ilea6^ IT2one^ GEORG E H. KNOX _,^--^-^'^-'<;2c*-<£-e' The date shows when this volume was taken. fe V.'-IT- Q'Qh iH MA^a^-S^TO 'M P All books not in \ise for instruction or re-. search are limited to all borrowers. Volumes of periodi- cals a^d of pamphlets compris'q so many sub- jects, that they are hpld , i|n the library as much as possible. For spe- cial purposes they are given out for a limited time. Graduate? and sen- iors are allowed five volumes for two weeks. Other students may have two vols, from the circulating library for two weeks. Books not needed during recess periods should be returned to the library, or arrange- . ments made for their return during borrow- er's absence, if wanted. Books needed by more than one person are held on the reserve list'. Books of special value and gift . books, when the giver wishes it, are not, allowed to circulate. , laSj :/' ■:)Yi^^ HF5386 .K74 " """"'""' ""'"^"^ Ready money olin 3 1924 030 156 784 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030156784 READY MONEY. PRICE, $3-4°, Net. THE PERSONAL HELP SCHOOL OF ACHIEVEMENT consists of a course of instruction on The Development of the Personality or. How to Be King in Your Line and covers four great departments : Jst. The Development of the Personality 2d. The Growth and Promotion of the Employee 3d. The Art and Science of Salesmanship 4th. The Organization and Management of Business Enterprises ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH WHAT YOU HAVE ACHIEVED IN THE PAST? DO YOU WANT TO DO GREATER THINGS IN THE FUTURE? Of course you want to be a popular, progressive, successful man or woman. You perhaps feel that you have done everything in your power toward that end. You have worked early and late with but small or medium returns and have seen others make a brilliant record with seemingly little effort. Do you think it is ' ' luck?' ' They have simply discovered their possibilities. You can very likely outstrip them when you find your- self. George H. Knox, the President and founder of "The Personal Help School of Achievement," has helped hundreds of young men and women to discover themselves and to secure positions to which they had before never even dreamed of aspiring. Would you not like to have him help you ? Write for a circular to-day. Address all communications to PERSONAL HELP PUBLISHING CO. Department Z Des Moines, Iowa GEORGE H. KNOX. personal Melp Xlbrar^ READY MONEY BY GEORGE H. KNOX PRESIDENT PERSONAL HELP PUBLISHING COMPANY FOUNDER PERSONAL HELP SCHOOL OF ACHIEVEMENT PERSONAL HELP PUBLISHING COMPANY DES MOINES, IOWA 1905 I) Copyright, 1 905 By GEORGE H. KNOX. Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England. Protected by International copyright in Great Britain and all her colonies, and, under the provisions of the Berne Convention, in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Tunis, Hayti, Luxembourg, Monaco, Montenegro and Norway. All Rights Reserved, (Printed in the United States.) '7) id CONTENTS. PART I. PAGE Getting Started • 19 Invincible Determination .... • 33 Courage ....... ■ 41 Give the Boy a Chance .... • 53 Doing Things When You Are Not Busy • 63 Books ....... • 71 Only Half-doing Things .... 73 Being Businesslike ..... 77 He Can— But Will He? .... 83 Right Thinking as a Business-getter . 87 Why People Fail at First .... 93 Making up One's Mind .... 99 Doing a Big Business on a Small Margin 103 Nerve ....... 107 Make the Most of It 109 Confidence ...... 119 Failure ....... 125 Stroking the Fur the Right Way in Business 129 Get Results 133 Self-mastery ....... 135 Past Records ...... 139 (13) 14 CONTENTS PAGE Finding One's Self ..... 143 Emergency ..... 147 Getting Into a Rut, and Getting Out 155 Initiative . ..... 159 Hard Times 165 Things to Think About .... 169 (a) Miscellaneous .... 169 ((5) Being Satisfied .... 173 Ic) It's Little Things That Count 174 (^/) Appreciation .... 175 (e) Trifles 177 If) I Say Just What I Think 178 (g) Taking Advice .... 181 (/z) The Modern Book 184 (z) Brains and Muscle 186 What Are You Cut Out For? 189 PART II. BITS OF ELOQUENCE. Introduction ..... Toussaint L'Ouverture. Wendell Phillips Bribery. Demosthenes A Plea for the Poet Archias. Cicero . What Is a Minority? John B. Gough Immortality. William Jennings Bryan Death of Lincoln. Henry Ward Beecher 201 203 207 211 213 217 CONTENTS IS PAGE The Vision of War. Robert G. Ingersoll . . 223 Robert Emmet's Defense. Robert Emmet . .227 An Appeal to Arms. Patrick Henry . . . 241 Pericles to Aspasia. Pericles . . -247 The Eloquence of O'Connell. Wendell Phillips . 251 The Gettysburg Speech. Abraham Lincoln . 255 The Chicago Convention Speech. William Jen- nings Bryan . . . . . . -257 The Defense of Hofer, the Tyrolese Patriot. Andreas Hofer ...... 261 A Reminiscence of Lexington. Theodore Parker 265 Washington. Anon. ..... 269 The True Greatness of England. John Bright . 271 Henry W. Grady. John Temple Graves . .275 Washington. Anon. . . . . -283 Webster's Reply to Hayne. Daniel Webster . 285 The Death of Nathan Hale. Charles Dudley Warner ....... 289 The Revolutionary Alarm. George Bancroft . 293 The New South. Henry W.Grady . . .297 PART I (17) BiMWi£^&^.. GETTING STARTED. When one thinks of the thousands who have succeeded without even a ghost of a chance, we in this glorious age of progress and success ought to feel ashamed. Young man, are you discouraged? Do you think your lot is hard? — that times are not like they used to be, or that you have no chance? Let me urge you to stand erect in the strength of your own vigorous manhood, and resolve with all the power in your being that there will be one more light, one more guide-post, one more successful man; that, if someone has to fail, that someone shall not be you. There isn't an occupation or a profession in existence but what has been glori&ed by men who at first were no greater than you. I care not what your occupation may be, you can make such a start and follow that start with such a future and such a life that you will have immortalized your name and made for yourself a monument that will reach the sky. (19) 20 READY MONEY Don't wait until you are a Napoleon before you begin. You might as well wait until you had become a skilful swimmer before going into the water. It's waiting to do something great, or waiting to make up your mind, or waiting to get good and ready that finds men getting old without a purpose. All the mag- nificent conflicts and toUs, and defeats and vic- tories, and nearly all the preparation come after the start. The start is the supreme moment — the supreme test of strength. 'Thou- sands are standing on the bank shivering in- stead of jumping in and becoming warm by their own activity in the water. Thousands never start because they are afraid they can- not make it go. Thousands more never start because they don't see ahead to the reward, and thousands never start because they think they have'nt been offered enough for their ser- vices. One reason is as bad as another. What difference does it make to the dead man whether he was killed intentionally or by accident? What difference does it make why one doesn't start if he doesn't? Are you disheartened? Are you afraid to make a start for fear you will fail, and your last condition be worse than your GETTING STARTED 21 first? You have the sympathy of all successful men, for they have all had their misgivings at times. But your suppositions are wrong. Every man has success within himself, and to start is to win half the battle. A start toward usefulness is one that man never yet made in vain. Every man and every genius in all his- tory started before he could do the thing. We learn by doing, and we learn in no other way. Napoleon developed the qualities of a great general by fighting little battles and big battles, and by meeting reverses as well as victories. In one sense, no great man ever launched a great enterprise. The young man with great possibilities within him launched a little enter- prise, and the two grew up together; and we have a John Wanamaker and a great department store; we have a Rothschild and a great bank- ing system; we have a Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence; a George Washington and a great Republic. The important thing — the great stroke of genius — is the result of less important things well done. Endeavor to do something and do it now. It gives a man will-power, decision, and strength. Why should you hesitate? No 22 READY MONEY one in all history ever accomplished anything by hesitation but his own ruin. Everything that has ever been done has been done after the start, and every start has been small. The smaller the start the greater the opportunity for growth. After the start comes momentum, confidence, skill. The second day will see one doing more than the first. In a year he has done wonders, and in ten years accomplished the impossible. Are you afraid you will not succeed? You are as good as the average. You have in you what has made all the world successful. The men who have gone before you have left their lights burning as a token of their success. You see their monuments of achievement reaching to the very stars, and you hear the sound of their shouts of victory from every hill-top in Christendom. To succeed is but the natural way to live. To fail is contrary to nature. There is success for all when the price is paid, and the more you give the less it costs. Men can all pay if they only will. Do you think that the work in which you are now engaged isn't worth your supremest efforts? Perchance the work may not be, but you are worth your GETTING STARTED 23 supremest effort, and you are the one that is being made. Do you think your services are under- estimated, and you are waiting for your price? You are cutting off your own head. You are putting between you and success a pile of rock a mile high. When you refuse to take what you can get, you imply a lack of confidence in yourself. It is a mistaken idea to think an employer will keep your wages down if you deserve to have them raised. The salary you begin on has nothing to do with your success. What you earn has everything to do with it. Begin at any figure and trust to your own skill for a raise. Don't be afraid of being underpaid. The idea alone is enough to cause your ruin. If a young man or an old man wants a position, it pays to get it at any price. You can at least earn as much or more than if you didn't work at all, and if you should happen to have an employer who didn't appreciate your services, he couldn't keep you long. Others would hire you at an advance in salary. Just as surely as water seeks its own level, a man will get what's coming to him in the long run. Most of our successful men of to-day started on a small salary. It wasn't the salary that 24 READY MONEY made them great. It was the position. If they hadn't been big enough and far-sighted enough to take the position at a small salary, rather than no position at all, they never would have been heard from. Getting the position is the only thing worth considering. The salary always, always comes. Robert C. Clowry commenced as a messenger boy in Joliet, Illinois, working the first six months without a cent of salary. Dur- ing the six months he did his own cooking and did odd jobs to earn enough money to buy food. (He says it didn't take much money.) He had but one object: to hold his unsalaried position and learn telegraphy. He says he made it his business, during that first six months, to do everything within his power to further the interests of his employer, and in after life he always endeavored to do more than he got paid for. He didn't think he was underestimated or imposed upon during that trial period; he thought he was most fortunate to have a posi- tion and a chance to learn the business without having to pay for the privilege. He was in exactly the right mental attitude. He expected a little promotion at the end of six months, but he got a big one. He was given an ofi&ce. He GETTING STARTED 25 received a dozen promotions all in one. He never stopped learning. He never stopped climbing until he had the highest position in the business — the presidency of the Western Union Telegraph Company. He is now one of the busiest men in the country. It was just fifty years from the time he commenced to work without a salary until he was elected president of the Western Union. If he had demanded even a small salary to start with all might have been different. If he had been sat- isfied with his promotion or ten promotions all would have been different, and our telegraph system less complete. But he never stopped learning, and he never stopped growing. Patrick Houlahan is the superintendent of the Hannibal & St. Joe Railway. Thirty-six years ago he was employed to carry drinking water to the working men on an Illinois railway. Perhaps it isn't so much credit to him to do his work well now — he gets big pay for it — but it is to his credit that when he was carrying that water he did it well and kept it clean, fresh, and cool for the thirsty men. The young man who does the seemingly unimportant thing well from the start, and does it cheerfully, will have no 26 READY MONEY trouble with more important matters. It is in the beginning of a man's career that he falls down; not in the end. John G. Carlisle, Secretary of the Treasury in Cleveland's administration, began teaching country school in Kentucky at twelve dollars a month. At the end of a year he asked for fifteen dollars. It stirred the people up to such an extent that the matter of a three dollar raise for the young man was made a campaign issue. He went on the stump in his own behalf and was defeated, but he says the experience gained put him in the House of Representatives a few years later. Edward T. Jeffery, President of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, started in the ofhce of the Illinois Central Railway Company in Chicago at a salary of forty-five cents a day. He was another man, or, rather, a boy at that time, who wanted experience and was willing to work for it. He says: "The idea that I was engaged in business was a delight to me." And so hundreds of such men might be named, men who are very giants in their several fields. They commenced for just what they could get, and the fact that these young men took the GETTING STARTED 27 position at any price is as much an indication of greatness as anything else they ever did. The young men who are to be the little men of the future refuse to go to work for what they are worth. The young men who are to be the big men of the future go to work for what they can get, and trust entirely to their own skill and merit for promotion. Getting started is the greatest of all steps toward success, and a man or boy should get the position regardless of the salary in order that he may gain experience and fit himself for any salary. It's an inspiration to a man to be in business even if his salary is unreasonably small. If the salary were the only thing that he was in business for, he might as well quit, perhaps, and become a tramp, but the salary has absolutely nothing to do with it. I repeat it, it is the position. Get the position. Put into it twice as much as is expected. Rejoice that you can get that experience without having to pay tuition as you would in college. Rejoice that you are a part of the world's workers and becoming useful to humanity, and just as surely as the sun rises in the morning your salary will rise. 28 READY MONEY Out of over a thousand men to whom I have talked personally in regard to getting started, something like two or three hundred have taken exception to this position. These have all been men from twenty-five to thirty-five years of age. They say it's all right for a boy who is not sup- posed to be worth anything, or who has plenty of time to make it up in, "but I am a man; it's time that I was doing something. I cannot afford to waste any more time in getting expe- rience." It doesn't seem to me that anything could be more unwise. How very foolish for a man to say he cannot afford to waste any more time getting experience, and then waste the next six months or the next year or the next five years looking for some one that wUl pay him his price. The chances are his price isn't half what he ought to be worth. Had he gone in at the other man's price he would have devel- oped. At the end of five years he would have drawn a handsome salary. If a man is never to old to learn he is never too old to get started right. If he doesn't happen to get started when he is a boy or a young man, the sooner he gets started the better. He has got to start sometime or he wUl never be right. Suppose a GETTING STARTED 29 man takes the wrong road and has travelled a hundred miles in the wrong direction. How absurd it would be for him to say that he didn't propose to waste time to get on the right road and would continue to go the wrong way. Yet this is what is happening right along. On the farm scores of men ask for work and are told that they can get it at eighteen dollars a month, but move on because they couldn't get twenty. Perhaps they get twenty after a while, but they waste a month or two trying to find someone who wUl give them twenty dollars. It's ten thousand times more agreeable to work on a farm at any price than to travel along the road looking for work. This' I know from expe- rience. During the years of 1893 and 1894, in the drought-stricken districts of Nebraska and South Dakota, the best of farm laborers were only able to get work about half the time, and at fifty cents a day at that. There were a good many men in those States who knew what it was to walk along the railroad track or the dusty road for a week at a time before they could get work at any price. In those days, when the sun was beating down on the parched earth and dying grain, work at any price was a blessing. so READY MONEY Those who demanded ordinary wages got nothing. Those who worked for what they could get made money. The fact that a man had work of any kind, at any price, was a source of the greatest encouragement. A year ago we hired a number of men to go on the road at a salary of forty dollars a month and expenses. They couldn't get this much teaching, couldn't make it at anything else. One very brilliant young man who had worked hard and proven his worth said the salary was better than he expected, and he only feared he wouldn't be able to earn it, but would do his level best. Another young man, not worth so much, but who was seven or eight years older, and who was a college graduate, said that "if this first man, who is not a college graduate and is only twenty-one years of age, is worth forty dollars a month to you, then I'm worth a hundred. My experience gained in the Uni- versity will be used to your advantage. I spent money getting that education and I ought to be paid for it. I won't work for you unless I get a hundred dollars a month." He didn't work. The year has gone. The first