to You years, but could not have because it was two miles from the railroad. But two miles is nothing, even to an automobile like mine. So I can work in the city and play all summer in the country thanks to my automobile. It has done some other good things for me. It has improved the country roads between my little white house and town. Before the automobiles began to go by, the roads were very rough. But now all across the country-side mud puddles and deep ruts have vanished as if by magic. The automobile has made the town " dress up." And it has made me " dress up " my place, also. Have you ever noticed how many more flowers are planted around farm-houses than formerly were? Do you want to know why that is ? I will tell you. It used to make me mad because people who whirled by my place in limousines never stopped to look around. " I '11 make them turn their proud heads/' I said. So I planted flowers and painted my house. Cut Down Your Necessities 19 Now, on Sunday afternoons, I lie in the hammock on my porch and listen to people in the cars saying to each other: "What a pretty little place that is! I wonder who lives there? " That 's why there are more flowers than there used to be the automobile has done that. With a tin pail full of coffee and a basket of sandwiches, I have had more fun exploring the wood roads around my place than Columbus ever had in discovering America. My automobile has brought my office and my little white house side by side. It has given me a new pride in my place. It has improved the roads around me. Yes, and it has made me a good neigh- bor to people whom I have wanted to call on for years, and never brought myself to it, because I hate long, hot rides on the street cars. It has made me a better citi- zen all around. Gasoline is very high this year. I shall have to cut out some other fool- ish necessity. V DO YOU BORE YOURSELF? RIDING on a train the other day, I got to watching a man whose con- dition was really pathetic. He had forgotten to bring a book or a magazine ; there was no one in the car with whom he could talk. For one of the few times in his life, he was utterly alone in the world: and he was utterly miserable. Cast on his own resources, he discov- ered that there were inside of him no reservoirs of thought or interest where his dusty soul might be refreshed. He was thrown unexpectedly into his own company, and he bored himself terribly. His was not an exceptional case : on the contrary, he was rather typical of the ordinary modern man. In olden days, when towns were more scattered, distances greater, and life less 20 Do You Bore Yourself? 21 complex, men were accustomed to be alone for hours and even days, and could stand it. The modern man must be talking, or he must be reading, or he must be playing: anything lest by accident he be left alone for a little time and compelled to think. * The world/' as Wordsworth said, " is too much with us." I would not have any man unsocial. He who withdraws himself from his fel- low men lessens his service and impover- ishes his life, no matter what work of art may come out of his solitude. But it would do the world good if every man in it would compel himself occasion- ally to be absolutely alone. Away from people, who blunt the edges of his personality: away from books and magazines, which give him his thinking pre-digested : away on a long walk, where he could face the world with a naked mind and compel himself to think some things through by himself. Most of the world's progress has come out of periods of such loneliness. 22 More Power to You Moses was a social being, a political leader, whose success was in his power to handle an unruly crowd. But Moses' great contribution to the world the Ten Commandments came down from the mountain-top where he had climbed alone. It was out of the silence that Samuel's call came; and Mohammed's; and Joan of Arc's. To Lincoln, poor struggling lawyer, there once came an offer from a great rail- road to become its general counsel at $10,000 a year. He did not seek advice, though friends offered it freely. One day he appeared at his office an hour later than usual, and announced that he had made his de- cision. He had risen early and walked out to the little grove on the edge of Springfield where most of his decisions were made, and there had wrestled the thing out alone. John C. Calhoun once told a friend that he " had early subjected his mind to such Do You Bore Yourself? 23 a rigid course of discipline, and had per- sisted without faltering until he had ac- quired a perfect control over it; that he could now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased without wandering even for a moment; that it was his habit, when he set out alone for a walk or a ride, to select a subject for reflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander from it until he was satisfied with its exam- ination." " How do you wish to be shaved, sir? " Daniel Webster's barber once asked him. To which the great man replied: " In silence, sir." There is no great success without con- centration: and no concentration in minds that have not been disciplined to long- continued, self-reliant thought. Store your mind with thoughts worth while: be independent of the world of chatter yes, even occasionally of the world of books. For in this lies the secret of a virile personality and the key to contentment 24 More Power to You The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Wise men stock their heaven with good things, and carry it always with them. Tl ABOUT MAKING MONEY IT is easy to be hypocritical on the sub ject of money. We have formed a habit of pretending publicly to despise money, while actually working our heads off to get more of it. We make speeches to young men advis- ing them to " seek the higher good," and hurry straightway to our offices to make up for lost time. Let us have done with such hypocrisy. We are all out to make money; nor is there anything reprehensible in that fact. Wise old Sam Johnson said: " There are few occupations in which men can be more harmlessly employed than in mak- ing money." It is not " money " that is the " root of all evil," as we often misquote, but " the love of money." 25 26 More Power to You How much of yourself are you willing to sell for money? The answer to that question is none of my business. It is a personal question - a question for you to ask yourself. But if you are the sort of person I think you are, your answer to it will be some- thing like this : There are some things I am not willing to sell for money. / will not sell my health. Not for all the money in the world will I die twenty years before my time, as Harriman did; nor spend my old age drinking hot water, like John D. Rockefeller. I will not sell my home. I will forget my business when I leave my office. My home shall be a place of rest and high thinking and peace not a mere annex to my factory or office, where the talk is of nothing but gains and loss. / will not sell my honor. I will not engage in any business, no matter what the profit, that does not contribute something to the happiness and progress of the world. About Making Money 27 King Midas, in a fit of covetousness, prayed that everything he touched might turn to gold. And his prayer was granted. The food he was lifting to his mouth turned to gold : his wife, if he had touched her, would have turned to gold. There are too many King Midases loose in the world. They do not have the Midas touch: they have the Midas look. They see nothing but money. A beautiful garden to them is merely something that " must have cost a thou- sand dollars." They look on their homes and they see, not a home, but an expense of so much a month. They look on their wives, and figure how much less it cost them to live when they lived alone. The universe, to them, is a balance- sheet: their minds are adding-machines : their hearts beat in tune with the ticker. God pity them the men with the Midas look! 28 More Power to You Get money but stop once in a while to figure what it is costing you to get it. No man gets it without giving some- thing in return. The wise man gives his labor and ability. The fool gives his life. VII SHOULD WE BE SENT TO JAIL FOR EATING THE WRONG FOOD? IN Erewhon people were sent to jail for eating the wrong food. Ever hear of Erewhon? It is a mythical country which a man named Samuel Butler wrote about. This is what I gathered [says Samuel Butler], That in that country, if a man falls into ill health or catches any disorder, or fails bodily before he is seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of his countrymen, and if convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced to jail. . . . But if a man forges a cheque, or sets a house on fire, or does any other such things as are criminal in our country, he is either taken to a hospital and most carefully tended at the public expense, or, if he is in good circumstances, he lets it be known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe fit of immorality, just as we do when we are ill; and they come and visit him with great solici- 29 30 More Power to You tude, and inquire with interest how it all came about, what symptoms first showed themselves, etc. questions which he will answer with per- fect unreserve. Butler says he visited a court in Ere- whon, and saw prisoners being sentenced for eating improperly and otherwise in- juring their health. To one hardened criminal the judge said: " Prisoner at the bar, you have been accused of the great crime of laboring under pulmonary consumption, and, after an impartial trial before a jury of your countrymen, you have been found guilty. . . . This is not your first offense: you have had a long career of crime. You were con- victed of aggravated bronchitis last year; and I find that, although you are now only twenty-three years old, you have been imprisoned no less than fourteen times for illnesses of a more or less hate- ful character." In Erewhon, you see, the man who lets his health go to pieces is counted a greater criminal than the man who burns down a barn or forges a check. His health is a part of the State's as- Eating the Wrong Food 31 sets: by ruining it he defrauds the State, and makes himself liable to punishment. There is something to be said in favor of the Erewhon custom. We are too sympathetic with certain sorts of sick people. They are sick be- cause of their own bad habits usually because they eat too much or eat the wrong kind of food. They are very careful that the oil they buy for their automobiles shall be of pre- cisely the right grade, but they never stop to ask themselves, " Am I eating the food that is calculated to develop the maximum efficiency in my particular body at this par- ticular season of the year? " Instead of sending such people flowers, it would be better if we sent them to jail on a healthful diet of plain bread and water for a few weeks. They would come out cured. The Romans were wiser, as old Dr. Thomas Moffett tells us: The Romans once banished Physickians out of Rome under pretense that physick drugs weak- 32 More Power to You ened the people's stomacks; and cooks for cor- rupting and enforcing appetites with strange sawces and seasonings. Yet they retained Cato, chief dietiest of that time, and all of them that were able (without physick) to prevent and cure diseases. If you would banish physickians and do without physick, be your own Cato. Find out whether your food is building your system up or merely clogging it up. Give a little attention to this subject if you would be really well as much attention, for instance, as you give to discovering the proper oil for your automobile. VIII DO YOU LIVE IN A HOME OR ONLY IN A HOUSE? PEOPLE use words loosely. They speak of " owning a house " and " owning a home " as if both phrases meant the same. As a matter of fact, many a man who pays rent all his life owns his own home; and many a family has successfully saved for a home only to find itself at last with nothing but a house. I knew one such case. To " own their own home " became a perfect obsession with the family a false god to which everything else must be sacrificed. To swell the sacred fund, the father wore clothes so shabby that his business progress was retarded. The children were under-nourished, and two of them died. Life lost every vestige of sweet- 33 34 More Power to You ness in the driving struggle to scrimp and to pay. At length ambition was realized: they stepped through the door of the house on which the last cent had been paid. They had bought their house : but in the process they had destroyed their home. What is the ideal home? I should say, first of all, it is a " cozy " place, a place not too large. The Vatican has 15,000 rooms. The Pope could, if he would, sleep every night for forty years in a different room. The Winter Palace at Petrograd is so vast that, once when repairs were to be made on the roof, peasants were found living there in wooden shacks, their existence unsuspected by the glittering tenants underneath. But these palaces are not homes. The turtle does not construct a shell ten times larger than it needs; the bird does not spread her nest across a whole tree-top merely because materials happen to be at hand. Only man commits the foolish error of building a house too large to be a home. A Home or a House? 