"There are moments," says Dean Alford, "which are worth more than years. We cannot help it. There is no proportion between s.p.a.ces of time in importance nor in value. A stray, unthought-of five minutes may contain the event of a life. And this all-important moment--who can tell when it will be upon us?"
"What we call a turning-point," says Arnold, "is simply an occasion which sums up and brings to a result previous training. Accidental circ.u.mstances are nothing except to men who have been trained to take advantage of them."
The trouble with us is that we are ever looking for a princely chance of acquiring riches, or fame, or worth. We are dazzled by what Emerson calls the "shallow Americanism" of the day. We are expecting mastery without apprenticeship, knowledge without study, and riches by credit.
Young men and women, why stand ye here all the day idle? Was the land all occupied before you were born? Has the earth ceased to yield its increase? Are the seats all taken? the positions all filled? the chances all gone? Are the resources of your country fully developed?
Are the secrets of nature all mastered? Is there no way in which you can utilize these pa.s.sing moments to improve yourself or benefit others? Is the compet.i.tion of modern existence so fierce that you must be content simply to gain an honest living? Have you received the gift of life in this progressive age, wherein all the experience of the past is garnered for your inspiration, merely that you may increase by one the sum total of purely animal existence?
Born in an age and country in which knowledge and opportunity abound as never before, how can you sit with folded hands, asking G.o.d"s aid in work for which He has already given you the necessary faculties and strength? Even when the Chosen People supposed their progress checked by the Red Sea, and their leader paused for Divine help, the Lord said, "Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, _that they go forward_."
With the world full of work that needs to be done; with human nature so const.i.tuted that often a pleasant word or a trifling a.s.sistance may stem the tide of disaster for some fellow man, or clear his path to success; with our own faculties so arranged that in honest, earnest, persistent endeavor we find our highest good; and with countless n.o.ble examples to encourage us to dare and to do, each moment brings us to the threshold of some new opportunity.
Don"t _wait_ for your opportunity. _Make it_,--make it as the shepherd-boy Ferguson made his when he calculated the distances of the stars with a handful of gla.s.s beads on a string. Make it as George Stephenson made his when he mastered the rules of mathematics with a bit of chalk on the grimy sides of the coal wagons in the mines. Make it, as Napoleon made his in a hundred "impossible" situations. Make it, as _all leaders of men_, in war and in peace, have made their chances of success. Golden opportunities are nothing to laziness, but industry makes the commonest chances golden.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures."
""Tis never offered twice; seize, then, the hour When fortune smiles, and duty points the way; Nor shrink aside to "scape the specter fear, Nor pause, though pleasure beckon from her bower; But bravely bear thee onward to the goal."
CHAPTER II
WANTED--A MAN
"Wanted; men: Not systems fit and wise, Not faiths with rigid eyes, Not wealth in mountain piles, Not power with gracious smiles, Not even the potent pen; Wanted; men."
All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a man!
Don"t look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man,--it is you, it is I, it is each one of us! . . . How to const.i.tute one"s self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.--ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
Diogenes sought with a lantern at noontide in ancient Athens for a perfectly honest man, and sought in vain. In the market place he once cried aloud, "Hear me, O men"; and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully: "I called for men, not pygmies."
Over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling, the world has a standing advertis.e.m.e.nt: "Wanted--A Man."
Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"
though all the world say "Yes."
Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt or paralyze his other faculties.
Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.
A thousand pulpits vacant in a single religious denomination, a thousand preachers standing idle in the market place, while a thousand church committees scour the land for men to fill those same vacant pulpits, and scour in vain, is a sufficient indication, in one direction at least, of the largeness of the opportunities of the age, and also of the crying need of good men.
Wanted, a man of courage who is not a coward in any part of his nature.
Wanted, a man who is well balanced, who is not cursed with some little defect of weakness which cripples his usefulness and neutralizes his powers.
Wanted, a man who is symmetrical, and not one-sided in his development, who has not sent all the energies of his being into one narrow specialty and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and die. Wanted, a man who is broad, who does not take half views of things; a man who mixes common sense with his theories, who does not let a college education spoil him for practical, every-day life; a man who prefers substance to show, and one who regards his good name as a priceless treasure.
Wanted, a man "who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose pa.s.sions are trained to heed a strong will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself."
The world wants a man who is educated all over; whose nerves are brought to their acutest sensibility; whose brain is cultured, keen, incisive, broad; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic; whose heart is tender, magnanimous, true.
