Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

Helen Keller

There can be no such thing as an impure gentleman. The two words contradict each other. A gentleman must be pure. He need not have fine clothes. He may have had few advantages. But he must be pure and clean. And, if he have all outward grace and gift and be inwardly unclean, though he may call himself a gentleman, he is a liar and a lie.

O, young man, guard your heart-purity! Keep innocency! Never lose it; if it be gone, you have lost from the casket the most precious gift of God. The first purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling, if soiled, can be cleansed by no fuller's soap. If a harp be broken, art may repair it; if a light be quenched, the flame may kindle it; but if a flower be crushed, what art can repair it? If an odor be wafted away, who can collect or bring it back?

Parents are, in many cases, responsible for the impurity of their children. Through a mistaken sense of delicacy, they allow the awakened, searching mind of the child to get information concerning its physical nature from the mind of some boy or girl no better taught than itself, and so conceive wholly wrong and harmful ideas concerning things of which it is vitally important that every human being should at the outset of life have clear and adequate ideas. Such silence, many times, is fatal, and always foolish, if not criminal.

"I have noticed," says William Acton, "that all patients who have confessed to me that they have practised vice, lamented that they were not, when children, made aware of its consequences; and I have been pressed over and over again to urge on parents, guardians, schoolmasters, and others interested in the education of youth, the necessity of giving to their charges some warning, some intimation, of their danger. To parents and guardians I offer my earnest advice that they should, by hearty sympathy and frank explanation, aid their charges in maintaining pure lives." What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?

A prominent writer says: "If young persons poison their bodies and corrupt their minds with vicious courses, no lapse of time, after a reform, is likely to restore them to physical soundness and the soul purity of their earlier days."

There is one idea concerning purity which should never have been conceived, and, having been conceived, should be, once and forever, eternally exploded. It is that purity is different in the different sexes.

It would be loosening the foundations of virtue to countenance the notion that, because of a difference in sex, men are at liberty to set morality at defiance, and to do with impunity that which, if done by a woman, would stain her character for life. To maintain a pure and virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman must be virtuous and pure, both alike shunning all acts infringing on the heart, character, and conscience,—shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed, can never be entirely thrown out again.

Is there any reason why a man should have any license to drag his thoughts through the mud and filth any more than a woman? Is there any sex in principle? Isn't a stain a blot upon a boy's character just as bad as upon a girl's? If purity is so refining and elevating for one sex, why should it not be for the other?

It is incredible that a man should be socially ostracized for comparatively minor offenses, yet be rotten with immorality and be received into the best homes. But, if a woman makes the least false step in this direction, she is not only ostracized but treated with the utmost contempt, while the man who was the chief sinner in causing a woman's downfall, society will pardon.

To put it on the very lowest ground, I am certain that if young men knew and realized the fearful risks to health that they take by indulging in gross impurities they would put them by with a shudder of disgust and aversion. It may very easily happen—it very often actually does happen—that one single step from the path of purity clouds a man's whole life with misery and unspeakable suffering; and not only that, but even entails lifelong disease on children yet unborn.

To return to its Maker at the close of life the marvelous body which He gave us, scarred by a heedless life, with the heart rotten with impurity, the imagination filled with vicious images, the character honeycombed with vice, is a most ungrateful return for the priceless life of opportunity.

A mind retaining all the dew and freshness of innocence shrinks from the very idea of impurity, the very suggestion of it, as if it were sin to have even thought or heard of it, as if even the shadow of the evil would leave some soil on the unsullied whiteness of the virgin mind. "When modesty is once extinguished, it knows not a return."

CHAPTER L

THE HABIT OF HAPPINESS

The highest happiness must always come from the exercise of the best thing in us.

When you find happiness in anything but useful work, you will be the first man or woman to make the discovery.

If you take an inventory of yourself at the very outset of your career you will find that you think you are going to find happiness in things or in conditions. Most people think they are going to find the largest part of their happiness in money, what money will buy or what it will give them in the way of power, influence, comforts, luxuries. They think they are going to find a great deal of their happiness in marriage. How quickly they find that the best happiness they will ever know is that which must be limited to their own capacity for enjoyment, that their happiness can not come from anything outside of them but must be developed from within. Many people believe they are going to find much of their happiness in books, in travel, in leisure, in freedom from the thousand and one anxieties and cares and worries of business; but the moment they get in the position where they thought they would have freedom many other things come up in their minds and cut off much of the expected joy. When they get money and leisure they often find that they are growing selfish, which cuts off a lot of their happiness. No man able to work can be idle without feeling a sense of guilt at not doing his part in the world, for every time he sees the poor laboring people who are working for him, who are working everywhere, he is constantly reminded of his meanness in shifting upon others what he is able to do and ought to do himself. Idleness is the last place to look for happiness. Idleness is like a stagnant pool. The moment the water ceases to flow, to work, to do something, all sorts of vermin and hideous creatures develop in it. It becomes torpid and unhealthy giving out miasma and repulsive odors. In the same way work is the only thing that will keep the individual healthy and wholesome and clean. An idle brain very quickly breeds impurities.

The married man quickly learns that his domestic happiness depends upon what he himself contributes to the partnership, that he can not take out a great deal without putting a great deal in, for selfishness always reaps a mean, despicable harvest. It is only the generous giver who gets much. There is nothing which will so shrivel up a man; and contract his capacity for happiness as selfishness. It is always a fatal blighter, blaster, disappointer. We must give to get, we must be great before we can get great enjoyment; great in our motive, grand in our endeavor, sublime in our ideas.

It is impossible, absolutely unscientific, for a bad person to be truly happy; just as impossible as it would be for one to be comfortable while lying on a bed of nettles which are constantly pricking him. There is no way under heaven by which a person can be really happy without being good, clean, square, and true. This does not mean that a person is happy because he does not use tobacco, drink, gamble, use profane language or does not do other vicious things. Some of the meanest, narrowest, most contemptible people in the world do none of these things but they are uncharitable, jealous, envious, revengeful. They stab you in the back, slander you, cheat you. They may be cunning, underhanded, and yet have a fairly good standing in the church. No person can be really happy who has a small, narrow, bigoted, uncharitable mind or disposition. Generosity, charity, kindness are absolutely essential to real happiness. Deceitful people can not be happy; they can not respect themselves because they inwardly despise themselves for deceiving you. A person must be open minded, transparent, simple, in order to be really happy. A person who is always covering up something, trying to keep things from you, misleading you, deceiving you, can not get away from self-reproach, and hence can not be really happy.

Selfishness is a fatal enemy of happiness because no one ever does a really selfish thing without feeling really mean, without despising himself for it. I have never seen a strong young man sneak into a vacant seat in a car and allow an old man or woman with a package or a baby in her arms to stand, without looking as though he knew he had done a mean, selfish thing. There is a look of humiliation in his face. We are so constituted that we can not help condemning ourselves for our mean or selfish acts.

The liar is never really happy. He is always on nettles lest his deceit betray him. He never feels safe. Dishonesty in all its phases is fatal to happiness, for no dishonest person can get his self-approval. Without this no happiness is possible.

Before you can be really happy, my friend, you must be able to look back upon a well-spent past, a conscientious, unselfish past. If not, you will be haunted by demons which will destroy your happiness. If you have been mean and selfish, greedy and dishonest with your fellowmen, all sorts of horrible things will rise out of your money pile to terrify and to make your happiness impossible.

In other words, happiness is merely a result of the life work. It will partake of the exact quality of the motive which you have put into your life work. If these motives have been selfish, greedy, grasping, if cunning and dishonesty have dominated in your career, your happiness will be marred accordingly.

You can not complain of your happiness, because it is your own child, the product of your own brain, your own effort. It has been made up of your motives, colored by your life aim. It exactly corresponds to the cause which produced it.

There is the greatest difference in the world between the happiness which comes from a sweet, beautiful, unselfish, helpful, sympathetic, industrious, honorable career, and the mean satisfaction which may grow to be a part of your marked self if you have lived a selfish, grasping life.

What we call happiness is the harvest from our life sowing, our habitual thought-sowing, deed-doing. If we have sown selfish, envious, jealous, revengeful, hateful seeds, greedy, grasping seeds, we can not expect a golden happiness harvest like that which comes from a clean and unselfish, helpful sowing.

If our harvest is full of the rank, poisonous weeds of jealousy, envy, dishonesty, cunning, and cruelty, we have no one to blame but ourselves, for we sowed the seed which produced that sort of a harvest.

Somehow some people have an entirely wrong idea of what real happiness is. They seem to think it can be bought, can be had by influence, that it can be purchased by money; that if they have money they can get that wonderful, mysterious thing which they call happiness.

But happiness is a natural, faithful harvest from our sowing. It would be as impossible for selfish seed, greed seed to produce a harvest of contentment, of genuine satisfaction, of real joy, as for thistle seeds to produce a harvest of wheat or corn.

Whatever the quality of your enjoyment or happiness may be, you have patterned it by your life motive by the spirit in which you have worked, by the principles which have actuated you.

A pretty different harvest, I grant, many of us must face, marred with all sorts of hideous, poisonous weeds, but they are all the legitimate product of our sowing. No one can rob us of our harvest or change it very much. Every thought, every act, every motive, whether secret or public, is a seed which no power on earth can prevent going to its harvest of beauty or ugliness, honor or shame. Most people have an idea that happiness is something that can be manufactured. They do not realize that it can no more be manufactured than wheat or corn can be manufactured. It must be grown, and the harvest will be like the seed.

You, young man, make up your mind at the very outset of your career that whatever comes to you in life, that whether you succeed or fail, whether you have this or that, there is one thing you will have, and that is a happy, contented mind, that you will extract your happiness as you go along. You will not take the chances of picking up or developing the happy habit after you get rich, for then you may be too old.

Most people postpone their enjoyment until they are disappointed to find the power of enjoyment has largely gone by and that even if they had the means they could not get anything like as much real happiness out of it as they could have gotten as they went along when they were younger. Take no chances with your happiness, or the sort of a life that can produce it; whatever else you risk, do not risk this. Early form the happy habit, the habit of enjoyment every day, no matter what comes or does not come to you during the day. Pick crumbs of comfort out of your situation, no matter how unpleasant or disagreeable.

I know a man who, although poor, can manage to get more comfort out of a real tough, discouraging situation than any one else I have ever seen. I have often seen him when he did not have a dollar to his name, with a wife to support; yet he was always buoyant, happy, cheerful, consented. He would even make fun out of an embarrassing situation, see something ludicrous in his extreme poverty.

There have never been such conflicting estimates, such varying ideas, regarding any state of human condition as to what constitutes happiness. Many people think that it is purchasable with money, but many of the most restless, discontented, unhappy people in the world are rich. They have the means of purchasing what they thought would produce happiness, but the real thing eludes them. On the other hand, some of the poorest people in the world are happy. The fact is that there is no possible way of cornering or purchasing happiness for it is absolutely beyond the reach of money. It is true, we can purchase a few comforts and immunities from some annoyances and worries with money which we can not get without it. On the other hand, the great majority of people who have inherited money are positively injured by it, because it often stops their own development by taking away the motive for self-effort and self-reliance.

