The Golden Censer Part 26

WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THESE RANK FAILURES?

Nothing. We can take warning from them. "A failure establishes only this," says Bovee, "that our determination was not strong enough." This is very nearly the truth. We fail because we feel the game to be hardly worth the candle. We are not willing to pay the price and the value of success. We had rather slide down the hill than climb up higher. When you hit your head against a door in the dark, you are stunned. You are then twice as likely as before to hurt yourself. Bear that in mind.

Stop. Move with the greatest of caution.

THIS IS WHY SHAKSPEARE SAYS

that when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

When you have failed, try and get a new start, clear of the consequences of the last disaster. You know exactly where you erred, and can guard against the weak places in your judgment, the cause of your defeat.

Above all, study the "dead rank failure" in your community, and do everything precisely opposite to the way he invariably operates.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

GAINS AND BRAINS.

Virtue without success Is a fair picture shown by an ill light; But lucky men are favorites of heaven: All own the chief, when fortune owns the cause.--Dryden.

Lucky men are favorites of heaven, simply because they have been endowed with that charming blindness which keeps them from seeing when they are whipped in the battle of life. The man of success has usually a greater sense of the value of a ten-dollar note than his clerk who, like the braggart _Pistol_, has got the world for his oyster, and expects to open that tough old mollusk with his rusty sword. The man of success sees each young helper around him given better opportunities than he himself had to begin with. His astonishment that inexperienced young men should think they have no chance is always noticeable. He half-envies some stripling soldier in the battle who is yet a high private in the rear rank. The high private cannot understand how this envy can be possible, and will not believe it exists. If you will study the lucky man you will see that his "luck" is usually more of a matter of course than an extraordinary happening. Reverse the thing, and you can comprehend it. Here is a brakeman. He gets killed by the cars.

WAS IT NOT ASTONIs.h.i.+NG?

Well, yes, it was; still, if anybody were going to be killed, the brakeman would be the most likely to be the victim. Go to the accident insurance office and observe how little anxious they are to take such a risk, and what an enormous premium they ask when they do take one! Here is a man running a powder-factory. The insurance men will not touch him at all! Now our man of success is like the brakeman, in a sense. He is always on the train, always between the cars, always standing in the frog. If any such thing as luck is out, it must hit him, or some other brakeman like him. Certainly, it will not touch the man asleep in his house

HALF A MILE FROM THE TRACK!

You have a very small chance to draw money in a lottery, and it is a very foolish thing to throw away earnings buying tickets--yet of two fools who expected to draw the grand prize, that one would be the greatest who had no ticket in the lottery! The man of success wants something to strike around his premises. He, therefore, has got conductors of the celestial fluid on his house, and on his barns. His chicken-coops, his corn-cribs point to heaven, and even the stumps in his back yard

BRISTLE WITH LIGHTNING-RODS.

Clap! comes the bolt; the man of success is the one who has been hit, and those persons who do not understand it are astonished at his luck!

The man of success is a stone; there are a number of eggs who are bent on dancing in the same cotillon with him; they think he has great luck to last through to such music! The man of success is a thoroughbred; his sire won a Derby; all the drayhorses believe that, when this lucky thoroughbred runs,

THE EARTH MOVES BACKWARD

beneath his feet, to help him in overcoming distance! The man of success is a lightning calculator; the spectators all think he is a lucky fellow to guess at the sum of a great block of figures so quickly and always guess right; they never could do it!

"LUCK" SAYS RICHARD COBDEN,

"is ever waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance. Labor on character." The man of success who owns a mill is seen in the water up to his waist, dragging a log behind him. "Is he not lucky to get his dam fixed so soon after the flood!" say the neighbors. The man of success who owns a grocery has got ten barrels of flour on the sidewalk, two casks of petroleum in the alley, and twelve barrels of sugar on his trucks. At night the barrels are all in their places, and, so far as I have ever seen,--in the retail business, at least,--it was not the clerks of the man of success who did

THE HEAVY END OF THE LIFTING.

"I never" says Addison, "knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who complained of bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the a.s.saults of all the ill-luck that fools ever dreamed of." "Strong men believe in cause and effect," says Emerson. "There are no chances so unlucky," says Rochefoucauld, "that people are not able to reap some advantage from them, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage."

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LUCK,

we never mean that a man is lucky to be endowed with successful qualities. So long as we do not go back to the real matter of fortune, which lies in the character, let us, at least, be intelligent, and stop talking about one man having any more good things happen to him than another. There is only one sure thing about events, and that is the law of chance. If men take to chance, they will come out even, if it be a fair chance.

THIS IS CERTAIN.

If you try to match the penny some one has covered, and fail ten times in succession, it is a certainty that you will succeed often enough, ere long, to make your failures and your successes balance. Everything which depends entirely on chance is exactly even. If the man you envy to-day on account of some piece of unquestionably good luck, were to be as closely watched to-morrow, he would be seen to suffer some piece of as unquestionably bad luck. You cannot help noticing his good fortune, and he never howls about his disasters.

FORTUNE TELLERS

thrive on this principle--taking even guesses, and trusting to the victim's remembrance of all that comes true and his forgetfulness of all that does not.

Put up your lightning-rods, get between the cars, begin making powder--increase your probabilities of getting blown up, of having something out of the ordinary run happen to you. If you are food for big fish, go where the big fish are, and you will not be left over for lunch. If you can be useful to a great railroad man, a great statesman, or, even, a great nation, they are going to thrive on you. They will take a taste of you almost before you know it. If you are smart, sober, and were not born tired, there is no bad luck that can get even a shade the best of you.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

DISCIPLINE.

"Tarry a while," says Slow.--Mother Goose.

Our generation is formed largely of men who went to war and experienced the trials and the combats of one of the greatest commotions of all history. Upon those men was imposed the glorious rod of discipline. "Thus far and no farther!" is written upon their broad foreheads as plainly as the G.o.d of the great sea marks it on the rocks with which he has hemmed the sh.o.r.es, and I would not wonder if the vast prosperity of the present day were largely attributable to that stern fondness with which the true man pa.s.ses into the action of daily life, and obeys orders under fire. Young man, carve yourself down to that rugged line that will make you a fitting part of the structure in which you are an element.

BE RATHER THE GIRDER

holding the building than the creaking clapboard flapping in the wind.

When you get an order from your employer, school yourself to move mechanically to the action implied. Glory in it. Be sure, only, that you are carrying out the wishes of your superior. Make it your pleasure. It will become an intense delight. Suppose that you are allowed a holiday.

You return to your home and find a command to appear at your place of business. A delay in finding you has happened. You can reach your employer just at the end of business hours. You say "I will not mind this; there is not time enough." Alas! You have done yourself

A CRUEL WRONG.

You have given an entrance to a wedge that will rend you in pieces. On the other hand, you do not stop to look twice at the dial. You go. Good!

You have strengthened your character. You can depend on yourself. You admire yourself. "I received your directions at 5.30. I have obeyed orders." Drill of this sort will soon hew your mind down to the solid heart of oak. You will know what you mean when you say a thing. "I will get up at 6 o'clock." When 6 o'clock arrives, and you are aroused, your mind is not

A MESS OF PULP,