man has earned his forty dollars a month, and more. He has a GETTING STARTED 31 position now that is a credit to any man of his age. The man who refused the forty a month and wanted one hundred hasn't done anything worth while since. He hasn't earned a hun- dred dollars all told, and he wouldn't be worth as much to us as he was last year, because he is out of touch with the business. He couldn't get a position with us on a salary at all. He would have to begin on commission again and prove his worth. And so I could give scores of such illustrations. Every employer of men has the same thing to contend with; not with aU men of course, but with a great many. It's no disgrace not to be a success at thirty or thirty-five years of age, or even forty. A man may not have done anything very much when he is thirty-five years old, and yet not have wasted much time either. He may have unconsciously been storing away energy and reserve power that will some day make him famous. Men do not all discover themselves at the same age. Some of our successful men didn't know themselves when they were thirty- five. Think of "Golden Rule" Jones. "At thirty-five history was to him a blank, the poets unknown, science unguessed. He never wrote 32 READY MONEY an article for the press until he was forty; he never made a public speech until he was forty- five. "He died at the early age of fifty-eight, and was known as a practised and skilful orator; a ready writer, a good authority on history, a student of science and an appreciative critic of the world's great literature. So there you have Sam Jones — inventor, successful business man, mayor of a great city, lecturer, author, student, critic, philanthropist." I would urge every young man who hasn't a position to get one at any kind of work, at any kind of pay, if there is a chance for growth, and I would like to see the kind of work in which there isn't an opportunity for growth. Of course, if a man wants to be a merchant I wouldn't advise him to go to the farm or the railroad shop. If he knows what he wants let him do that. If he doesn't know what he wants let him do anything, and do it with a wUl, and the time will come when the world will make a beaten path to his door. INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION. I WISH that every young man and young woman might have enkindled in their lives an invincible determination to do and to be. Why shouldn't everyone be a magnificent success? No one was intended to be a failure. Why shouldn't people discover their great possi- bilities, and the magnificent personality which might be cultivated until it would grow and blossom like a beautiful flower? Why shouldn't people take up the study of enthusiasm and make good will, progress, and enterprise part of their moral law? This great world is big enough, and good enough, and grand enough for every man and woman to succeed in, and it is possible for every person on earth to rise higher and higher in the scale of life until this earth is a perfect paradise. Think of 'the desire we may cultivate, and the inspiration which would be ours if we would but appropriate the enthusiasm, the courage, the energy, and the zeal that the great men of every age have left 3 (33) 34 READY MONEY as a blessed heritage to mankind. Think of the glory of putting heart and soul, and inspira- tion and zeal into your work, and making it the pride of your life and the admiration of the world. It's the only way a person can get all that's coming to him. It's the only natural way to live. Think of what it all means! Not simply that you will realize a handsome profit from your work— that alone is worth striving for; money is a means to an end, and to acquire it is a most laudable ambition; the man who says he doesn't want it is abnormal — but suc- cess means vastly more than profit; it means that you have conquered; you have self-satis- faction; you know that you have a place in the world. Success means a greater personality, a greater usefulness, the realization of one's hopes, and a heritage to leave to the world which will encourage the future generations of men. What young men need is a burning desire that wUl arouse in them the lion of progress and an uncon- querable ambition to rise. I tell you, we all need more grit, more nerve, more "git-up-and-git." Think of the multitudes of great men whose lives shine like the mid-day sun. You say it was genius that made them great! It was INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION 35 doing the thing next to them that made them geniuses. Why shouldn't every man cuUivate the grit and determination of a WilHam Lloyd Garrison? Many young men give up their positions if they are told they can't succeed. Confront them with a difficulty and they seek the path of least resistance. Not so with William Lloyd Garrison. He lived for a prin- ciple and gloried in carrying out his purposes. Listen to his words: "I will be as harsh as truth; as uncompromising as justice; I am in earnest ; I will not equivocate ; I will not excuse ; I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." Isn't that inspiring? Isn't more of that sort of determination what we need? Hear Robert Emmet — forced to give his life for a principle, he sacrificed all that was dear to a young man rather than bow to the dictates of what he believed to be wrong. He was tried by a judge who was prejudiced against him, and who reluctantly allowed him to make his own defence. "My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind by humiliation to the proposed ignominy of the scaffold — but worse to me than the pro- posed shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would be 36 READY MONEY the shame of such foul and unfounded imputa- tions as have been laid against me in this Court. You, my lord, are a judge; I am the supposed culprit; I am a man, you are a man also. By a revolution of power we might change places, though we never could characters. If I stand at the bar of this Court and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice! If I stand at this bar and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, also condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to re- proach? . . . . I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge to answer for the conduct of my whole life, and am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here? By you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reser- voir, your lordship might swim in it." Isn't that the kind of courage we need in business? Hear Martin Luther, the giant of the Middle Ages, who, rather than go contrary to his conscience and do an act unworthy of a man, exclaimed in tones of thunder that echoed INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION 37 around the world: "If I had a thousand heads I would lose them all sooner than recant." That's the kind of grit that has inspired us, and those are the kind of men who have given us our magnificent civilization. Whether it was Luther, Savanarola, Emmet, or Lovejoy, each and every one laid down his life without a fair trial before unholy and unjust persecutors, for a principle. There are no more behead- ings, no more burnings at the stake, and for doing the things for which those men laid down their lives, people are now lauded to the skies. But the clear grit, the magnificent manhood of those heroic men is to the world as inspiring as it is grand. Listen to the immortal words of Patrick Henry: "Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the expense of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I care not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." It was simply the culmination of his invincible deter- mination. A deep-seated, never-dying enthu- siasm is what we need to awaken in us the mighty force of genius. Think of the determination of General 38 READY MONEY Marion, the "Swamp Fox of the Carolinas," when he said to the British general, "I am in love, and my sweetheart is liberty and I am happy indeed. I would rather fight for such blessings for my country and feed on roots than keep aloof though wallowing in all the luxuries of Solomon. For now, sir, I walk the soil that gave me birth and exult in the thought that I am not unworthy of it. I look upon these venerable trees around me and feel I do not dishonor them. The children of future generations may never hear my name, but it gladdens my heart to think that I am now contending for their freedom and all its countless blessings." How we are thrilled by the bravery of Napo- leon when his own soldiers threatened his life in the Egyptian campaign. He banished for- ever their murderous designs by walking into their midst and calmly saying, "Soldiers, you are Frenchmen ; you are too many to assassinate and too few to intimidate me." "We have met the enemy and they are ours" was said by a man whose resolute determination knew no bounds. With Commodore Perry's determination and enthusiasm it was as easy INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION 39 to capture the enemy's entire fleet as for an army headed by a man who lacked it to capture a single firearm. To be enthusiastic is to be keenly alive. It is to "forget those things which are behind and to reach forth unto those things which are before." It's to put snap into things! and the difference between putting snap into your work and just simply doing it is precisely the difference between success and failure. "Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm," says Emerson. It pays to wake up and stop idle dreaming and wishing, and do something. The thing can be done. It's not hard; not half so hard as it seems. It's not necessary to change occupa- tions or professions. Success is there. All it needs is to be started and it will go around the world and climb above the stars. There are no impossibilities. There are no things that "can't be done." 40 READY MONEY " The world wants men, — large-hearted manly men ; Men who shall join in chorus and prolong The psalm of labor and of life. The age wants heroes — heroes who shall dare To struggle in the solid ranks of truth, And clutch the monster, error, by the throat ; To bear opinion to a loftier seat ; To blot the error of oppression out, And lead a universal freedom in. ' ' COURAGE. All the world admires courage. It is the symbol of honor, glory, and renown. It raises its strong arm against tyranny, and with its magic touch transforms the serf into the freeholder and men into gods. It raises the silken flag of honor above the din of battle and flashes a million sabres in the sunlight. It causes men to brave the mountains of ice and snow, and the hardships of an arctic sea; bear the heat of a tropical sun, or face the fevers and wild beasts of the jungle, in their search for that which enriches mankind. It takes the miner into the bowels of the earth, or carries him to the highest peaks in quest of the precious metals, that trade may be stimulated and prosperity advanced among men. We are inspired by the courage of the life-savers on the beach, the fire-fighters in our great cities, and the defenders of the weak and helpless in every clime. We delight to honor the brave men and women of every age who have faced trials and tribulations (41) 42 READY MONEY almost unendurable; aye, even banishment, the felon's cell, the gallows, the stake, and the cross, that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Without courage America or the New World would not have been. The wonders of un- knovra seas would still be shrouded in mystery and superstition. The beautiful farms, the towering cities, the industries, the prosperity, and the civilization that make this world a paradise would still be a mighty void, the earth a wilderness, and the howl of the wild beast its only music. We glory in the courage of the giants who have gone, the mighty heroes who dared to do. We glory in the heroes of our own day who, in every land and clime, are fighting the battles of the free and making this world a more perfect place for the millions yet unborn. Courage is not something that belongs only to those who have drawn the sword or marched to the inspiring music of war; it belongs not alone to those who gave their lives that a prin- ciple might live, and right triumph over wrong. The courage of the business man who has built up enterprises that bless mankind is often as great as that of the man whose inventions have COURAGE 43 revolutionized the world.. The statesman who follows the dictates of his conscience regardless of his own success, the criticism of his friends or the ridicule of his enemies, is as brave and as great as the heroes of other days. The wife and mother who is obliged to forego many of the pleasures of life, who cannot expe- rience the variety of scenes and conditions that her husband enjoys; the patient, faithful, loving wife, who has the cares and trials of a home to contend with, who, both by precept and ex- ample, raises a family of children in purity and virtue, toils for them through the long hours of the day, and sings to them praises of joy in the twilight, is as much a heroine as though she had given her life for a principle and become a martyr for her race. There's another form of courage that is too often made light of by the thoughtless throng. The courage which abstains from weakness, folly, and sin. There are boys and young men by the thousands who haven't the courage to refuse a cigar or a chew of tobacco when offered by a companion. Men will take into their systems that which deadens their higher sensi- bilities, lowers their moral tone, lessens their 44 READY MONEY manliness, and unfits them for the parlor or the society of women while engaged in the unwholesome practice that makes every place in which they congregate a den of filth, and them- selves slaves to a habit loathsome to humanity and a barrier to the highest development of the race, all for a lack of moral courage to refuse tobacco in any form, and because of the foolish and unfortunate belief that the stuff would make them men. No young man would place in the presence of refined company a tobacco- stained spittoon. But is such a cuspidor any worse looking than the young man's mouth? And out of that mouth comes such a stench as to sicken humanity. The effects of tobacco on its victim are bad. The financial drain is bad. The unpleasantness it creates is bad, and it decreases the personality. It gives one a breath so foul as to detract from the man, and business is lost. A good many people are obliged to expend their thought and energy in dodging a tobacco breath instead of being free to listen to the man's proposition. The time to cure the tobacco habit is before the habit has been formed. The time in which every evil habit should be cured, whether it be tobacco, COURAGE 45 social impurity, secret vice, drunkenness, gam- bling, or theft, is before the habit has been formed. As the young eagle is fitted by nature for its habitation among the crags, so should the "father's counsel and the mother's care" fit the boys and girls of to-day to withstand the temp- tations of to-morrow. Boys who don't use tobacco have more manly courage than those who do. They make better men and are in greater demand in the business world. The Personal Help Publishing Company employs more than a thousand men a year, but they won't take any who use tobacco if they know it. What is true of the tobacco habit is also true of the whiskey habit. I think the most elo- quent denunciation of the liquor trafiic I ever read is by Robert G. Ingersoll. A large part of IngersoU's life was wasted in trying to see the bad in the church instead of the good. That was all it amounted to. In trying to stem the onward tide of Christianity any one man or group of men is no more than a mere speck in the path of a mighty avalanche. However, Ingersoll said many things that are noble, elo- quent, and inspiring. He was one of the greatest orators of his day. He helped to take super- 46 READY MONEY stition out of the lives of thousands, and for the good he did and for the noble, loving, and tender things which he said we ought to have the moral courage to give him due credit. It pays to see the good in people no matter who they are. Hear him denounce the liquor traffic: "I am aware that there is a prejudice against any man engaged in the manufacture of alcohol. I believe that from the time it issues from the coiled and poisonous worm in the distillery until it empties into the hell of death, dishonor, and crime, that it demoralizes everybody that touches it, from its source to where it ends. I do not believe anybody can contemplate the subject without becoming prejudiced against that liquor crime. All we have to do, gentle- men, is to think of the wrecks on either bank of the stream of death, of the suicides, of the insanity, of the poverty, of the ignorance, of the destitution, of the little children tugging at the faded and weary breasts of weeping and despairing wives, asking for bread; of the talented men of genius it has wrecked, the men struggling with imaginary serpents, produced by this devilish thing; and when you think of the jails, the almshouses, of the asylums, of the COURAGE 47 prisons, of the scaffolds on either bank, I do not wonder that every thoughtful man is preju- diced against this stuff called alcohol." And yet there are those who haven't the manliness to refuse it. Give us not only the courage that wUl prevent the forming of these evU practices, but the courage that will break off the habit when it has been acquired. Give us the courage that will keep young men and women from wasting precious time, hour after hour, in useless games that have a fascination which leads to ruin. Why spend the long hours of the evening at the card table when one might be aroused and inspired to mighty deeds of usefulness by studying the lives and deeds of men who stand out before the world like shining stars in the firmament? It may not be the firm's business how an employe spends his evenings, but it is its busi- ness if he is sleepy and half dead the next day. It is its business if he has been spending half the night in some gambling den with worse men than ever wore a mask. "Gambling is a game in which to win is to lose." The young man who wins his first money at cards or any other gambling device loses his head first, then his 48 READY MONEY self-respect, his manhood, his body, and his soul. To his success in business or his influence for anything worth while it is a fatal blow. What business man or firm wants to employ a man who gambles? They shun him as they would the bubonic plague. No one who plays cards for money can ever hope for promotion in any business, not even the saloon. No young man means to go to the bad or become a pro- fessional gambler, but after a start is made it is hard to stop, and, besides, he has nothing else to do. He has unfitted himself to associate with honest men. No one wants him in their business. He