35 The ideal home is a place of rest. One can rest in a room simply furnished, but not in a department store or a museum. You would not fill your home with warring visitors: do not crowd it with pictures, bric-a-brac, and " souve- nirs " that jar and clash. And the home is a place of peace: A place where the soul is " restored"; where a few pictures suggest the fragrance and healing of the out-of-doors; where good books lift the tired mind out of it- self into the companionship of the wise and great of all ages; where love and sym- pathy conquer care. The cave-man who first piled stones to- gether into a rude hut did it to provide a shelter for his most precious possession, the sacred fire. There is a sacred fire that burns in every real home; an altar to restfulness and for- bearance and love. The man who can claim that altar, whether the shelter built about it be a mansion or only a single room, he it is who owns his own home. IX BEING A REAL PRODUCER HAVE you ever in your whole life raised anything out of the ground? Have you with your own hands planted a seed, watered it, tended it up through inf ancy to full growth, and finally sat down at your table to eat of its fruit? In these days of the infinite division of labor, when so many of us merely live off each other, there are millions of men and women who are born and die without ever once tasting that transforming experience. However much of books and travel they may have known, such people die un- educated. To them a sunset is merely a color in the west: a storm is an interference with the routine of their going about They have never looked into the sunset yearningly for promise of a warm day that will coax the buds upon their plants into 36 Being a Real Producer 37 fuller life: they have never stood and watched the leaves fairly leap to be watered by the rain. They have never once peeped back of the curtain of external things to see the miracle of God at work on His world. Every man and woman who can have access to a little piece of land no mat- ter how small ought to make a garden. Not for the sake of thrift alone, but for the development of his or her own character. God was the first gardener: He started the human race in a garden. From that day to this, whenever man has grown weary of the complexities of life, whenever his spirit has been dis- traught and sore, he has turned back to the land, and, with its soil on his fingers and its odor in his nostrils, has found heal- ing and calm. If you are the kind of man who thinks at all, you must have periods of depres- sion when it dawns on you that your job is a very artificial thing, not at all essential to the world's existence. 38 More Power to You " What 's the use?" you cry in such periods. " I am not needed. Abolish my store, or my factory, or my railroad, and the world would still go on. It would still be fed and clothed. I 'm not a pro- ducer of wealth: I merely help in the dis- tribution of what somebody else creates. The farmer is the only real producer." When that feeling comes over you, take a spade and go into your back yard and dig and plant something. Harvest time will come, and you can stand with your throat bared and shout defiance to the universe. " Behold," you may cry, " I am no longer a burden on any man; for I have delved in the earth and raised my own food. The world is richer this year by five bushels of potatoes and ten pecks of peas than it would have been had I not lived. I can look every man in the eye without shame. I have proved that I am independent of circumstance. I can, if need be, feed myself." PERHAPS YOU DON'T DREAM ENOUGH A CERTAIN man went to work for John D. Rockefeller in the early days. After he had been there a couple of weeks, Rockefeller dropped into his office one afternoon and said: 4 Just as soon as you get this job organ- ized I want you to look around for some one to turn it over to. Then you put your feet on the desk and dream out some way of making more money for the Standard Oil Company." It was a rather startling order for a new man to receive from his boss. Appar- ently it violated all the time-worn pre- cepts of business progress. Here was an employer willing to pay only small salaries to the kind of men who 39 40 More Power to You keep their heads forever bent over the desk, and reserving his big salaries for the kind of men who sit with their feet piled on the desk. A curious contradiction of all the First Reader stories. Yet there must be something in it: for on the foundation of that philosophy Rockefeller built the biggest fortune in the world. As a matter of fact, there is a great deal in it. The world would not have advanced very far had it not been for the contribu- tions of its dreamers. It would never have gained its steam- boat, nor its Atlantic cable, nor its wire- less telegraph, nor its electric light. It would never have acquired any really great enterprise. For a little enterprise may be rustled and worried into being: but a really great program or movement or business must be dreamed. Over in West Orange, New Jersey, I stood one day in Mr. Edison's laboratory, Do You Dream Enough? 41 talking with him. And as we talked I looked out across the huge expanse of con- crete factories stretching all around us. Shop after shop, all full of men and machines, all turning out their special part of the product. And a certain sense of awe came over me. To think, I said to myself, that all this huge pile of factories should have been spun out of one single little human brain. Thousands of tons of iron and concrete and brick and mortar, all built on what? On nothing but one man's ideas, and faith and dreams. Most of the work of carrying on the world is necessarily hard and dull and routine in character : and for it the world needs us men and women who can steel our souls against weariness and monotony, and press forward with good cheer. We are entitled to respect just in pro- portion as we do our work without grumbling, in a spirit of real devotion. We can not by the mere wishing become Edisons or Watts : it would be worse than folly for us to pile our feet upon the desk 42 More Power to You and say, " Go to, now; I will not work any longer : I will dream a dream." But almost any one of us could vastly increase the amount of imagination that he uses in his daily life. The faculty of vision, like any other human faculty, grows through exercise. It is easy to become so engrossed with the mere mechanics of business as to lose the habit of thought. Easy to say, " Yours received and contents noted " a certain number of times during the day, and go home with the notion that one has done a good day's work. When the really valuable work of the day could have been and should have been done under the shower-bath in the morning, or in the fif- teen minutes' walk across the park to the office. One man in a million wakes up, like Lord Byron, to " find himself famous." But the majority of famous men are not taken unawares by fame. On the wall of their minds hangs their own vision of what they ought to be and can be. Do You Dream Enough? 43 They are not surprised by success when it comes; because they have seen it coming, and planned out its coming, in their dreams. XI A LESSON FROM LUIGI HERE is a recipe for living a hundred years. It is not based upon any theory of mine. If it were it would be worthless. For I have not lived a hundred years. But Luigi Cornaro lived to be one hun- dred and two, and " died painlessly, as one who falls into sweet sleep." The formula is his. At thirty-six, the doctors said to Luigi : " Make your will; you have only a few months to live." At the end of the few months they came back expecting to sign his death certificate. To their surprise, they found him well. What had Luigi done? Taken medi- cine ? No. What he did was the simplest thing in 44 A Lesson from Luigi 45 the world. He merely stopped eating. Instead of three heavy meals a day, he substituted three very light ones. Instead of getting up from the table with a feel- ing of fullness, he got up feeling still hungry. Instead of half a dozen different dishes, he confined himself to one at each meal. And each day he ate the same dish, at the same time, and in the same amount. Year after year he continued to grow stronger. At seventy he was thrown from his horse, and again the doctors said: " No man of seventy can stand such an accident; you will die. " But so strong was Luigi that he was out of bed in no time at all. In his years of careful eating he made some important discoveries. He discovered, first, that the rule, * Whatever your appetite craves is good for you," is a bad rule. Many foods of which he was very fond proved bad for him : and some others which he had never liked proved to have just the nourish- ment that his system required. 46 More Power to You He discovered that u a man can not be a perfect physician of any one save of him- self alone. " In other words, that no physician could prescribe for him offhand a diet as well suited to his needs as he could prescribe for himself, after years of careful study of his own requirements. All women have an idea that men ought to eat a great deal. If a man is feeling badly, a woman's remedy is always to make him sit down to a large, appetizing meal. Luigi's women-folks were no different from others. When he was about eighty they gathered around him and persuaded him to increase his daily food allowance from twelve to fourteen ounces a day. As a result he nearly died. Then he went back to his twelve-ounce diet, and lived twenty-two years longer. " Most men," said a philosopher, " dig their graves with their teeth." Diogenes, seeing a young man going to a banquet, caught him and took him home, and rejoiced as if he had saved him from some great danger. A Lesson from Luigi 47 " If I were to assign any one thing as especially conducing to long life from a study of the habits of centenarians/' says Sir Henry Thompson, " it would be semi- starvation." " Semi-starvation " the word makes you gasp, but have no fear. You can cut down your eating a long way below where it is now and still be in no danger. Luigi's granddaughter reports that " during the latter part of his life the yolk of one egg sufficed for a meal and some- times two." If you would live long, eat very tem- perately of a few pure foods. This is one of the wisest lessons you can ever learn. It is the lesson from Luigi. XII I WOULD IF HE WERE MY BOY A MOTHER asked me recently to recommend a list of books for her boy to read. I answered: Start him with a u Life of Lincoln"; then a " Life of Washington"; then a "Life of Cromwell"; and Franklin's auto- biography. When he has read these, I will recommend some more. Do not buy these books for him. Take him to a book-store and let him buy them for himself. Let his library be his own library. The love of books is an intoxi- cating habit, like the love of liquor. If more boys were taught to haunt book- stores, fewer of them would haunt saloons. Then I went on to say: And don't forget that the best and big- gest and wisest book lies all around him 48 // He Were My Boy 49 and costs nothing. Do not let your boy grow up without some knowledge of the miracle of creation as it is exhibited in the growth of a garden of flowers. These books that I have recommended are the biographies of mighty men. Na- ture is the autobiography of Almighty God. No matter where you live or how busy you are, help your boy to make a garden. Perhaps you are penned up in an apart- ment. Never mind. Let him plant some- thing, if it be only a packet of seeds in a window-box. If you would expand his soul, fill it full of reverence. 4 The love of dirt," says Charles Dud- ley Warner, " is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleas- ures, eaten dirt, and sowed wild oats, drifted around the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. 50 More Power to You " The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world. " It is not simply beets and potatoes and string-beans that one raises in his well kept garden. There is life in the ground. It goes into the seeds; and it also, when stirred up, goes into the man who stirs it" Tell your boy the story of Antaeus. Antaeus was a giant, and it was one of Hercules' tasks to kill him. But Hercules discovered that every time he threw Antaeus to the ground, the giant came up stronger than ever. He had only to touch the soil to have his strength and courage renewed. Men are like that and boys. There is, first of all, health for the boy who digs in the ground. It is not by chance that so large a percentage of our successful men grew up bare-footed on the farm. There is discipline and respect for hon- est toil. No boy who has weeded a garden on his hands and knees, under the // He Were My Boy 51 hot sun, is likely to grow up to be a spend- thrift or a snob. And there is most of all rever- ence. " I often think, when working over my plants," said John Fiske, " of what Lin- naeus once said of the unfolding of a blos- som : 4 I saw God in His glory passing near me, and bowed my head in worship.' ' By all means, teach your boy the love of good books. But do not let him hold his books so close to his eyes that he fails to read the greatest mystery serial story in the world the serial story of which God writes a new and more wonderful in- stalment every spring. XIII MUSIC IS NOT MERELY ENTERTAIN- MENT: IT IS ALSO MEDICINE I LIKE grand opera music, and dislike grand opera. In the first place, grand opera costs too much. In the second place, it seems to me a hybrid art. Acting and singing no more belong together for me than read- ing and dancing. The acting of a play or the narration of a story carries me along with it. I can surrender myself to the illusion: identify myself with the charac- ters and forget everything in my interest in their affairs. But it is simply beyond me to feel any illusion concerning a love scene between two supposedly passionate young lovers, when the parts are sung by a burly Italian man and a burly German woman, both 52 Music Is Medicine 53 over forty years old and more than forty stone in weight. The only way I can enjoy the acting of opera is to close my eyes. Furthermore, I like to be able to start my opera and stop it when I want to; to smoke if I like, or lie down if I like ; and, finally, to be able to leave when I get ready, without feeling that I am losing any money by doing so. In other words, I like my opera on a machine. Music is not merely entertainment: it is medicine. Pythagoras, who lived many hundred years ago, discovered that. He was able to work wonders in cases of violent in- sanity with no other remedy than soothing music. Esquirol, the celebrated French alien- ist, said: " Music acts most powerfully on the physical and moral nature, and I use it constantly in mental disease. It soothes and calms the patient's mind, and, though it may not cure, it is a most pre- cious agent and ought not to be neglected." 