Almost everybody is afflicted with one kind of discontent or the other.
It would be well for you, Mr. Reader, to decide what kind of discontent afflicts you. If you have the wrong kind, hurry and get the other as fast as possible.
THE DISCONTENT THAT WHINES
This is the kind of discontent which Emerson refers to when he says that "discontent is the want of self-reliance."
The WHINING discontent ruins many lives; it is used as the excuse for much foolish conduct, much neglect of duty.
It is the discontent which reflects the feeble soul, the self-indulgent, worthless being.
A young man who gets drunk or dissipates otherwise, who offers as an excuse, "Well, I was feeling kind of DISCONTENTED and had to do something," is afflicted with the wrong kind of discontent in its most virulent form.
The office boy with small wages who is caught smoking cigarettes, or evading his duties, or undermining his moral character by gambling, will also say, "I was discontented and had to do something."
If you have THAT discontent, try to get rid of it and get the other kind.
THE DISCONTENT THAT MEANS AMBITION
Alexander the Great lived and died discontented, but Emerson would scarcely have attributed that gentleman"s discontent to lack of self-reliance.
Alexander was discontented, first, because he could not conquer the whole world, and, second, because there were no others that he could conquer. He was a vast genius, almost humorous in his ambitious discontent sometimes--especially when he looked at the stars and said, as alleged, that he was ashamed to look at all those other worlds when he had barely conquered this one little world that he lived on.
If you have in you Alexander"s brand of discontent you may well be grateful.
You are still more to be envied if you have the discontent which has impelled thousands of great men to devote their lives ceaselessly to the discovery of truth, working for others. ----
When Taglioni, the great ballet dancer, was a little girl, with skinny legs and a skinnier future, being extremely homely and with no prospects of success, she was discontented.
Other skinny-legged little ballet dancers of her cla.s.s were discontented also.
But Taglioni"s discontent impelled her to spend every spare moment whirling on her big toe, practicing her entrechat, or laboring over the art of smiling, naturally, with aching toes, aching back, aching thighs, and solar plexus almost exhausted from the unnatural strain.
The other skinny-legged discontented ones exercised their discontent on their patient mothers, instead of exercising it on their own big toes. THEY never were heard of, whereas Taglioni pranced on HER big toe before every court in Europe, and her smile, which ultimately became natural, attracted the opera gla.s.ses of all the great men.
There are thousands of young musicians, young business men, young singers, young electricians--thousands and hundreds of thousands of human beings engaged in all kinds of effort in all directions.
ALL OF THEM ARE DISCONTENTED. Those that have the right kind of discontent will go at least as far as their natural capacity can take them, and those that have the wrong kind will collapse, achieve nothing and devote wasted lives to wasting pity on themselves. ----
Try to acquire the discontent of Alexander, Carlyle, Pagallini, Taglioni, or even that of the honest bootblack who "shines them up" so hard that the perspiration comes through his check jumper in cold weather.
WHAT THE BARTENDER SEES
A young man with a cold face, much nervous energy and a tired-of-the-world expression leans over the polished, silver-mounted drinking bar.
You look at him and order your drink.
You know what you think of him, and you think you know what he thinks of you.
Did you ever stop to think of ALL THE STRANGE HUMAN BEINGS besides yourself that pa.s.s before him?
He stands there as a sentinel, business man, detective, waiter, general entertainer and host for the homeless.
In comes a young man, rather early in the day.
He is a little tired--up too late the night before. He takes a c.o.c.ktail. He tells the bartender that he does not believe in c.o.c.ktails. He never takes them, in fact. "The bitters in a c.o.c.ktail will eat a hole through a thin handkerchief--pretty bad effect on your stomach, eh?" and so on.
Out goes the young man with the c.o.c.ktail inside of him.
And the bartender KNOWS that that young man, with his fine reasonings and his belief in himself, is the confirmed drunkard of year after next. He has seen the beginning of many such c.o.c.ktail philosophers, and the ending of the same.
The way NOT to be a drunkard is never to taste spirits. The bartender knows that. But his customers do NOT know it. ----
At another hour of the day there comes in the older man. This one is the fresh-faced, YOUNG oldish man.
He has small, gray side-whiskers. He shows several people--whom he does not know--his commutation ticket.
He changes his mind suddenly from whiskey to lemonade. The bartender prepares the lemon slowly, and the man changes his mind back to whiskey.
Then he tries to look more dignified than the two younger men with him. In the midst of the effort he begins to sing "The Heart Bowed Down with Weight of Woe," and he tells the bartender "that is from "The Bohemian Girl.""
He sings many other selections, occasionally forgetting his dignity, and occasionally remembering that he is the head of a most respectable home--partly paid for.
The wise man on the outside of the bar suggests that the oldish man will get into trouble. But the bartender says: "No; he will go home all right. But he won"t sing all the way there. About the time he gets home he"ll realize what money he has spent, and you would not like to be his wife."
The bartender KNOWS that the oldish man--about fifty-one or fifty-two--has escaped being a drunkard by mere accident, and that he has not quite escaped yet.
A little hard luck, too much trouble, and he"ll lose his balance, forget that there IS lemonade, and take to whiskey permanently. ----
At the far end of the bar there is the man who comes in slowly and pa.s.ses his hand over his face nervously. The bartender asks no question, but pushes out a bottle of everyday whiskey and a small gla.s.s of water.
The whiskey goes down. A shiver follows the whiskey and a very little of the water follows the shiver. The man goes out with his arms close to his sides, his gait shuffling and his head hanging.
It has taken him less than three minutes to buy, swallow and pay for a liberal dose of poison.
Says the bartender:
"That fellow had a good business once. Doesn"t look it, does he? Jim over there used to work for him. But he couldn"t let it alone."
The "it" mentioned is whiskey.
Outside in the cold that man, who couldn"t let it alone, is shuffling his way against the bitter wind. And even in his poor, sodden brain reform and wisdom are striving to be heard.
His soul and body are sunk far below par. His vitality is gone, never to return.
The whiskey, with its shiver that tells of a shock to the heart, lifts him up for a second.