When people get money they often stop growing because they depend upon the money instead of relying upon their own inherent resources.

Rich people suffer from their indulgences more than poor ones suffer from their hardships.

A great many rich people die with liver and kidney troubles which are effected both by eating and drinking. The kidneys are very susceptible to the presence of alcohol. If rich people try to get greater enjoyment out of life than poor people by eating and drinking, they are likely very quickly to come to grief. If they try to seek it through the avenue of leisure they soon find that an idle brain is one of the most dangerous things in the world—nothing deteriorates faster. The mind was made for continual strong action, systematic, vigorous exercise, and this is possible only when some dominating aim and a great life purpose leads the way.

No person can be really healthful whose mind is not usefully and continually employed. So there is no possibility of finding real happiness in idleness if we are able to work. Nature brings a wonderful compensatory power to those who are crippled or sick or otherwise disabled from working, but there is no compensation for idleness in those who are able to work. Nature only gives us the use of faculties we employ. "Use or lose" is her motto, and when we cease to use a faculty or function it is gradually taken away from us, gradually shrivels and atrophies.

There is no satisfaction like that which comes from the steady, persistent, honest, conscientious pursuit of a noble aim. There are a multitude of evidences in man's very structure that his marvelous mechanism was intended for action, for constant exercise, and that idleness and stagnation always mean deterioration and death of power. No man can remain idle without shrinking, shrivelling, constantly becoming a less efficient man; for he can keep up only those faculties and powers which he constantly employs, and there is no other possible way. Nature puts her ban of deterioration and loss of power upon idleness. We see these victims everywhere shorn of power—weak, nerveless, backboneless, staminaless, gritless people, without forcefulness, mere nonentities because they have ceased working. Without work mental health is impossible and without health the fullest happiness is impossible.

It has been said that happiness is the most delusive thing that man pursues. Yet why need it be a blind search?

If we were to stop the first hundred people we meet on the street and ask them what in their experience has given them the most happiness, probably the answer of no two would be alike.

How interesting and instructive it would be to give a thousand dollars to each of these hundred people, and without their knowing it, follow them and see what they would do with the money,—what it would mean to them.

To some poor youth hungry for an education, with no opportunity to gain it, this money would mean a college education. Another would see in his money a more comfortable home for his aged parents. To another this money would suggest all sorts of dissipation. Some would see books and leisure for self-improvement, a trip abroad.

We all wear different colored glasses and no two see life with the same tint.

Some find their present happiness in coarse dissipation; others in a quiet nook with a book. Some find their greatest happiness in friends, in social intercourse; others seek happiness in roving over the earth, always thinking that the greatest enjoyment is in another day, in another place, a little further on, in the next room, or to-morrow, or in another country.

To many people, happiness is never where they are, but almost anywhere else.

Most people lose sight of the simplicity of happiness. They look for it in big, complicated things. Real happiness is perfectly simple. In fact, it is incompatible with complexity. Simplicity is its very essence.

I was dining recently with a particularly successful young man who is trying very hard to be happy, but he takes such a complicated, strenuous view of everything that his happiness is always flying from him. He drives everything so fiercely, his life is so vigorous, so complicated, that happiness can not find a home with him very long. Nor does he understand why. He has money, health; but he always has that restless far-away, absent-minded gaze into something beyond, and I do not think he is ever really very happy. His whole manner of living is extremely complex. He does not seem to know where to find happiness. He has evidently mistaken the very nature of happiness. He thinks it consists in making a great show, in having great possessions, in doing things which attract a great deal of attention; but happiness would be strangled, suffocated in such an environment. The essentials of real happiness are few, simple, and close at hand.

Happiness is made up of very simple ingredients. It flees from the complex life. It evades pomp and show. The heart would starve amid the greatest luxuries.

Simple joys and the treasures of the heart and mind make happiness.

Happiness has very little to do with material things. It is a mental state of mind. Real permanent happiness can not be found in mere temporary things, because its roots reach away down into eternal principles.

One of the most pathetic pictures in civilization is the great army of men and women searching the world over for happiness, as though it existed in things rather than in a state of mind.

The people who have spent years and a fortune trying to find it look as hungry and as lean of contentment and all that makes life desirable as when they started out. Chasing happiness all over the world is about as silly a business as any human being ever engaged in, for it was never yet found by any pursuer. Yet happiness is the simplest thing in the world. It is found in many a home with carpetless floors and pictureless walls. It knows neither rank, station, nor color, nor does it recognize wealth. It only demands that it live with a contented mind and pure heart. It will not live with ostentation; it flees from pretense; it loves the simple life; it insists upon a sweet, healthful, natural environment. It hates the forced and complicated and formal.

Real happiness flees from the things that pass away; it abides only in principle, permanency.

I have never seen a person who has lived a grasping, greedy, money-chasing life, who was not disappointed at what money has given him for his trouble.

It is only in giving, in helping, that we find our quest. Everywhere we go we see people who are disappointed, chagrined, shocked, to find that what they thought would be the angel of happiness turned out to be only a ghost.

All the misery and the crime of the world rest upon the failure of human beings to understand the principle that no man can really be happy until he harmonizes with the best thing in him, with the divine, and not with the brute. No one can be happy who tries to harmonize his life with his animal instincts. The God (the good) in him is the only possible thing that can make him happy.

Real happiness can not be bribed by anything sordid or low. Nothing mean or unworthy appeals to it. There is no affinity between them. Founded upon principle, it is as scientific as the laws of mathematics, and he who works his problem correctly will get the happiness answer.

There is only one way to secure the correct answer to a mathematical problem; and that is to work in harmony with mathematical laws. It would not matter if half the world believed there was some other way to get the answer, it would never come until the law was followed with the utmost exactitude.

It does not matter that the great majority of the human race believe there is some other way of reaching the happiness goal. The fact that they are discontented, restless, and unhappy shows that they are not working their problem scientifically.

We are all conscious that there is another man inside of us, that there accompanies us through life a divine, silent messenger, that other, higher, better self, which speaks from the depths of our nature and which gives its consent, its "amen" to every right action, and condemns every wrong one.

Man is built upon the plan of honesty, of rectitude—the divine plan. When he perverts his nature by trying to express dishonesty, chicanery, and cunning, of course he can not be happy.

The very essence of happiness is honesty, sincerity, truthfulness. He who would have real happiness for his companion must be clean, straightforward, and sincere. The moment he departs from the right she will take wings and fly away.

It is just as impossible for a person to reach the normal state of harmony while he is practising selfish, grasping methods, as it is to produce harmony in an orchestra with instruments that are all jangled and out of tune. To be happy, we must be in tune with the infinite within us, in harmony with our better selves. There is no way to get around it.

There is no tonic like that which comes from doing things worth while. There is no happiness like that which comes from doing our level best every day, everywhere; no satisfaction like that which comes from stamping superiority, putting our royal trade-mark upon everything which goes through our hands.

Recently a rich young man was asked why he did not work. "I do not have to," he said. "Do not have to" has ruined more young men than almost anything else. The fact is, Nature never made any provision for the idle man. Vigorous activity is the law of life; it is the saving grace, the only thing that can keep a human being from retrograding. Activity along the line of one's highest ambition is the normal state of man, and he who tries to evade it pays the penalty in deterioration of faculty, in paralysis of efficiency. Do not flatter yourself that you can be really happy unless you are useful. Happiness and usefulness were born twins. To separate them is fatal.

It is as impossible for a human being to be happy who is habitually idle as it is for a fine chronometer to be normal when not running. The highest happiness is the feeling of wellbeing which comes to one who is actively employed doing what he was made to do, carrying out the great life-purpose patterned in his individual bent. The practical fulfilling of the life-purpose is to man what the actual running and keeping time are to the watch. Without action both are meaningless.

Man was made to do things. Nothing else can take the place of achievement in his life. Real happiness without achievement of some worthy aim is unthinkable. One of the greatest satisfactions in this world is the feeling of enlargement, of growth, of stretching upward and onward. No pleasure can surpass that which comes from the consciousness of feeling one's horizon of ignorance being pushed farther and farther away—of making headway in the world—of not only getting on, but also of getting up.

Happiness is incompatible with stagnation. A man must feel his expanding power lifting, tugging away at a lofty purpose, or he will miss the joy of living.

The discords, the bickerings, the divorces, the breaking up of rich homes, and the resorting to all sorts of silly devices by many rich people in their pursuit of happiness, prove that it does not dwell with them, that happiness does not abide with low ideals, with selfishness, idleness, and discord. It is a friend of harmony, of truth, of beauty, of affection, of simplicity.

Multitudes of men have made fortunes, but have murdered their capacity for enjoyment in the process. How often we hear the remark, "He has the money, but can not enjoy it."

A man can have no greater delusion than that he can spend the best years of his life coining all of his energies into dollars, neglecting his home, sacrificing friendships, self-improvement, and everything else that is really worth while, for money, and yet find happiness at the end!

The happiness habit is just as necessary to our best welfare as the work habit, or the honesty or square-dealing habit.

No one can do his best, his highest thing, who is not perfectly normal, and happiness is a fundamental necessity of our being. It is an indication of health, of sanity, of harmony. The opposite is a symptom of disease, of abnormality.

There are plenty of evidences in the human economy that we were intended for happiness, that it is our normal condition; that suffering, unhappiness, discontent, are absolutely foreign and abnormal to our natures.

There is no doubt that our life was intended to be one grand, sweet song. We are built upon the plan of harmony, and every form of discord is abnormal.

There is something wrong when any human being in this world, tuned to infinite harmonies and beauties that are unspeakable, is unhappy and discontented.

CHAPTER LI

PUT BEAUTY INTO YOUR LIFE

When the barbarians overran Greece, desecrated her temples, and destroyed her beautiful works of art, even their savageness was somewhat tamed by the sense of beauty which prevailed everywhere. They broke her beautiful statues, it is true; but the spirit of beauty refused to die, and it transformed the savage heart and awakened even in the barbarian a new power. From the apparent death of Grecian art Roman art was born. "Cyclops forging iron for Vulcan could not stand against Pericles forging thought for Greece." The barbarian's club which destroyed the Grecian statues was no match for the chisel of Phidias and Praxiteles.

"What is the best education?" some one asked Plato many centuries ago. "It is," he replied, "that which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable."

The life that would be complete; that would be sweet and sane, as well as strong, must be ornamented, softened, and enriched by a love of the beautiful.

There is a lack in the make-up of a person who has no appreciation of beauty, who does not thrill before a great picture or an entrancing sunset, or a glimpse of beauty in nature.

Savages have no appreciation of beauty. They have a passion for adornment, but there is nothing to show that their esthetic faculties are developed. They merely obey their animal instincts and passions.

But as civilization advances ambition grows, wants multiply, and higher and higher faculties show themselves, until in the highest expression of civilization, we find aspiration and love of the beautiful most highly developed. We find it manifested on the person, in the home, in the environment.