54 More Power to You Gladstone, attacked by occasional periods of nervous exhaustion, would have his favorite hymns sung to him. Herbert Spencer, when neuralgia shot him through, lay down and ordered soft music played, and invariably obtained re- lief. And I, in my humble fashion, have the same experience. I like to go home in the evening before dinner, and lie down for half an hour and listen to my favorite music. If I need stimulation, there are stimulat- ing pieces; if relaxation, there are selec- tions that relax; if sleep, there are songs that carry one over pleasant pastures and lay one down under fragrant apple trees to peaceful slumber. Music is a mental and spiritual mas- sage, or a bracing cold shower bath, ac- cording to what you select. I personally do not care to take my spiritual massage in the Metropolitan Opera House, any more than I would care to have my hair cut in Madison Square Garden. Every child should grow up in a home Music Is Medicine 55 where music is constantly played. Every experience of a happy youth should have some particular song bound up with it, so that the playing of that song in after life will reawaken that experience and cause it to be lived again. I can never hear Handel's " Largo " without living over one of the quiet Sun- days of my boyhood, because it was played in our house almost every Sunday. " Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," brings back a memory to me that is peculiarly intimate and sweet. There are a hundred favor- ites each calling its own particular bit of grand opera back into my memory a fragment of the opera of my own life. Do not deny your child the blessed min- istry of music. It is one of the rarest gifts. Sweeten his soul with it. Perhaps you may even be able to teach him to love opera. If not, you can at least teach him to love music in his own home. And he will be in good company. That is the way the prophet Elisha liked his music. Of him it is written that, when 56 More Power to You driven to utter weariness by the perplexi- ties of his business, he would cry: " But now bring me a minstrel. " And it came to pass, when the min- strel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." XIV A FEW KIND WORDS FOR BUSINESS I GRADUATED from college when muckraking was in its greatest glory. The magazines and newspapers and re- formers had filled our youthful minds with so much distressing information that we hardly knew whether the world was a safe place for us to step out into or not. We looked askance on all the fellows in college whose fathers had made money. To be sure, the fathers seemed decent enough old codgers when they visited us at the fraternity house. But we felt that something w r as dark and bad in their past somewhere. We would not have been seen walking on the street with John D. Rockefeller for anything. I remember visiting Washington and looking at the United States Senate. I 57 ^8 More Power to You felt as if I were inside the gates of Sing Sing. There was So-and-So from Texas: we had been told that the Oil Trust owned him. There was So-and-So from Wiscon- sin: the railroads owned him. And so on. All there through some unholy alliance. All city governments were corrupt; all laws were passed from evil motives; all business was yoked together in a vast un- seen network, fashioned and fostered to exploit the nation. A business man was a being without con- science or intelligence, like a slot-machine. You gave him a nickel and he gave you a nickel's worth of goods. If he took your nickel and withheld the goods, then he was a successful business man. Running a magazine was very easy in those days. All one had to do was to take down a map of the United States and place his finger on any spot say Owosso, Michi- gan. Then call in a writer and say, " Get Kind Words for Business 59 on the train and go out and see what is rotten in Owosso." Muckraking did some good: but we have come to realize now that it over- played its hand. In fact, I believe it could be shown that the greatest force for righteousness in the United States to-day is nothing more nor less than the once maligned BUSINESS. Certainly Business is the greatest force in America working for temperance. The young men of half a century ago were pretty heavy drinkers. The young men of to-day have given up drink. Not altogether because they were ar- gued into it or scared into it: but also be- cause they know that it destroys their effi- ciency and cripples their progress in Busi- ness. Business is the greatest ally and pro- moter of Honesty. And more and more I have come to feel that Honesty is, after all, the corner-stone of all the virtues. I have seen a business man refuse to sign a document that contained the tiniest 60 More Power to You little misstatement a misstatement that probably never would have been detected, and might have meant thousands of dol- lars in profits to him. I have seen a man whose time is worth - a thousand dollars a day spend half an hour editing a single advertisement so jealous was he of his firm's reputation for never making a false claim or an ex- travagant assertion. Business has taught that honesty is the best policy; and millions of young men have been made better citizens by first being made better business men. Nothing has impressed me more than this: Get to the top of a big business enterprise, and nine times out of ten you will find an idealist. You will find a man who has long since ceased to be interested in mere money- making, who is staying in business because of what he wants his business to do for his employees, his community, and his country. I do not say that Business is perfect. Far from it. Kind Words for Business 6 1 But I do say that the time is past when the young man who goes into business needs to feel that he is making a selfish choice a choice that cuts him off from service to his fellow men. "Be not slothful in business" said St. Paul, " fervent in spirit; serving the Lord. 99 f Many a man, building a big business in America, has, as a by-product of his build- ing, strengthened the character and lifted the ideals of hundreds of his associates, and helped in the regeneration of a whole community. And the number of such men the idealists of BUSINESS in America is in- creasing very fast. XV SOME POOR BLIND FOLK HAVE NEVER SEEN A MIRACLE HERE is an important distinction that many people overlook. God made the world; but He does not make your world. He provides the raw materials, and out of them every man selects what he wants and builds an individual world for him- self. The fool looks over the wealth of ma- terial provided, and selects a few plates of ham and eggs, a few pairs of trousers, a few dollar bills and is satisfied. The wise man builds his world out of wonderful sunsets, and thrilling experi- ences, and the song of the stars, and ro- mance and miracles. Nothing wonderful ever happens in the life of the fool. 62 Speaking of Miracles 63 A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose is to him, And it is nothing more. An electric light is simply an electric light; a telephone is only a telephone nothing unusual at all. But the wise man never ceases to won- der how a tiny speck of seed, apparently dead and buried, can produce a beautiful yellow flower. He never lifts a telephone receiver or switches on an electric light without a certain feeling of awe. And think what a miracle it is, this harnessing of electricity to the service of man! Who, unless his sense of awe had grown blunt through constant familiarity, would believe it? The sun, the center of our universe, goes down behind the western horizon. I touch a button, and presto ! I have called it back the room is flooded anew with light. The thunder that men once called the voice of God rolls out its mighty waves of sound, and the sound carries only a few 64 More Power to You score miles. But I puny speck upon the face of the earth I lift a little in- strument: and, behold, my whisper is heard a thousand miles away. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and brought it down to earth. For that crime the gods chained him to a lonely rock and sent a huge bird to feed upon his vitals. Each night the wound healed, and each day it was torn open again. That was the punishment of the man who dared to wrest away the richest treas- ure of the gods. But fire the treasure of the gods > has almost disappeared out of our daily life : we scorn it. Do we want heat? We press a but- ton: and lo, heat, invisible, silent, all- pervasive, flows into our homes over a copper wire. Do we need power? We have but to press another switch, and giants come to us over the same slender roadway. Clothed in invisible garments, they cleanse our homes, wash our clothes, crank our automobiles do everything that once Speaking of Miracles 65 taxed the strength of men and hurried women into unlovely old age. Don't let your life become a prosaic affair: don't let familiarity with the mar- vels about you breed thoughtlessness and contempt. Let the fool build his world out of mere food and drink and clothes: you fashion yours out of marvelous experiences: fur- nish and decorate it with miracles. Exercise your mind in the wholesome activity of wonder: train your soul to rev- erent awe. If you had stood with Moses on the shore of the Red Sea, and had seen it divide to let the children of Israel pass over, you would have had no difficulty in recognizing that as a miracle. But every night when the sun goes down, a man stands in a power-house in your city and throws a switch, and instantly the city and the country for miles around are flooded with sunshine. And you say to yourself casually: " Oh, I see the lights are on." XVI I REASSURE A MOTHER A MOTHER writes me about her son's reading. Among other things, she says : In spite of all I can do or say, he insists on reading stories. How can I correct this habit? Frankly, madam, I do not know. It is about as easy to cure a boy of eat- ing as it is to destroy his love for good stories. Centuries before there was any writ- ing, story-tellers drifted about from vil- lage to village, gathering the people to- gether and telling them stories. The love of fiction is as old as that older than recorded history, older even than civilization. It can not be rooted out: its roots run back too far. And why should you want to root it out? The greatest Teacher that ever lived 66 I Reassure a Mother 67 spent half His time telling stories to His disciples. " Without a parable [a story] He taught them nothing." These stories have transformed humanity. One great story written in our own coun- try, " Uncle Tom's Cabin," so stirred men's hearts that they said, " Slavery must go." Good stories will not hurt your boy: they may, if he is the right kind of boy, inspire him to real achievement. And they will do something else for him, equally important. They will de- velop his imagination. We have too little regard for the high value of the imagination, we Americans. We are too matter-of-fact. We forget that all great inventions, all great discov- eries, all great achievements in science or business, came to pass because some man first had imagination enough to conceive them. Many men have been hit on the head by a falling apple. Newton, when the apple hit him, had imagination enough to formulate the law of gravitation. 68 More Power to You Many men have been burned by their wives' tea-kettles. Watt had imagination enough to conceive the steam-engine. Look through the pages of history, and you will discover that the leaders of men have been those who could dream great dreams and carry them out the men of powerful, intelligent imagination. Because this is true, the editor of a mag- azine that prints stories has a responsi- bility that he must take seriously if he is any sort of man at all. He is intrusted with the duty of stimulating the imagina- tion of thousands of children of mothers like you. He may, if he choose, publish stories whose appeal is to the baser side of the imagination and even achieve a certain sort of circulation increase for his maga- zine by so doing. Or he may regard every mother among his readers as if she were his own mother, and every mother's son as a younger brother. You need not concern yourself because your boy likes stories. But are the stories / Reassure a Moth^by he reads the right kind of stories do they appeal to his imagination on its best and highest side? That is the important question for you. XVII IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHETHER YOUR BRAIN IS FLABBY, FEEL OF YOUR LEGS THIS is one of the greatest tragedies of modern life. Men are forget- ting how to walk. They travel by taxi-cabs and street cars; they travel by automobile; they project their personalities over a telephone wire. But they do not walk. There is a double loss in this. A loss in health, first. Most of the diseases of modern men originate in the intestines. Formerly men and women walked enough to keep the stomach mus- cles firm, the intestines healthfully agi- tated. Now men and women even more so sit all day slumped in. Germs settle down inside them gladly; TO // Your Brain Is Flabby 71 and Death, his work made easy for him, laughs. There is another loss, equally great. A loss in mental keenness and mental wealth. Did you ever take a walk in the country with some one who knows really how to walk? Some one of the type of the naturalist Linnaeus, for instance ? Linnasus walked into Oland, and found the lands of the farmers ruined by sand blown from the beaches. He discovered that the roots of a cer- tain beach grass were long and firm: he taught the farmers to sow that grass along the beach, and so preserved their lands from ruin. He walked into Thorne, and found that at a certain period in every year the cattle fell sick and died. It was a curse, the people said the act of angry spirits. But Linnaeus, examining the pastures, uncovered a noxious weed, and showed the farmers how the work of one laborer 72 More Power to You for a few days every season would root it out. In his walks he examined and cata- logued 8,000 plants, vegetables, and flowers. How many plants, vegetables, and flowers do you think you could identify if you were to see them in their native state ? " Few men," said Dr. Johnson, " know how to take a walk." It was so in his day. It is even more true now. But those favored few enjoy a glorious and mysterious privilege. To discover where the violets first bloom in the spring To be able to tell directions in the woods, by knowing that large pine trees bear more numerous branches on their southern side Or that grass grows on the south side of ant-hills and whortle-berries on the north To learn to greet the wild flowers by name There are few pleasures more richly sat- // Your Brain Is Flabby 73 isfying; none that pay larger dividends in health. The man who goes into the country once a week is a better citizen than the man who never goes, even though his eyes see nothing more inspiring on his walk than a golf ball. But far more to be envied is that little inner circle of Nature's favorites who speak her language intimately; who read her thoughts in her woods and brooks and flowers. " You shall never