draws his salary in advance to bet, and borrows that he may win back what he has lost. Sometimes he wins, and again he loses; then steals money with which to win on a "sure thing" with the intention of quitting the nefarious business. But he doesn't quit. The next move is down and out, but if he goes to the penitentiary he is better off than to remain in the community, a vulture to prey on innocent humanity and a curse to himself forever. He becomes a cheat and a fraud, but the one he cheats most of all is himself, for a gambler cheats himself out of every virtue and COURAGE 49 puts in their place a demon with neither heart nor soul. All humanity is crying out against those who play cards for money, and the best preventive against playing cards for money is not to play cards for fun. We sometimes see a man who occasionally plays for money, picks up a few election bets, but does most of it on "the quiet," and seems to maintain his self-respect. The ordinary young man thinks he will do the same, but we know he doesn't. He is challenged to bet on a game, one at which he is pretty good, and thinks it would show lack of confidence in his skUl were he to refuse; he hasn't the courage to say no. He gives in, and you know the rest. The story is written in poverty and rags, dis- honor, destitution, and crime, in every city, town, and hamlet in the world. The "respect- able man" who bets perhaps only at election time, or plays for a prize in the parlor, is to blame; he sets the wrong example. Go back to the liquor traffic and you have the same thing to contend with. The respect- able man who "takes a glass occasionally with a friend" does more harm than the drunkard in the gutter. He takes but little, but so READY MONEY he hasn't the courage to let that Httle alone. He says he can take it or leave it, but we know he can't, because he sometimes takes it. The man who says "I can take it or leave it alone" never leaves it alone. No young man expects to become a drunkard, but, lacking the courage to refuse the stuff absolutely, he decides to follow in the footsteps of his friend who seems none the worse for the drinks he has taken, but nine times out of ten he lands in the ditch and in a drunkard's grave, all because he lacked a little courage at the beginning. Courage to begin with is what is needed. Every young man knows all about the evU effects of drink, but thinks he will quit by and by. If he can't control himself when he is clean, upright, and pure, how can he expect to after the habit has been formed? Give us more courage and we will have more men who can say no. "Men who will not lie; men who will not steal; men who will not flinch; men who can look the world or the devil right in the eye and say NO; men through whom the current of everlasting life runs still and deep and strong." In business and in every walk of life lack of COURAGE SI courage keeps thousands in the background. Another place where moral courage is needed is by the thousands of employes and employers who are entrusted with business secrets. It is wrong for such people to say they don't know, and, besides, it is a useless excuse, for every one knows they do know. But how they rise in the majesty of their own greatness when they truthfully and courageously say, "that is a business secret, a matter I cannot talk about." That is courage as great as was ever displayed on the field of battle. It is a principle that ought to be emblazoned in letters of gold on the walls of every office in Christendom, and in characters as permanent as the everlasting hUls stamped into the lives of the millions yet to be. Give us the courage that wiU enable us to own up to our mistakes when we make them; that is another virtue that should be written in letters of fire across the sky. It isn't so bad to make a mistake, but to try to cover it up is fatal. Give us the courage to withhold the hasty reply or the stinging blow. Anyone can engage in a fist fight; it is a mere animalism; it takes ten times the courage for a man to 52 READY MONEY maintain his dignity and scorn to stoop to the level of an unworthy antagonist. Give us the courage to be frank, absolutely frank, fearless, honest, and true. It mil lighten the heart, glorify the soul, and bring into the face a glow of beauty and righteousness that grows brighter and brighter unto the per- fect day. GIVE THE BOY A CHANCE. If a man does anything worth while it is be- cause he first did something when he was a boy. A boy who is always pampered and made to believe that he is only a little boy, and given nothing to do, is the boy who will do nothing when he grows up. To be successful requires long preparation — it won't do to begin at matur- ity. We hear a great deal of talk about the city boy not being able to cope, in after-life, with his country brother, and the statement can hardly be made too emphatic. The man who was a country boy leads, as a rule, in nearly every race that requires strength of mind or of muscle. The city boy is just as honest, just as anxious, just as deserving as the country boy, but he has not been brought up right. He usually misses a great education; not schooling — he spends three days in school where the country boy spends one, but he does nothing else. He has unfortunately missed the real education that makes school education worth while. The (53) 54 READY MONEY average city boy of well-to-do parents doesn't know how to dress himself until he is six or seven years old. He has never found out that he can. It is "mamma" this and "mamma" that, and he grows up without knowing that he is supposed to do anything. If there is any work to be done about the place someone is employed to do it, and the boy naturally con- cludes that he was intended for something better than just ordinary work. On such a boy his parents have placed the stamp of doom, and they don't all live in the city; yet the envi- ronment of the country is against idlers, and as long as there are chores to do it will be pretty hard to bring up, in the country, a boy who doesn't at times have the satisfaction of knowing that he is useful. Doing chores is a boy's salvation. A country boy is useful and earns his living about as soon as he is big enough to wear trousers. He becomes a full-fledged farmer and a level- headed, practical man before the city boy knows how to do anything but play. He has developed good common sense before he is six; he knows when things are going all right and when they aren't. If a pig gets through the fence he GIVE THE BOY A CHANCE 55 knows it; if he finds the gate open he knows enough to close it. He can take the dog and go after the cows; he carries his father a drink to the field, and calls him to dinner; he takes care of the baby, and helps in a hundred ways, and it is all splendid development. He can milk when he is ten, plow a little later, and run the farm when he is sixteen, and he has never been a slave to either work or idleness. He has been knocked about; he has been tried; he has been abused at times, but it is all transforming him into a magnificent man. He knows what it is to work from six until twelve and to get so hungry that at ten he thinks he has reached the limit. He knows what it is to get up in the winter, build the fire, do the chores, and hustle to school about an hour before time so that he can be in the games. He is an all-round boy. He knows how to get himself out of a difiicult situation. If he has a break-down he can patch the machine up and go ahead; if the harness breaks, he knows how to mend it. He knows how to cure ring-bone, spavin, and poll-evils, how to break balky horses, and how to tell the age of any "critter" (or he thinks he does). He knows what each horse and calf on 56 READY MONEY the place is worth; he knows how many pounds of wheat are in a bushel, and how much to sow on an acre, and knows all about everything else that grows. He knows the names of the birds in the air, the fish in the stream, and knows the nature and habitation of every wild animal. He knows about how much he can stand. He knows his own strength, because he has done the thing before. What chance has the average city-bred boy with such a one when they enter business and competition? It is not the pon- derous brain nor the mighty intellect, nor the theoretical education alone that counts; it is this practical knowledge and talent that have been unconsciously developed. It is not the man who knows the most; it is the man who knows how to use what he does know. When a man has never had a fight, has never had any opposition, has never met any grief and doesn't know what it is to work against odds, he is at a mighty disadvantage. He doesn't know whether he is going to win or lose; but show me a fellow who has been at it since he was three years old, and I will show you a fellow that you can't stop with a club. He has learned how to use his head, and how to adapt himself GIVE THE BOY A CHANCE 57 to circumstances and win out, without even thinking it is hard or out of the ordinary. Human nature is so constructed that neither a boy nor a man can develop good common sense and clear judgment, learn to think quickly and decide instantly unless he is placed in a position where he is obliged to figure his way out. Give the boy a chance to rely upon him- self, whether he is in town or in the country. If he is in town, give him something to do, and the sooner the better. If town people would only dismiss some of their servants and set their boys to carrying coal, washing dishes, scrubbing the floor, mowing the lawn, cleaning windows, turning the washing machine, run- ning the furnace and carrying out the ashes, taking care of the horse, etc., there would be more town boys in the United States Senate and in every successful enterprise. Let him sell papers. There is no reason why the poor boy should have that great advantage all to himself. Teach him to make bargains, buy the groceries, and pay bills, and he will become self-reliant and learn how to deal with men. Teach him to buy his own clothes. It is worth something to a boy to know the price of com- 58 READY MONEY modities — to know what it costs to live. Teach him the value of self-reliance and the glory of doing things that are useful. Give the rich boy a chance. He ought not to be made to suffer and go through life handicapped and without practical education because of the combined good fortune and foolishness of his father. Wherever he is give him a chance to work with both head and hands. Give him opposition; give him something to endure, something to strive for, something to prize, and you place within his grasp the lever that moves the world. Boys don't have to be made to do these things; they have to be let. Give them plenty of en- couragement; keep their coniidence, and they will come out broad-minded, hard-muscled, successful men. This preparation they must have. If you look up the career of each successful man you will find that he had made a thorough preparation long before the world discovered him and long before he discovered himself. We all know the story of David, who did battle with the giant. King Saul said to him: "David, you are only a boy. You can't fight the giant. He has an armor that cannot be penetrated; GIVE THE BOY A CHANCE S9 his sword is so large that it would take two men to handle it, and his spear an ordinary man could hardly lift." David replied: "In taking care of my father's sheep there came a lion, and I slew the lion with a stone from my sling; and there came a bear, and I killed the bear; and I know that with my sling I can kill Goliath." I don't think there was any miracle about it. David was an expert with the sling. He knew just what he could do, because he had been doing it every day of his life. Abraham Lincoln fought the pangs of poverty in the wilderness of Indiana and Illinois. He knew all about overcoming obstacles. He had attempted the impossible even, and had seen it yield, and when he was President of the United States and became engaged in that great strife, the Civil War, and when his resignation was demanded by the South and by thousands in the North who should have been his friends, he was not dis- mayed. He knew from past experience that he could win out. That battle was no greater for him then than were many former battles in which he had triumphed. The greatest preparation that James A. 6o READY MONEY Garfield ever had for the presidency of Hiram College was when he rang the bell and swept the halls in that college while he was a boy; and when he washed dishes in the dormitory and sold books during the summer to defray his college expenses he was doing that which gave him a knowledge of men and things, and fitted him to occupy the highest office in the greatest country in the world. Stephen Girard knew how to fit a boy for success. The boy Lippincott worked for him faithfully, and he encouraged Lippincott, and told him that if he continued to work faithfully until he was twenty-one years of age he should be rewarded. The day that Lippincott was twenty-one he walked into Girard 's office and reminded his employer of that promise. Girard said: "I want you to quit the work you are now doing and learn the cooper's trade." It was an awful disappointment, but the boy had already developed perhaps more than his share of good, hard sense, and he replied: "I am surprised, but if that is what you want me to do I shall do it." Girard told him to go ahead, and to report his progress at the end of one year. Lippincott became an apprentice in the GIVE THE BOY A CHANCE 6i best coopering establishment in Philadelphia. At the end of a year he appeared before Girard, who had very little to say, but told him to go and make for him three barrels, the best that could be made. In a few days he came back with the barrels. When asked the price by Mr. Girard he said one dollar each was the very least he could make such barrels for. Girard thereupon wrote Lippincott a check for $25,000, and said to him: "Invest this in business, and if you ever fail you will have a trade to fall back upon." Isn't the patience of Lippincott, in going through all that drud- gery, a magnificent lesson? John Wanamaker didn't become a great merchant in a day. Perhaps it wasn't exactly the wheeling of his truck through the streets of Philadelphia in a wheelbarrow that caused his great success; but it was the spirit that made him willing to do anything that needed to be done, whether he liked to do it or not. Give the boy a chance. Teach him to be useful. Teach him self-reliance. Teach him to stand alone. Teach him that the suc- cess for which he is striving is carefully wrapped up within himself, only waiting to be discovered. 62 READY MONEY It's a great thing to teach a boy how to do things, and it's a great thing to teach him that he has a personaHty to mould, a leadership to acquire over himself and a soul to develop and save. "Hats off to the boy. He is the future leader of mankind. His life is big with possibilities. He may make or uncrown kings, change boun- dary lines between States, write books that will mould characters. Or invent machines that will revolutionize the world." DOING THINGS WHEN YOU ARE NOT BUSY. The man who wastes time that he doesn't need will need time when he can't get it. The listless whiling away of time when one doesn't happen to have anything special to do is as bad as spending money when one doesn't know what he will need the article for. Time is money, plus. It is possible to get money with- out an effort sometimes, but time doesn't sit around waiting. We are given eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for recreation, the improvement of our minds, and the social amenities of life, but how many are there who can put their finger on the last eight hours and tell where they have gone? Some men work eight hours a day and never seem to get anything done. Others there are who may not seem to work that long but accom- plish wonders. Why? They know the value of time. They do things when they are not busy. That is, when their ordinary work is done, they keep going. (63) 64 READY MONEY Most of a man's planning and figuring and real head work must be done outside of regular business hours. And why shouldn't one plan to better his condition when time is at his dis- posal and he has nothing else to do? If Jie doesn't plan then he may not be able to plan at all. Thousands of men waste their spare time and neglect the opportunity of doing a little thinking because they are employes and expect the boss to do the planning. There's the rub. He thinks he is working for the boss instead of for himself. I believe the biggest mistake an employe can make is to deceive himself with the idea that he is simply working for someone else for so much a day. Every employe, whether a ten-thousand-doUar-a-year man or a dollar-a-day man, is first of all work- ing for himself, and when he concludes that he is working for the boss and lets the boss do his planning, he is giving himself a life sentence at hard, disagreeable labor, poor grub, and small pay. Such men get more than they are worth if they get anything. Don't work for the boss; put your heart and soul into your work. Work for the glory of working. Take a personal pride in adding to your skill. Be a part of DOING THINGS WHEN NOT BUSY 65 the institution, and some day you will own the institution or a better one. Every employe ought to do head-work enough to earn his salary and throw his mechanical work in. The employe who makes a "big thing" is the one who puts heart and soul, good cheer, and good will into his work, and he always makes a "big thing." "If I were working in a business I didn't own I would do just what I am doing in the business I do own, and enthusiastically plan and work for its greatest success. That's what I did do in my early days, and I own a business now just like my employer's, only better." That's what successful men are saying to-day, and they will be saying it always. If you have a boss give him the benefit of all the planning you can; he needs it. And, besides, it gives you practice in planning, too, and you may be able to plan some day for others who forget to plan for themselves. Doing a little thinking in the right direction means promotion and success. There's more than one way to plan. Some plan for the suc- cess of the enterprise and get it, and, incident- ally, find themselves away ahead. Others s 66 READY MONEY plan to get a raise, and sometimes get it, but it doesn't amount to anything. The best way to get promotion is to make the firm prosperous. The man who plans his own promotion with simply selfish interests in view may get the promotion, but it will some day give him "a black eye." Isn't it better to plan night and day, if necessary, for the success of the business and get a five hundred dollar raise because you have made a place for yourself than to simply plan for your selfish interests and get a five dollar raise? Thinking out things during one's