The late Professor Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University, one of the finest thinkers of his day, said that beauty has played an immense part in the development of the highest qualities in human beings; and that civilization could be measured by its architecture, sculpture, and painting.

What an infinite satisfaction comes from beginning early in life to cultivate our finer qualities, to develop finer sentiments, purer tastes, more delicate feelings, the love of the beautiful in all its varied forms of expression!

One can make no better investment than the cultivation of a taste for the beautiful, for it will bring rainbow hues and enduring joys to the whole life. It will not only greatly increase one's capacity for happiness, but also one's efficiency.

A remarkable instance of the elevating, refining influence of beauty has been demonstrated by a Chicago school-teacher, who fitted up in her school a "beauty corner" for her pupils. It was furnished with a stained glass window, a divan covered with an Oriental rug, and a few fine photographs and paintings, among which was a picture of the Sistine Madonna. Several other esthetic trifles, artistically arranged, completed the furnishings of the "beauty corner." The children took great delight in their little retreat, especially in the exquisite coloring of the stained glass window. Insensibly their conduct and demeanor were affected by the beautiful objects with which they daily associated. They became more gentle, more refined, more thoughtful and considerate. A young Italian boy, in particular, who had been incorrigible before the establishment of the "beauty corner," became, in a short time, so changed and softened that the teacher was astonished. One day she asked him what it was that made him so good lately. Pointing to the picture of the Sistine Madonna the boy said, "How can a feller do bad things when she's looking at him?"

Character is fed largely through the eye and ear. The thousand voices in nature of bird and insect and brook, the soughing of the wind through the trees, the scent of flower and meadow, the myriad tints in earth and sky, in ocean and forest, mountain and hill, are just as important for the development of a real man as the education he receives in the schools. If you take no beauty into your life through the eye or the ear to stimulate and develop your esthetic faculties, your nature will be hard, juiceless, and unattractive.

Beauty is a quality of divinity, and to live much with the beautiful is to live close to the divine. "The more we see of beauty everywhere; in nature, in life, in man and child, in work and rest, in the outward and the inward world, the more we see of God (good)."

There are many evidences in the New Testament that Christ was a great lover of the beautiful especially in nature. Was it not He who said: "Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these"?

Back of the lily and the rose, back of the landscape, back of all beautiful things that enchant us, there must be a great lover of the beautiful and a great beauty-principle. Every star that twinkles in the sky, every flower, bids us look behind it for its source, points us to the great Author of the beautiful.

The love of beauty plays a very important part in the poised, symmetrical life. We little realize how much we are influenced by beautiful people and things. We may see them so often that they become common in our experience and fail to attract much of our conscious attention, but every beautiful picture, every sunset and bit of landscape, every beautiful face and form and flower, beauty in any form, wherever we encounter it, ennobles, refines and elevates character.

There is everything in keeping the soul and mind responsive to beauty. It is a great refreshener, recuperator, life-giver, health promoter.

Our American life tends to kill the finer sentiments; to discourage the development of charm and grace as well as beauty; it over-emphasizes the value of material things and under-estimates that of esthetic things, which are far more developed in countries where the dollar is not the God.

As long as we persist in sending all the sap and energy of our being into the money-making gland or faculty and letting the social faculty, the esthetic faculty, and all the finer, nobler faculties lie dormant, and even die, we certainly can not expect a well-rounded and symmetrical life, for only faculties that are used, brain cells that are exercised, grow; all others atrophy. If the finer instincts in man and the nobler qualities that live in the higher brain are under-developed, and the coarser instincts which dwell in the lower brain close to the brute faculties are over-developed, man must pay the penalty of animality and will lack appreciation of all that is finest and most beautiful in life.

"The vision that you hold in your mind, the ideal that is enthroned in your heart—this you will build your life by, this you will become." It is the quality of mind, of ideals, and not mere things, that make a man.

It is as essential to cultivate the esthetic faculties and the heart qualities as to cultivate what we call the intellect. The time will come when our children will be taught, both at home and in school, to consider beauty as a most precious gift, which must be preserved in purity, sweetness, and cleanliness, and regarded as a divine instrument of education.

There is no investment which will give such returns as the culture of the finer self, the development of the sense of the beautiful, the sublime, and the true; the development of qualities that are crushed out or strangled in the mere dollar-chaser.

There are a thousand evidences in us that we were intended for temples of beauty, of sweetness, of loveliness, of beautiful ideas, and not mere storehouses for vulgar things.

There is nothing which will pay so well as to train the finest and truest, the most beautiful qualities in us in order that we may see beauty everywhere and be able to extract sweetness from everything.

Everywhere we go there are a thousand things to educate the best there is in us. Every sunset, landscape, mountain, hill, and tree has secrets of charm and beauty waiting for us. In every patch of meadow or wheat, in every leaf and flower, the trained eye will see beauty which would ravish an angel. The cultured ear will find harmony in forest and field, melody in the babbling brook, and untold pleasure in all Nature's songs.

Whatever our vocation, we should resolve that we will not strangle all that is finest and noblest in us for the sake of the dollar, but that we will put beauty into our life at every opportunity.

Just in proportion to your love for the beautiful will you acquire its charms and develop its graces. The beauty thought, the beauty ideal, will outpicture themselves in the face and manner. If you are in love with beauty you will be an artist of some kind. Your profession may be to make the home beautiful and sweet, or you may work at a trade; but whatever your vocation, if you are in love with the beautiful, it will purify your taste, elevate and enrich your life, and make you an artist instead of a mere artisan.

There is no doubt that in the future beauty will play an infinitely greater part in civilized life than it has thus far. It is becoming commercialized everywhere. The trouble with us is that the tremendous material-prizes in this land of opportunity are so tempting that we have lost sight of the higher man. We have developed ourselves along the animal side of our nature; the greedy, grasping side. The great majority of us are still living in the basement of our beings. Now and then one rises to the drawing-room. Now and then one ascends to the upper stories and gets a glimpse of the life beautiful, the life worth while.

There is nothing on earth that will so slake the thirst of the soul as the beauty which expresses itself in sweetness and light.

An old traveling man relates that once when on a trip to the West he sat next to an elderly lady who every now and then would lean out of the open window and pour some thick salt—it seemed to him—from a bottle. When she had emptied the bottle she would refill it from a hand-bag.

A friend to whom this man related the incident told him he was acquainted with the lady, who was a great lover of flowers and an earnest follower of the precept: "Scatter your flowers as you go, for you may never travel the same road again." He said she added greatly to the beauty of the landscape along the railroads on which she traveled, by her custom of scattering flower seeds along the track as she rode. Many roads have thus been beautified and refreshed by this old lady's love of the beautiful and her effort to scatter beauty wherever she went.

If we would all cultivate a love of the beautiful and scatter beauty seeds as we go through life, what a paradise this earth would become!

What a splendid opportunity a vacation in the country offers to put beauty into the life; to cultivate the esthetic faculties, which in most people are wholly undeveloped and inactive! To some it is like going into God's great gallery of charm and beauty. They find in the landscape, the valley, the mountains, the fields, the meadows, the flowers, the streams, the brooks and the rivers, riches that no money can buy; beauties that would enchant the angels. But this beauty and glory can not be bought; they are only for those who can see them, appreciate them—who can read their message and respond to their affinity.

Have you never felt the marvelous power of beauty in nature? If not, you have missed one of the most exquisite joys in life. I was once going through the Yosemite Valley, and after riding one hundred miles in a stage-coach over rough mountain roads, I was so completely exhausted that it did not seem as though I could keep my seat until we traveled over the ten more miles which would bring us to our destination. But on looking down from the top of the mountain I caught a glimpse of the celebrated Yosemite Falls and the surrounding scenery, just as the sun broke through the clouds; and there was revealed a picture of such rare beauty and marvelous picturesqueness that every particle of fatigue, brain-fag, and muscle weariness departed in an instant. My whole soul thrilled with a winged sense of sublimity, grandeur, and beauty, which I had never experienced before, and which I never can forget. I felt a spiritual uplift which brought tears of joy to my eyes.

No one can contemplate the wonderful beauties of Nature and doubt that the Creator must have intended that man, made in His own image and likeness, should be equally beautiful.

Beauty of character, charm of manner, attractiveness and graciousness of expression, a godlike bearing, are our birthrights. Yet how ugly, stiff, coarse, and harsh in appearance and bearing many of us are! No one can afford to disregard his good looks or personal appearance.

But if we wish to beautify the outer, we must first beautify the inner, for every thought and every motion shapes the delicate tracings of our face for ugliness or beauty. Inharmonious and destructive attitudes of mind will warp and mar the most beautiful features.

Shakespeare says: "God has given you one face and you make yourselves another." The mind can make beauty or ugliness at will.

A sweet, noble disposition is absolutely essential to the highest form of beauty. It has transformed many a plain face. A bad temper, ill nature, jealousy, will ruin the most beautiful face ever created. After all, there is no beauty like that produced by a lovely character. Neither cosmetics, massage, nor drugs can remove the lines of prejudice, selfishness, envy, anxiety, mental vacillation that are the results of wrong thought habits.

Beauty is from within. If every human being would cultivate a gracious mentality, not only would what he expressed be artistically beautiful, but also his body. There would indeed be grace and charm, a superiority about him, which would be even greater than mere physical beauty.

We have all seen even very plain women who, because of the charm of their personality, impressed us as transcendently beautiful. The exquisite soul qualities expressed through the body transformed it into their likeness. A fine spirit speaking through the plainest body will make it beautiful.

Some one, speaking of Fanny Kemble, said: "Although she was very stout and short, and had a very red face, yet she impressed me as the supreme embodiment of majestic attributes. I never saw so commanding a personality in feminine form. Any type of mere physical beauty would have paled to insignificance by her side."

Antoine Berryer says truly: "There are no ugly women. There are only women who do not know how to look pretty."

The highest beauty—beauty that is far superior to mere regularity of feature or form—is within reach of everybody. It is perfectly possible for one, even with the homeliest face, to make herself beautiful by the habit of perpetually holding in mind the beauty thought, not the thought of mere superficial beauty, but that of heart beauty, soul beauty, and by the cultivation of a spirit of kindness, hopefulness, and unselfishness.

The basis of all real personal beauty is a kindly, helpful bearing and a desire to scatter sunshine and good cheer everywhere, and this, shining through the face, makes it beautiful. The longing and the effort to be beautiful in character can not fail to make the life beautiful, and since the outward is but an expression of the inward, a mere outpicturing on the body of the habitual thought and dominating motives, the face, the manners, and the bearing must follow the thought and become sweet and attractive. If you hold the beauty thought, the love thought, persistently in the mind, you will make such an impression of harmony and sweetness wherever you go that no one will notice any plainness or deformity of person.

There are girls who have dwelt upon what they consider their unfortunate plainness so long that they have seriously exaggerated it. They are not half so plain as they think they are; and, were it not for the fact that they have made themselves very sensitive and self-conscious on the subject, others would not notice it at all. In fact, if they could get rid of their sensitiveness and be natural, they could, with persistent effort, make up in sprightliness of thought, in cheerfulness of manner, in intelligence, and in cheery helpfulness, what they lack in grace and beauty of face.