break down in a speech," said a great English statesman, " on the day that you have walked twelve miles." Flabby legs usually mean flabby brains. If you would think clearly, speak force- fully, work effectively, get out into the country when you can and walk. XVIII DO BABIES LIKE YOU ? THAT *S A PRETTY GOOD TEST *T TOW do you like babies?" some JL JL woman asked Charles Lamb. " B-b-oiled, madam/' stuttered Lamb. In the beginning of the race nobody except mothers liked babies. The records of civilization's slow prog- ress are written in babies' blood. Babies had no rights: they were a neces- sary evil. In the South Sea Islands, when either parent died, the children were slain and buried also, to wait on the parent in the other world. In China it is estimated that 40 per cent, of the girl babies in the provinces of the interior were drowned. In India, when a girl baby was born, the mother put opium on her breasts, and the 74 Do Babies Like You? 75 baby, inhaling it with the mother's milk, died. Inside the great brass statue of Moloch a roaring fire was built on holy days. And into the seething arms of the god women hurled their screaming infants. Even the Greeks, who established a civilization higher than that of any other ancient people, regularly u exposed " their undesired infants on the mountain-sides. And Socrates, their greatest man, saw nothing in the practice to condemn. Little by little, through the succeeding centuries, the baby has been coming into his own. Romulus, who founded Rome, took the first forward step; the Emperor Hadrian made another advance. But it was Christianity that discovered the baby. All motherhood became sanctified in the worship paid to Mary, the mother of Jesus. All childhood was ennobled by the birth in the manger. To-day we measure the civilization of a j6 More Power to You nation by the question : How does it treat its babies? And the civilization of an individual can be measured by the same test. Do you consider babies a nuisance? Do you dislike them? Do they fear you? Then though your culture may be- long to the twentieth century your heart still lingers in the first. It ? s a question how much any one man influences the world through his business life or his public acts. Alexander conquered the world. And, before his ashes were cold, his kingdom began to break up. But one little section of the human race is given into your care irrevocably: Your babies. What you make them they will be. Through them and their descendants you can perpetuate your influence to the end of time. If there is a baby in your home, nursing-bottles ought to be more impor- tant to you than stocks and bonds. You ought to know more about the Do Babies Like You? 77 various kinds of baby foods than you know about golf. Your business is important because it makes your living. But your home is all-important because there you make lives. In it are molded the characters of the future proprietors of the earth : your chil- dren the most important citizens in the world. XIX NOW WILL YOU STOP THAT SUNDAY WORK? THIS is a " scientific " age. The way to get a man married is not to introduce him to a pretty girl. You must prove to him by statistics that married men are more successful and live longer than single men. Then he goes about it scientifically. It used to be sufficient merely to tell a child, " Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. In it thou shalt not do any work." But the modern child and man asks, Why? Well, here is one reason why a scientific reason. Dr. E. G. Martin, of the Harvard Medical School, selected nine first-year medical students, all in good health, and 78 Stop That Sunday Work 79 tested them every day for eight weeks with electric currents. Each day he recorded the smallest shock that they could feel. The smaller the shock they could feel, the higher their sensitiveness. A high sensitiveness means high nervous efficiency. You know that from your own experi- ence. You have been so " dead tired " you could not taste the food you were eating; so tired that you hardly felt a blow or a prick which would otherwise have caused you severe pain. Your sensitiveness was low. And Dr. Martin discovered this: There was an unmistakable tendency for the sensitiveness to be at its highest at the beginning of the week and to sink steadily from day to day until the week's end, reaching the lowest point on Saturday. With the return of Monday fol- lowing the Sunday recess the sensitiveness was back at its former high point. The chart on the next page shows the results of the experiment: 80 More Power to You 110 100 M Tu W TH F S It shows what happens to your reservoir of nervous energy every week. Monday you are keen, alert, ready for anything. Tuesday you are not quite so fit. Thursday and Friday and Saturday you slump off very fast, each day a little less fresh than the day before. And by Sat- urday night you are dead tired. Then, if you rest Sunday, you are back to high-water mark again Monday morn- ing. If you do not rest, you go down and down. Stop That Sunday Work 81 The results [says Dr. Martin] show that the repose of a single night following a day of toil does not afford complete restoration of the im- paired nervous tissues; and furthermore that the longer period furnished by the Sunday recess gives, under ordinary conditions, the longer time needed for the expulsion of the accumulated fa- tigue products and the recovery of efficiency. Arnold Bennett, in " The Truth About an Author," tells how, after working seven days a week for several years, he learned that a day of complete rest greatly added to his efficiency. The man who carries his work home with him and dwells on it in the time devoted ostensibly to rest [concludes Dr. Martin] is defeating the very purpose he seeks increased efficiency. " Remember the Sabbath day," says modern Science. But the Bible said it thousands of years ago. Some day, when you have had enough scientific proof, you will begin to believe that there are quite a good many things in the Bible worth knowing and believing. I XX ASK ANY SUCCESSFUL MAN SHOULD like to have this carved on my tombstone : Here lies a man who edited a magazine: he made many mistakes, but we forgive him for them, because year after year he preached Thrift to his readers, he encouraged several million peo- ple to save money. We are not a thrifty people, as com- pared with other nations. Belgium before the war was known as a " country without paupers " ; of France's 10,000,000 voters nine tenths are owners of government bonds. There are 12,- 500,000 savings accounts in France, and half of them little ones less than $4. But only one in ten of us have savings accounts: the rest of us are " good fellows." 82 Ask Any Successful Man 83 I attended the funeral of a " good fel- low " recently. He had always " lived up to his income.'* When the company for which he worked was reorganized ten years ago, the president said to him: " Have you a thousand dollars? " A thousand dollars put into that busi- ness ten years ago would be earning a com- petence for his widow to-day. But the u good f ellow " did not have it: he had never learned to save. And now we are raising a fund to buy his daughter a piano, so that she can give music lessons. I came away from the funeral with an- other man whose salary has never been as large as the " good fellow's." We rode in his automobile. " Do you know how I paid for this automo- bile ?" he asked. "Out of the dividends that came to me last year from my savings. When I was getting eighteen dollars a week, my wife took two of it every week and put it into the savings bank, where we could n't touch it. When I was raised to twenty-five, she raised the savings fund to five a week ; and so on. I J m forty-seven years old now. I Ve never had a big 84 More Power to You salary, as you know; but I could retire to-mor- row, if I wanted to, and have more than thirty dollars a week in dividends from the money I Ve saved. I tell you, I don't know anything that makes a man face the world with so much confi- dence as the knowledge that he has made himself independent of it." There you have them side by side the " good fellow " and the " wise fellow." All of us belong in one class or the other. Which class are you in? "If you want to know whether you are going to be a success or a failure in life," said James J. Hill, " you can easily find out. The test is sim- ple and infallible. Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may not think it, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you." There is not a single man, woman, or child in America who can not save some money if he or she will set out de- terminedly to do it. " Ah," you object. " How can you say that? You do not know my circum- stances." Ask Any Successful Man 85 No, I do not. But if circumstances dic- tate your life, this is not written for you. You will not succeed anyway: you do not count. " Circumstances! " exclaimed Napoleon. " I make circumstances." XXI IF YOU CAN GIVE YOUR SON ONLY ONE GIFT, LET IT BE ENTHUSIASM A LITTLE while ago I was in charge of a large organization of salesmen. My chief sent me to a Western city to appoint a manager for that territory. There were two candidates. We had their records in detail, but we had never met either of them. I was to look them over, form my judgment, and appoint the better man. I met one man in Cincinnati, the other in St. Louis. The man in Cincinnati said to me: " What does this position pay?" I told him. " That is more than I am getting here," he said, " and I should like the job. Every man wants to better himself when lie can." The St. Louis man did not wait for me 86 Give Your Son Enthusiasm 87 to arrive in the city. He found out on what train I was coming, rode out on the line, and surprised me by walking down the aisle of my car. He began to talk. He told me about himself, his training and his selling experience. He had drawn up plans in detail for the development of our territory ; he told me how many men he ex- pected to have working by the end of the year, and just how he thought he could increase our volume of business. I had to hire him, finally, in order to get a chance to go to bed at night. And in his enthusiasm he forgot to ask me and I forgot to tell him what the salary would be. The first man had wanted a better job, which is commendable enough. But I hired the man who was enthusiastic about the opportunity. Napoleon's adversaries used to speak of him as " the 100,000 man" mean- ing that his spirit infused into an army was equal to an additional 100,000 troops. They criticized his tactics; they accused him of disregarding all the rules of sue- 88 More Power to You cessful warfare : yet he won and they lost. Because his enthusiasm carried his soldiers to impossible achievements. We are told a great deal about the necessity for controlling our emotions, for being self-contained, for not letting our enthusiasm sweep us off our feet. Much of this advice is very wise. But don't forget that the Indians were very self-contained. They controlled their emotions so successfully that it was a point of pride among them never to ex- hibit pleasure or pain or love or en- thusiasm. And the Indians used to own this coun- try and do not own it any more. It was taken away from them By men like Columbus, who believed so enthusiastically that the world was round, in an age when other people believed it flat, that he risked tumbling off into space in order to discover a new continent. By men like Fulton, who believed that steam could be made to run a boat in spite of wind or tide. By men like Marcus Whitman, who Give Your Son Enthusiasm 89 was so enthusiastic about the great un- known West that he rode alone across the continent to add the Western empire to our country. By men like James J. Hill, whose en- thusiasm could picture towns and farms where other men saw only useless prairies. Take your son on trips; show him the big men of his own time, such as the President of the United States; and the great sights of the world, such as Niagara Falls. Encourage him to express his enthu- siasm and delight. Let him believe that the world is full of wonderful things, and he himself full of splendid possibilities. He can learn self-repression in later years: but enthusiasm, once lost, is lost forever. " Men are nothing," said Montaigne, " until they are excited." And Montaigne was right. Of two boys with equal ability, the one who can be excited about his work, day after day and year after year, is the boy that is going to win. XXII HAVE YOU CEASED TO STUDY? IF SO, GOOD NIGHT A MAN named Brown and a man named Black graduated from high school and entered business in New York at the same time. Both made rapid progress. At twenty- five each of them was drawing $2,500 a year. " Coming men," said their friends. " If they are so far along at twenty-five, where will they be at fifty? " Black went on. At fifty he is president of his company, with an income of $25,000 a year. But something happened to Brown. He never fulfilled the large promise of his youth: at fifty he had hardly advanced be- yond his thirty mark. What was it that happened to these two 00 Have You Ceased to Study? 91 men, of equal education and so far as the world could judge equal ability? I will tell you. Brown became satisfied. He ceased to study: which means that he ceased to grow. Black has told me that when he reached $5,000 a year he said to himself: " I have made a good start. Nothing can stop me if I keep my health and keep growing. I must study, study, study: I must be the best informed man on our business in the United States. 1 ' There is the difference. One stayed in school: one did not. The position you attain before you are twenty-five years old is of no particular credit to you. You gained that simply on the education your parents gave you education that cost you no sacrifice. But the progress you make in the world after twenty-five that is progress that you must make by educating yourself. It will be in proportion to the amount of study you give to your work in excess of the amount the other man gives. 