spare moments gives one a hundred years instead of fifty in which to do business. It gives one two years instead of one and a much greater and more successful life. Waste time, and your substance is gone; utilize it, and you grow rich and powerful. If a man works eight hours a day with his hands I would urge him to add to that eight hours of manual labor four hours of head-work, and instead of two hands he wUl have ten. Every successful man knows the value of time. Gladstone says: "Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a usury of profit beyond DOING THINGS WHEN NOT BUSY 67 your most sanguine dreams, and that the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and moral stature, beyond your darkest reckonings." Napoleon once planned a whole campaign, between the acts, while at the theatre. He didn't need to take a day off to do a thing. He worked as long hours as the sun would let him, and planned his great campaigns while his soldiers slept. Napoleon conquered all Europe because he utilized the time that the rest of the world was letting go to waste. How much time is wasted on the train; yet men who have tried it find they can use their time on the train as profitably as in the office. A man can write better stuff and work out new ideas and plan better things on the "Fast Mail" than he can at home. Why spend one's time in idly gazing out of the window when one might be making plans and working out ideas that would revo- lutionize his business. As soon as the last good- bye is said it pays to "get busy." To me working on the train is a delight. There is something about the lightning-like speed of a fast train, the elegance and comfort of a parlor car, and the energy and enthusiasm it seems to generate that inspires one to do his best. 68 READY MONEY Think, too, of the time that might be saved in an office by getting rid of men who haven't the decision of character to get up and go when they get through. Perhaps the caller is not to blame. To sit and talk about nothing or more than is necessary about something may be his weakness, but the office man who has work to do must learn to get rid of such people or he himself becomes the guilty party and a squand- erer of precious time that belongs to his business. We need more of this idea: "Bore no man and let no man bore you." I knew of a commercial college student who committed to memory the multiplication table from twelve to twenty by going over part of them each day while going to the post-office. During their spare time, the time in which they were not supposed to be busy, men have done things which have made them immortal — the classics have been trans- lated, orations written, inventions thought out and enterprises planned and developed, which have revolutionized the world. It pays to use time as it goes along. "One of the most important lessons to be learned by every man who would get on in his calling is the art of economizing his time. A DOING THINGS WHEN NOT BUSY 69 celebrated Italian was wont to call his time his estate ; and it is true of this, as of other estates of which the young come into possession, that it is rarely prized till it is nearly squandered ; and then when life is fast waning they begin to think of spending the hours wisely, and even of hus- banding the moments. Unfortunately, habits of indolence, listlessness, and procrastination, once firmly fixed, cannot be suddenly thrown off, and the man who has wasted the precious hours of life's seed-time finds that he cannot reap a harvest in life's autumn. It is a truism which cannot be too often repeated, that lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medi- cine, but lost time is gone forever." BOOKS. Books: The pillars of progress and the in- spiration of mankind. How mighty is thy power and how wondrous thy influence! That which immortalizes man on earth and inspires him like a benediction from on high. In books we are permitted to associate with the genius of every age. In them we have the experience, the inspiration, the thoughts and deeds of all the "countless dead." It's no wonder that Henry Clay's mother saved pennies from her washing to buy her boy books. It's no wonder that Abraham Lincoln made such an effort to secure books. It's no wonder that every successful man in every walk of life is surrounded by the best books, and is buying scores of new ones every year. The people who have not been awakened to the great value of books are the ones who say they have more books now than they have time to read. Refusing to buy new books until the old ones have been read is like refusing to asso- ciate with new friends until everything, good (71) 72 READY MONEY and bad, has been learned about the old friends. It's coming in touch with great men, getting a little experience here and an idea there, that sharpens the intellect and makes the man. It's coming in touch with new friends and new ideas in books that opens the eyes and inspires the soul. A book isn't something a man reads to pass away the time. It's an assimilation of other men's success. It's the association of the reader with the greatest of the world's great. Through books he is taken out of a poor envi- ronment and ascends to the highest plane known to man. He is inspired by the words of the author, with the experience of men who, like himself, hungered for something worth while; and the inspiration which he gets from that half hour's reading brings about the discovery of himself — and a new genius is born. ONLY HALF-DOING THINGS. Only half-doing things is the ruination of multitudes. The world is crowded with people who don't do all they can. Half-hearted success is whole-hearted failure. Half-hearted work gives us half-hearted men who can neither live half a life nor make half a success, nor develop into half a man. The man who puts only half his energy into his work finds that it is the other half that counts. The one who knows only half the things about his business finds that all the profits are in the other half. The one who only half tries, no matter what he is doing, finds, when it is too late, that everything worth while is in the other half. The man who only half tries will accomplish something but not enough. The business man who only half tries gets some business because some business comes to him. He may eke out an existence, he may even make expenses and pay his debts, but if he is going to make anything out of himself or out of his business he must bring the other (73) 74 READY MONEY half into play. Those half-hearted men always blame their business if they don't succeed. A man is only half trying when he isn't attempting the things that "can't be done," and a man isn't half trying who hesitates because he doesn't like the nature of his work. There's only one way for such a man: "Do the thing that ought to be done whether you like to do it or not." Make yourself like it. That is the schooling and the discipline upon which men grow. Make yourself like it until you have mastered it, and then you will like it naturally. The great bulk of the failures are failures because people don't do all they can. They move along the line of least resistance and do that which is easy, and if they meet an obstacle they try to work around it, and failure is the inevitable result. "The person who is content to do less than his thorough best is neither shrewd nor good. To do things by halves or thirds, to put only a part of one's self into a given task, whether the tool is a pen or a pick, is to add to the general bulk of unrighteous- ness." Are you one of the persons who is not doing all he can? Examine yourself. Is your health good? If not, the chances are that you ONLY HALF-DOING THINGS 75 are not doing all you can. Do you get out in th^ morning and fill your lungs with fresh air; breathe in the sunshine and rejoice that you are alive? If so, your health is probably all right. Are you lazy? l^j^ou are lazy and don't know it, I'BkU you how to discover it. If you find yourself putting off till to-morrow things that ought to be done to-day, you ju^azy. There's no other name for it. The pe^^who isn't lazy is the one who does it to-day, ^^ther he likes to do it or not. This doesn't mean the over-worked person who is carrying the bur- dens of half a dozen who ought to be working, but it does mean the one who thinks he is over- worked but isn't. Do you make friends readily and keep them? If not, you are not doing your best to develop your personality. It pays to have a good per- sonality and a winning way. Have you had severe discipline, both mental and physical? If not, you may have done your best, but you have been unfortunate. Your best can't be very much without discipline; without having done the thing that was hard. Do you read the best books, and the best articles, associate with the best men, think the best thoughts, and 76 READY MONEY *rive for the highest ideals? Who are the men you think about and try to be like? Wild Bill, Idaho Ike, prize-fighters, tight-rope walkers, stage heroes, or the great and magnificent men in every calling? Cai^ou point with pride to some of the leading men of affai™^nd deter- mine to be like them? If not, you are not doing your JjmL Are you, doing all that you can to keepj^^pself in trim? To be in the pink of conditron physically and mentally, and ready and willing to do anything that needs to be done, is a great substitute for genius. BEING BUSINESSLIKE. There is a difference between being busi- nesslike and being suspicious. You may have the utmost confidence in a man's integrity and yet not trust him. Your acquaintance may be limited, or you may lack confidence in his judgment. You don't refuse to trust him be- cause you are suspicious, but because to trust him would be unbusinesslike. One of the great- est mistakes that a business man can make is to place his business in such a condition that he must depend upon others carrying out their good intentions in order to make his success possible. Business men are making contracts every day, but no contract should ever be signed that hasn't in it everything that ought to be in it, or that has anything in it that a man can't perform. No man should make a verbal agreement not in harmony with his written contract. Let a contract be such that neither party will have to trust to the honesty, judg- ment, or memory of the other. (77) 78 READY MONEY I wrote to one of our representatives the other day to ascertain whether or not a certain man, with whom we wished to have business dealings, was responsible. ' He wrote back: "He is a splendid Christian gentleman and will do anything that he agrees to do." That is a most admirable commendation- for a man; nothing could be better, so far as the commendation itself is concerned, but it doesn't say that the man is financially responsible. It doesn't say that a business house would be justified in trust- ing him with goods and money and know that they could make him pay, whether he wanted to or not. Responsibility in business, in addi- tion to integrity, means financial responsibility. It means that that man has a sufficient amount of property, so that you could force, if neces- sary, the performance of the contract which he has entered into with you. It would be unbusi- nesslike to make a contract with a man to supply him with goods and money and then not be in a position to force him to comply with his part of the contract. He might be perfectly honest, but conditions might arise over which he had no control; he might get sick; he might die, or he might not think he owed it. There might BEING BUSINESSLIKE 79 be some misunderstanding. If any of these contingencies should arise, your business is tied up with that man who has your money, your goods, or both; and you can't succeed unless he does, if you have made an unbusinesslike contract. There's no reason in the world why you should be responsible for this man's mis- fortunes. If he gets sick, it is not your fault; if he uses poor judgment, you are not to blame ; and if he misunderstands, you should have pro- tection. You have already performed your part of the contract, and he has agreed to perform his; if he gets sick, it's his own lookout. If any of his friends cause him financial embarrass- ment, he alone is responsible. Therefore, when you make a contract with that man, if he is not financially responsible himself, if he is not in a position himself so that you can force the performance of his part of the contract or force him to return your goods, then you must get that man to give security making you safe. Otherwise, you yourself are not businesslike; your success is tied up in another man's hands; you are not free to act; you don't know what is going to happen, and you don't deserve the credit and support of business institutions. 8o READY MONEY This, of course, doesn't refer to men whose word is as good as a section of land; it has reference to people with whom you have not had a thorough acquaintance. We all have friends, of course, whom we would be willing to trust to the ends of the earth and stand responsible for in their every act, but we do it for the sake of friendship, not for the sake of business. If sickness overtakes them, we are ready to stand by them and see them through, but in that event it ceases to be a strictly busi- ness proposition. It's never unbusinesslike to trust a friend if you know you won't need the money when it's due, and don't care when he pays, or how; you know he is just as anxious to pay as you are to have him, and you are in a position to stand by him until he is able to pay. Such actions are not unbusinesslike; they are most commendable, and every man has such a friend, or ought to have; but it would be unbusinesslike if you had to borrow the money to lend to that friend. It is unbusinesslike to jeopardize another party for the sake of your friend ; it can't be done safely. The fact that a man is said to be a Christian gentleman is not enough, in a business way, unless he is also BEING BUSINESSLIKE 8i financially responsible. Being a Christian is a great deal. I don't want to be misunderstood. I don't mean to imply that being a Christian isn't the most important thing in the world. Christianity is the redeeming feature of man- kind. Because of its power and the integrity of character which it gives a man, people as- sume to be Christians when they are not, in order that they may derive some benefit from the great reputation which Christianity has made. But that is only one more reason why a contract made with such a man, without finan- cial responsibility, would be unbusinesslike. The man may be a splendid Christian in the truest sense of the term and be everything that a man of integrity should be, and yet be a poor business man. He might agree to do things in that contract that he could do if he were level- headed enough; but failing to accomplish his purpose he is not able to comply with the con- tract, and, therefore, you, perhaps, lose your whole business because you made a contract which took your business out of your own con- trol and placed you in such a position that you couldn't carry that contract into effect, unless the other man carried out his part; therefore, 6 82 READY MONEY to make such a contract would be dishonest on your part. A good business man is often accused of being suspicious and mean, when in reality he is only businesslike and endeavor- ing to make such an arrangement as will enable him to compel the other party to do what the other party could easily compel him to do. HE CAN— BUT WILL HE? The average man can make a success, but he doesn't — not one that is worth talking about. There are several reasons for this, the principal one being that he doesn't know that he can make a success. He hasn't discovered him- self. He doesn't know that it doesn't take any more energy to do the thing for a lifetime than to do it just for now. He hasn't realized that it takes almost as much energy to be indifferent as to be positive. His ambition has not been aroused, and he is satisfied with indifference. The price of success is more than he thinks he can pay. I have often been asked by young men if I thought they could succeed, and I have invari- ably answered: "I know that you can, but I don't know that you wUl." If young men would buckle in and stay buckled in, such a question would become obsolete. They too often engage in an enterprise and are hopeful of great success without reckoning the price at which success {83) 84 READY MONEY comes, and when they encounter a few obstacles they change their minds. They say: "This thing isn't what it's represented to be; I'm going to try something else," and so multitudes go through life jumping from one thing to another. They don't like the business because they are not acquainted with it. They haven't studied it enough to know what is in it, or their moral stamina hasn't been developed to such an extent that they can face the music and over- come the difficulties one at a time. The road to success is not very long if you put your per- sonality, your vim, and your whole life into every step of that road. If you go through the obstacles as you come to them, whether it is agreeable or disagreeable, you will find the dis- tance only about a mile, but try to dodge them and it's a thousand. When once the start is made, doing the thing to a finish is the price of success, and after all, it is the easiest way. The more you give the more you have left. Talent begets talent. Industry and good judg- ment make the genius. There's no cut rate at success headquarters. Pay as you go and the price is small ; try to work in on a sham and the price is so high that it puts a mortgage on HE CAN— BUT WILL HE? 85 your soul. Don't think of success as some great prize within the reach of a chosen few. You have it now within your grasp. Every time you do a thing right and finish it, you are suc- cessful, and each right action brings you nearer success on a larger scale. Every time you do a wrong thing, you are a failure, and it makes it easier for you to fail again, unless you take advantage of the experience gained by that failure. Doing a thing wrong once is no crime, but it is seldom necessary to make the same mistake twice. Would you know whether or not you can succeed? Look around. If others are suc- ceeding in that particular business, then you can. If it is a profitable thing to do and a thing you want to do, don't say that you cannot, and don't listen to any of the "it can't be done" croakers. The reader of this article can do anything that has been done if he wants to badly enough. You have within you the ingredients of success; it rests with you to bring them out. First, is the enterprise worth your energy? If it is, and you have decided that that is what you want to do, you can do it, and it won't be half so hard 86 READY MONEY as it seems. As your knowledge of the business increases, the obstacles will decrease, and if you will add to your past efforts a little more