We admire the beautiful face, the beautiful form, but we love the face illumined by a beautiful soul. We love it because it suggests the ideal of the possible perfect man or woman, the ideal which was the Creator's model.

It is not the outward form of our dearest friend, but our ideal of friendship which he arouses or suggests in us that stirs up and brings into exercise our love and admiration. The highest beauty does not exist in the actual. It is the ideal, possible beauty, which the person or object symbolizes or suggests, that gives us delight.

Everyone should endeavor to be beautiful and attractive; to be as complete a human being as possible. There is not a taint of vanity in the desire for the highest beauty.

The love of beauty that confines itself to mere external form, however, misses its deepest significance. Beauty of form, of coloring, of light and shade, of sound, make our world beautiful; yet the mind that is warped and twisted can not see all this infinite beauty. It is the indwelling spirit, the ideal in the soul, that makes all things beautiful; that inspires and lifts us above ourselves.

We love the outwardly beautiful, because we crave perfection, and we can not help admiring those persons and things that most nearly embody or measure up to our human ideal.

But a beautiful character will make beauty and poetry out of the prosiest environment, bring sunshine into the darkest home, and develop beauty and grace amid the ugliest surroundings.

What would become of us if it were not for the great souls who realize the divinity of life, who insist upon bringing out and emphasizing its poetry, its music, its harmony and beauty?

How sordid and common our lives would become but for these beauty-makers, these inspirers, these people who bring out all that is best and most attractive in every place, every situation and condition!

There is no accomplishment, no trait of character, no quality of mind, which will give greater satisfaction and pleasure or contribute more to one's welfare than an appreciation of the beautiful. How many people might be saved from wrong-doing, even from lives of crime, by the cultivation of the esthetic faculties in their childhood! A love of the truly beautiful would save children from things which encoarsen and brutalize their natures. It would shield them from a multitude of temptations.

Parents do not take sufficient pains to develop the love and appreciation of beauty in their children. They do not realize that in impressionable youth, everything about the home, even the pictures, the paper on the wall, affect the growing character. They should never lose an opportunity of letting their boys and girls see beautiful works of art, hear beautiful music; they should make a practise of reading to them or having them read very often some lofty poem, or inspirational passages from some great writer, that will fill their minds with thoughts of beauty, open their souls to the inflow of the Divine Mind, the Divine Love which encompasses us round about. The influences that moved our youth determine the character, the success and happiness of our whole lives.

Every soul is born responsive to the beautiful, but this instinctive love of beauty must be fostered through the eye and the mind must be cultivated, or it will die. The craving for beauty is as strong in a child of the slums as in a favorite of fortune. "The physical hunger of the poor, the yearning of their stomachs," says Jacob A. Riis, "is not half so bitter, or so little likely to be satisfied as their esthetic hunger, their starving for the beautiful."

Mr. Riis has often tried to take flowers from his Long Island home to the "poors" in Mulberry Street, New York. "But they never got there," he says. "Before I had gone half a block from the ferry I was held up by a shrieky mob of children who cried for the posies and would not let me go another step till I had given them one. And when they got it they ran, shielding the flower with the most jealous care, to some place where they could hide and gloat over their treasure. They came dragging big, fat babies and little weazened ones that they might get a share, and the babies' eyes grew round and big at the sight of the golden glory from the fields, the like of which had never come their way. The smaller the baby, and the poorer, the more wistful its look, and so my flowers went. Who could have said them no?

"I learned then what I had but vaguely understood before, that there is a hunger that is worse than that which starves the body and gets into the newspapers. All children love beauty and beautiful things. It is the spark of the divine nature that is in them and justifies itself! To that ideal their souls grow. When they cry out for it they are trying to tell us in the only way they can that if we let the slum starve the ideal, with its dirt and its ugliness and its hard-trodden mud where flowers were meant to grow, we are starving that which we little know. A man, a human, may grow a big body without a soul; but as a citizen, as a mother, he or she is worth nothing to the commonwealth. The mark they are going to leave upon it is the black smudge of the slum.

"So when in these latter days we invade that slum to make homes there and teach the mothers to make them beautiful; when we gather the children into kindergartens, hang pictures in the schools; when we build beautiful new schools and public buildings and let in the light, with grass and flower and bird, where darkness and foulness were before; when we teach the children to dance and play and enjoy themselves—alas! that it should ever be needed—we are trying to wipe off the smudge, and to lift the heavy mortgage which it put on the morrow, a much heavier one in the loss of citizenship than any community, even the republic, can long endure. We are paying arrears of debt which we incurred by our sad neglect, and we could be about no better business."

There are many poor children in the slums of New York, Mr. Millionaire, who could go into your drawing-room and carry away from its rich canvases, its costly furnishings, a vision of beauty which you never perceived in them because your esthetic faculties, your finer sensibilities, were early stifled by your selfish pursuit of the dollar.

The world is full of beautiful things, but the majority have not been trained to discern them. We can not see all the beauty that lies around us, because our eyes have not been trained to see it; our esthetic faculties have not been developed. We are like the lady who, standing with the great artist, Turner, before one of his wonderful landscapes, cried out in amazement: "Why, Mr. Turner, I can not see those things in nature that you have put in your picture."

"Don't you wish you could, madam?" he replied. Just think what rare treats we shut out of our lives in our mad, selfish, insane pursuit of the dollar! Do you not wish that you could see the marvels that Turner saw in a landscape, that Ruskin saw in a sunset? Do you not wish that you had put a little more beauty into your life instead of allowing your nature to become encoarsened, your esthetic faculties blinded and your finer instincts blighted by the pursuit of the coarser things of life, instead of developing your brute instincts of pushing, elbowing your way through the world for a few more dollars, in your effort to get something away from somebody else?

Fortunate is the person who has been educated to the perception of beauty; he possesses a heritage of which no reverses can rob him. Yet it is a heritage possible to all who will take the trouble to begin early in life to cultivate the finer qualities of the soul, the eye, and the heart. "I am a lover of untainted and immortal beauty," exclaims Emerson. "Oh, world, what pictures and what harmony are thine!"

A great scientist tells us that there is no natural object in the universe which, if seen as the Master sees it, coupled with all its infinite meaning, its utility and purpose, is not beautiful. Beauty is God's handwriting. Just as the most disgusting object, if put under a magnifying glass of sufficient power, would reveal beauties undreamed of, so even the most unlovely environment, the most cruel conditions, will, when viewed through the glass of a trained and disciplined mind, show something of the beautiful and the hopeful. A life that has been rightly trained will extract sweetness from everything; it will see beauty everywhere.

Situated as we are in a world of beauty and sublimity, we have no right to devote practically all of our energies and to sap all our life forces in the pursuit of selfish aims, in accumulating material wealth, in piling up dollars. It is our duty to treat life as a glory, not as a grind or a purely business transaction, dealing wholly with money and bread-and-butter questions. Wherever you are, put beauty into your life.

CHAPTER LII

EDUCATION BY ABSORPTION

John Wanamaker was once asked to invest in an expedition to recover from the Spanish Main doubloons which for half a century had lain at the bottom of the sea in sunken frigates.

"Young men," he replied, "I know of a better expedition than this, right here. Near your own feet lie treasures untold; you can have them all by faithful study.

"Let us not be content to mine the most coal, to make the largest locomotives, to weave the largest quantities of carpets; but, amid the sounds of the pick, the blows of the hammer, the rattle of the looms, and the roar of the machinery, take care that the immortal mechanism of God's own hand—the mind—is still full-trained for the highest and noblest service."

The uneducated man is always placed at a great disadvantage. No matter how much natural ability one may have, if he is ignorant, he is discounted. It is not enough to possess ability, it must be made available by mental discipline.

We ought to be ashamed to remain in ignorance in a land where the blind, the deaf and dumb, and even cripples and invalids, manage to obtain a good education.

Many youths throw away little opportunities for self-culture because they cannot see great ones. They let the years slip by without any special effort at self-improvement, until they are shocked in middle life, or later, by waking up to the fact that they are still ignorant of what they ought to know.

Everywhere we go we see men and women, especially from twenty-five to forty years of age, who are cramped and seriously handicapped by the lack of early training. I often get letters from such people, asking if it is possible for them to educate themselves so late in life. Of course it is. There are so many good correspondence schools to-day, and institutions like Chautauqua, so many evening schools, lectures, books, libraries, and periodicals, that men and women who are determined to improve themselves have abundant opportunities to do so.

While you lament the lack of an early education and think it too late to begin, you may be sure that there are other young men and young women not very far from you who are making great strides in self-improvement, though they may not have half as good an opportunity for it as you have.

The first thing to do is to make a resolution, strong, vigorous, and determined, that you are going to be an educated man or woman; that you are not going to go through life humiliated by ignorance; that, if you have been deprived of early advantages, you are going to make up for their loss. Resolve that you will no longer be handicapped and placed at a disadvantage for that which you can remedy.

You will find the whole world will change to you when you change your attitude toward it. You will be surprised to see how quickly you can very materially improve your mind after you have made a vigorous resolve to do so. Go about it with the same determination that you would to make money or to learn a trade. There is a divine hunger in every normal being for self-expansion, a yearning for growth or enlargement. Beware of stifling this craving of nature for self-unfoldment.

Man was made for growth. It is the object, the explanation, of his being. To have an ambition to grow larger and broader every day, to push the horizon of ignorance a little further away, to become a little richer in knowledge, a little wiser, and more of a man—that is an ambition worth while. It is not absolutely necessary that an education should be crowded into a few years of school life. The best-educated people are those who are always learning, always absorbing knowledge from every possible source and at every opportunity.

I know young people who have acquired a better education, a finer culture, through a habit of observation, or of carrying a book in the pocket to read at odd moments, or by taking courses in correspondence schools, than many who have gone through college. Youths who are quick to catch at new ideas, and who are in frequent contact with superior minds, not only often acquire a personal charm, but even, to a remarkable degree, develop mental power.

The world is a great university. From the cradle to the grave we are always in God's great kindergarten, where everything is trying to teach us its lesson; to give us its great secret. Some people are always at school, always storing up precious bits of knowledge. Everything has a lesson for them. It all depends upon the eye that can see, the mind that can appropriate.

Very few people ever learn how to use their eyes. They go through the world with a superficial glance at things; their eye pictures are so faint and so dim that details are lost and no strong impression is made on the mind. Yet the eye was intended for a great educator. The brain is a prisoner, never getting out to the outside world. It depends upon its five or six servants, the senses, to bring it material, and the larger part of it comes through the eye. The man who has learned the art of seeing things looks with his brain.

I know a father who is training his boy to develop his powers of observation. He will send him out upon a street with which he is not familiar for a certain length of time, and then question him on his return to see how many things he has observed. He sends him to the show windows of great stores, to museums and other public places to see how many of the objects he has seen the boy can recall and describe when he gets home. The father says that this practise develops in the boy a habit of seeing things, instead of merely looking at them.