92 More Power to You Analyze any successful man and you will find these three great facts : He had an aim: Lord Campbell wrote to his father, as an excuse for not coming home over the holi- days: " To have any chance of success, I must be more steady than other men. I must be in cham- bers when they are at the theater: I must study when they are asleep: I must, above all, remain in town when they are in the country." He worked: " I have worked," said Daniel Webster, " for mose than twelve hours a day for fifty years." He studied: Vice-President Henry Wilson was born in the direst poverty. " Want sat by my cradle," he says. " I know what it is to ask my mother for bread when she had none to give. I left home when ten years of age, and served an apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving one month's schooling each year, and at the end of eleven years of hard work a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought me $84." Have You Ceased to Study? 93 Yet in those eleven years of grueling labor he found time to read and study more than one hundred books. Really big men check themselves up each autumn, at the beginning of a new business year. " This year," they say, " I am going to master one new subject. I am going to pursue such and such studies, which will increase my ability and earning power." The bigger they are, the longer they keep themselves in school. Gladstone took up a new language after he had passed seventy. Have you left school? As a matter of fact, did you grow men- tally last year at all? What definite sub- ject are you planning to devote your eve- nings to this year? " As a rule," said Disraeli, " the most successful man in life is the man who has the most information." How much will you increase your stock of useful information in the next business year? XXIII A MAN ASKS, u WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK? " OF course, no man wants the same book for every mood, any more than he wants the same food for every meal or the same medicine for every disease. But the book to which I come back again and again was written several hun- dred years ago. It is called Ecclesiastes: you will find it about the middle of the Bible. Fred- erick the Great called it the " Book of Kings," and said every monarch should re- read it constantly. He should have said every man; for every man is the monarch of his own life. And this is the book of life, written by a king who had everything that life can give. 04 What Is Your Favorite Book? 95 It is the answer to the eternal question: " What's the use ?" What profit hath a man of all his labor Which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, And another generation cometh: But the earth abideth for ever. . . . All the rivers run into the sea; Yet the sea is not full ; Unto the place from whence the rivers come. Thither they return again. . . . The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, It is that which shall be; And that which is done Is that which shall be done: And there is no new thing under the sun. In other words, life is not just one thing after another. It is the same thing again and again. Get up, worry and work; eat> lie down, sleep. What 's the use of it all? The man who is never tempted to ask that question has no imagination. Solomon, the writer, determined to find out what is worth while in life. 96 More Power to You Is wisdom the thing greatly to be de- sired? He made himself the wisest man in the world, and discovered what ? In much wisdom is much grief: And he that increaseth knowledge Increaseth sorrow. From wisdom he turned to mirth, only to find, as an end of living, that " this also is vanity." He sought to give his heart unto wine, and "to lay hold on folly": and in this too there was no satisfaction. Perhaps, then, he said to himself, per- haps work is the one thing worth while. To achieve something great to leave a monument for posterity to wonder at. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: . . . Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. Wisdom, mirth, work, fame What Is Your Favorite Book? 97 The man who has not at some time sought each one as a solution of the puzzle of life has in him no spirit of adventure. But none of them satisfied Solomon. What, then, is the answer to the riddle? What will satisfy the soul of man ? What will make his life seem to have been worth while when he comes to give it up ? The answer is in the great last chapter, which begins : Remember now thy Creator In the days of thy youth, While the evil days come not, Nor the years draw nigh, When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. To live straight and simply; to do a little kindness as one moves along; to love useful work; to raise a worthy family; and to leave the world a little better than you found it to do one's daily duty in simple reverence this is the final answer. And the man who, having passed through his periods of questioning, and 98 More Power to You made his false excursions into the varied by-paths, does not come finally to this true road, has failed to find real great" ness. XXIV THIS HOARY-HEADED FALSEHOOD HAS LIVED LONG ENOUGH THERE are a few hoary-headed falsehoods that have lived too long. One of them is this : " Ninety-five per cent, of the men who go into business in this country fail." I have heard speakers get that off at dinners with ponderous gravity: I have seen it again and again in magazine articles. Recently a statistician has examined the records of business success and failure in this country, and has proved conclusively that the statement is not true. Ninety-five per cent, of the men who en- ter business do not fail; and, of those who do fail, a good many start over again, pay up their debts, and die successful. We have fallen into the habit of talking 99 loo More Power to You about success as if it were something ex- ceptional. In America success is not the exception it is the rule. I am continually amazed by the mediocre men men of one idea, men who bore you to death if you have to talk with them half an hour who win out. Five years ago a group of us used to wag our heads sadly about the fate of poor Horton. He was buried alive in a great corporation. To be sure, we did not think he deserved much of the world: he had no genius, only a dogged sort of loyalty. The other day I received an engraved notice that Horton had been made general manager of his concern. I picked up the latest copy of a trade paper yesterday. On the cover was the name of a poor stick I used to know. We wondered, when he married, how he could ever find a job that would pay him enough to support a wife. That was six or seven years ago. Yes- terday in this trade paper I found a full- A Hoary-Headed Falsehood 101 length picture of him, seated in his mahogany-trimmed office. He has been made his company's president. We need to get two things firmly in mind about American business. First : In a country growing as fast as this, the earning power of money is very great. Your banker will point out to you that if, at twenty-one, you begin saving money regularly, systematically, you will at fifty have as large an income from your savings as you now have from your salary. In other words, any man in America who will set himself doggedly at it can acquire a competence. And second: Business in America is expanding so fast that any man who will take the trouble to equip himself, and who will work determinedly, can win a fair measure of success. Luck? you ask. Yes. " I believe there are lucky men," said Charles M. Schwab. " I have made it a rule of my life to surround myself with lucky men : to have no other kind in posi- tions of importance that I control." IO2 More Power to You But when you come to ask Charles M. Schwab what he means by luck, you will discover from his own career that he means, first, hard work; second, an un^ shakable conviction that he deserves to be lucky and is going to be lucky. Many men have the work without the conviction. Get that conviction to-day. Get it firmly implanted in your mind that in this country a majority of the men your age, who have less brains than you, are going to be successful men at fifty. If you believe that you are going to be one of that majority, if you save money and work, you will win. Don't tell me that you won't I have never met you ; but I have met a good many self-made rich men. And, without knowing you at all, I tell you con- fidently that you have more brains than some of them have. XXV IN APPRECIATION OF MOTHERS A LADY asks me whether I am in favor of woman suffrage. My answer is that I am in favor of mothers. Having been a voter for a number of years, and something of a student of poli- tics, I am under no illusions about the ballot. It is a very clumsy weapon. Politics accomplishes a minimum of progress with a maximum of expense and noise. There are many other avenues of influence more quiet, more pleasant, and far more effective. But if the mothers of America believe that the ballot will help them to widen their influence; if suffrage will extend the atmosphere of the home into politics in- stead of extending the atmosphere of poli- 103 104 More Power to You tics into the home; if the ballot will help women to make the working conditions of girls better, enable them to lead happier, bigger lives, and found finer homes then I am for suffrage now and forever. It is an interesting thing to remember that the whole process of evolution has been devoted to one single accomplishment the development of a mother. Nature began with the protozoa, the simplest form of life : then she made the worms: then the mollusks: then the am- phibia: then the reptiles: then the birds: and last of all, what? The mammalia, as science calls them - the mothers. Having made the mothers, Nature has never made anything since. She consid- ered her task complete. All up through the various stages of life she had struggled gradually toward motherhood. In the lower stages there is no mother- hood, because there is no infancy. With the ephemeridae the moment of birth is also the moment of death: they are born, In Appreciation of Mothers 105 live, and die all in a single instant. Not much chance for motherhood there. The land-crab marches down from her mountain home to the seashore once a year, lays her eggs in the sand, and marches up again. (There are Femin- ists, by the way, who contend that the land- crab has the right idea that mother- hood ought to be only an incident in the woman's life, as it is in the land-crab's life.) Even with the higher animals the young are dependent on the mother for only a few days or weeks or months. They come quickly to self-reliance: they are ready almost immediately to feed them- selves. For man alone Nature reserved infancy. And infancy created motherhood. For years the child is dependent upon its mother absolutely. It is weak, helpless, unable to feed itself, unable to walk, an easy victim to a single hour's neglect. Out of its helplessness, unselfishness was born into woman's heart; out of its pain grew sympathy; out of its long years 106 More Power to You of weakness came patience and self-sacri- ficing devotion. Women, bending over the cradles of their young, learned these virtues first: little by little, they have passed them on to men. And the world's progress is meas- ured by the slow record of their growth in the world the growth of a patience and unselfishness and devotion and love. Unless each new generation of women gathered these golden virtues all over again at the cradles of their young, the world would soon forget. The weakness of infancy is the source of all social progress. " Of such is the kingdom of heaven. " We men in business get to thinking of ourselves as important in the scheme of things: but we are not. Harriman dies, and the trains on his railroads stop for five minutes and then rush on again. We men can be killed by millions, and the ranks close up and move forward. The world can not be permanently damaged, so long as it has its mothers. " What does France need most? " they In Appreciation of Mothers 107 asked Napoleon. " Mothers,'' was his reply. " All that I am I owe to my mother," Lincoln said a hundred times. And what was true of Lincoln is true in large degree of every other good man in the world. Fortunate are those men who know it. XXVI THE LESSON OF A FAILURE DO you want to do some reading that will be intensely interesting as well as profitable? Read the story of some of the great failures of the world. Find out what caused them. I have recently been reading the story of a colossal failure the defeat of the Spanish Armada, as told by the historian Froude. The Armada was the greatest fleet the medieval world had ever seen. It con- sisted of 130 ships, and carried more than 30,000 sailors and soldiers. It was fitted out by Philip II of Spain to conquer England, and was meant to overwhelm all resistance by its size. It mounted more than 2,500 guns. Yet this magnificent fleet, the mightiest in the world, was met by a little fleet un- 108 The Lesson of a Failure 109 der Lord Howard and decisively defeated. Why? Because the Spanish were not so brave as the English? No. Because their guns were inferior? Not at all. The Spanish Armada failed because its commander had no faith in himself. Read this letter, which he wrote to the King when he was notified of his appoint- ment: My health is bad [he wrote], and from my small experience of the water I know that I am always seasick. I have no money which I can spare. [As a matter of fact, he was the richest nobleman in Spain.] The expedition is on such a scale and the object of it is of such high im- portance, that the person at the head of it ought to understand navigation and sea-fighting, and I know nothing of either. I have not one of these essential qualifications. I have no acquaint- ance among the officers who are to serve under me. Were I competent otherwise, I should have to act in the dark by the opinion of others, and I can not tell to whom I may trust. The Adelantado of Castile would do better than I. Our Lord would help him, for he is a good no More Power to You Christian and has fought in naval battles. If you send me, depend upon it, I shall have a bad account to render of my trust. Think of Philip II appointing a man to command his fleet who would write a let- ter like that! How could such a commander expect 30,000 men to have any faith in him, when he had absolutely none in himself? Yet the headstrong King did send him; and the result was one of the most monu- mental disasters of history. Men fail for many reasons. Some because they overreach them- selves because they have too much self- confidence. But there is another kind of failure that is far worse the failure of those who, as Goethe says, " make no mistakes, be- cause they never wish to do anything worth doing." For goodness' sake, make mistakes. If