energy, a little more head-work, a little more vim, you will find yourself leading the hosts long before you had dreamed of such a rise. He can — but will he? is not complimentary. I wish every young man would so live, that when he undertakes anything out of the ordinary his friends wUl be able to say: "It seems impos- sible, but if anyone can do it, he is the man. I have never known him to fail yet, and I be- lieve he can do anything he undertakes." I knew of a young man once who undertook to superintend a very difficult business. His closest friend said, in speaking of him, "I know of only one reason why he is likely to succeed in the venture; he thinks himself that he will succeed, and I never knew him to fail in anything in which he believed himself." Every young man is building a reputation; if he gets that kind of a reputation it is worth a gold mine. Why not get it? RIGHT THINKING AS A BUSINESS- GETTER. "Success is the result of endeavor. The attainment of a proposed object." Success is strength. It is opposed to weakness, indecision and procrastination. To be a success is to do the thing right, and to do it right now. He who makes it his busiaess to do things right and do them right away, is already a success. It is to do the thing so that it will never have to be done again. Success is decision, self-reliance, action. Success is the result of a right mental attitude. Too many are afraid they are not going to make the thing go. They see obstacles and come in contact with disagreeable features. They look on the dark side of their own business and on the bright side of every other business, and so lose heart. Some men have the faculty of see- ing more difficulties than others. The easier it is for a man to see obstacles, the harder it is to see success. It is easier to fail than to suc- ceed. It is easier to drift down stream than to (87) 88 READY MONEY row up. People are more apt to see an obstacle than the way around it. It takes energy and investigation to get through. It pays to study; it pays to know; it pays to do. We have seen men travel around the world peeping into every nook and corner of every occupation and profession in their search for success, and yet not find it. They have tried farming. They have tried railroading. They have tried selling groceries. They have tried selling dry-goods, then shoes, and sometimes "blue sky." They have tried law, medicine, and the ministry, and all without avail. Why? Because success comes from within; each man carries the "Holy Grail" within himself. Right thinking brings success, no matter where, or when, or how. Let a man become convinced that he can do a thing, and the idea arouses him to the greatest endeavor. Confidence be- gets confidence, and success begets success. Build around yourself an atmosphere of suc- cess. Take a mental inventory of yourself. How do you check up? What has been your opportunity? What are your possibilities? Have you ever tried to cultivate your personal- ity? It can be done; you ought to do it. A RIGHT THINKING A BUSINESS GETTER 89 man's thoughts determine his actions, and his actions determine his success. One isn't even energetic unless he thinks about it. Take heed how you think. To think right and to feel right is a capital more valuable than a bank account, and it's the kind of capital that gets the bank account. A man isn't going to have the success he deserves if he lets his energy all run to spite thoughts, or even allows part of it to run to spite or hate, or any of the other vices that weaken. Every business man — yes, and every other man — has little, short-sighted people to deal with; let those people "chew the rag" if they want to, but for the man who expects to do things, life is too short to wrangle. It's too short to try to "get even." If there's a person one is trying to "get even" with, there's only one way of doing it with safety, and that is, quit dealing with him and cease thinking of him entirely. Wipe him off the slate, but don't sit down and think mean things about him, be- cause a man can exhaust more energy in half an hour of that sort of thing than would be required to run his business for a day. Besides, he loses more than energy; he loses personality, he loses control of himself; he weakens himself; 90 READY MONEY he even impairs his digestion and ruins his health. And what's the use of worrying about what is not going to happen? It is said that nine-tenths of the worrying is done over things that never happen. What's the use? That energy, if directed in the right channel, would run a business and manage a thousand men. What's the use of worrying about things that are going to happen? If they are going to hap- pen, they are going to happen — let them hap- pen. What's the use of being jealous of people who are getting along faster than we are? It doesn't do them any harm; they would be pleased if they knew it, but it will ruin the man who keeps it up. What's the use of being afraid that you are not going to carry the enterprise through successfully? It's being afraid that makes the thing go down. It pays to think right. It pays to take a powerful stimulant every hour or two, in the form of bright, cheerful, enthusiastic, confident, business-getting thoughts. Think about being broad-minded and generous and successful. Have in mind the kind of person you want to be and keep those thoughts con- stantly before your mind, and you will get to be RIGHT THINKING A BUSINESS GETTER 91 that sort of person. It pays to think right; it pays to feel right. The way one feels has much to do with the way one thinks, and the way he looks has something to do with the way he feels. The man who looks shabby will feel shabby. If a man is in a business where personal appear- ance counts, he ought to make it a point to look well. He doesn't necessarily need to wear expensive clothes, but he needs to wear clothes that he won't be ashamed of. If he doesn't, he won't feel right, and can't do himself justice. A man's thoughts determine his success, his standing in the community, and his opinion of himself. If he dwells upon the petty annoy- ances of his business; makes little deals; tries to "jew" people down on pennies, he is going to be a two-cent man. It doesn't pay to be cheap. A man can afford to leave the thing or pay two prices, but he can't afford to make a practice of "jewing" people down. There are people who do that sort of thing, and when they deal with you, you had better give them two cents where they want one. They will think you are generous if you do; they will think you are as small as they are if you don't. Such people are always unreasonable, but if you try 92 READY MONEY to reason with them they think you are unrea- sonable, and go off and talk about you. Better give such a man his price, add a little to it and pile him on the first train that comes along. I believe that if every man could control his thoughts and aspirations to such an extent that he would treat everyone with whom he dealt as though he were that one, he would get rich. It's sympathy that counts. It's not the amount of money that one has in the bank, or in real estate, or in bonds. I would rather have a big, splendid, useful life that was a blessing to humanity, than a big bank account with sel- fishness. However, selfishness doesn't mean a big bank account, nor does a useful, generous life mean a little one. Cultivate the attitude of courage, positiveness, good cheer, and suc- cess. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." But if evil thoughts take the good out of a man, so good thoughts beget good thoughts, a happy, cheerful disposition, and a successful life. "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." WHY PEOPLE FAIL AT FIRST. People who are not getting on as rapidly as they should are not failing because of lack of backbone, nor because they lack will-power or desire, or willingness to do. There are thousands of people who have all those qualities, with hon- esty added, who aren't making the success they deserve. A person can't have success without working hard and faithfully for it and doing his best, and yet, a good many people do this who don't find success such as they have been striving for, and it's not lack of good intent; it's lack of person- ality. It's the lack of that pleasing, winning, forceful way, which makes a person liked and gets him business. A man can't succeed alone. Co-operation makes a person successful; it's the voluntary, hearty good-will of his fellows. A man uncon- sciously draws people to him by the strength of his personality. People are in training for almost everything under the sun but the thing (93) 94 READY MONEY they need most — development of their own per- sonality. The world is full of people who deserve more than they get. When you see a man who isn't as successful as he should be, he may not deserve censure. We don't know how hard he has tried ; we don't know the conditions with which he has had to contend. He may not be well liked, but it may not be his fault. The chances are that it isn't. Most people like to please, to create a favorable impression. Per- haps they don't always know how, and have never realized that the art can be learned. Some of the men who are the least successful to-day, will be the most successful to-morrow if they happen to discover their own strength. It is the accomplishment of things that makes a man well pleased with himself, and being well pleased with one's self adds to the personality. When a man does a thing well, it has a tendency to make him appear at his best; when he doesn't do it well, he hasn't anything to be proud of, and it naturally affects his personality. A man's success is in his mind. Unless he believes heartily in what he is doing and is glad that he is doing it, hard work will bring but WHY PEOPLE FAIL AT FIRST 95 meagre results. This doesn't mean that a man should quit until he finds something he likes; it means he should like the thing he is doing. Cultivate a cheerful, hopeful, confident men- tal attitude. It's the natural way to live. A man is nearly always in the right mental atti- tude when he goes into a new business. He has convinced himself that it can be made a suc- cess. He has thought about the bright side of it until he is enthusiastic, and he goes at that business full of vim and fire and makes a bril- liant success of it for a few days, then concludes that it isn't what he thought it was, and fails. He fails because he has changed his mind con- cerning the business, and nine times out of ten, he changes his mind because he is worn out. When he commences he is stimulated with enthusiasm beyond his normal capacity. His hopes are so high and his interest in his busi- ness so keen that he feels he can do two men's work — and he does. He isn't able to build up nerve energy and enthusiasm so rapidly as it is being used, so he becomes exhausted. He doesn't realize it at first, but it tells on his busi- ness. Things don't go quite so well, and he doesn't know what is the matter. He begins to 96 READY MONEY fear the business isn't what he had thought it to be, that after all, there are a good many un- pleasant things about it that he hadn't antici- pated ; and because of his overworked condition, be becomes a ready subject for the "blues." He makes a failure of the business simply because he doesn't know what is the matter. What he needs is shorter hours for a few days and a little more sleep. It doesn't take a man long to be able to generate all the nerve energy and enthusiasm he needs, if his business has merit and he understands it. A man may not have made the preparation necessary, and when his enthusiasm plays out he has nothing to fall back upon. In the canvassing business (and that is really one of the most important enterprises we have, because everyone is a salesman more or less), the salesman, as a rule, does more business the first week than the second. He does business on his enthusiasm the first week, and it's a pretty good thing to do business on. No salesman can be so inferior or so unintelligent but that he can sell goods if he is enthusiastic ; but the more enthusiastic he is the more likely he is to wear himself out, and if he doesn't know his business WHY PEOPLE FAIL AT FIRST 97 pretty thoroughly, he has no foundation. Even if he does know his business, he needs to cut his hours a little shorter for a few days until he can regulate his enthusiasm and concentrate his energies and keep himself in better condi- tion, both mentally and physically. What is true of the salesman is true of others. MAKING UP ONE'S MIND. "Josh Wise" says: "There's two kinds uv men always in hard luck: Them th't did it, but never thought, an' them th't thought, but never did it." The latter is the more humiliat- ing. "To think a thing and then wait until someone else does it, is the most harassing of all thoughts," says Emerson. "I thought of that myself, but I didn't say it," is what too many people are obliged to say after the idea has made a hit. Do the thing as soon as you think of it. Putting it off until a more conve- nient time is dangerous. "Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard thing makes it impossible." Make the move without waiting to know whether or not some- one else would do it. If it is the right thing to do, do it against the world. If you wait to see what other people will think of it, someone else will do it. Stand alone. The world takes off its hat to the man who can stand alone. The man who goes ahead and does business without (99) loo READY MONEY waiting for reinforcements is the one who con- quers. George Eliot says: "No great deed was ever done by falterers who ask for cer- tainty." Take the initiative; decide quickly. The man who can't decide worries about the matter, and the more he worries about it the more muddled he becomes. Investigate the thing, and then decide once for all. The man who stands alone, and who is capable of stand- ing alone, is constantly pushed forward to vic- tory by all the great forces in the universe. The man who doesn't try to stand alone is in a heap. "The successful man is the man who knows a good thing when he sees it." To be able to know a good thing when you see it, is a valuable asset to one's capital. There are two kinds of people who don't know a good proposition when they see it. Those who think it is too good to be true, and those who think its so good that perhaps it might be made better. A young man in the employ of a certain com- pany was called in to renew his contract for a year. He expected to get about $75 a month, but his firm offered him $100 a month. He thought there must be a big profit in the business if they could afford that, and that per- MAKING UP ONE'S MIND loi haps they could afford more. He didn't act agreeably surprised; he didn't say he appre- ciated the advance, but said he would let them know in a day or so. He actually asked for a little more. Negotiations were then broken off, and he finally hired for half what he was first offered. Decision marks the man of power. Decide a thing, and it is therewith no "ifs" to contend with. Be able to cope with the strong. It takes energy to decide, but it saves time. Two-thirds of life is wasted in making up one's mind. "There is no grander sight in the world than a young man fired with a great purpose, domi- nated by one unwavering aim. He is bound to win. The world stands aside and lets him pass. He does not have one-half the opposition to overcome that the undecided, purposeless man has, who, like driftwood, runs against all sorts of snags to which he must yield because he has no momentum to force them out of his way. What a sublime spectacle to see a youth going straight to his goal, cutting his way through difficulties and surmounting obstacles which dishearten others, as though they were stepping stones." DOING A BIG BUSINESS ON A SMALL MARGIN. Doing a big business on a small margin means giving everyone a chance. It means more help, more customers, more opportunity for growth, more self-satisfaction, and more profit. The man who is big enough to do a big business on a small margin, is big enough to sacrifice the nickel to get the dollar. Some men are so penurious that they are afraid to take any risk. They are afraid to let go of a penny; and when they get a dollar they squeeze the life out of the eagle. If such a man makes a fortune, he makes it by saving a penny at a time. The other man develops a fortune in brains and far-sighted business ability, and if he has a misfortune and loses his all, he can begin over again and buUd up another fortune in a few years. The man who does a small business on a big margin, has nothing left if he loses his fortune; he can but begin over again and save a penny (103) I04 READY MONEY at a time just as the miser does. His little busi- ness has not given him an experience that's worth anything. He has lived unto himself and has never been heard of by the world. A man must make money; he must have a margin. Everyone wants him to make a profit, but he wrongs himself most of all when he tries to make an unreasonable profit. The big business on a small margin is one of the keynotes of success. Successful men put more into their business than mere physical energy, force, and brains; they put into it gentleness, kindness, and char- ity. The man who is not fair nor generous will never feel right, and he won't consider himself a real success. It is a misfortune to be unrea- sonably selfish. When the theatre is on fire, we think it is brutal for strong men to crush weak women and children to death in their mad rush for safety; but how much worse it is for calm, collected, sharp, shrewd men to take advantage of the innocent and unsuspecting, and by means of technicalities beat them out of house and home to add to their own ill-gotten gains. The man who gets all he can and keeps all he gets, regardless of the "how," will never DOING BUSINESS ON A SMALL MARGIN *ios be considered a success by the world, and will never feel right about it himself. Selfishness is a vice when it overrides honor, and, as a rule, selfishness results in failure. The selfish man is usually near-sighted. He holds a nickel so close to his eyes that he loses sight of dollars easily within his reach. He isn't content to do a big business on a small margin, but does a small business on a large profit. He grinds so much profit out of his victim that he loses him. He "kills the goose that lays the golden egg." It pays to be generous; it pays to be fair; it pays to give more than is expected, and I don't believe that many successes have been built up in any other way. I doubt the ultimate success of either individuals or organizations who don't do more than they promise. NERVE. What is nerve? Nerve is that which enables a person to hang on and die in the last ditch or win out. It is undertaking more than ordinary things; it is taking big risks on one's own ability; it is holding the fort against all-comers. It