When a new student went to the great naturalist, Professor Agassiz of Harvard, he would give him a fish and tell him to look it over for half an hour or an hour, and then describe to him what he saw. After the student thought he had told everything about the fish, the professor would say, "You have not really seen the fish yet. Look at it a while longer, and then tell me what you see." He would repeat this several times, until the student developed a capacity for observation.

If we go through life like an interrogation point, holding an alert, inquiring mind toward everything, we can acquire great mental wealth, wisdom which is beyond all material riches.

Ruskin's mind was enriched by the observation of birds, insects, beasts, trees, rivers, mountains, pictures of sunset and landscape, and by memories of the song of the lark and of the brook. His brain held thousands of pictures—of paintings, of architecture, of sculpture, a wealth of material which he reproduced as a joy for all time. Everything gave up its lesson, its secret, to his inquiring mind.

The habit of absorbing information of all kinds from others is of untold value. A man is weak and ineffective in proportion as he secludes himself from his kind. There is a constant stream of power, a current of forces running to and fro between individuals who come in contact with one another, if they have inquiring minds. We are all giving and taking perpetually when we associate together. The achiever to-day must keep in touch with the society around him; he must put his finger on the pulse of the great busy world and feel its throbbing life. He must be a part of it, or there will be some lack in his life.

A single talent which one can use effectively is worth more than ten talents imprisoned by ignorance. Education means that knowledge has been assimilated and become a part of the person. It is the ability to express the power within one, to give out what one knows, that measures efficiency and achievement. Pent-up knowledge is useless.

People who feel their lack of education, and who can afford the outlay, can make wonderful strides in a year by putting themselves under good tutors, who will direct their reading and study along different lines.

The danger of trying to educate oneself lies in desultory, disconnected, aimless studying which does not give anything like the benefit to be derived from the pursuit of a definite program for self-improvement. A person who wishes to educate himself at home should get some competent, well-trained person to lay out a plan for him, which can only be effectively done when the adviser knows the vocation, the tastes, and the needs of the would-be student. Anyone who aspires to an education, whether in country or city, can find someone to at least guide his studies; some teacher, clergyman, lawyer, or other educated person in the community to help him.

There is one special advantage in self-education,—you can adapt your studies to your own particular needs better than you could in school or college. Everyone who reaches middle life without an education should first read and study along the line of his own vocation, and then broaden himself as much as possible by reading on other lines.

One can take up, alone, many studies, such as history, English literature, rhetoric, drawing, mathematics, and can also acquire by oneself, almost as effectively as with a teacher, a reading knowledge of foreign languages.

The daily storing up of valuable information for use later in life, the reading of books that will inspire and stimulate to greater endeavor, the constant effort to try to improve oneself and one's condition in the world, are worth far more than a bank account to a youth.

How many girls there are in this country who feel crippled by the fact that they have not been able to go to college. And yet they have the time and the material close at hand for obtaining a splendid education, but they waste their talents and opportunities in frivolous amusements and things which do not count in forceful character-building.

It is not such a very great undertaking to get all the essentials of a college course at home, or at least a fair substitute for it. Every hour in which one focuses his mind vigorously upon his studies at home may be as beneficial as the same time spent in college.

Every well-ordered household ought to protect the time of those who desire to study at home. At a fixed hour every evening during the long winter there should be by common consent a quiet period for mental concentration, for what is worth while in mental discipline, a quiet hour uninterrupted by time-thief callers.

In thousands of homes where the members are devoted to each other, and should encourage and help each other along, it is made almost impossible for anyone to take up reading, studying, or any exercise for self-improvement. Perhaps someone is thoughtless and keeps interrupting the others so that they can not concentrate their minds; or those who have nothing in common with your aims or your earnest life drop in to spend an evening in idle chatter. They have no ideals outside of the bread-and-butter and amusement questions, and do not realize how they are hindering you.

There is constant temptation to waste one's evenings and it takes a stout ambition and a firm resolution to separate oneself from a jolly, fun-loving, and congenial family circle, or happy-hearted youthful callers, in order to try to rise above the common herd of unambitious persons who are content to slide along, totally ignorant of everything but the requirements of their particular vocations.

A habit of forcing yourself to fix your mind steadfastly and systematically upon certain studies, even if only for periods of a few minutes at a time, is, of itself, of the greatest value. This habit helps one to utilize the odds and ends of time which are unavailable to most people because they have never been trained to concentrate the mind at regular intervals.

A good understanding of the possibilities that live in spare moments is a great success asset.

The very reputation of always trying to improve yourself, of seizing every opportunity to fit yourself for something better, the reputation of being dead-in-earnest, determined to be somebody and to do something in the world, would be of untold assistance to you. People like to help those who are trying to help themselves. They will throw opportunities in their way. Such a reputation is the best kind of capital to start with.

One trouble with people who are smarting under the consciousness of deficient education is that they do not realize the immense value of utilizing spare minutes. Like many boys who will not save their pennies and small change because they can not see how a fortune could ever grow by the saving, they can not see how a little studying here and there each day will ever amount to a good substitute for a college education.

I know a young man who never even attended a high school, and yet educated himself so superbly that he has been offered a professorship in a college. Most of his knowledge was gained during his odds and ends of time, while working hard at his vocation. Spare time meant something to him.

The correspondence schools deserve very great credit for inducing hundreds of thousands of people, including clerks, mill operatives, and employees of all kinds, to take their courses, and thus save for study the odds and ends of time which otherwise would probably be thrown away. We have heard of some most remarkable instances of rapid advancement which these correspondence school students have made by reason of the improvement in their education. Many students have reaped a thousand per cent on their educational investment. It has saved them years of drudgery and has shortened wonderfully the road to their goal.

Wisdom will not open her doors to those who are not willing to pay the price in self-sacrifice, in hard work. Her jewels are too precious to scatter before the idle, the ambitionless.

The very resolution to redeem yourself from ignorance at any cost is the first great step toward gaining an education.

Charles Wagner once wrote to an American regarding his little boy, "May he know the price of the hours. God bless the rising boy who will do his best, for never losing a bit of the precious and God-given time."

There is untold wealth locked up in the long winter evenings and odd moments ahead of you. A great opportunity confronts you. What will you do with it?

CHAPTER LIII

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

When plate-glass windows first came into use, Rogers, the poet, took a severe cold by sitting with his back to what he supposed was an open window in a dining-room but which was really plate-glass. All the time he was eating he imagined he was taking cold, but he did not dare ask to have the window closed.

We little realize how much suggestion has to do with health. In innumerable instances people have been made seriously ill, sometimes fatally so, by others telling them how badly they looked, or suggesting that they had inherited some fatal disease.

A prominent New York business man recently told me of an experiment which the friends of a robust young man made upon him. It was arranged that, beginning in the morning, each one should tell him, when he came to work, that he was not looking well, and ask him what the trouble was. They were to say it in a way that would not arouse his suspicions, and note the result. At one o'clock this vigorous young man had been so influenced by the suggestion that he quit work and went home, saying that he was sick.

There have been many interesting experiments in the Paris hospitals upon patients in a hypnotic trance, wounds being inflicted by mental suggestion. While a cold poker was laid across their limbs, for example, the subjects were told that they were being seared with a red-hot iron, and immediately the flesh would have the appearance of being severely burned.

I have known patients to collapse completely at the sight of surgical instruments in the operating room. I have heard them say that they could actually feel the cutting of the knife long before they took the anesthetic.

Patients are often put to sleep by the injection into their arms of a weak solution of salt and water, which they are led to think is morphia. Every physician of large experience knows that he can relieve or produce pain simply by suggestion.

Many a physician sends patients to some famous resort not so much for the waters or the air as for the miracle which the complete change of thought effects.

Even quacks and charlatans are able, by stimulating the hope of those who are sick, to produce marvelous cures.

The mental attitude of the nurse has much to do with the recovery of a sick person. If she holds the constant suggestion that the patient will recover; if she stoutly affirms it, it will be a wonderful rallying help to the forces which make for life. If, on the other hand, she holds the conviction that he is going to die, she will communicate her belief, and this will consequently depress the patient.

We are under the influence of suggestion every moment of our waking lives. Everything we see, hear, feel, is a suggestion which produces a result corresponding to its own nature. Its subtle power seems to reach and affect the very springs of life.

The power of suggestion on expectant minds is often little less than miraculous. An invalid with a disappointed ambition, who thinks he has been robbed of his chances in life and who has suffered for years, becomes all wrought up over some new remedy which is advertised to do marvels. He is in such an expectant state of mind that he is willing to make almost any sacrifice to obtain the wonderful remedy; and when he receives it, he is in such a receptive mood that he responds quickly, and thinks it is the medicine which has worked the magic.

Faith in one's physician is a powerful curative suggestion. Many patients, especially those who are ignorant, believe that the physician holds the keys of life and death. They have such implicit confidence in him that what he tells them has powerful influence upon them for good or ill.

The possibilities of healing power in the affirmative suggestion that the patient is going to get well are tremendous. The coming physician will constantly reassure his patient verbally, often vehemently, that he is absolutely bound to recover; he will tell him that there is an omnipotent healing power within him, and that he gets a hint of this in the power which heals a wound, and which refreshes, renews, and recreates him during sleep.

It is almost impossible for a patient to get well while people are constantly reminding him how ill he looks. His will-power together with all his physical recuperative forces could not counteract the effect of the reiteration of the sick suggestion.

Many a sick-room is made a chamber of horrors because of the depressing suggestion which pervades it. Instead of being filled with sunshine, good cheer, and encouragement, it is often darkened, God's beautiful sunshine shut out; ventilation is poor; everybody has a sad, anxious face; medicine bottles and surgical apparatus are spread about; everything is calculated to engender disease rather than to encourage health and inspire hope. Why, there is enough depressing suggestion in such a place to make a perfectly well person ill!

What people need is encouragement, uplift, hope. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened and developed. Instead of telling a friend in trouble, despair, or suffering that you feel very sorry for him, try to pull him out of his slough of despond, to arouse the latent recuperative, restorative energies within him. Picture to him his God image, his better self, which, because it is a part of the great immortal principle, is never sick and never out of harmony, can never be discordant or suffer.

Right suggestion would prevent a great majority of our divorces. Great infatuation for another has been overcome by suggestion in numerous instances. Many women have been thus cured of a foolish love for impossible men, as in the case of girls who have become completely infatuated with the husband of a friend. Fallen women have been entirely reclaimed, have been brought to see their better, finer, diviner selves through the power of suggestion.

The suggestion which comes from a sweet, beautiful, charming character is contagious and sometimes revolutionizes a whole neighborhood. We all know how the suggestion of heroic deeds, great records, has aroused the ambitions and stirred the energies of others to do likewise. Many a life has turned upon a few moments' conversation, upon a little encouragement, upon the suggestion of an inspiring book.