you are going to fail at all, let it be because you believe too much in yourself. That, at least, is a man's way to fail. XXVII WHEN A BOY KNOWS MORE THAN HIS FATHER SOMETIMES a boy does know more than his father. Ours would have been a very different history if Abe Lincoln, age sixteen or so, had been guided by the wisdom of Thomas Lincoln, age thirty-six or so. " Now, Abe," we can imagine him say- ing, " don't waste time readin' them books. Readin' never done me any good, and what was good enough for me 's good enough for you." Lincoln knew more than his father. It was a divine disobedience that led him to close his ears to the man who had brought him into the- world, and open his heart to the vision that was to help him conquer the world. in 112 More Power to You Robert Louis Stevenson knew mora than his father. That father would have shackled him to engineering. He could not understand the obstinacy of the boy who refused to apply himself. That obstinacy saved a great author from misery as a mediocre engineer. It was an obstinacy that en- riched the ages. Jesus Christ knew more than His father. " Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing," said His mother to Him. And neither His mother nor His father could hear the Voice that was calling Him away from them, the Voice that was to find fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters for Him among all those who should do His will. " Let no man despise thy youth," wrote Paul to Timothy. The boy who has not some firm convic- tions and a willingness to defend them, even against the arguments of those older t than himself, is not likely to amount to much, either as a boy or as a man. When a Boy Knows More 113 But they must be convictions, not mere prejudices, not selfish impulses or passions. I know two men who " knew more " than their fathers. One boy is the office manager of a large manufacturing concern, and his salary is $40 a week. " Better go on in school," said his father to him when he was seventeen years old. " Better go to college: better get all the education you can while you have the chance. You '11 need it after- wards." But the boy quit school and went to work. He was promoted from office-boy to bookkeeper, from bookkeeper to head bookkeeper, from head bookkeeper to office manager. His path looked golden and long. And then suddenly he stopped. 4 You see that man?" said the presi- dent of his concern to me the other day. ' There is a man who might have become general manager of this business if he had had a college education. His salary 114 More Power to You might have been $20,000 a year: instead it 's $2,000. He 's reached his limit. What a shame that he has n't education enough to go on." He " knew more " than his father. And his boyish obstinacy is costing him $18,000 a year. " Keep yourself clean, my son," said the father of another boy. " You '11 never regret it. And some day you '11 thank heaven you did." But the boy knew more than his father. He knew that every young man who is worth his salt must sow his wild oats. So he sowed right merrily. I saw him the other day. He came to me about getting a job. He was pale, and anemic, and his hands twitched, and he was forever rolling cigarettes. He could not concentrate his mind on one subject for even a couple of minutes. I could not give him a job: no man could. God knows what will become of him. He would starve if it were not for the few dollars he gets from his father When a Boy Knows More 115 The father who, he thought, knew ever so much less than he. YOUTH is the mainspring of the world. Its insurgency, its inquisitiveness, its eagerness to try the untried and do the im- possible, drives the world forward in spite of the conservatism of age. Fortunate are those of us who recog- nize the divine importance of youth's cock- sureness and conceit, and yet know how, gently and appreciatively, to temper it with the riper judgment of added years. XXVIII BUILDING MATERIALS FOR CASTLES IN SPAIN HAVE NOT ADVANCED AT ALL I HAVE been reading the story of Cecil Rhodes. His life was full of adventure : it makes excellent reading. But the passage that interested me most was this: Riding to the Matoppos one day at the usual four miles an hour, Rhodes had not said a word for two hours, when he suddenly remarked: " Well, le Sueur, there is one thing I hope for you, and that is that while still a young man you may never have everything you want. " Take myself, for instance : I am not an old man, and yet there is nothing I want. I have been Prime Minister of the Cape, there is De Beers [the diamond mines that Rhodes con- trolled] and the railways, and there is a big coun- try called after me, and I have more money than I can spend. 116 Castles in Spain 117 "You might ask, 'Wouldn't you like to be Prime Minister again ? ' Well, I answer you very fairly I should take it if it were offered to me, but I certainly don't crave for it." At twenty-five he was so rich that he did not want for any of the things that money can buy; at thirty-five he did not want anything at all; at forty-nine he died. I hope I may never be guilty of writing anything intended to make poor people contented with their lot. I would rather be known as one who sought to inspire his readers with a divine discontent. To make men and women discontented with bad health, and to show them how, by hard work, they can have better health. To make them discontented with their intelligence, and to stimulate them to con- tinued study. To urge them on to better jobs, better homes, more money in the bank. But it does no harm, in our striving n8 More Power to You after these worth-while things, to pause once in a while and count our blessings. Prominent among my blessings I count the joys of anticipation the delights of erecting Castles in Spain. " There would be few enterprises of great labor or hazard undertaken/' says Dr. Johnson, " if we did not have the power of magnifying the advantages which we persuade ourselves to expect from them." Divine power! Blessed gift of the gods ! How largely are they to be pitied who have it not. Aladdin did not have it. Nero did not have it. Anything he wanted he could have at the instant when he wanted it. And, far from finding joy in life, he found insanity and the detestation of mankind. If you would discover the really happy men of history, look for those who have striven forward from one achievement to another, drawn by the power of their own anticipations. They have made every day yield a Castles in Spain 119 double pleasure the joy of the present, and the different but no less satisfying joys provided by a wise imagination. I believe in day-dreams. I am strong for Castles in Spain. I have a whole group of them myself, and am constantly building improvements and making altera- tions. I do not let my work upon them inter- fere with my regular job. Rather, it re- inforces the job. My castles are an incentive to efficiency: they give added reason and purpose to the business of being alive. I trust that before I am ready to stop I may have considerably more money than I now have. But I trust also that I may never have too much money. I should not, for in- stance, like to have as much as Mr. Rocke- feller. Indeed, I feel an almost snobbish sense of superiority when I think of Mr. Rocke- feller and Cecil Rhodes and Croesus and all the others of that ilk. For I have everything that they have I2O More Power to You a roof over my head, and three meals a day, and work that I like, and the love of good friends. And I have something else that they do not have and can not know. I have wants. XXIX TOO MANY MEN STILL BELIEVE IN PERPETUAL MOTION SOME day, go into the Patent Office in Washington and look at the applica- tions that have been made for patents on perpetual-motion machines. You will see some very ingenious de- vices. For instance, a machine to be run by the power of gravity iron balls drop- ping down a chute and turning a wheel. The inventor of that machine provided for everything. He even added a brake to stop the machine, in case it should run so fast as to become unmanageable. He forgot only one thing that it re- quires just as much energy to lift the balls up against gravity as they develop by fall- ing down. 121 122 More Power to You In England, between 1617 and 1903, more than six hundred separate applica- tions for patents were made on perpetual- motion machines. Every single year brings its inevitable crop of new applications. They stand this unending procession as a magnificent monument to the unchangeableness of human nature. A testimony to man's unquenchable be- lief that somehow, somewhere, it is pos- sible in this world to get something for nothing. It is a mistake to gather all these per- petual-motion machines together in Wash- ington, D. C. One of them should be set up at the busiest .corner of every American city. And twelve should be distributed along Wall Street, New York. Every man who goes downtown to busi- ness in the morning should pass a per- petual-motion machine and be reminded of its lesson. There is one great law that runs through all life. Many men have discov- Perpetual Motion 123 ered it: Emerson named it the Law of Compensation. Everywhere that law is operative. In physics, action and reaction are equal. In electricity, if the north end of a magnet attracts, the south end repels. If, as Emerson points out, a govern- ment is bad, the governor's life becomes unsafe. If taxes are too high, they yield no revenue; if laws are too severe, juries will not convict; if they are too lenient, private vengeance steps in and metes out justice. Compensation everywhere. When I started in business I used to be somewhat worried by the good fortune of the wicked. I saw men who worked one half as hard as I and were paid twice as much money. I saw other men lift themselves into the good graces of the boss on the golden wings of golf and funny stories. But I have seen the Law of Compensa- tion get in too much deadly work ever to concern myself any more about anybody else's success. 124 More Power to You I have seen good fellows who thought they were perfectly secure because they called the boss by his first name, be fired by the same boss, who called them by their first name when he did it. And I have seen men grow very rich and I know that there are many ways in which the Law of Compensation can work when a man has the ambition to become very rich. It can make him pay in health. It can turn his home into a counting-room. It can make his children snobs and hypo- crites. It can destroy his joy in simple things. Another gentleman discovered the Law of Compensation even before Emerson. He stated it in this form : Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. There are many seeming exceptions to this law; but the longer I live the more sure I am that if most of the exceptions were analyzed they would be found not to be exceptions at all. Perpetual Motion 125 There is no such thing as perpetual mo- tion. No man ever for very long gets more than he deserves, without paying for it something equally as valuable as he gets. " Nothing can work me damage except myself," said St. Bernard. " The harm that I sustain I carry about in me, and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault" " And " he might have added " never a real gainer for very long, except by my own hard work." XXX YOUR OWN LITTLE BED IS YOUR BEST M. D. ONE reason for many of the world's tribulations is simply lack of sleep. Men who ought to be firm-nerved and resolute are vacillating and irritable, ready to believe the worst about one another, quick to take offense. Troubles that would be laughed away by rested men are bungled into bigness by sluggish brains. The world is too much ruled by tired- eyed men. Look at the newspaper pictures of Mr. Asquith if you would know why England did not make more progress in the first year of the war. His face looks as if he were 7,000 hours behind in his sleep. Study any one of the flash-lights taken of our prominent men at public banquets. 126 Your Best M. D. 127 It will help you to understand why our own government is not more efficient. To avoid overeating and alcohol and the ciga- rette habit are matters of self-control [says Dr. Richard Cabot in the American Magazine]. To get the sleep one needs (which means all that one can possibly soak into one's system in twenty-four hours) often takes courage the courage to re- fuse invitations, to invite ridicule, to seem odd or " puritanic." I believe that more minor illnesses are due to lack of sleep than to any other recog- nizable factor. A person catches cold, gets lum- bago, is constipated or headache-ridden because his vitality is below par, his physical expenditure beyond his physical income. Sleep would set him square with the world; but to get sleep means sacrificing the evening's fun. This he won't do, and so he runs in debt, and is chronically edging toward a breakdown. A few men seem to be able to operate indefinitely with very little sleep. Edison is one of these. Napoleon seemed to be. But Napoleon in his later years showed plainly a loss of virility due to accumu- lated fatigue. He often dropped asleep in the midst of vital matters. ia8 More Power to You Gladstone, on the other hand, consid- ered regular sleep of first importance, and sacrificed everything to it. When Perseus, the last king of ancient Macedonia, was confined as a prisoner at Rome, his guards wished to put him out of the way without leaving any marks on his person or bringing down the dis- pleasure of their superiors upon them. They accomplished their purpose by making it impossible for the poor prisoner to get a single moment's sleep. Napoleon sent 30,000 of his trained veterans to Haiti at one time to reduce the negro population, who were being led by the redoubtable Toussaint L'Ouverture. A few months later 5,000 of them all that were left withdrew, bedraggled and defeated. What had happened to the other 25,000? Shot? Not many of them. Toussaint did not have ammunition enough to shoot very many. No. He adopted the simpler and more effective plan of starving them to death for lack of sleep. Night after night, Your Best M. D. 129 when the French lay down to snatch a few moments' rest, he would threaten an at- tack. All night long a few of his men would continue the pretense and all night long the French would toss in sleep- lessness. They had faced the best men of Europe and won: but they could not conquer the loss of sleep. I have seen an