is doing the thing which the ordinary person thinks is impossible. It is setting your standard twice as high as your business associates would set it for you, and then reaching it. It is burning your bridges behind you and staking your all on your own endeavor. It is taking chances that are not chances — to ordinary people the risk would be enormous, but the man of nerve is not even taking chances because he knows he can carry the thing through and doesn't allow himself to become side-tracked, or even annoyed by the people who say it can't be done. Nerve consists not only in undertaking a hard task, but in everlastingly and unflinchingly standing by your business when your friends have given up in despair. That is the truest (107) io8 NERVE test of nerve. It is nerve that gives us our steamboats and Atlantic cables. It is nerve that belts our continents with railroads and enables men to build up enterprises that astonish the world. Nerve is that which enables one to calmly and unflinchingly face an unpleasant task or a seemingly unendurable condition, when duty requires it. MAKE THE MOST OF IT. "He must have some object in it; he must think he can make some money out of your business," was the reply I got from a man on the train last week, when I told him how very cordially and generously myself and party had been entertained by a certain business man upon whom we had called. How unjust, how uncharitable, how untrue, and after all, how useless and unfortunate is such a remark. It makes one wrinkle up his chin, and almost wish he had kept his appreciation to himself. By this man whom we visited, we were treated royally, not because he expected something in return; not at all. He did it because he is a royal man and could not do any other way, and be natural. We must not think when a man walks out with us to the corner to show us the way, that he has an axe to grind. To accuse him of a selfish object may not do him any harm, but it takes all the sweet out of our own lives. It's putting frowns where there should be smiles; (109) no READY MONEY it's making our lives less noble, less beautiful, and less satisfactory than they should be. Bet- ter be suspicious that a man has too much heart, than that he has not enough. When you are down, make the most of it; but life is not a teeter-board — you can go up without causing anyone to go down. To be constantly accusing people of irregularities, is to bring reproach upon ourselves. Neither is it a good practice for one to assume that people won't trust him. In making a practice of assumin^g the motives of others to be selfish, we imply a lack of gen- erosity in ourselves. Don't jump to the conclusion that people are trying to beat you. It is all right to be business- like; you must be. It is all wrong to be unbusi- nesslike. It is all wrong to tie your business up in such a way that you have to depend either upon the honesty or the judgment of someone else to enable you to succeed in fulfilling your promises. Suspicion is an entirely different thing. The very first symptom of dishonesty in yourself is to begin to think that someone else is trying to take advantage of you. The man may have made a mistake. It is always wise to make the best of it, and assume that he MAKE THE MOST OF IT iii did make a mistake if he doesn't do what you expect him to do. There are exceptions, but I would rather guess wrong once in a while than to be suspicious of everyone. If you do busi- ness with a man by mail, for instance, and he doesn't send you what you order, if there is a shortage or some defect, write and tell him that you presume his shipping clerk overlooked something or sent you someone else's order, but don't accuse him of trying to beat you. It may not do hrmany harm, but it hurts you. Wait until the matter is cleared up, and you will nearly always find that the man was perfectly honest. I believe if there is one thing worse than another it is believing the worst of people . A disinterested person who tries to "look wise" and says, "I don't know whether he is all right or not," deserves censure. If he doesn't know anything about it, why doesn't he do like the courts — assume that a man is innocent until he is proven guilty. We call a man a hypocrite because we don't believe he lives as well as he preaches, when if we knew how hard and faithfully that man is striving to live up to his ideals, he would have our support and admiration, and his life would very likely be an inspiration to us. 112 READY MONEY Suspicion is not something that is confined to business only; there is sometimes a domestic suspicion that is more deadly. Love that has to be proven two or three times a day is cheap. Our life is just what we make it. The only way to have our own way, is not to have it. The only way to keep some things is to give them away. Man doesn't live unto himself alone. The way to be useful and happy is to forget self — do something for others. "Let your light shine." When people begin to demand things and rebel when they don't get just what they want, they are making for themselves a life of torture. "It would be better for all of us if we would devote less time to worrying about get- ting into the hell of the next world, and devote more time to keeping hell out of our lives in this." The worst kind of suspicion is to think that people are down on you; that they don't like you. The worst thing about suspicion of that kind is that it comes true. The way to make people dislike you is to accuse them of disliking you. If you want to drive love out of a man's heart, tell him it is gone. I am satisfied that if we aren't tolerant here, the hereafter won't have MAKE THE MOST OF IT 113 much relief. Would you go to heaven when you die? You can, by getting in on this side. The main entrance is here. To have a happy, beau- tiful life in the hereafter, a noble and unselfish life in the present is necessary. One way to have trouble is to think you have. One way to make things unendurable is to think them unendurable. It is a great mistake to bemoan one's fate. Turning our minds and our imaginations wrong side out in order to dwell upon our own pitiable condition is what makes it pitiable. "All the sympathy one needs will come from without — that from within should be suppressed by the greater virtues, self-reliance and moral courage. More persons than one have actually died from self-pity, because of lack of moral stamina sufficient to enable them to rise above ' the slings and shots of outrageous fortune.'" There is no use telling a person that their troubles are not real, there is no use telling them not to think of themselves, but there is a use — a great use at such times in thinking of other people's troubles. Let a person who has troubles of his own take an interest in those less fortunate — those who are really suffering, and 114 READY MONEY his own troubles will take to themselves the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. "Look out, not in; Look up, not down ; Look forward, not back ; And lend a hand. ' ' We forget the thorn when we behold the beauty and fragrance of the rose. Would you like to be admired and loved? Then radiate love. Quit accusing; swear off on finding fault and asking for explanations. Don't demand love, but radiate it. Love and esteem are not things that go where they are sent. You can't compel them. I know a young married couple, splendid people both of them, who each have the idea that the other's love is growing cold, etc., and every time there is a dispute the fact is made known with renewed emphasis, and yet that is not a very appropriate time for such unpleasant and usually unexpected information. Who would think of taking a beautiful flower out of doors every time there was a blighting frost or chilling blast? What the frost would do for the flower, accusations will do for love. A woman MAKE THE MOST OF IT "5 is accused or assailed; is told that she doesn't understand, that her love has grown cold, and when she tries to explain, loses her temper, and gets all tangled up — there seems to be some- thing in it. The suspicions come true, there is a panic on the board of the imagination ; Satan gets a corner on reason, and, by losing faith and common sense, imaginary faults are magnified into impassable mountains, and the outcome is divorce, and at least one life of remorse. If it weren't for an unfounded and unnecessary sus- picion, the divorce courts would go begging. Keep out suspicion by radiating love and sunshine. "We live by radiation, not by absorption." Let a person live for self and selfish purposes, insist upon having his own way, demand things, insist upon being noticed and made much of, upon getting his share, and the proper credit for everything he may do, and that person makes life a living death. He develops not into a big man with everything he wants, but into a big demon with nothing he wants. Let a person forget self, see that the others all get in, radiate sunshine and love, and a beautiful, glorious life is developed. Try to make it pleasant for others, ii6 READY MONEY and you will find happiness piled up in great mountains at your own door. "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days." Have faith in others, and others will have faith in you; love others, and others wUl love you; tell others your secrets, and they will tell you theirs. Take your medicine, whether bitter or sweet. As long as you have to take it, you might as well take it cheerfully. If a thing must be done, let us make the most of it, and it will go pleasantly enough. It is dreading it that makes it unendurable. A good housekeeper opens the shutters and lets in the sunshine; otherwise, sickness and death will prevail in that house. Open the windows of the soul, and let the sunshine of gladness and good cheer brighten your life and gladden the hearts of those around you. Get sympathy by being sympathetic and kind, and even if Fate does sometimes give you a bitter dose, most of the bitterness can be taken out by cheerfully taking the medicine. To accept conditions just as they are, and make the most of them is the bravest and noblest thing on earth; not only that, it is common sense in the thirty-third degree. The MAKE THE MOST OF IT 117 idea is worth the most careful consideration. Why should it not be practised more, and make life one grand, harmonious, beautiful reality. Rebellion is ruin and death. Put a man in the penitentiary. He may be innocent or guilty. If he rebels, he wUl come out a worse man, with neither love nor charity ; nothing in his heart but a deep-seated hate, that grows more deadly, until it gets him in again. But let him make the most of it, adjust himself to conditions as he finds them, and he comes out with a Pilgrim's Progress, or at least is a better man, and his stay has made every prisoner happier and better. It is not our riches that gives us happiness; it is our ability to appreciate what we have. Make the most of it, is a glorious principle. It makes the poor rich, and the earth a Paradise. The sting of poverty is taken away by cheer- fully accepting conditions until they can be bettered. And what good would it do to rebel? What's the use of all the rebellion, fault-finding, dissatisfaction, suspicion, and vituperation? If a good man does something we don't like, emu- late the good; and let the evil wither and die. What good will it do us to constantly hold his mistakes up to our own gaze? If an author ii8 READY MONEY writes some things that seem to us foolish, we needn't read them, but why should we cast aside with bitterness and vituperation a great masterpiece, or something that would brighten and gladden our lives, simply because the same author wrote something, or did something, in an unguarded moment that we don't like. Let us emulate all that is good and endeavor to take out of our own lives that which we don't like in others. The world is full of good, full of beauty, full of love — let us make the most of it. Think of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. There is a book that will give one sunshine and hope and joy. It should be read and re-read by everyone. There are thousands of books that we need not read, but there are a few that gladden the heart, and inspire the soul. Let us read them, and we will have more faith, more joy, more sunshine, more love. CONFIDENCE. A MAN doesn't fail because he wants to; he fails because he thinks he has to. He doesn't make a success, for he doesn't think he can. He knows that other men are successful and are doing great things, but he thinks that they are "natural born geniuses," or have some advan- tage. He has confidence in other people, but none in himself, and when a man has lost con- fidence in himself he has nothing else to lose. Yet, lost confidence is something that can be found, and is found every day by thousands. Nothing is equal to confidence — absolute, unadulterated confidence. Think of the per- fect satisfaction that comes to men when they know, and know that they know; when they have done the thing, and know that they can do it again. Such men are not afraid of competi- tion ; they are not afraid of anything. They are generals — captains of industry, whether on a small or on a large scale. People lack confidence because they haven't done the thing themselves. A child cannot learn (119) I20 READY MONEY to walk without it; without it a boy cannot learn to swim; a farmer would not sow the seed nor reap the harvest. Confidence is a mighty force. Let us have more of it in our individual lives. Success and happiness in this world and the world to come is won by confidence. Paul fought the good fight of faith because he was confident. Ninety-five per cent, of all the business done in America is done on confidence. In oratorical contests, in athletic contests, in business contests, and in the future success of the individual, it is largely a matter of confi- dence. Confidence in one and the lack of it in the other, makes the battle unequal, and gives the victory to him who has the most faith. This is true in every walk of life, even in the disreputable prize-fight; there is no exception. It is said that John L. Sullivan in his time fought more battles and won more victories, such as they were, than any other man that ever entered the prize-ring; and he said, in comment- ing upon the many men he fought, that "most of them were beaten before they raised a hand." The name of John L. Sullivan struck terror to the heart of every prize-fighter, and they no sooner stepped into the ring to meet that cham- CONFIDENCE 121 pion than their nerve left them. Had it not been for the wonderful confidence of Sullivan and the lack of it in many of his victims, he wouldn't have been champion of the world so long. "Once upon a time this Sullivan had arranged to meet an enormous athlete, greatly his superior in mere physical strength. This man, who was a professor of gymnastic training and who had taken first prize at Vienna — one of the most perfectly developed men in the world — might easily have defeated John L. Sullivan if he had had the courage behind his muscle. Sullivan had not trained. On the contrary, he had been dissipating badly, and it was with great difficulty that his friends got him sufiiciently sober to enter the ring. There was never a moment in Sulli- van's life when he wasn't ready to meet any man living, and supremely confident of victory. Through the mist of alcohol he looked with his usual savage expression at the man opposed to him, and when the fight should have begun, that huge athlete, perfectly sober and perfectly trained, actually dropped to his knees, with his hands lifted in supplication. Merely looking at Sullivan had frightened all the fight out of him, and the thing was a fiasco." 122 READY MONEY Cultivate confidence, courage, hope. "The young man with an unquenchable hope, high aspiration, a pure and undefiled ambition, who knows how to work, who is optimistic and enthu- siastic, whose determination cannot be downed by temporary reverses, will sooner or later have the world at his feet." Sometimes a man loses confidence by getting in beyond his depth. It doesn't do for a man to try to revolutionize himself in a day. Simply start in by trying to do a little more or a little better than usual. Increase your efforts little by little, and little by little your confidence will increase until you will eventually do what at first would have been impossible. Don't take two steps at a time, but carefully and sys- tematically reach out, and by putting yourself in a proper mental attitude you can double your capacity in a very few months. There is scarcely any limit to a man's mental possibilities. In business all things are possible if a man is patient and doesn't try to revolution- ize the whole thing in a day. Have a high ideal; otherwise it will be hard to keep from getting discouraged at times. Keep in close touch with men who have gone before. Read — select some CONFIDENCE 123 man that has met more than his share of grief and has conquered it and reached the top. When you come to a hard place and feel like giving up, think "what would he do if he were here?" This will help to carry you through. The glorious thing about this striving for suc- cess and supremacy is that it's the only way to be happy. It's real life; it's worth ten times more than the prize itself, and the prize is worth all it costs. Think how pleasant it will be in after-life to look back upon your struggles and realize that you went right through without a whimper, and think how much confidence it will give you and how much strength for the next difficulty. Meeting obstacles and overcoming them is one of the greatest things in the world for developing a man's personality. "Success grows out of the struggle to overcome difficul- ties;" if there were no obstacles there would be no success. Difficulty is not only a spur that urges men forward, but it's the very making of the man himself. I believe that if a man is any- thing in the next world it is because he was first something in this world. A man who has over- come difficulties and mastered himself, has 124 READY MONEY increased his knowledge and capacity for enjoy- ment a thousand fold, and in the process has developed a magnificent soul. Lack of confidence isn't a failing common only to those who are not successful. All people are successful more or less, and it is to successful people that this subject will appeal. A success- ful man who has acquired his success easily is the one most likely to succumb for lack of confi- dence. The man who has honestly and sincerely worked every inch of the way, and is there be- cause he deserves to be there, isn't very easily disappointed in himself, and he isn't going to lose confidence without a pretty severe jolt. The young man who tries to avoid the hard places and gets ahead on someone's wild throw or on the strength of his father's income, or some other kind of a pull, is the man who is likely to lose