Many men who have made their impress upon history, who have left civilization a little higher, accomplished what they did largely because their ambition was aroused by suggestion; some book or some individual gave them the first glimpse of their possibility and enabled them to feel for the first time a thrill of the power within them.

The suggestion of inferiority is one of the most difficult to overcome. Who can ever estimate the damage to humanity and the lives wrecked through it! I know men whose whole careers have been practically ruined through the constant suggestion, while they were children, that they would never amount to anything.

This suggestion of inferiority has made them so timid and shy and so uncertain of themselves that they have never been able to assert their individuality.

I knew a college student whose rank in his class entitled him to the highest recognition, whose life was nearly ruined by suggestion; he overheard some of his classmates say that he had no more dignity than a goose, and always made a very poor appearance; that under no circumstances would they think of electing him as class orator, because he would make such an unfortunate impression upon an audience. He had unusual ability, but his extreme diffidence, timidity, shyness, made him appear awkward and sometimes almost foolish,—all of which he would undoubtedly have overgrown, had he not overheard the criticism of his classmates. He thought it meant that he was mentally inferior, and this belief kept him back ever after.

What a subtle power there is in the suggestion of the human voice! What emotions are aroused in us by its different modulations! How we laugh and cry, become indignant, revengeful, our feelings leaping from one extreme to the other, according to the passion-freighted or love-freighted words which reach our ear; how we sit spell-bound, with bated breath, before the great orator who is playing upon the emotions of his audience, as a musician plays upon the strings of his harp, now bringing out tears, now smiles, now pathos, now indignation! The power of his word-painting makes a wonderful impression. A thousand listeners respond to whatever he suggests.

The voice is a great betrayer of our feelings and emotions. It is tender when conveying love to our friends; cold, selfish, and without a particle of sympathy during business transactions when we are trying to get the best of a bargain.

How we are attracted by a gentle voice, and repulsed by one that is harsh! We all know how susceptible even dogs and horses are to the different modulations of the human voice. They know the tone of affection; they are reassured and respond to it. But they are stricken with fear and trembling at the profanity of the master's rage.

Some natures are powerfully affected by certain musical strains; they are immediately lifted out of the deepest depression and despondency into ecstasy. Nothing has touched them; they have just merely felt a sensation through the auditory nerve which aroused and awakened into activity certain brain cells and changed their whole mental attitude.

Music has a decided influence upon the blood pressure in the arteries, and upon the respiration. We all know how it soothes, refreshes, and rests us when jaded and worried. When its sweet harmonies fill the soul, all cares, worries, and anxieties fly away.

George Eliot, in "The Mill on the Floss," gives voice to what some of us have often, doubtless, felt, when under its magic spell. "Certain strains of music," she says, "affect me so strangely that I can never hear them without changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroism."

Latimer, Ridley, and hundreds of others went to the stake actually rejoicing, the spectators wondering at the smile of ineffable peace which illumined their faces above the fierce glare of the flames, at the hymns of praise and thanksgiving heard amid the roar of crackling fagots.

"No, we don't get sick," said an actor, "because we can't get sick. Patti and a few other stars could afford that luxury, but to the majority of us it is denied. It is a case of 'must' with us; and although there have been times when, had I been at home, or a private man, I could have taken to my bed with as good a right to be sick as any one ever had, I have not done so, and have worn off the attack through sheer necessity. It's no fiction that will power is the best of tonics, and theatrical people understand that they must keep a good stock of it always on hand."

A tight-rope walker was so ill with lumbago that he could scarcely move. But when he was advertised to appear, he summoned all his will power, and traversed the rope several times with a wheelbarrow, according to the program. When through he doubled up and had to be carried to his bed, "as stiff as a frozen frog."

Somewhere I have read a story of a poor fellow who went to hang himself, but finding by chance a pot of money, he flung away the rope and went hurriedly home. He who hid the gold, when he missed it, hanged himself with the rope which the other man had left. Success is a great tonic, and failure a great depressant.

The successful attainment of what the heart longs for, as a rule, improves health and happiness. Generally we not only find our treasure where our heart is, but our health also. Who has not noticed men of indifferent health, perhaps even invalids, and men who lacked energy and determination, suddenly become roused to a realization of unthought-of powers and unexpected health upon attaining some signal success? The same is sometimes true of persons in poor health who have suddenly been thrown into responsible positions by death of parents or relatives, or who, upon sudden loss of property, have been forced to do what they had thought impossible before.

An education is a health tonic. Delicate boys and girls, whom parents and friends thought entirely too slender to bear the strain, often improve in health in school and college. Other things equal, intelligent, cultured, educated people enjoy the best health. There is for the same reason a very intimate relation between health and morals. A house divided against itself can not stand. Intemperance, violation of chastity, and vice of all kinds are discordant notes in the human economy which tend to destroy the great harmony of life. The body is but a servant of the mind. A well-balanced, cultured, and well-disciplined intellect reacts very powerfully upon the physique, and tends to bring it into harmony with itself. On the other hand, a weak, vacillating, one-sided, unsteady, and ignorant mind will ultimately bring the body into sympathy with it. Every pure and uplifting thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty purpose and unselfish endeavor, reacts upon the body, makes it stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful.

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The body is molded and fashioned by the thought. If a young woman were to try to make herself beautiful, she would not begin by contemplating ugliness, or dwelling upon the monstrosities of vice, for their hideous images would be reproduced in her own face and manners. Nor would she try to make herself graceful by practising awkwardness. We can never gain health by contemplating disease any more than we can reach perfection by dwelling upon imperfection, or harmony through discord.

We should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind; and we should fight every discordant thought and every enemy of harmony as we would fight a temptation to crime. Never affirm or repeat about your health what you do not wish to be true. Do not dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. Never allow yourself to think that you are not complete master of yourself. Stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself the slave of an inferior power.

The mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to preserve it from decay, many years longer than it does now. The longest lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives.

Many nervous diseases have been cured by music, while others have been greatly retarded in their development by it. Anything which keeps the mind off our troubles tends to restore harmony throughout the body.

It is a great thing to form a habit, acquire a reputation, of always talking up and never down, of seeing good things and never bad, of encouraging and never discouraging, and of always being optimistic about everything.

"Send forth loving, stainless, and happy thoughts, and blessings will flow into your hands; send forth hateful, impure, and unhappy thoughts, and curses will rain down upon you and fear and unrest will wait upon your pillow."

There is no one principle that is abused to-day in the business world more than the law of suggestion. Everywhere in this country we see the pathetic victims of those who make a business of overpowering and controlling weaker minds. Thus is suggestion carried even to the point of hypnotism as is illustrated by unscrupulous salesmen and promoters.

If a person steals the property of another he is imprisoned, but if he hypnotizes his victim by projecting his own strong trained thought into the innocent, untrained, unsuspecting victim's mind, overcomes his objections, and induces him voluntarily to buy the thing he does not want and can not afford to buy, perhaps impoverishing himself for years so that he and his family suffer for the necessities of life, no law can stop him. It would be better and should be considered less criminal for a man to go into a home and steal articles of value than to overpower the minds of the heads of poor families and hypnotize them into signing contracts for what they have really no right and are not able to buy.

Solicitors often command big salaries because of their wonderful personal magnetism and great powers of persuasion. The time will come when many of these "marvelous persuaders," with long heads cunningly trained, traveling about the country, hypnotizing their subjects and robbing them of their hard-earned money, will be regarded as criminals.

On the other hand, suggestion is used for practical good in business life.

It is now a common practise in many concerns to put in the hands of their employees inspiring books and to republish in pamphlet form special articles from magazines and periodicals which are calculated to stir the employees to new endeavor, to arouse them to greater action and make them more ambitious to do bigger things. Schools of salesmanship are using very extensively the psychology of business and are giving all sorts of illustrations which will spur men to greater efficiency.

The up-to-date merchant shows his knowledge of the power of suggestion for customers by his fascinating show-windows and display of merchandise.

The restaurant keeper knows the power of suggestion of delicious viands upon the appetite, and we often see tempting dishes and articles of food displayed in the window or in the restaurant where the eye will carry the magic suggestion to the brain.

A person who has been reared in luxury and refinement would be so affected by the suggestion of uncleanliness and disorderliness in a cheap Bowery eating-place that he would lose the keenest appetite. If, however, the same food, cooked in the same way, could be transferred to one of the luxurious Broadway restaurants and served upon delicate china and spotless linen with entrancing music, the entire condition would be reversed. The new suggestion would completely reverse the mental and physical conditions.

The suggestion of the ugly suspicions of a whole nation so overpowered Dreyfus during his trial that it completely neutralized his individuality, overbalanced his consciousness of innocence. His whole manner was that of a guilty person, so that many of his friends actually believed him guilty. After the verdict, in the presence of a vast throng which had gathered to see him publicly disgraced, when his buttons and other insignia of office were torn from his uniform, his sword taken from him and broken, and the people were hissing, jeering, and hurling all sorts of anathemas at him, no criminal could have exhibited more evidence of guilt. The radiations of the guilty suggestion from millions of people completely over-powered his own mentality, his individuality, and, although he was absolutely innocent, his appearance and manner gave every evidence of the treason he was accused of.

There is no suggestion so fatal, so insinuating, as that of impurity. Vast multitudes of people have fallen victims to this vicious, subtle, fatal poison.

Who can depict the tragedies which have been caused by immoral, impure suggestion conveyed to minds which were absolutely pure, which have never before felt the taint of contamination? The subtle poisoning infused through the system makes the entrance of the succeeding vicious suggestions easier and easier, until finally the whole moral system becomes saturated with the poison.

There is a wonderful illustration of the power of suggestion in the experience of what are called the Stigmatists. These nuns who for years concentrated all of their efforts in trying to live the life that Christ did, to enter into all of His sufferings, so completely concentrated all of their energies upon the Christ suffering, and so vividly pictured the wounds in their imaginations, that their thought really changed the chemical and physical structure of the tissues and they actually reproduced the nail marks in the hands and feet and the spear wound as in the side of the crucified Christ.

These nuns devoted their lives to this reproduction of the physical evidences of the crucifixion. The fixing of the mind for a long period of time upon the wounds of the hands, feet, and the side, were so vivid, so concentrated, that the picture was made real in their own flesh. In addition to the mental picturing, they kept constantly before them the physical picture of the crucified Christ, which made their mental picture all the more vivid and concentrated. The religious ecstasy was so intense that they could actually see Christ being crucified, and this mental attitude was outpictured in the flesh.

CHAPTER LIV

THE CURSE OF WORRY

This monster dogs us from the cradle to the grave. There is no occasion so sacred but it is there. Unbidden it comes to the wedding and the funeral alike. It is at every reception, every banquet; it occupies a seat at every table.

No human intellect can estimate the unutterable havoc and ruin wrought by worry. It has ever forced genius to do the work of mediocrity; it has caused more failures, more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, than any other one cause since the dawn of the world.

Did you ever hear of any good coming to any human being from worry? Did it ever help anybody to better his condition? Does it not always—everywhere—do just the opposite by impairing the health, exhausting the vitality, lessening efficiency?

