Let, therefore, nothing escape your observation--deem nothing below your notice. Dive into all depths, and explore all hidden recesses that will render you a master of every department of any business or profession you may engage in. The man who can render himself generally useful has always a better chance of getting on in the world. Whatever you thoroughly acquire will be a source of satisfaction and profit to you throughout your future life. It will save you many an anxious hour by day, and many a restless one by night. Remember that the whole is made up of parts, and that the parts must be well understood before you can master the whole. You will never be able to manage your business successfully without a thorough knowledge of it in all its details.
Resolve, therefore, at the very commencement of your career, to acquire such knowledge.
Young people sometimes say, "I shall never get an opportunity of showing what is in me, for every business is now so crowded." Shakespeare has answered this when he said, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." As a matter of fact opportunities come to all, but all are not ready for them when they come. Successful men are those who prepare themselves for all emergencies, and take advantage of the occasion when the favorable time comes.
A good many young men excuse themselves from ever becoming anything, or doing anything, by the fact that they always live where it is low tide.
Perhaps that is because it is always low tide where they live. At any rate, the more we learn of the history of the men who have succeeded, the more apparent it becomes that if they were born in low water, they patched up their tattered circ.u.mstances, and beat out to sea on a tide of their own making.
If you would be a success in the business world, then you must master everything that you lay your hands upon. Bear in mind that this is your own interest, as well as your duty toward your employer. Think nothing below your attention; do not be afraid of drudgery. Investigate all, comprehend all, grasp all, and master all. Business, like an ingenious piece of machinery, is made up of many complicated parts. a.n.a.lyze it, therefore, thoroughly search all its parts, and know for yourself how they are put together.
You may cherish the hope that you will one day be an employer yourself.
It would be very desirable if we could repose unlimited confidence in the words and acts of our fellow-men; but, unfortunately, the condition of the world is not as yet sufficiently advanced to enable us to do so.
Where you will find one that you can trust, you will find many that need watching. If you should be unacquainted with some of your business details, you must trust to others, and may in consequence be deceived. A few months of careful attention to it at the commencement of your career will secure you against deception throughout the whole of your life as an employer.
Then you must also be careful to remember that dividends in life are not paid until the investment of personal effort has been made. Sowing still antedates reaping; and the amount sowed determines pretty closely the size of the harvest. Whether it be young men or wheat fields the interest can be depended upon to keep up with the capital, and empty barns in October are the logical consequence of empty furrows in spring.
The young man may as well understand that there are no gratuities in this life, and that success is never reached "across lots."
Success means, all the way through to the finish, a victory over difficulties; and if the young aspirant lacks the grit to face and down the difficulty that happens to confront him at the start, there is little reason to expect that his valor will show to any better advantage in his encounter with enemies that get in his way later.
Young men are apt to imitate each other. Let your conduct be such as to bear imitation; otherwise you will lead those who are younger than you to form injurious habits, and be the means of leading them away from the path of duty. It is an obligation you owe your seniors. In the discharge of their duties they will have to depend upon you to a certain extent; and if your part is not properly performed, the whole system must unavoidably suffer derangement.
If the mind is temperate in feeling, deliberate in choosing, and robust in its willing, character becomes set and enduring. If, on the contrary, feeling is volatile, choice fickle, and the will flabby, one quality after another awakens momentary admiration and impulse; ideals succeed each other as the vanishing visions of a dream; life is pa.s.sed in a state of perpetual inward contradiction; and failure, both for yourselves and for your imitators, is almost sure to follow.
No young man can remain long in this unsettled or transition state; but he must become _something_. You will therefore do well to be careful how you tread this probationary ground; for it is really the one great opportunity of your lives so far as concerns the formation of your general characters. Use it thoughtfully and well, and your manhood will be stronger, richer, and more helpful, all through your later years.
XXVII.
ORDER.
MEMORY GEMS.
Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty.--C. Simmons
Without method, little can be done to any good purpose.--Macaulay
A place for everything, and everything in its place.--Old Proverb
Order is the law of all intelligible existence.--Blackie
Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, and the security of the state.--Southey
The two words "order" and "method" are so closely akin to each other that it is quite difficult to separate them, even in the mind. "Order is heaven"s first law," it is said; also, "Method consists in the right choice of means to an end." Here a distinction is made; but the two words taken together, cover the line of thought we now wish to follow.
Children nowadays do not learn to read as they once did. They go to kindergartens; but order is the rule even in such play-schools, and it is the one great reason why they succeed. All schools and colleges depend upon order for successful work.
"He who every morning plans the transactions of the day," says Victor Hugo, "and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits of neither distribution nor review."
There is no talent like method; and no accomplishment that man can possess, like perseverance. These two powers will usually overcome every obstacle; and there is no position which a young man may not hope to secure, when, guided by these principles, he sets out upon the great highway of life. In after years, the manners and habits of the man are not so readily adapted to any prescribed course to which they have been unaccustomed. But in youth habits of system, method, and industry, are as easily formed as others; and the benefits and enjoyments which result from them, are more than the wealth and honors which they always secure.
