But if she drives, why then she weeps--it is so hard to be Perched stiffly in a carriage seat while other girls run free.
She used to cry herself quite sick to think she had to go Month after month to dreary schools; that was her constant woe.
But on her graduating day, my, how her tears did run!
It seemed so sorrowful to know that her school life was done.
One day she wept because she saw a funeral train go by-- It was so sad that she must live while other folks could die.
And really all her friends will soon join with her in those tears Unless she takes a brighter view of life ere many years.
The conceited girl or woman is tiresome and unpleasant as a companion, but the morbidly discontented woman is far worse. Perhaps you have met her, with her eternal complaint of the injustice of Fate toward her.
She feels that she is born for better things than have befallen her; her family does not understand her; her friends misjudge her; the public slights her.
If she is married she finds herself superior to her husband and to her a.s.sociates. She is eternally longing for what she has not, and when she gets it is dissatisfied.
The sorrowful side of life alone appeals to her.
This she believes is due to her "artistic nature." The injustice of fortune and the unkindness of society are topics dear to her heart.
She finds her only rapture in misery.
If she is religiously inclined she looks toward Heaven with more grim satisfaction in the thought that it will strip fame, favor and fortune from the unworthy than because it will give her the benefits she feels she deserves.
She does not dream that she is losing years of Heaven here upon earth by her own mental att.i.tude.
WE BUILD OUR HEAVENS THOUGHT BY THOUGHT.
If you are dwelling upon the dark phases of your destiny and upon the ungracious acts of Fate, you are shaping more of the same experience for yourself here and in realms beyond.
You are making happiness impossible for yourself upon any plane. In your own self lies Destiny.
I have known a woman to keep her entire family despondent for years by her continual a.s.sertions that she was out of her sphere, misunderstood and unappreciated.
The minds of sensitive children accepted these statements and grieved over "Poor Mother"s" sad life until their own youth was embittered.
The morbid mother seized upon the sympathies of her children like a leech and sapped their young lives of joy.
The husband grew discouraged and indifferent under the continual strain, and what might have been a happy home was a desolate one, and its memory is a nightmare to the children to-day.
Understand yourself and your Divine possibilities and you will cease to think you are misunderstood.
It is not possible to misunderstand a beautiful, sunny day.
All nature rejoices in its loveliness.
Give love, cheerfulness, kindness and good-will to all humanity, and you need not worry about being misunderstood.
Give the best you have to each object, purpose and individual, and you will eventually receive the best from humanity.
CHAPTER XVII
COWARDICE AND WORRY
Cowardice is a much more prolific source of worry than most people imagine. There are many varieties of cowardice, all tracing their ancestry back to fear. Fear truly makes cowards of us all. There are the physical cowards, the social cowards, the business cowards, the hang-on-to-your-job cowards, the political cowards, the moral cowards, the religious cowards, and fifty-seven, nay, a hundred and one other varieties. Each and all of these have their own attendant demons of worry. Every barking dog becomes a lion ready to tear one to pieces, and no bridge is strong enough to allow us to pa.s.s over in safety. No cloud has a silver lining, and every rain-storm is sure to work injury to the crops rather than bring the needful moisture for their vivification.
What a piteous sight to see a man who dares not express his honest opinions, who must crawl instead of walk upright, in the presence of his employer, lest he lose his job. How his cowardice worries him, meets him at every turn, torments him, lest some incautious word be repeated, lest he say or do the wrong thing. And so long as there are cowards to employ, bully employers will exist. Nay, the cowardice seems to call out bullying qualities. Just as a cur will follow you with barkings and threatening growls if you run from him, and yet turn tail and run when you boldly face him, so with most men, with society, with the world--flee from them, show your fear of them, and they will harry you, but boldly face them, they gentle down immediately, fawn upon you, lie down, or, to use an expressive slang phrase, "come and eat out of your hand."
How politicians straddle the fence, refrain from expressing their opinions, deal in glittering generalities, because of their cowardly fears. How they turn their sails to catch every breath of popular favor. How cautious, politic, wary, they are, and how fears worry and besiege them, whenever they accidentally or incidentally say something that can be interpreted as a positive conviction. And yet men really love a brave man in political life; one who has definite convictions and fearlessly states them; who has no worries as to results but dares to say and do those things only of which his conscience approves. No matter how one may regard Roosevelt, cowardice is one thing none will accuse him of. He says his say, does his will, expresses himself with freedom upon any and all subjects, let results be as they may. Such a man is free from the petty worries that beset most politicians.