What have not men done under the pressure of worry! They have plunged into all sorts of vice; have become drunkards, drug fiends; have sold their very souls in their efforts to escape this monster.

Think of the homes which it has broken up; the ambitions it has ruined; the hopes and prospects it has blighted! Think of the suicide victims of this demon! If there is any devil in existence, is it not worry, with all its attendant progeny of evils?

Yet, in spite of all the tragic evils that follow in its wake, a visitor from another world would get the impression that worry is one of our dearest, most helpful friends, so closely do we hug it to ourselves and so loath are we to part from it.

Is it not unaccountable that people who know perfectly well that success and happiness both depend on keeping themselves in condition to get the most possible out of their energies should harbor in their minds the enemy of this very success and happiness? Is it not strange that they should form this habit of anticipating evils that will probably never come, when they know that anxiety and fretting will not only rob them of peace of mind and strength and ability to do their work, but also of precious years of life?

No man can utilize his normal power who dissipates his nervous energy in useless anxiety. Nothing will sap one's vitality and blight one's ambition or detract from one's real power in the world more than the worrying habit.

Work kills no one, but worry has killed vast multitudes. It is not the doing things which injures us so much as the dreading to do them—not only performing them mentally over and over again, but anticipating something disagreeable in their performance.

Many of us approach an unpleasant task in much the same condition as a runner who begins his start such a long distance away that by the time he reaches his objective point—the ditch or the stream which is to test his agility—he is too exhausted to jump across. Worry not only saps vitality and wastes energy, but it also seriously affects the quality of one's work. It cuts down ability. A man can not get the highest quality of efficiency into his work when his mind is troubled. The mental faculties must have perfect freedom before they will give out their best. A troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously, and logically. The attention can not be concentrated with anything like the same force when the brain cells are poisoned with anxiety as when they are fed by pure blood and are clean and unclouded. The blood of chronic worriers is vitiated with poisonous chemical substances and broken-down tissues, according to Professor Elmer Gates and other noted scientists, who have shown that the passions and the harmful emotions cause actual chemical changes in the secretions and generate poisonous substances in the body which are fatal to healthy growth and action.

One of the worst forms of worry is the brooding over failure. It blights the ambition, deadens the purpose and defeats the very object the worrier has in view.

Some people have the unfortunate habit of brooding over their past lives, castigating themselves for their shortcomings and mistakes, until their whole vision is turned backward instead of forward, and they see everything in a distorted light, because they are looking only on the shadow side.

The longer the unfortunate picture which has caused trouble remains in the mind, the more thoroughly it becomes imbedded there, and the more difficult it is to remove it.

Are we not convinced that a power beyond our control runs the universe, that every moment of worry detracts from our success capital and makes our failure more probable; that every bit of anxiety and fretfulness leaves its mark on the body, interrupts the harmony of our physical and mental well-being, and cripples efficiency, and that this condition is at war with our highest endeavor?

Is it not strange that people will persist in allowing little worries, petty vexations, and unnecessary frictions to grind life away at such a fearful rate that old age stares them in the face in middle life? Look at the women who are shriveled and shrunken and aged at thirty, not because of the hard work they have done, or the real troubles they have had, but because of habitual fretting, which has helped nobody, but has brought discord and unhappiness to their homes.

Somewhere I read of a worrying woman who made a list of possible unfortunate events and happenings which she felt sure would come to pass and be disastrous to her happiness and welfare. The list was lost, and to her amazement, when she recovered it, a long time afterwards, she found that not a single unfortunate prediction in the whole catalogue of disasters had been realized.

Is not this a good suggestion for worriers? Write down everything which you think is going to turn out badly, and then put the list aside. You will be surprised to see what a small percentage of the doleful things ever come to pass.

It is a pitiable thing to see vigorous men and women, who have inherited godlike qualities and who bear the impress of divinity, wearing anxious faces and filled with all sorts of fear and uncertainty, worrying about yesterday, to-day, to-morrow—everything imaginable.

"Fear runs like a baleful thread through the whole web of life from beginning to end," says Dr. Holcomb. "We are born into the atmosphere of fear and dread, and the mother who bore us had lived in the same atmosphere for weeks and months before we were born. We are afraid of our parents, afraid of our teachers, afraid of our playmates, afraid of ghosts, afraid of rules and regulations and punishments, afraid of the doctor, the dentist, the surgeon. Our adult life is a state of chronic anxiety, which is fear in a milder form. We are afraid of failure in business, afraid of disappointments and mistakes, afraid of enemies, open or concealed; afraid of poverty, afraid of public opinion, afraid of accidents, of sickness, of death, and unhappiness after death. Man is like a haunted animal from the cradle to the grave, the victim of real or imaginary fears, not only his own, but those reflected upon him from the superstitions, self-deceptions, sensory illusions, false beliefs, and concrete errors of the whole human race, past and present."

Most of us are foolish children, afraid of our shadows, so handicapped in a thousand ways that we can not get efficiency into our life work.

A man who is filled with fear is not a real man. He is a puppet, a mannikin, an apology of a man.

Quit fearing things that may never happen, just as you would quit any bad practise which has caused you suffering. Fill your mind with courage, hope, and confidence.

Do not wait until fear thoughts become intrenched in your mind and your imagination. Do not dwell upon them. Apply the antidote instantly, and the enemies will flee. There is no fear so great or intrenched so deeply in the mind that it can not be neutralized or entirely eradicated by its opposite. The opposite suggestion will kill it.

Once Dr. Chalmers was riding on a stage-coach beside the driver, and he noticed that John kept hitting the off leader a severe crack with his whip. When he asked him why he did this, John answered: "Away yonder there is a white stone; that off leader is afraid of that stone; so by the crack of my whip and the pain in his legs I want to get his mind off from it." Dr. Chalmers went home, elaborated the idea, and wrote "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection." You must drive out fear by putting a new idea into the mind.

Fear, in any of its expressions, like worry or anxiety, can not live an instant in your mind in the presence of the opposite thought, the image of courage, fearlessness, confidence, hope, self-assurance, self-reliance. Fear is a consciousness of weakness. It is only when you doubt your ability to cope with the thing you dread that fear is possible. Fear of disease, even, comes from a consciousness that you will not be able to successfully combat it.

During an epidemic of a dreaded contagious disease, people who are especially susceptible and full of fear become panic-stricken through the cumulative effect of hearing the subject talked about and discussed on every hand and the vivid pictures which come from reading the newspapers. Their minds (as in the case of yellow fever) become full of images of the disease, of its symptoms—black vomit, delirium,—and of death, mourning, and funerals.

If you never accomplish anything else in life, get rid of worry. There are no greater enemies of harmony than little anxieties and petty cares. Do not flies aggravate a nervous horse more than his work? Do not little naggings, constantly touching him with the whip, or jerking at the reins, fret and worry him much more than the labor of drawing the carriage?

It is the little pin-pricks, the petty annoyances of our everyday life, that mar our comfort and happiness and rob us of more strength than the great troubles which we nerve ourselves to meet. It is the perpetual scolding and fault-finding of an irritable man or woman which ruins the entire peace and happiness of many a home.

The most deplorable waste of energy in human life is caused by the fatal habit of anticipating evil, of fearing what the future has in store for us, and under no circumstances can the fear or worry be justified by the situation, for it is always an imaginary one, utterly groundless and without foundation.

What we fear is invariably something that has not yet happened. It does not exist; hence is not a reality. If you are actually suffering from a disease you have feared, then fear only aggravates every painful feature of your illness and makes its fatal issue more probable.

The fear habit shortens life, for it impairs all the physiological processes. Its power is shown by the fact that it actually changes the chemical composition of the secretions of the body. Fear victims not only age prematurely but they also die prematurely. All work done when one is suffering from a sense of fear or foreboding has little efficiency. Fear strangles originality, daring, boldness; it kills individuality, and weakens all the mental processes. Great things are never done under a sense of fear of some impending danger. Fear always indicates weakness, the presence of cowardice. What a slaughterer of years, what a sacrificer of happiness and ambitions, what a miner of careers this monster has been! The Bible says, "A broken spirit drieth the bones." It is well known that mental depression—melancholy—will check very materially the glandular secretions of the body and literally dry up the tissues.

Fear depresses normal mental action, and renders one incapable of acting wisely in an emergency, for no one can think clearly and act wisely when paralyzed by fear.

When a man becomes melancholy and discouraged about his affairs, when he is filled with fear that he is going to fail, and is haunted by the specter of poverty and a suffering family, before he realizes it, he attracts the very thing he dreads, and the prosperity is crushed out of his business. But he is a mental failure first.

If, instead of giving up to his fear, a man would persist in keeping prosperity in his mind, assume a hopeful, optimistic attitude, and would conduct his business in a systematic, economical, far-sighted manner, actual failure would be comparatively rare. But when a man becomes discouraged, when he loses heart and grip, and becomes panic-stricken and a victim of worry, he is not in a position to make the effort which is absolutely necessary to bring victory, and there is a shrinkage all along the line.

There is not a single redeeming feature about worry or any of its numerous progeny. It is always, everywhere, an unmitigated curse. Although there is no reality in fear, no truth behind it, yet everywhere we see people who are slaves to this monster of the imagination.

CHAPTER LV

TAKE A PLEASANT THOUGHT TO BED WITH YOU

Shut off your mental steam when you quit work. Lock up your business when you lock up your office or factory at night. Don't drag it into your home to mar your evening or to distress your sleep.

You can not afford to allow the enemies of your peace and happiness to etch their black pictures deeper and deeper into your consciousness.

Many people lie down to sleep as the camels lie down in the desert, with their packs still on their backs. They do not seem to know how to lay down their burdens, and their minds go on working a large part of the night. If you are inclined to worry during the night, to keep your mental faculties on the strain, taut, it will be a good plan for you to have a bow in your bedroom and unstring it every night as a reminder that you should also unstring your mind so that it will not lose its springing power. The Indian knows enough to unstring his bow just as soon as he uses it so that it will not lose its resilience.

If a man who works hard all day uses his brain a large part of the night, doing his work over and over again, he gets up in the morning weary, jaded. Instead of having a clear, vigorous brain capable of powerfully focusing his mind, he approaches his work with all his standards down, and with about as much chance of winning as a race horse who has been driven all night before a contest would have. Not even a man with the will of a Napoleon could win out under such conditions.

It is of the utmost importance to stop the grinding, rasping process in the brain at night and to keep from wearing life away and wasting one's precious vitality.

Many people become slaves to night worry. They get into a chronic habit of thinking after they retire—especially of contemplating their troubles and trials,—and it is a very difficult habit to break.

It is fundamental to sound health to make it a rule never to discuss business troubles and things that vex and irritate one at night, especially just before retiring, for whatever is dominant in the mind when one falls asleep continues its influence on the nervous structure long into the night.

Some people age more at night than during the daytime, when, it would appear, if they must worry at all, the reverse ought to be true. When hard at work during the day they do not have much time to think of their ailments, their business troubles, their misfortunes. But when they retire, the whole brood of troubling thoughts and worry ghosts fill the mind with horrors. They grow older instead of younger, as they would under the influence of sound, refreshing sleep.