confidence at the supreme moment. FAILURE. Why do some people fail? Because they prepare for failure as carefully as other people prepare for success. Lack of confidence means failure, but thou- sands fail who do not know anything about con- fidence — people who haven't got far enough along to know that they can or they can't; people who think their lot is hard and haven't thought of trying to better it ; people who are sunk in their old environment and haven't thought of getting out. They don't know that there is success in the land. They don't know that this old world is simply alive with enthusiasm. They don't know of the whirl and din and progress and the thousands of triumphs that mark every hour. People are imitators. When a man doesn't see anything around but failure or half-hearted success, he is a failure himself. Lack of knowl- edge is what keeps people down — not a lack of book learning, but a lack of knowledge of what is being done and what can be done. (125) 126 READY MONEY Occasionally we hear of a man's rising out of his environment and making a great success. It isn't an accident. That man found out that other people were succeeding, either by seeing it with his own eyes, by being told, or by reading about it. Reading is what uplifts humanity and makes progress possible. By reading one gets the experience of the greatest men and thereby becomes better qualified for any undertaking. There are two kinds of food; the kind that gives the body strength and beauty, and the kind that simply enables it to eke out a mere existence. And so there are two kinds of read- ing matter; the kind that makes men grow, the kind that gives a man ideas that help him to dis- cover himself and opens his eyes to a great and glorious world of prosperity and happiness ; and there is another kind of reading that is only trash. It may not be so very bad, it may not be bad at all in one sense, but there is nothing up- lifting in it. It doesn't build a man up; it simply, like trashy food, keeps him alive; that's all. It doesn't inspire him with hope or enthu- siasm or any desire to pick himself up and do a little better. It is the kind that makes men fail. FAILURE 127 The minds of many people are literally starved for the want of the right kind of reading. To read the daily paper only is not enough. It would be as wise to expect to keep the body in a healthy condition on a diet of potatoes. A man never accomplishes anything without thinking about it. If he makes a failure, he has been thinking of failure when he should have been thinking of success. STROKING THE FUR THE RIGHT WAY IN BUSINESS. Tact is the great every-day weapon of man- kind. It is hard to define, but means saying and doing the right thing at the right time; always stroking the fur the right way; carrying one's point without ruffling the feelings of others; getting the person with whom you are deahng in complete sympathy with you and thinking as you do without his knowing that you are conscious of the fact. Tact is the art which enables one to go into a place where everything seems against him, and come away victorious. It is the faculty of making the disagreeable person pleasant; of making the embarrassed one feel at ease. Tact is something without which great success is impossible. It is good sense and a money-get- ting quality. It is an indispensable quality in every spot on earth where there are human beings. To be calm and courteous when one has reason to be otherwise, is tact. To be silent 9 (129) I30 READY MONEY instead of giving a sharp reply is tact. It is just as easy to make a person feel good as to make him feel bad. It pays big in happiness, influence and business, but for the sake of the feelings of the other party alone, it is one's duty to please. Tact gets the thing done. The business man doesn't find people waitmg for him, or many people tumbling over themselves to get to him. He must vi^ork up his trade, and many people who are out of sorts and grumpy are, by the use of tact, made to forget their unpleasantness, and are led to do business. Discourteous people, when handled by a careful person, are made to feel ashamed and are glad to make prompt restitution. Tact is a lubricator, and if there's enought of it used, it takes out the squeak. It can easily be developed. People are really more tactful than they think they are, but we are all apt to be too thoughtless when things go wrong, and that's the time we need our tact most. How are we to develop this wonderful little something which makes people liked and appreciated? By saying and doing things that will please. It is too bad that we so often say things which displease, or don't say things which please, when it is just as easy. But STROKING THE FUR THE RIGHT WAY 131 even this can be overdone. I know a young man who overdoes it ; it has unconsciously made him a flatterer, and he is disliked on that account. Saying things that please, like everything else, has a limit. Nothing is more appreciated than a cup of cold water by the thirsty traveler, but he wouldn't like to have the "water cure" tried on him. However, it is pretty hard for a well- meaning, honest person to say too many good things. It is, of course, simply a matter of see- ing the good that is in people. Saying things that displease never yet accomplished anything. If one is doing business he can't afford to be witty at another person's expense. Give a person what he wants. There's no use telling him that roast duck for supper will be his ruination, if he likes roast duck. Why contradict people and say things which might better be left unsaid? "I'm not going to tell a person he's all right when he isn't." Perhaps, but neither would it be tactful to tell him he is all wrong. He may be right in more things than we are, and average up better. However, we are seldom called upon to judge another man's merits or demerits to his face. It is the little things which are occurring every hour that we 132 READY MONEY must look out for. Make things as agreeable as possible ; it is just as easy as to argue, even if you are right. Arguing and doing business don't go together. We can develop tact by not expecting too much tact from others. How many annoying and displeasing things we can hear if we are listening for them. When we try to "get even" it gives tact a "black eye." This thing of retorting is where the rub comes. It is a magnificent thing to be big enough to ignore petty slights and insults. Half of them are never intended, and when they are intended, the offender doesn't deserve the satisfaction of having them noticed. Stroke the fur the right way; it's a pleasant way to live. GET RESULTS. "By their fruits ye shall know them" is a good motto to live by, and is as applicable now as it was two thousand years ago. The business world considers but one thing — results. Unless a man does the business, he isn't counted. His- tory is made and the world advanced by men who get results and care not for salary, time, nor hardships. Bismarck learned how to run the German Empire while he was Secretary for the German Legation in Russia. Had he done only what he thought he had to, there would have been no Bismarck, and Germany would not have been a first-class power to-day. The men who make history are the men who get what they go after — the men who get results. A man might as well judge himself as others always judge him — by the business he gets. Excuses and explan- ations aren't necessary if a man is getting busi- ness. If he isn't getting business, they won't do any good. Local conditions aren't a sufficient (133) 134 READY MONEY excuse; too early or too late; competitors; not feeling well; wet weather or dry, it's all the same. Nothing on earth will save a man but actual results. If he gets business he is the whole thing; if he doesn't, he's "dead grass," m spite of everything. In war, as in everything else, men are judged by just one thing — results. It doesn't make any difference how mighty the contending forces if the commanding officer doesn't win victories for his country, he is recalled. The travelling man who doesn't get business for his firm is given a permanent vacation. It matters not what the conditions are; excuses don't go. The minister may be eloquent, he may be a tireless worker, and have the interests of his people at heart, but if he doesn't add to the member- ship, he has to go. Results are what count. It is nature's law, and from it there is no appeal. I'll tell you who get results. The men who are never daunted, who never doubt, who glory in doing the things that can't be done — big men, who take in the whole situation, who have high hopes, high ambitions, believe in great things, and are not afraid. SELF-MASTERY. Success is largely a matter of management. Self-mastery means more than doing right mor- ally and controlling one's temper. A man must have a temper if he is going to be good for any- thing. Without a temper a man would be like a piece of untempered steel. It is necessary to have a temper, but it is also necessary to con- trol it, at least most of the time; all the time would be asking too much. It is said that the man who can control his temper can control the other fellow and have things his own way. But sometimes one's inclinations are harder to control than his temper. It is understood that one should control his thoughts and actions so far as not doing certain things is concerned, but it is doing things that one doesn't like to do, or when one doesn't like to do them, that is the real test. There is such a thing as impulse and moods and the blues. A horse is a creature of impulse. If he wants grass he eats it; if he wants to lie (135) 136 READY MONEY down he lies down. A man is sometimes a creature of impulse to a certain extent. When he feels like quitting, he too often quits, whether he is through or not; when he doesn't like the work, he quits for the same reason. He gets the blues; he quits simply because he is blue. Now, in order to make a success, there's just one thing for such a man to do, and that is, to guide his life by reason and judgment instead of impulse. Not "how do I like this?" or "how do I feel about it?" but "what is it going to do for me?" "what success am I going to make of it?" "what are its effects upon my future pros- pects?" There's just one thing to do, and that is for a man to screw down his will-power upon his moods and impulses, and not allow them to influence his life, and determine whatever he plans to do he will do, regardless of how he feels, or how other people feel. When he finds a difficult place, it will simply mean to him a little harder work, a little more will-power, that's all. The results may not come quite so quickly, but he realizes that they will come just the same, and hard work will give him more strength and more energy for another and a greater victory in the future. SELF-MASTERY 137 The average young person lacks confidence simply because he never does vfork enough to create confidence in himself and his own ability to succeed. To develop the positive side, you must say "I can," "I will," and "I must," and, above them all, place the motto: "Do it now," and keep right on doing it. Thousands fail in life because they lack the grit to get right up and do the thing. It isn't always the brainiest men in the world who make the greatest successes. It's men who buckle down and do things; men who have will-power and initiative; men who are not afraid; men who know, and know they know; men who will make themselves do the thing that needs to be done, regardless of how they feel about it; the men who make themselves do the thing, whether they like it or not, are the men who have dis- covered the great secret. How many people give up because they don't feel like it, or it looks too hard for them? Such people would resent being called lazy. They are not exactly lazy; they work hard, but not quite hard enough. They get up only about half enough steam, and then if the engine doesn't go they give up. Too many men give up just before the turning-point. Isn't 138 READY MONEY it sad to see a strong swimmer go down just before help arrives? Isn't it too bad to see a strong young man fail, turn back, and lose all the energy that has been expended when one more trial, one more supreme effort would have won all? Self-mastery means keeping at it with renewed energy and a greater zeal than ever. One of the greatest requisites for success is not knowing when you are whipped. PAST RECORDS. Many a man loses out because he depends upon his past records for future success. That is, he doesn't make the preparation later in life that he did at first, and, therefore, his success is not so great. Had he made the same prepa- ration and put into it the same zeal, his success would be much greater, because of his added experience. A little success is often a danger- ous thing. It sometimes makes a man think he has done something great, when in reality he hasn't done half what he could, and in that event, he has a tendency to rest upon his past record. He lives in the past, and ceases to grow. Listen to the words of Paul: "This one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before" — and with his added zeal and experience, and enthusiasm for victories already gained, he pressed forward to a conquest greater than Napoleon ever dreamed of. If you think about your past records, think of them for one thing only, and that — as a (139) 140 READY MONEY stimulus to greater deeds. "What man has done man can do;" we think of when striving to outdo others. But we sometimes forget to apply it to ourselves and our own achievements. The important thing is not so much in surpassing others, as in surpassing ourselves. Forget the things which are behind, and with an unquench- able zeal press on to the things which are before. A man never gets so far along that he doesn't need preparation. He never gets so far along that he doesn't need to enthuse himself for the conflict. Press on with enthusiasm and hope, and to-morrow you will take hold of things that to-day seem impossible. It's hard to get a lesson even in the Primer at first, but by getting one lesson at a time it seems but a day until you can follow the logic of the philosopher. Step by step, round by round, whether in the public school or in the great school of life, all victories are gained and all obstacles vanish. "We build the ladder by which we rise." The distant mountains that rise in their majestic heights are crossed by pathways that we can see only as we rise to higher levels; and our ideal life that rises in its majestic grandeur is reached PAST RECORDS 141 only by our noble deeds, our high hopes, our lofty aspirations, and our mighty resolves; doing each hour what our lives crave to idealize ; fulfilling each day the most sacred mission of life — to live — and help others to live. Look not to the past except for experience and inspiration, but appropriate the splendid possibilities of the present, and with an un- daunted hope face the future. Look out for the present, and the future will take care of itself. I would rather see a man get ready for the future by earning five dollars a day at good, honest work, than to make five million in his mind by what is called "day dreaming." FINDING ONE'S SELF. There's not very much difference between the man who is succeeding and the man who isn't; between the man who is taking big strides onward, and the man who is doing only fairly well. The one has discovered himself; the other has not. The one knows he can do things; the other is not sure. A man is more capable than he thinks he is. He doesn't ex- pect as much of himself as he should. He too frequently judges himself by what he is instead of what he may become by adding just a little more vim and thought to his efforts. The rate at which a man's capacity for doing things can be developed is wonderful. He can do but a little to-day, but by doing that little and doing it with snap and energy, he is a stronger man to-morrow; he can do more, and the next day a new idea is evolved in his mind. He is begin- ning to think. Thinking is what makes the man; not thinking alone, but thinking and putting those thoughts into action. The (143) 144 READY MONEY dreamer thinks, but doesn't accomplish any- thing because he doesn't act. Get a person sufficiently aroused to know that he can do something, and the idea sets him on fire with enthusiasm and marks an epoch in his hfe. An emergency comes up, and the young man is surprised that he did so well; that's finding one's self. Doing better than one expects is finding one's self. It isn't so very hard to do. There's not so much to find at first, but what you do find grows with amazing rapidity. The possibility is there; all it needs is to be brought out into the sun- light and cultivated. A man finds himself by doing something better or something more than he ever did before. The first time a bird flies it doesn't fly very far, but it discovers itself; it learns that it can fly, and it then soars above the clouds. The bird discovers itself when it gets out of the nest. Young men are discovered by themselves in the same way. It is better to jump out of the old environment and out of the old nest and fall than to remain there and doze away the time in useless inactivity. But he doesn't fall. If he did there would be FINDING ONE'S SELF 145 no harm done. "The glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall." I would rather do a thing and do it wrong than dilly dally around for a life time and never know whether it was "best" or not. It is all right to be cautious, but all wrong to be over- cautious. The thing must be tried. Some risk must be taken. The person who never risks anything wiU never have anything. The effort must be made. Find yourself and then get efficiency. Don't be satisfied with the first "find;" there is more there. A man's possibilities are practically unlimited. EMERGENCY. It has been said, but can't too often be repeated, that "being ready" is in itself suc- cess. The statement has been confirmed by every successful man, living or dead. What is the use of being offered a position at a thou- sand or more dollars a year if one isn't fitted to do the work, and what good would it do to be offered a ten thousand dollar position if one is incompetent to fill it. Opportunity is not something that comes suddenly and goes by like "The Twentieth Century Limited." Opportunities are coming and going all the time. Some people cannot see them; others can. The clearer the vision the more of them are seen. Opportunities increase as cobwebs in the brain decrease. If a man hasn't his eyes open, opportunities may come or they may not. It makes no difference. The person who is ready is the only one who finds anything worth whUe to do. Opportunities don't come on the wings of the morning. They are not sent by divine dispensation, or mysterious (147) 148 READY MONEY power; they grow. They grow in the mind, but they don't