abject coward lie down to sleep, and rise up a strong, courageous man. I have seen a liar go to bed, and awake ready to tell the truth and take the consequences. I have seen vigorous, de- termined executives step out of the same beds where faltering ineffectives lay down the night before. ' Those who are habituated to full and regular sleep are those who recover most readily from sickness," says Dr. Benjamin W. Richardson, and adds: " The obser- vation of this truth led Menander to teach that sleep is the natural cure of all diseases." Menander was right. We should have fewer doctor bills; fewer deaths of men 130 More Power to You between forty and fifty; fewer quarrels yes, even fewer wars if the nerves of all men were kept toned and sweet by a generous measure of sleep. In all the world of literature there is no finer line than this : He giveth His beloved sleep. XXXI THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF ENCOURAGE- MENT IN HISTORY FOR MOST OF US A MOTHER writes me a very dis- couraged letter. Her boy is good and hard-working, but he is very backward in school. In fact, his teachers have about given him up in despair. Both the boy's father and his mother stood well in their classes: they are fond of books and study. They can not un- derstand what is the matter with their boy. Fortunately, there are two very en- couraging things that can be said in reply to a letter like this. One of them I have just been reading in a Life of Kitchener by Harold Begbie: Nothing in Herbert Kitchener created passion- ate friendships or stirred the admiration of 132 More Power to You smaller men among the cadets. He was remark- able for quickness in mathematics, but in every- thing else was accounted thick-headed a slow coach, climbing the dull hill of duty, which has no dazzle of adventure on the crest. He managed to scramble into Woolwich: he was not high on the lists; and no one thought anything about him. After leaving Woolwich he got his commission in the Royal Engineers; and still no one thought much about him. The boy who was dull and thick-headed whom nobody thought much about grew up to become the idol of an empire. Cardinal Wiseman, as a boy, was termed " dull and stupid." Charles Darwin, who changed the whole channel of thought in the scientific world, was so lazy and do-less in boyhood that his father predicted he would be a disgrace to the family. Heine, by his own confession, " idled away his school days and was horribly bored " by the instruction given him. Wordsworth was so lazy up to the age of seventeen as to be " incapable of con- tinued application to prescribed work." Encouragement in History 133 Henry Ward Beecher barely succeeded in graduating from Amherst, having stood almost at the foot of his class; and James Russell Lowell was suspended by Harvard " on account of continued neglect of his college duties." First of all, to this mother of a " back- ward " boy I would say: Have courage. He travels in good company. Hundreds of those of whom the world is most proud have been almost given up in despair by their parents in youth. Only when the spark of their special in- terest was struck have they shown the stuff that was in them. And the second thing that may be said to such a mother is even more encourag- ing. Dullness is the rule in the world: bril- liance is the exception. Business and government and law and medicine and the church are ruled by mediocrities. " I have talked with great men," said Lincoln, " and I do not see how they dif- fer from others." 134 More Power to You The truest bit of business philosophy ever penned is contained in the story of the tortoise and the hare. Any one who watches business life care- fully for any length of time is continually seeing brilliant, unstable men overtaken and surpassed by men with half their in- herent ability, whose very mental slowness has inculcated in them a mastering persist- ency. The mother of the boy who invariably leads his class has reason to be concerned: the mother of the dull boy might wish him more cleverly endowed, but she need not despair if only his slowness to learn fos- ters thoroughness. " My master whipped me very hard/' says Dr. Johnson. " Without that, sir, I would have done nothing." Yet he who as a boy had to be whipped to learn, set himself in later life doggedly ' and unrelentingly to a task that raised him high above the brilliant men of his time in literary prominence, and made him a citizen of the ages. XXXII YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY HARRIMAN died twenty years be- fore his time. He was a tremen- dous worker, but work did not kill him. What killed Harriman was thinking in bed. Thinking in business hours is a construc- tive process. Thinking in bed is usually worry. One reason why every man should read history is in order that he may know the folly of worry. Read the History of Rome by Ferrero, especially those chapters following the as- sassination of Caesar. See the pitiful worry of poor Cicero. Should he follow the dictates of his conscience and throw in his lot with the friends of Caesar, who had shown him so much kindness? 135 136 More Power to You Or should he take what seemed to be the safer course, and join with Caesar's assassins? Day after day he tortured his soul with worry. How pitifully unimportant all that worry seems to us, two thousand years afterward. How clearly we can see that if Cicero had simply followed his con- science he could have spared himself all that worry and probably saved both his life and his honor. A greater man than Cicero lived through a far greater period of trial. And he did not worry. That man was Abraham Lincoln. He was depressed, yes; heartsick, yes. But worried? No! When he was tempted to worry by some trial that seemed overwhelming, he would say to himself, " This too will pass." By which he meant that a thousand such trials had visited men in centuries gone by, and had passed away. His trial was important enough to make him think. You Should Not Worry 137 But no trial could be important enough to make him worry. A certain business man faced his board of directors recently. He had done his best but he had lost them a large sum of money. One of the directors said to him: ' You don't seem to be much worried." He replied: " You gentlemen don't pay me any money to worry about your business. You pay me to do my best according to my judgment and conscience. I have done that. To worry would not add one penny to your balance sheet." Learn this lesson from history: In all the six thousand years of history, worry has accomplished nothing. Your worry will accomplish no more e XXXIII THOUGHTS ON LYING ON MY BACK AND READING A SEED CATALOGUE IT is snowing outside; the sky is leaden; no birds sing. The winter wind howls. And I have been lying on my back, read- ing a seed catalogue, and laughing to my- self at poor old winter. He is my hereditary enemy. The Eng- lish have not watched the reports of Ger- many's condition more intently than I have marked the various stages of his. They are hoping that Germany will give in before next autumn. I do not have to hope. I know positively that I have win- ter beaten. I have even marked down on my calendar the date in April when I shall celebrate my victory by my annual tri- umphal march. When that date arrives, I pack my old 138 On Reading a Seed Catalogue 139 corduroy trousers in a suit-case, with the two shirts I bought from the United States Army store for sixty-five cents each, my old curved pipe and a can of the mixture that my wife lets me use outdoors but not inside the house, and set forth for my lit- tle farm in Massachusetts. People wonder why I have a farm in the rockiest spot in the world, when I might have selected one of the fertile counties of Massachusetts or Connecticut or New York. The trouble with these fertile farms is that they constantly tempt one to grow something useful. One feels conscience- stricken not to be trying to make the place pay. I know that my place can not possibly pay. I know that nothing will grow on it but pine trees and flowers. I can plant all the vacant places to posies without one single twinge of conscience. I have a magnificent alibi for my inherent laziness. Why work, I say to myself, when it 's no use? Why try to fight against Nature? Why fly in the face of Providence? 140 More Power to You Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep. Slumber and flowers what more can one ask of a farm? It is hard for me to understand people who have even one foot of land and who do not raise any flowers. Just as a back yard full of rubbish al- ways seems to me to suggest a rubbishy soul, and a barren back yard a more or less desolate character, so a back yard run- ning over with flowers cries out that in this house dwell beauty and peace and content. For myself, I have already planned out just where the pansies are to be this sum- mer, and the hollyhocks, and the sweet- williams, and the nasturtiums, and the roses. I get right out after breakfast, and by nine o'clock the sweat is pouring down every degree of my longitude. I rejoice. I say to my soul, " Surely, soul, every drop of this sweat that rolls out of your system lengthens your life." I feel my neck get- On Reading a Seed Catalogue 141 ting sunburned, and I do not care. It is as if health were being poured into me from the great source of all health, as power is poured into a storage battery. And Sundays, after church, I take a book and lie down in the midst of my flow- ers, and look at the marvel of their color- ing, and wonder how it is that out of the little black seeds I planted could have come such yellows and reds and purples and greens. And people go by and see me stretched there, and I hear them tell each other that I am a fellow from New York who is sort of crazy, and who must have married a rich wife, as he never does any work. And then I turn over and listen to the much more satisfying conversation of the flowers, who bend their heads and whis- per in my ear : Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Where- fore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 142 More Power to You shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? . . . Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. XXXIV ON TAKING MY OLD FISHING-POLE OUT OF WINTER STORAGE I HAVE examined the high cost of liv- ing cloud inside and out, and I have been able to discover only this one single patch of silver lining: Meat prices are so high that the fish which I shall catch this summer will have some chance of being treated by my family with respect. No more shall I be met at the door with the cruel taunt: "If you expect to eat those little things, you will have to clean them yourself." Instead I shall be hailed as one who, in his slender way, is aiding the Allies, and fighting for liberty, by help- ing to feed the world. Slinking in at the back gate with my string of fish is a humiliation that I shall never have to endure again. I shall march H3 144 More Power to You home proudly, as the cave-man used to march, bearing the fruits of his prowess to his woman and cubs. I am told by eminent doctors that since 1900 there has been a frightful increase in the percentage of deaths among middle- aged men from diseases of the heart and liver and kidneys. In the same years I have noted a fright- ful increase in golf and other forms of violent outdoor exercise. I see men of forty and even younger rushing off to the links for a game that used to be thought safe only for hardened survivors of ninety or more. I watch them hurl themselves feverishly from hole to hole, returning exhausted to their club-houses or being driven home in limousines, supposing they have done them- selves good. And I shake my head sadly and fondle my fishing-pole. No man ever died at forty-five from over-exertion at fishing. There is not a single recorded case of a man's heart being adversely affected by the sight of a My Old Fishing-Pole 145 cork pulled under the surface of a pond. If one loves life and would continue long in it, let him fish. Fishermen grow in wisdom as they grow in years. As Izaak Walton hath it: I have found it to be a real truth, that the sit- ting by the river's side is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will in- vite an angler to it; and this seems to be main- tained by the learned Peter Du Moulin, who in his discourse of the fulfilling of the Prophecies, observes, that when God intended to reveal any future events or high notions to his prophets, he then carried them either to the deserts or the sea- shore, and having so separated them from amidst the press of people and business, and the cares of the world, he might settle their mind in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation. v No great philosophy, as far as I know, has been born on either the bleachers or the links: but how many of the ideas that have made men truer and nobler have come out of long days on the bank, when there were no bites! Fishing is human life epitomized. There is the water, calm, inscrutable, 146 More Power to You impenetrable, the symbol of fate, into which every man casts his line. What lies at the bottom of it for him no man may see. The tiny minnow of misfortune which nibbles away his bait, may be followed the next moment by a monstrous catch of good luck, sweeping him almost off his feet. What happened yesterday in this very spot is no augury of what may take place to-day. Always there is the hope that the next fling of the line will bring the reward: always the lure of the one more try. And as one grows older in fishing, even as one grows older in living, there comes the same consoling truth that one need not catch big fish in order to be happy: that the spirit of the fishing is more im- portant than the size of the catch: that he who fishes well must fish with a calm and tranquil soul, drawing his reward from the joy of his fishing rather than from the weight of his fish. To one who can tune his soul to it, there is consolation in fishing, and healing and peace. My Old Fishing-Pole 147 After their Great Friend had gone, the disciples of Jesus were desolate. Where should they turn? What could they do? And Simon Peter, seeking comfort, an- swered: " I go a-fishing." Every true fisherman in the world knows exactly how he felt. XXXV IT 'S A GOOD OLD WORLD IF YOU KNOW HOW TO BREATHE I ONCE had the misfortune to know a pessimist. There was some excuse for his pessimism. He was a narrow- chested chap threatened with tuberculosis. He had given himself up for lost. But one night somebody induced him to go to a singing school. I saw him a year later. His chest was filled out; there was a sparkle in his eye; his laugh could be heard a city block away. He was a resurrected and transformed man. What had happened to him? The sim- plest thing in the world. He had simply learned how to breathe. The average man or woman goes through life with one third of his or her lung capacity totally unused. 