Such are the principal qualities necessary for advancement in life, though any one of them, without much or any of the other, will, if not counteracted by negative properties, be sure to command a certain degree of success. He who is about to start in the race would do well to ponder upon the difficulties he has to encounter, and make up a manful resolution to meet them with a full exertion of all his powers. To revert to the general question—what is it that enables one man to get in advance of his fellows? The answer is obvious: it can only be his doing more than the generality of them, or his enduring more privation than they are generally inclined to do [that is, self-denial], in order that he may acquire increased power of doing. The fault of most unsuccessful persons is their want of an adequate idea of what is to be done, and what is to be endured. They enter business as into a game or a sport, and they are surprised, after a time, to find that there is a principle in the affair they never before took into account—namely, the tremendous competition of other men. Without being able to do and suffer as much as the best men of business, the first place is not to be gained; without being able to do and suffer as much as the second order of men of business, the second place is not to be gained; and so on. New candidates should therefore endeavour to make an estimate of the duties necessary for attaining a certain point, and not permit themselves to be thrown out in the race for want of a proper performance of those duties. They should either be pretty certain of possessing the requisite powers of exertion and endurance, or aim at a lower point, to which their powers may seem certainly adequate.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] This remark is borrowed from the conversation of a medical friend.
CONTROLLERS-GENERAL.
It is a prevailing notion, that people are all so exclusively engrossed with their own concerns in this world, as to have no time or opportunity to take the least interest in those of their neighbours. No idea could be more mistaken. The truth is, a great many people—perhaps a third of the population of large towns, and three-fourths of those in small ones—are far more anxious about the concerns of their neighbours than about their own. In fact, society in this respect resembles the ape department in a menagerie, where, it is said, every individual chatterer neglects his own pan of meat (opposite his cage), and stretches with all his might to reach the mess of some distant companion in captivity, who, on his part, tries, with equal straining and exertion, to rob some other friend. The case, however, differs immensely as to intention. The monkeys, as we seriously believe, act thus from a wish to eat all the neighbouring pans of meat in the first place, after which they think it will be time enough to attend coolly to their own. But human beings look after each other’s morals and worldly prosperity through the most generous impulses. They think it selfish to be always attending to their own affairs, and that it would be an utter defiance of the greatest law of nature, if they were only to look after themselves. Our own business requires, perhaps, the first attention, but common justice to our race demands that all our spare time, at least, should be devoted to a supervision of the concerns of other people, and a surveillance of their moral conduct. We are to love our neighbours as ourselves, and, in order to testify that we love them, we are to do as we do with children, castigate them properly whenever they misbehave.
It is lamentable to think how negligent some large classes of society are respecting the affairs of their neighbours. In large cities, the more actively engaged citizens go on from year to year in the pursuit of their own advantage, never casting a single thought upon their next-door neighbours, unless, perhaps, to make a transient inquiry into the state of their credit. Is it not fortunate, that, while the men are thus apt to get wrapped up in their own sordid interests, the fairer and more generous part of the race are still in general sufficiently at leisure to see after their neighbours? What would society do without these amiable controllers-general?—or what would society do, if these amiable controllers were to get so much engaged too, as to have no time for the affairs of their friends? It is dreadful even to think of such a calamity. How many poor improvident wretches would, in such an event, be left to sink or swim as chance directed! How naughty the world at large would become!
Let us contemplate the delightful picture of one of these friends of society. She is generally a person very much at leisure; for without leisure, that natural preference of our own concerns to those of others precludes all exertion of the faculty: she is also, in general, placed in a tolerably secure position in the world, whence she may survey, with compassionate and patronising eyes, the poor strugglers beneath her. Virtuous she is, as virtuous can be; that is to say, she is altogether beyond temptation. Herself and all her own immediate friends have been fortunate; therefore she has a kind of prescriptive title to speak freely of the misfortunes of others. It is incredible what exertions this amiable person will make to procure data for her remarks, or, to speak more properly, grounds whereon she may proceed in her benevolent exertions. Charity being an excuse for every thing, she will even descend so far from her dignity as to institute inquiries, through servants and children, into the concerns of those persons whom she has taken under her patronage. Her own Betty, having the same turn with herself, takes frequent opportunities of visiting the kitchens of her friends; and all the remarks that the girl has been able to make upon the external state of things there, and all the prattle she has been able to pick up from the servants in that house, is brought home and faithfully detailed to her mistress, who accidentally, for that purpose, opens a conversation with her. Nor is this all. Through the impulse of her benevolent wishes, the good lady will often take information from her servant, which she has learned from another servant, respecting the concerns of a family in which that other servant has perhaps a sister or a friend; her sincere desire of doing good being so strong as to reconcile her to every possibility of misrepresentation, which a story may be supposed to undergo in its progress through so many mouths. It is also to be observed, that she is not exclusively attentive to the concerns of those whom she actually knows. The acquaintances of her acquaintances, and their acquaintances again, even to the third generation, she will inquire about with equal solicitude; and if she knows any thing disagreeable connected with your friends, or any thing that might be thought to unfit them for your acquaintance, she always very kindly lets you hear of it, so that you may be quite upon your guard.