"Never study on speculation," says Waters; "all such study is vain. Form a plan, have an object; then work for it, learn all you can about it, and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculation, is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful at some time; which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a bra.s.s door-plate with the name Thompson on it, thinking it might some day be of service."
Orderly boys and girls are fair scholars, firm friends, and good planners; they make few mistakes, and succeed pretty well in all they do. Order does not make a genius; but a genius without order is exasperating when he is a man, and is only pardoned for his want of order when he is a boy because he is expected to do better each day.
Begin with orderly _habits_; next day try order in _thought_; and then will follow naturally order in _principles_.
"You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan," said Curran, "if you would buy a few yards of red tape and tie up your bills and papers."
Curran realized that methodical people are accurate as a rule, and successful.
The celebrated Nathaniel Emmons, whose learning made him famous through all New England, claimed that he could not work at all, unless order reigned about him. For more than fifty years the same chairs stood in the same places in his study; his hat hung on the same hook; the shovel stood on the north side of the open fireplace, and the tongs on the south side; and all his books and papers were so arranged that he claimed to be able to find any information he needed in three or four minutes.
The demand for perfection in the make-up of Wendell Phillips was wonderful. Every word must express the exact shade of his thought; every phrase must be of due length and cadence; every sentence must be perfectly balanced before it left his lips. Exact precision characterized his style. He was easily the first legal orator America has produced. The rhythmical fullness and poise of his periods are remarkable.
A. T. Stewart was extremely systematic and precise in all his transactions. Method ruled in every department of his store, and for every delinquency a penalty was rigidly enforced. His eye was upon his business in all its various branches; he mastered every detail and worked hard.
It has also been repeatedly a.s.serted that Noah Webster never could have prepared his dictionary in thirty-six years, unless the most exacting method had come to the rescue. He himself claimed that his orderly methods saved him ten or twenty years, and a vast amount of anxiety and trouble.
Good habits are the first steps in order for children,--punctuality, neatness, a place for everything. Yet, do not let habits master you, so that you never can do anything except in a fixed manner at a fixed time, and cannot give up your way of doing for the sake of something greater.
It is true, however, that there is a wonderful force in mere regularity.
A writer by the name of Bergh tells of a man beginning business, who opened and shut his store at the same hour every day for weeks, without selling two cents" worth of goods, yet whose application attracted attention and paved the way to fortune.
Sir Walter Scott has also said that "When a regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion because the front does not move steadily and without interruption. It is the same thing with business.
If that which is first in hand be not instantly, steadily, and regularly dispatched, other things acc.u.mulate behind, till affairs begin to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion."
The great enemy of order is laziness. It is too much trouble to do a thing when it ought to be done, instead of doing it when you want to do it. Young people should learn to think, talk, read in an orderly manner.
The country, the state, the town, the home, depend upon order.
Supposing each person did what he wished, without regard to the welfare of others,--that meals, parties, lessons, came at any time; that caucuses and elections happened when any one desired them; that prisons and hospitals took people or not, just as superintendents felt; that everybody was a self-const.i.tuted policeman, yet no one wanted to be looked after himself;--what a hard time all people would have!
A very important point still remains to be noticed. It is this: Our principles ought to be strong enough to govern our habits. Habits may make us disagreeable and fussy; principles make us broad, far-seeing, sympathetic, and independent. Success in life depends upon having the _principle_ of order. Always do the _important_ thing _first_; for that is what order means. Some boys and girls are orderly about their rooms, but disorderly in their ways of doing things,--always in a hurry, and always puzzled what to do next. Orderly people make plans, allow a margin of time for carrying them out, so that they shall not overlap one duty with another; and then, if there is any time left, they fill it with some extra employment or enjoyment, which they have kept in the background all ready for use.
JOHN WESLEY.
If John Wesley had not been such an orderly boy, he never could have been the founder of Methodism. He was born at Epworth, England, in 1703, and had nineteen brothers and sisters, though only ten of them lived long enough to be educated.
His brother Charles was his intimate companion. When students at Oxford, they and two other friends formed a small society, which was called the "Holy Club" by those who laughed at it. They had sets of questions, labeled in order for their examination. From the exact regularity of their lives and their methods of study, they came to be called Methodists, in allusion to some ancient physicians who were so termed.
The name was so quaint that it became immediately popular. They visited the poor and sick, and had regular lists of inquiries and rules for general use.
All the orderly habits of his youth guided him even when he became a man; and the amount of work he accomplished is almost beyond belief. In the last three years of his life, although sick nearly all the time, he preached as many times as ever until a week before his death, in 1791.
Always anxious never to lose a moment, and to be methodical in all his habits, he read as he traveled on horseback for forty years. He delivered forty thousand sermons, and wrote many books and essays, and gave away in charity one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was a great sum in those days.
The secret of John Wesley"s success began in his love of order, and culminated in the wonderful, orderly discipline of the immense Methodist denomination. At his death there were nearly eighty thousand members, whose leaders, great and little, had definite duties to perform. Yet, in his love for order, he never lost sight of individual poor and sick people, but remembered to serve each one.
[Footnote: See "Lives of Wesley," by Tyerman (1876); Riss (1875); Isaac Taylor"s "Wesley and Methodism" (1868); and "Wesley"s Journals," in seven volumes.]