He knows nothing of their existence. They cannot breathe in the free atmosphere that is essential to his life; like the cowardly cur, they run away at his approach.
Oh, cowards all, of every kind and degree, quit ye like men, be strong and of good courage, dare and do, dare and say, dare and be, take a manly stand, fling out your banner boldly to the breeze, cry out as did Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty, or give me death," or as that other patriot did: "Sink or swim, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote." Do the things you are afraid of; dare the men who make cowards of you; say the things you fear to say; and be the things you know you ought to be, and it will surprise you how the petty devils of worry will slink away from you. You will walk in new life, in new strength, in new joy, in new freedom. For he who lives a life free from worries of this nature, has a spontaneity, a freedom, an exuberance, an enthusiasm, a boldness, that not only are winsome in themselves, make friends, open the doors of opportunity, attract the moving elements of life, but that give to their possessor an entirely new outlook, a wider survey, a more comprehensive grasp. Life itself becomes bigger, grander, more majestic, more worth while, the whole horizon expands, and from being a creature of petty affairs, dabbling in a small way in the stuff of which events are made, he becomes a potent factor, a man, a creator, a G.o.d, though in the germ.
CHAPTER XVIII
WORRY ABOUT MANNERS AND SPEECH
Many people are desperately worried about their manners. One has but to read the letters written to the "Answers to Correspondents"
departments of the newspapers to see how much worry this subject of manners causes. This springs, undoubtedly, from a variety of causes.
People brought up in the country, removing to the city, find the conditions of life very different from those to which they have been accustomed, and they are _uncertain_ as to what city people regard as the right and proper things to do. Where one, perforce, must act, uncertainty is always irritating or worrying, and, because of this uncertainty, many people worry even before the time comes to act. Now, if their worry would take a practical and useful turn--or, perhaps, I had better state it in another way, viz., that if they would spend the same time in deciding what their course of action should be--there would be an end put to the worry.
We have all seen such people. They are worried lest their clothes are not all right for the occasion, lest their tie is of the wrong shade, their shoes of the correct style, and a thousand and one things that they seem to conjure up for the especial purpose of worrying over them. Who has not seen the nervousness, the worried expression on the face, the real misery of such people, caused by trifles that are so insignificant as not to be worth one-tenth the bother wasted on them.
The learning of a few fundamental principles will help out wonderfully. The chief end of "good manners" is to oil the wheels of social converse. Hence, the first and most important principle to learn is a due and proper consideration for the rights, opinions, and comfort of others. In other words, don"t think of yourself so much as of the other fellow. Let your question be, not: How can I secure my own pleasure and comfort? but How can I best secure his? It is a self-evident proposition that you cannot make him feel comfortable and happy if you are uncomfortable and unhappy. Hence, the first thing to do is to quit worrying and be comfortable. This desired state of mind will come as soon as you have courageously made up your mind as to what standard of manners you intend to follow. The world is made up to-day, largely, of two cla.s.ses: those who have money, and those who don"t. Of the former cla.s.s, a certain few set themselves up as the arbiters of good manners; they decide what shall be called "good form," and what is not allowable. If you belong to that cla.s.s, the best thing you can do is to learn "to play the game their way." Study their rules of calling cards, and learn whether you leave one, two, three, or six when you are calling upon a man, or a woman, or both, or their oldest unmarried daughter, or the rest of the family. This is a regular game like golf, or polo. You have to know the course, the tools to use, and the method of going from one goal to another. Now, I never knew any ordinarily intelligent man or woman who couldn"t learn the names of the tools used in golf, the numbers of the holes, and the rules of the game. _How_ you play the game is another matter. And so is it in "good society." You can learn the rules as easily as the next one, and then it is "up to you" as to _how_ you play it. You"ll have to study the fashions in clothes; the fashions in handkerchiefs, and how to flirt with them; when to drink tea, and where; how to lose money gracefully at bridge; how to gabble incessantly and not know what you are talking about; how to listen "intelligently" and not have the remotest idea what your _vis-a-vis_ is saying to you; you"ll have to join "steen clubs, and read ten new novels a day; go to every new play; know all about the latest movies; know all the latest ideas of social uplift, study art, the spiritual essence of color, the futurists, and the cubists. Of course, you"ll study the peerage of England and know all about rank and precedence--and, indeed, you"ll have your hands and mind so full of things that will make such a hash of life that it will take ten specialists to straighten you out and help you to die forty years before your time. Hence, if that is the life you intend to live, throw this book into the fire. It will be wasting your time to read it.