Mental discord saps vitality, lessens courage, shortens life. It does not pay to indulge in violent temper, corroding thoughts, mental discord in any form. Life is too short, too precious, to spend any part of it in such unprofitable, soul-racking, health-destroying business. The imagination is particularly active at night, and all unpleasant, disagreeable things seem a great deal worse then than in the day, because in the silence and darkness imagination magnifies everything. We have all dreamed of the evening's experience, after we went to sleep: perhaps it is the refrain of a song or the intense situation in a play which we live over again. This shows how powerful impressions are; how important it is never to retire to rest in a fit of temper, or in an ugly, unpleasant mood. We should get ourselves into mental harmony, should become serene and quiet before retiring, and, if possible, lie down smiling, no matter how long it may take to secure this condition. Never retire with a frown on your brow; with a perplexed, troubled, vexed expression. Smooth out the wrinkles; drive away all the enemies of your peace of mind, and never allow yourself to go to sleep with critical, cruel, jealous thoughts toward any one.

It is bad enough to feel inimical toward others when under severe provocation or in a hot temper, but you certainly can not afford deliberately to continue this state of mind after the provocation has ceased. The wear and tear upon your nervous system and your health takes too much out of you.

Be at peace with all the world at least once every twenty-four hours. You can not afford to allow the enemies of your happiness and your manhood or womanhood to etch their miserable images deeper and deeper into your life and character as you sleep.

Many of us with crotchety, sour dispositions and quick tempers sometimes have very hard work to be decent in our treatment of others. But we can, at least when we are alone, and away from the people who nettle and antagonize us, forget injuries, quit harboring unpleasant thoughts and hard feelings toward others.

It is a great thing to form a habit of forgetting and forgiving before going to sleep, of clearing the mind of all happiness and success enemies. If we have been impulsive, foolish, or wicked during the day in our treatment of others; if we have been holding a vicious, ugly, revengeful, jealous attitude toward others, it is a good time to wipe off the slate and start anew. It is a blessed thing to put into practise St. Paul's exhortation to the Ephesians: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."

If you wish to wake up feeling refreshed and renewed, you simply must retire in a happy, forgiving, cheerful mood. If you go to sleep in an ugly mood or while worrying or depressed, you will wake up tired, exhausted and with no elasticity or spring in your brain or buoyancy in your spirits, for the blood poisoned by worry, by discordant mood, is incapable of refreshing the brain.

If you have a grudge against another, forget it, wipe it out, erase it completely, and substitute a charitable love thought, a kindly, generous thought, before you fall asleep. If you make a habit of clearing the mind every night of its enemies, of driving them all out before you go to sleep, your slumber will be undisturbed by hideous dreams and you will rise refreshed, renewed.

Clean your mental house before retiring. Throw out everything that causes you pain, everything that is disagreeable, undesirable; all unkind thoughts of anger, hatred, jealousy, all selfish, uncharitable thoughts. Do not allow them to print their black hideous pictures upon your mind. And when you have let go of all the rubbish and have swept and dusted and garnished your mind, fill it full of the pleasantest, sweetest, happiest, most helpful, encouraging, uplifting thought-pictures possible.

An evening-happiness bath ought to be the custom in every home. A bath of love and good-will toward every living creature is more important than a water bath.

We should fall asleep in the most cheerful, the happiest possible frame of mind. Our minds should be filled with lofty thoughts—with thoughts of love and of helpfulness—thoughts which will continue to create that which is helpful and uplifting, which will renew the soul and help us to awake in the morning refreshed and in superb condition for the day's work.

If you have any difficulty in banishing unpleasant or torturing thoughts, force yourself to read some good, inspiring book—something that will smooth out your wrinkles and put you in a happy mood; something that will make you see the real grandeur and beauty of life; something that will make you feel ashamed of petty meannesses and narrow, uncharitable thoughts.

After a little practise, you will be surprised to see how quickly and completely you can change your whole mental attitude so that you will face life the right way before you fall asleep.

You will be surprised also to find how wonderfully serene, calm, refreshed, and rejuvenated you will be when you wake in the morning, and how much easier it will be to start right, and wear a smile that won't come off during the day, than it was when you went to bed in an ill-humored, worrying or ugly mood, or full of ungenerous, uncharitable thoughts.

Unless you tune your mind to harmony for sleep, there will be a constant strain upon the nervous system. Even if you do manage to go to sleep with a troubled mind, the brain keeps on working and you will wake up exhausted.

We should take special pains to erase the memory of all unfortunate experiences of the day, all domestic business or professional troubles and anxieties, in order to retire in a placid, peaceful, harmonious state of mind; not only because of the necessity of rising refreshed and invigorated in the morning, but because the character and the disposition are affected by the condition of the mind upon falling asleep. Mental discords not only prevent sound sleep but also leave in the blood poisonous waste from the chemical changes which in turn dulls and impairs the brain action.

Many business men suffer so much torture at night that some of them actually dread to retire because of the long, tedious, wakeful hours. Financial troubles are particularly exaggerated at night; and even many optimists suffer more or less from pessimism then.

Business men ought to know how to turn off brain power when they are not using it. They would not think of leaving or closing their factories at night without turning off the machinery power. Why should they then attempt to go to sleep without turning off their mental power? It is infinitely important to one's health to turn off mental power when not actually using it to produce something.

When you get through your regular day's work, why allow your precious energy to dribble away in little worries? Why carry your business home, take it to bed with you, and waste your life forces in ineffective thinking? Why permit a great leakage of mental energy and a waste of life-force? You must learn to shut off mental steam when you quit work.

Many men use up almost as much mental energy in the evening and in a restless night as during their actual work in the day.

Refresh, renew, rejuvenate yourself by play and pleasant recreation. Play as hard as you work; have a jolly good time, and then you will get that refreshing, invigorating sleep which gives an overplus of energy, a buoyancy of spirit which will make you eager to plunge into the next day's work.

No matter how tired or busy you are, or how late you retire, make it a rule never to go to sleep without erasing every unfortunate impression, every disagreeable experience, every unkind thought, every particle of envy, jealousy, and selfishness, from the mind. Just imagine that the words "harmony," "good cheer," and "good will to every living creature" are written all over your sleeping room in letters of light.

People who have learned the art of putting themselves into harmony with all the world before they retire, of never harboring a thought of jealousy, hatred, envy, revenge, or ill-will of any kind against any human being, get a great deal more out of sleep and retain their youth much longer and are much more efficient than those who have the habit of reviewing their disagreeable experiences and thinking about all their troubles and trials in the night.

Make it a rule to put the mind into harmony and a good-will attitude when retiring, and you will be surprised to see how much fresher, younger, stronger and more normal you will become.

I know people whose lives have been completely revolutionized by this experiment of putting themselves in tune before going to sleep. Formerly they were in the habit of retiring in a bad mood; tired, discouraged over anticipated evils and all sorts of worries and anxieties. They would worry over the bad things in their business, the unfortunate conditions in their affairs, and their mistakes, and would discuss their misfortunes at night with their wives. The result was that their minds were in an upset condition when they fell asleep, and these melancholy, black, ugly pictures, so exaggerated in awful vividness in the stillness, became etched deeper and deeper into their minds, and they awoke in the morning weary and exhausted, instead of feeling, as every one should, like a newly-made creature with fresh ambition and invigorated determination.

Form the habit of making a call upon the Great Within of you before retiring. Leave the message of up-lift, of self-betterment, self-enlargement, which you yearn for and long to realize but do not know how to bring about. Registering this call, this demand for something higher and nobler, in your subconsciousness, putting it right up to yourself, will work like a leaven during the night; and after a while all the building forces within you will help to unite in furthering your aim; in helping you to realize your vision.

There are marvelous possibilities for health building, success building, happiness building, in the preparation of the mind before going to sleep by impressing, declaring, picturing as vividly as possible our ideals of ourselves, what we would like to become and what we long to accomplish. You will be surprised to see how quickly that wonderful force in your subjective self will begin to shape the pattern, to copy the model which you thus give it. In these great interior creative, restorative forces lies the great secret of life. Blessed is he who findeth it.

CHAPTER LVI

THE CONQUEST OF POVERTY

No one can become prosperous while he really expects or half expects to remain poor. We tend to get what we expect, and to expect nothing is to get nothing.

When every step you take is on the road to failure, how can you hope to arrive at the success goal?

Prosperity begins in the mind and is impossible while the mental attitude is hostile to it. It is fatal to work for one thing and to expect something else, because everything must be created mentally first and is bound to follow its mental pattern.

Most people do not face life in the right way. They neutralize a large part of their effort because their mental attitude does not correspond with their endeavor, so that while working for one thing they are really expecting something else. They discourage, drive away, the very thing they are pursuing by holding the wrong mental attitude towards it. They do not approach their work with that assurance of victory which attracts, which forces results, that determination and confidence which knows no defeat.

To be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor, to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach East by traveling West. There is no philosophy which will help a man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure.

The man who would succeed must think success, must think upward. He must think progressively, creatively, constructively, inventively, and, above all, optimistically.

You will go in the direction in which you face. If you look towards poverty, towards lack, you will go that way. If, on the other hand, you turn squarely around and refuse to have anything to do with poverty,—to think it,—live it, or recognize it—you will then begin to make progress towards the goal of plenty.

As long as you radiate doubt and discouragement, you will be a failure. If you want to get away from poverty, you must keep your mind in a productive, creative condition. In order to do this you must think confident, cheerful, creative thoughts. The model must precede the statue. You must see a new world before you can live in it.

If the people who are down in the world, who are side-tracked, who believe that their opportunity has gone forever, that they can never get on their feet again, only knew the power of reversal of their thought, they could easily get a new start.

If you would attract good fortune you must get rid of doubt. As long as that stands between you and your ambition, it will be a bar that will cut you off. You must have faith. No man can make a fortune while he is convinced that he can't. The "I can't" philosophy has wrecked more careers than almost anything else. Confidence is the magic key that unlocks the door of supply.

I never knew a man to be successful who was always talking about business being bad. The habit of looking down, talking down, is fatal to advancement.

The Creator has bidden every man to look up, not down. He made him to climb, not to grovel. There is no providence which keeps a man in poverty, or in painful or distressing circumstances.

The Creator never put vast multitudes of people on this earth to scramble for a limited supply, as though He were not able to furnish enough for all. There is nothing in this world which men desire and struggle for, and that is good for them, of which there is not enough for everybody.

Take the thing we need most—food. We have not begun to scratch the possibilities of the food supply in America.

The State of Texas could supply food, home, and luxuries to every man, woman, and child on this continent. As for clothing, there is material enough in the country to clothe all its inhabitants in purple and fine linen. We have not begun yet to touch the possibilities of our clothing and dress supply. The same is true of all of the other necessities and luxuries. We are still on the outer surface of abundance, a surface covering kingly supplies for every individual on the globe.