148 How to Breathe 149 That is why, when you run, you get a " stitch in your side." The stitch is caused by the unfolding of some of the lung tissue that you ought to use but do not. Even when you practise deep breathing exercises you probably do not fill your en- tire lung capacity. At least, so Dr. Wil- liam Lee Howard says in his interesting book, " Breathe and Be Well." You expand your chest: but the really important part of your breathing is done with your diaphragm a big flat muscle that forms the floor of your chest. And the abdominal muscles are the boys you need to train if you are to get the most out of your diaphragm. Fill your lungs until you feel your stom- ach muscles pressing hard against your belt. That means that your diaphragm has straightened down and is massaging the top of your stomach and intestines helping along with the process of elimina- tion. When you breathe out, do it forcibly, 150 More Power to You with the stomach muscles: like a horse snorting but without the snort Your stomach and intestines will be forced up against the diaphragm again and given another massage. Breathing in is important, but breath* ing out is much more important. A majority of the ills to which modern man is victim originate in the intes- tines. And the chief of them auto-intoxica- tion, constipation would disappear if the stomach muscles got the exercise they ought to get through deep, forcible breath- ing. Doctors have long known that massage of the abdomen actually increases the num- ber of red corpuscles. Formerly it was thought that the mas- sage simply located and chased into cir- culation a lot of red corpuscles that were lying around in blind alleys. That is part of the explanation : here is the other part. There is secreted in the suprarenal glands, as Dr. Howard explains, a sub- How to Breathe 151 stance called epinephrin, a very powerful stimulant to the red corpuscles. " Massage of the abdomen drives the epinephrin into action, which forces the blood-cells to take up oxygen // by proper breathing you are furnishing the oxygen" Read sometime a book by a man like Thoreau, or John Burroughs, or Stewart Edward White one of the great open- air writers. Then, while the impression of its rich, bounding optimism is still strong upon you, pick up a book written by one of the Russian novelists, or by one of our mod- ern long-haired writers who believe that realism necessarily means murder and drunkenness and prostitution. What a difference! And what makes the difference? The realist will tell you that it is be- cause he thinks deeply, while the optimistic writer thinks superficially. As a matter of fact, the difference is not in the brains of the two men, but in their livers. 152 More Power to You It is not the depth of their thinking so much as the depth of their lungs. The corpuscles of the one are red and fed with oxygen: the corpuscles of the other are pale and fed with cigarette smoke and germs. " For what, after all, is Life? " asks an old Sanskrit quotation. And answers : " Life is the interval between one breath and another he who only half breathes only half lives." XXXVI WM. HOHENZOLLERN, LOCK BOX I, BERLIN DEAR WlLHELM: On the day I write this the Presi- dent is about to ask Congress to vote that you and my folks are at war. I see by the papers that some of your employees do not take this very seriously. So I think I ought to write you, and tell you exactly what it means. It means I say it without rancor, Wil- helm, and purely as a matter of giving you the customary notice it means that your services as King will no longer be required. So far as we are concerned, you might as well begin right now to clean out your desk. When our government writes to Berlin next time, the envelop may go to the same address, but it will bear a differ- ent name. i53 More Power to You We have come to this conclusion sol- emnly, Wilhelm. No nation ever went into war with so little flag-waving and cheering. We are not fighting for revenge, nor for territory, nor to win a " place in the sun." We are going to war to win peace for the world for this generation and all gen- erations to come. We have made up our minds, very so- berly, that permanent peace must rest on certain fixed foundations. That is the reason we can not make a permanent peace with you, Wilhelm. For the first of these foundations is Truth. I am not going to chide you with the " scrap of paper" incident: nor remind you of all the shifty, halting explanations you made when our boats were sunk. Zimmermann's last effort is enough to re- member. On the very day when he was telling us how friendly you are to us, he was promising to help Mexico take our To Wilhelm Hohenzollern 155 Southwest away and Japan our Pacific Coast. Your people we are willing to trust, Wil- helm; but we have had enough of your employees. The new world peace must be written on a whole sheet of paper, not a scrap. And the second foundation of the new world peace, Wilhelm, is Democracy. Kings may have been all right for the little one-cylinder States of the Middle Ages. But there will never be a succes- sion of men strong enough and wise enough to drive the big twin-six modern State. You may point to your splendid ances- tor, Frederick the Great; and I admit his ability. But who came after him, Wil- helm? Do you remember? Frederick William the Fat! Charlemagne was pretty successful at kinging: but a few years after Charle- magne whom do we see? Charles the Simple! Even granting that you have governed 156 More Power to You your people more wisely than they could govern themselves look at your oldest boy, Wilhelm. And, honestly, just be- tween ourselves, has n't the king business pretty well run out ? As long as Russia was ruled by a Czar, I did not mind you so much. There seemed no real hope for universal peace, anyhow. But the world is going democratic, Wil- helm : and universal peace seems, at last, to be within the range of possibility. For if history teaches any lesson at all, it is this that it is tremendously difficult to get democracies into war. When the smoke of war has cleared away, and you are farming quietly some- where, Wilhelm, you will begin to see things more clearly. You will begin to understand that what is to blame for the loss of your job is, after all, nothing less than the Christian religion itself. Nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ went about telling men that they were children of God. To Wilhelm Hohenzollern 157 If that is true, if all men are children of God, then all men are the equals of their kings. And now, after nineteen hundred years, Wilhelm, all men are about to find that great truth out. XXXVII GENERALLY SPEAKING, A JOB IS GOOD IN PROPORTION TO THE AMOUNT OF STUDY REQUIRED TO MASTER IT YESTERDAY morning, when I rode up in the elevator, the starter was breaking in a new elevator-boy. At noon, when I went out to lunch, the new boy was running the car alone. He had on a uniform, and was starting and stopping with the confidence of a veteran. From apprentice to professional in a couple of hours. Last week I saw a veteran motorman teaching his work to a youngster. On Tuesday and Wednesday the two were on the front platform together: on Thurs- day the new man was operating the car alone. It is a sight I have seen very often: yet I never see it without a feeling of wonder. 158 Price of a Good Job 159 What thoughts are in that young fel- low's head as he receives his instructions from the gray-haired veteran? How can he fail to look forward and see in the older man a picture of himself twenty years from now? He is taking up a low paid job a job with no future. Twenty years from now he will be just where he is to-day only older, with a grasp on the job somewhat less secure. His experience will count for nothing, because it is experience that any other man can gain in a couple of days. He may, from time to time, force an increase in his pay. But the increases will not be large. Why? Because he learned the job in two days. And in any other two days the company can find plenty of men who will learn just as fast and take the job away from him. Recently I met in a hotel restaurant a friend of mine who has just come back from England after taking special work in surgery under some of the greatest men in the world. 160 More Power to You He is thirty-one years old: it is fourteen years since he entered college. For ten of those fourteen years he has been in medical schools, in hospitals, and in foreign countries studying. Fourteen long years of hard, uninter- rupted study. Years made more difficult by the necessity for self-support: and filled sometimes with questionings, as he has seen his college class-mates moving forward to their places as well paid physicians, and he lingering still in school. Yet with what result? He has acquired a specialized training such as only a few other men in New York possess. He will begin life with an income of several thousands ; he will pay back his edu- cational debts in a couple of years; in ten years his income will be tens of thousands. Fourteen years of his life went into the mastery of his profession. But he need have no fear of losing what he has gained. No other man can displace him, except at the cost of fourteen years of work. I would not say one word in deprecia- Price of a Good Job 161 tion of honest toil in humble places. The routine activities of life must be carried on: the world has need of elevator-men and motormen. And, according to the loyalty and courage with which these do their work, they are entitled to the world's gratitude and respect. My quarrel is not with the elevator-boy who can not be anything but an elevator- boy: but with the boy who might fill a larger place in life if only he were not too lazy to try. I would see every young man filled, if possible, with a divine discontent, which would make him unwilling to be less than his very best. Every young man in the United States ought to read the autobiography of Ben- jamin Franklin. See with what painful diligence he taught himself to write good English. Watch him, at fourteen, attacking again the arithmetic that he had three times failed to pass in school, and conquering it. See Michelangelo, old and blind, still being wheeled into the great galleries, that 162 More Power to You he might with his fingers trace the outlines of the statuary true to his life's motto to the very end: Ancora impara " Still learning." 4 The gods sell anything to everybody at a fair price," said Emerson. And when he said it he epitomized the philosophy of Business. The job that the gods sell for two hours' training is worth just what it costs. Only that job is worth much which has tied to it the price-tag of constant, unceas- ing study and work. XXXVIII THE TIMES THAT TRY MEN'S ' SOULS MOST of us had our little spiritual worlds in apple-pie order in July, 1914. We had figured out a comfortable phi- losophy for ourselves. The world was a good place to live in : it was gradually growing better. War was a thing of the past. With woman suffrage, widows' pensions, mini- mum wage laws, direct primaries, national prohibition, and all the rest, we were al- most within sight of the millennium. God in His Heaven, all right with the world. And then, suddenly, out of the clouds there burst upon us the most terrible war in history, shattering our comfortable phi- losophies, rocking our faith. We saw school-teachers, lawyers, bank- 164 More Power to You ers, and clergymen marching forth in clean new uniforms cultured, civilized human beings. A day or two of war, and presto ! mud and blood spattered, they were tear- ing at one another like savages. I remember once talking to an ex-mis- sionary who had worked in Turkey. He had come back to this country, re- signed from the ministry, and entered busi- ness. " I should like to go on believing," he said; " but how can I, when I have seen the helpless Armenians massacred in the streets for no crime except that of being Christians? How can I continue to be- lieve in a God who allows His people to perish because they worship Him? " B. Fay Mills, the great evangelist, trav- eled in his middle years through some of the towns where he had held meetings as a young man and gained thousands of converts. His converts had back-slidden : there was almost nothing to show that the towns had ever been swept by a great religious revival. Times that Try Men's Souls 16$ Mills, saddened, exclaimed: "If the work was of God, why did not God preserve it?" And he lost his hold on faith. Thousands of men have, in the quiet of their own hearts, gone through a searching process in the past two years. Is all civilization, then, a sham? Is all our faith in a gradual progress toward bet- ter things a mere delusion? Is there no God? Or, if there be a God, is He One who does not care who sits idly in His Heaven, watching the evil in the world blot out the good? A hundred years ago the wars of Na- poleon tried men's souls as the war with Germany is trying them to-day. The finest young men of Europe bled to death, the wealth of civilization spilled in war to feed one man's crazed ambition. Why were such things allowed to be? In the search for the answer to that question, men lost their faith. But one man, Baron Stein, did not lose faith. It was his influence on Prussia and Austria, and later on the unstable Czar, i66 More Power to You that did as mux:h as anything else to corn- pass the downfall of Napoleon. " His whole conduct at this period," says Andrew D. White, " and indeed throughout all the years of his official life, was due, not merely to his hatred of the oppressor of his country, but to a deep faith that Napoleon's career was a chal- lenge to the Almighty, and that it there- fore could not continue." Against that faith Napoleon fought in vain. We have passed through trying days: we face days even more difficult. It is no time jto lose faith. It is a time to know, as Stein knew, that we fight to win, because there fight against us those whose whole career in this war has been