The whole world is looking for such a man. Although there are millions out of employment, yet it is almost impossible to find just the right man in almost any department of life, and yet everywhere we see the advertis.e.m.e.nt: "Wanted--A Man."
Rousseau, in his celebrated essay on education, says; "According to the order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man can not be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters little to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. Nature has destined us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination concerning society. To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _Let him first be a man_; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another as she pleases, he will be always found in his place."
A little, short doctor of divinity in a large Baptist convention stood on a step and said he thanked G.o.d he was a Baptist. The audience could not hear and called "Louder." "Get up higher," some one said. "I can"t," he replied. "To be a Baptist is as high as one can get." But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a _man_.
As Emerson says, Talleyrand"s question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty?
is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody?
does he stand for something? He must be good of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand, all that the common sense of mankind asks.
When Garfield as a boy was asked what he meant to be he answered: "First of all, I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I can succeed in nothing."
Montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to train a man.
One great need for the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have good bodies and an excess of animal spirits.
What more glorious than a magnificent manhood, animated with the bounding spirits of overflowing health?
It is a sad sight to see thousands of students graduated every year from our grand inst.i.tutions whose object is to make stalwart, independent, self-supporting men, turned out into the world saplings instead of stalwart oaks, "memory-glands" instead of brainy men, helpless instead of self-supporting, sickly instead of robust, weak instead of strong, leaning instead of erect. "So many promising youths, and never a finished man!"
The character sympathizes with and unconsciously takes on the nature of the body. A peevish, snarling, ailing man can not develop the vigor and strength of character which is possible to a healthy, robust, cheerful man. There is an inherent love in the human mind for _wholeness_, a demand that man shall come up to the highest standard; and there is an inherent protest or contempt for preventable deficiency. Nature, too, demands that man be ever at the top of his condition.
As we stand upon the seash.o.r.e while the tide is coming in, one wave reaches up the beach far higher than any previous one, then recedes, and for some time none that follows comes up to its mark, but after a while the whole sea is there and beyond it. So now and then there comes a man head and shoulders above his fellow men, showing that Nature has not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man will overtop the highest wave of manhood yet given to the world.
Apelles hunted over Greece for many years, studying the fairest points of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a forehead and there a nose, here a grace and there a turn of beauty, for his famous portrait of a perfect woman which enchanted the world. So the coming man will be a composite, many in one. He will absorb into himself not the weakness, not the follies, but the strength and the virtues of other types of men. He will be a man raised to the highest power. He will be a self-centered, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of Nature"s laws. His whole character will be impressionable, and will respond to the most delicate touches of Nature.
The first requisite of all education and discipline should be man-timber. Tough timber must come from well grown, st.u.r.dy trees.
Such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or an exquisite carving. But it must become timber first. Time and patience develop the sapling into the tree. So through discipline, education, experience, the sapling child is developed into hardy mental, moral, physical man-timber.
If the youth should start out with the fixed determination that every statement he makes shall be the exact truth; that every promise he makes shall be redeemed to the letter; that every appointment shall be kept with the strictest faithfulness and with full regard for other men"s time; if he should hold his reputation as a priceless treasure, feel that the eyes of the world are upon him that he must not deviate a hair"s breadth from the truth and right; if he should take such a stand at the outset, he would, like George Peabody, come to have almost unlimited credit and the confidence of everybody who knows him.
What are palaces and equipages; what though a man could cover a continent with his t.i.tle-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce; compared with conscious rect.i.tude, with a face that never turns pale at the accuser"s voice, with a bosom that never throbs with fear of exposure, with a heart that might be turned inside out and disclose no stain of dishonor? To have done no man a wrong; to have put your signature to no paper to which the purest angel in heaven might not have been an attesting witness; to walk and live, unseduced, within arm"s length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rect.i.tude;--_this is to be a man_.
Man is the only great thing in the universe. All the ages have been trying to produce a perfect model. Only one complete man has yet evolved. The best of us are but prophesies of what is to come.
What const.i.tutes a state?
Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate; Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; Not bays and broad-armed ports, Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts, Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No: men, high-minded men, With powers as far above dull brutes endued In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude,-- Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain.
WILLIAM JONES.
G.o.d give us men. A time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands: Men whom the l.u.s.t of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor--men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty, and in private thinking.
ANON.