If you don"t belong to the cla.s.s of the extra rich, but are all the time wishing that you did; that you had their money, could live as they live, and, as far as you can, you imitate, copy, and follow them, then, again, I recommend that you give this book to the nearest newsboy and let him sell it and get some good out of it. You are not yet ready for it, or else you have gone so far beyond me in life, that you are out of my reach.
If, on the other hand, you belong to the cla.s.s of _workers_, those who have to earn their living and wish to spend their lives intelligently and usefully, you can well afford to disregard--after you have learned to apply the few basic principles of social converse--the whims, the caprices, the artificial code set up by the so-called arbiters of fashion, manners, and "good form," which are not formulated for the promotion of intelligent intercourse between real manhood and womanhood, but for the preservation and strengthening of the barriers of wealth and caste.
Connected with this phase of the subject is a consideration of those who are worried lest in word or action, they fail in gentility. They are afraid to do anything lest it should not be regarded as genteel.
When they shake hands, it must be done not so much with hearty, friendly spontaneity, but with gentility, and you wonder what that faint touch of fingers, reached high in air, means. They would be mortified beyond measure if they failed to observe any of the little gentilities of life, while the larger consideration of their visitor"s disregard of the matter, would entirely escape them. To such people, social intercourse is a perpetual worry and bugbear. They are on the watch every moment, and if a visitor fails to say, "Pardon me," at the proper place, or stands with his back to his hostess for a moment, or does any other of the things that natural men and women often do, they are "shocked."
Then it would be amusing, were it not pathetic, to see how particular they are about their speech--_what_ they say, and _how_ they say it.
As Dr. Palmer has tersely said: "We are terrorized by custom, and inclined to adjust what we would say to what others have said before,"
and he might have added: It must be said in the same manner.
I cannot help asking why men and women should be terrorized by custom--the method followed or prescribed by other men and women. Why be so afraid of others; why so anxious to "kow-tow" to the standards of others? Who are they? What are they, that they should demand the reverent following of the world? Have you anything to say? Have you a right to say it? Is it wise to say it? Then, in the name of G.o.d, of manhood, of common sense, say it, directly, positively, a.s.sertively, as is your right, remembering the a.s.surance of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." Don"t worry about whether you are saying it in the genteel fashion of some one else"s standard. Make your own standard. Even the standards of the grammar books and dictionaries are not equal to that of a man who has something to say and says it forcefully, truthfully, pointedly, directly. Dr. Palmer has a few words to say on this phase of the subject, which are well worthy serious consideration: "The cure for the first of these troubles is to keep our eyes on our object, instead of on our listener or ourselves; and for the second, to learn to rate the expressiveness of language more highly than its compeers.
The opposite of this, the disposition to set correctness above expressiveness, produces that peculiarly vulgar diction, known as "school-ma"am English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with usage, all the picturesque, imaginative, and forceful employment of words is sacrificed."
There you have it! If you have something to say that really means something, think of that, rather than of the way of saying it, your hearer, or yourself. Thus you will lose your self-consciousness, your dread, your fear, your worry. If your thought is worth anything, you can afford to laugh at some small violation of grammar, or the knocking over of some finical standard or other. Not that I would be thought to advocate either carelessness, laziness, or indifference in speech. Quite the contrary, as all who have heard me speak well know.
But I fully believe that _thought_ is of greater importance than _form of expression_. And, as for grammar, I believe with Thomas Jefferson, that "whenever, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of your ideas can be condensed or a word be made to stand for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt."
I was present once when Thomas Carlyle and a technical grammarian were talking over some violation of correct speech--according to the latter"s standard--when Carlyle suddenly burst forth in effect, in his rich Scotch burr: "Why, mon, I"d have ye ken that I"m one of the men that make the language for little puppies like ye to paw over with your little, fiddling, twiddling grammars!"