“What do you think?” the talk, perhaps, thus proceeds; “they say she is such a fine lady that she never enters her kitchen: she never knows any day what is to be for dinner: all that kind of thing she leaves to her servants. And such quantities of company they keep! Hardly a night but what there are more or less visitors. A neighbour of ours, Mrs Blackwell, has an aunt who lives opposite them; and she says that the racket is without end. I’m sure I was just saying to our goodman the other day, that if we were to go on in such a way [be it marked, the speaker is reputed to be in infinitely better circumstances than the party commented on], we could not go on long. Puir young things! I’m greatly concerned about them—although, to be sure, it’s not my business. I was at the school with her mother, and I would like to see them keep right, if it were possible. Young folk are often newfangled about things at first. They think every body that they see is their friend—and its ‘this one, come to your supper,’ and ‘that one, come to your dinner,’ as if they could not get past it. When they come to my time o’ life, they’ll not be sae flush.”
“They say she’s highly accomplished,” thus runs another strain of remarks; “plays on the piano-forte and harp—draws—speaks French and Italian. That would be all very well if he had a fortune to keep it up; but a poor man’s wife! Commend me to a woman that can darn her husband’s stockings, and help to get ready his dinner. I think there’s naething like a gude plain education—reading, writing, and sewing—what mair does a woman need? The goodman and I were often advised to send our girls to learn music, but I never thought it their station. It just puts a parcel o’ nonsense into a girl’s head. Our lasses never learned ony thing but what they could mak a gude use o’; while, there’s Mary Foster does nothing but read novells from morning till night; she’s one o’ your fine misses. If our girls were to bring a novell into our house, I would put it at the back of the fire, though there was na another novell i’ the world.”
It is said that in nunneries, where there is neither vice, nor the possibility of it, the ladies, if unable to talk real scandal, make up for it by censorious remarks upon the most trifling foibles in their companions, or upon the most unimportant failures in the performance of the most unimportant duties. If a holy sister has been observed to smile at a wrong moment, if she has miscounted a bead, or tripped in her gown while walking in a procession, there is as much prattle about it as if she had committed a real offence. Just so, in a country town, every trivial incident becomes a subject of comment for those amiable people who make a point of attending to every body’s business but their own. The consequence is, that every person moves in a country town as if he were upon an ambuscading party: he sends by stratagem for every necessary of life which he requires: he takes all kinds of by-ways and back roads to escape observation, and cannot so much as cross the street without fearing he will be circumvented. Any thing like a good round thumping impropriety is hailed in such a place like rain in a drought. The most of the matters of remark are very small deer, hardly worth hunting down. When one of a more important character arises, it is quite a godsend. Suppose, for instance, the failure of some unfortunate merchant, who has been ruined by mere simplicity of character. The country people, somehow, have a most exaggerated idea of the mischiefs of bankruptcy. A bankrupt, in their eyes, is a person of distinguished criminality—almost enough to make him be regarded as a world’s wonder. In proportion, therefore, to their previous remarks for the edification of the unhappy man, is their wholesome severity afterwards. They are surprised to find that, after such an event, he still bears the ordinary shape of a human being—that he has not become signalised by some external transfiguration, of a kind sufficiently awful to indicate his offence. Another thing they are astonished at—that the family of a bankrupt should continue to have the usual appetites of human beings—that they should not, indeed, have altogether ceased to eat, drink, or sleep. The following is very nearly a conversation which really occurred, on such an occasion, in a somewhat humble rank of mercantile life.