grow in a stagnant brain any more than fish grow in a stagnant pool. A person who is indifferent to his own welfare has the fewest opportunities. The person who is keenly alive has them in abundance. There are always emergencies in every per- son's life, and on these emergencies a man swings either up or down. If he is ready he goes up with a bounce ; if he isn't ready he goes out of sight like a cannon ball in the ocean. If one knows only enough about his work to hold his job, a dull season will throw him out ; but if he is keen enough and understands his business, such an emergency will draw out his capabilities and swing him a notch higher. Being equal to the emergency when it comes is true greatness, and in no other way can a man reach the high places. It was this vhrtue in Lincohi that placed him in the President's chair. It is being unequal to the task that keeps the unimportant positions so over- crowded that there's no room to move and the high places begging for people who can "do things." Find the man who is equal to his task and stands four square to every proposi- EMERGENCY 149 tion that comes along, and scores of places are open to him. To become such a one is not so difficult as it seems. It doesn't require genius. it doesn't require the intellect of a Webster, or the magnetism of a Henry Clay. It is just simply doing the best that can be done. It is doing head-work. It is putting your per- sonality and your whole soul into everything you do. It isn't always necessary for one to tell all he knows, or do all he can; it is only when an emergency arises that such things are necessary; but when that time does come it is worth a lifetime to be able to do it.' To be equal to the emergency when it comes is one of the grandest things in the world. If there's anything that wiU make a man great, that wUl; without it you can't rise and you never know what you have missed. Sometimes it means a business of your own, a happy home, an inde- pendent living, and, sometimes, the presidency of a great corporation, or even of the United States. I talked the other day with a school teacher, who lives on the banks of the Hudson. She is employed by the parents in that community to teach their children how to keep abreast of the ISO READY MONEY times and become sensible and successful men and women. That teacher, although at least thirty years old, and teaching school every year, didn't know that Judge Parker lived on the Hudson, or even that he was the nominee of the Democratic party for Presi- dent of the United States, although two months had elapsed since his nomination and every daily paper in the country was full of politics. Was she ready for an emergency? What would she do if any of her pupils asked her a sensible question that wasn't in the book? Think of a teacher assuming to train the im- mortal minds of the future men and women of this country, who, outside of the things taught in the books, doesn't seem to know any more than a caterpillar! She could get a certificate just because she knew what would be asked; she studied the things that were in the books, and by reviewing for a week or two before the examinations she could get through. She knew what she was obliged to know in order to get a certificate perhaps, but she didn't know anything else. Knowing simply what one is obliged to know isn't much credit to anyone. EMERGENCY 151 I met a young man in Concord, Massa- chusetts, the other day who didn't know where Waldon Pond was, although that beautiful little lake was immortalized half a century ago by Thoreau. This young man had lived in Concord for months, and if he had had his eyes and ears open he would have known that Waldon Pond was within a mile and a half. While travelling on the "Twentieth Century Limited" the other day I employed the official train stenographer to take my dictation. He did it well, but in my limited conversation with him I learned that he had never heard of George H. Daniels. Think of it! A stenographer for a whole year on the finest train the world ever saw; perhaps the only train that has a general stenographer for the accommodation of the public, and yet not recognize even the name of the general passenger agent of that road. WUl that stenographer ever be general pas- senger agent? Hardly. True, this is an age of specialists. This young man did his work well, was agreeable and very accommodating, but would he be any less valuable as a stenographer if he knew other things? Why wouldn't it be well for him 1 52 READY MONEY to know something of the men who have made his position possible? Why not know every- thing possible about the great railway system of which he is a part? Why not take a special pride in the railroad business, the ofi&cials, and those magnificent trains, those luxurious pal- aces, that fly through space with the speed of a tornado? Every day clerks and stenographers, sales- men and managers, men and women, engaged in every kind of work under the sun, are being asked to do things that they ought to know how to do. It pays to cultivate more level-headed common sense, more energy, more hope, more life. High hopes, high aims, and high ambi- tions are what are wanted. It is knowing more than is expected, and doing more than is ex- pected that wins the prize and makes a person proud of his endeavor. This is what brings promotion. It is the real secret of achievement. Don't be satisfied with simply doing your work; put your personality into the little things and don't be afraid of doing too much. Don't be afraid of knowing what is going on around you. It is not only your business as an employe, but your privilege and opportunity to know EMERGENCY 153 more and to do more than you are hired to do. It is thinking these things and doing them without any hope of reward that pushes men ahead faster than they had ever dreamed of going. "Folks who never do any more than they get paid for never get paid for any more than they do." GETTING INTO A RUT, AND GETTING OUT. Getting into a rut is the result of being satisfied to drift along with the same old ma- chinery and the same old ideas. In order to keep up the necessary enthusiasm a man must put more ideas into his business or whatever he happens to be doing. Thinking and doing get a man out of a rut; being satisfied puts him in. Ceasing to make preparation gets people into a rut. The student who lays away his books and thinks he has learned enough when he graduates is entering a rut. It won't do to stop studying when one is eighteen or seventy. It won't do to stop studying and planning and preparing after one has made his first success. Constant preparation keeps a man out of a rut and makes constant success possible. It takes alertness and energy and enthusiasm to keep him up on a level where he can move forward without resistance. The man who votes a party ticket because his father does (and there are a good many of them) is in a IS6 READY MONEY political rut. I know a man who belongs to a certain church, and he says his only reason for belonging to that church in preference to another is because his mother belonged to it, and what is good enough for his mother is good enough for him. That man is in a religious rut, and if there were enough people who were as easily satisfied as he is we would have a revival of the dark ages. What he needs is a new line of goods. Keeping up with the times puts the latest and best machinery in the factory and on the farm. It puts labor-saving devices into the home. It puts the best and most up-to-date books into the library, and sends out of the home the best and brainest young men and young women that ever lived. Abraham Lin- coln got along without many things that are with us every-day necessities, but he got the very best helps that were to be had in his day, and that is something that no person is rich enough to neglect. It is hard to know too many things; it is easy to know too few. Sometimes a whole firm gets into a rut by not keeping up with the times and making improvements as fast as they should. They GETTING INTO AND OUT OF A RUT 157 keep the old machinery and the old ways in order to save, and in trying to save they lose and get into the rut so deep that there's only one way to get out — take "new blood" into the firm. Hire young men who are full of energy and ideas to go in and brush out the cobwebs and set things going with a boom. Keep out of a rut; it's dangerous. INITIATIVE. There is one quality of the human mind which is valued highly by the business world and which very often means success to the individual, while the lack of it means failure. It is the decisive force in one's life which we call initiative. Some people easily acquire the habit of doing without being directed, things that need to be done. Like every other quality, initiative is a thing to be developed. What is this highly to be desired quality, and how is it to be acquired? is the question of the ambi- tious man who feels his power but lacks ability to use it in a way that pays. Elbert Hubbard, one of the most practical writers in America, has said that "initiative is doing what needs to be done without being told." The same writer says: "The world reserves its big prizes for but one thing, and that is initiative." Is initiative a quality to be taken on or acquired immediately? Is it a something which is the result of a formula that can be worked out at will? Hardly. Initiative is a result. The (iS9) i6o READY MONEY result of constructive thinking and decisive action; it is the result of constructive thinking plus desire and willingness to do the task set before one no matter how hard that task may be. The lazy man has no initiative. The man who lacks ambition, the man who lacks con- viction, the man who lacks purpose and is afraid will have a hard time developing this aggressive and progressive quality. The big prizes in this world are waiting for men who not only possess these qualities, but for men who don't know anything about being afraid to try; men who make up their minds that the thing can be done and will be done. Constructive thinking is the dynamics of initiative, and constructive thinking is thinking thoughts which, when put into action, bring results. How many men fail and are failing to-day in all departments of public and pro- fessional life simply because they lack this quality. The average young law graduate thiaks it isn't just proper or in accordance with the ethics of the profession for him to hunt for any business at the start. Senator Beveridge says: "Scores of the brainiest lawyers in the country are eking out a miserable exist- INITIATIVE i6i ence in small country towns simply because they lack initiative. They are afraid to seek out the big prizes, although they have the ability to get them." Initiative is action, intel- ligent action, not only for the sake of pleasing an employer, but for the higher reason of doing something which ought to be done. Every young man is needed and there is work for him, provided his services are valu- able. It is his business to find out where he is needed, go there, offer his services, and do the work. We call this the age of progress, and it is if measured by other times. But how many men in proportion to the mass are engaged to-day in aggressive and progressive work? Men of initiative are in a surprisingly small minority. Initiative is the abUity to work without a boss; going ahead and doing your work without being told. After finishing a piece of work some people sit down and fold their hands and wait until they are told what to do next. There are people who don't like to tackle their work in the morning; whether in the field or in the office, they hesitate. Employes sometimes hang around and visit five or ten minutes in 1 62 READY MONEY the morning before they get down to business; that's all lack of initiative. Initiative pays. If you have to be told to do things; if you have to be told constantly what to do and how, the firm has to hire someone to do it; that overseer has to have a good salary and you must earn it for him. Go ahead and do the thing yourself and you won't need an overseer. You will get your own salary and his, too. Why not be an overseer of other people as well as yourself? Initiative will do it. Initiative is doing the thing the way you think it ought to be done and then taking chances. A man who won't do a thing unless he is told when he knows it ought to be done is a coward, and he is simply waiting for some one to tell him to do it so that if it doesn't turn out all right he will not be blamed. Every person has an opportunity to develop initiative. If you are working for yourself you must develop it. If you are not working for yourself and don't develop initiative, you never will be working for yourself. If your employer goes off and forgets to tell you what to do, go ahead and do what you think ought to be done and do it as nearly right as you can. That is developing INITIATIVE 163 initiative whether you do the thing right or not. Cultivate the facvilty of relying upon your own judgment; stand alone. A man can't develop self-reliance and good judgment by waiting for someone else to take the responsibility. He must begin, must make the effort, even if he doesn't do very well at first. Perfection is not a matter of days; it is the work of a lifetime. The first steam engine was much different from the present magnificent locomotive. Webster's first speech was as different from his best as the old engine is different from the new. Young men must have a great purpose, an intense earnestness, and a willingness to under- take and carry out their plans. Every business house has rules as a guide to its employes. These rules are strictly followed by a large per cent, of the employes, and they should be. But the men who become partners in the business must do more than live up to the rules.' A man who does no more than he is told is little better than a machine. The man who becomes a partner or owner has to make decisions him- self. He is likely to meet situations daily which require him to think and act independently. Decisions must be made, and made on the spot. 1 64 READY MONEY The young man who is unable to meet these emergencies is simply swamped and left in the rear. It is a thousand times better to make an occasional mistake than to fail to act at all. The way to avoid mistakes of judgment is to study the business thoroughly, study every transaction, scrutinize every detail. In this way the largest element of failure is eliminated. The men who are famous as the world's great generals have given the closest attention to the minutest detail. With them there was no such thing as luck. Their lives were mathematical in their precision; their victories were mathe- matical in their recurrence. Everything was conducted on the basis of cause and. effect. They never struck a blow without being thor- oughly prepared. Then when they struck it was with all their might and for a purpose. A young man's only question should be: "Can the thing be done?" When that is decided he should make up his mind once for all that it will be done. Preparedness, decision of character, and a willingness to go ahead and get the thing done mark the man of initiative. Would you be rich in the wealth of the world? You can be by first being rich in ambi- tion, perseverance, and initiative. HARD TIMES. What makes hard times? Mental attitude. Hard times, in this country, at least, is more an imaginary disease of the mind than an actual fact. Hard times have always existed for some, and always will. It's a disease that causes people to live on the dark side, borrow trouble, and cultivate disgruntle. Some people, whether rich or poor, it makes no difference, are affected with this malady all the time, others only tem- porarily, and the whole nation breaks out with the great epidemic every presidential year. What brings it on? Talk. An abnormal mental con- dition. Each political party makes such a desper- ate effort to misrepresent the other that people are actually scared into bankruptcy ; mental bank- ruptcy at least. Conditions are no worse during presidential years than other years, except that the politicians and editors get up a great buga- boo that does have a tremendous effect. Not because there's any less corn or wheat or oats or money, or any reason for a scare, but because people think there's reason and it is what peo- (165) i66 READY MONEY pie think, not actual conditions, that makes the difference. As right thinking determines the success of the individual, so does it deter- mine the success of the country. Send out the cry "hard times" and let enough people take it up and it paralyzes the industries of a nation. The malady is not always epidemic. It's a household pet with some people; it seems to be second nature to them, and it places them at a tremendous disadvantage. Sometimes a man is very poor and has a right to grumble and find fault with conditions. There are men with whom the world has dealt very hard, yet the poor don't cry "hard times" any more than those who are well-to-do. Talking hard times makes a man stingy, and it narrows him down until he doesn't feel right toward himself. It's people who have money and want to keep it who talk hard times, yet it is an entirely unnec- essary excuse. It's no disgrace to keep money. It isn't what a man earns, but what he saves that determines his stability. It's when a man feels he ought to spend but doesn't that he offers the excuse "hard times." Talking poverty is like taking a viper into one's bosom; it poisons the system. A man is finally led to believe that HARD TIMES 167 he is actually poor, that the world is against him, and that he is being wronged. Let a man get the idea that he is being wronged, or that everything is against him, and you cut his earn- ing capacity right in two. When a man gets to talking "hard times," he has a tendency to make a prisoner of himself and denies himself everything that is worth while. He doesn't enjoy what he has. He doesn't keep up with the times; he ceases to grow and brings about the very condition which he has been seeking to avoid. "Hard times" has a good many rela- tives. It's the twin brother of the "blues." The " blues " is a mental disease which saps the very life out of a person. When once the "blues" get possession they dethrone hope, stifle courage, paralyze ambition, impair diges- tion, check circulation, hinder assimilation, poison the system, ruin the personality, kill the desire to work, and fall like a blighting curse on every virtue. Thinking "hard times" makes "hard times." Thinking failure makes failure, and thinking the world is against one makes it so. Why not think good times. It will make a great difference in the way a person feels. i68 READY MONEY Why not talk like this: "We are doing fine; this is the best year we ever had ; next year is going to be better. I wouldn't exchange places with any man on earth. It's great the way business unexpectedly tumbles up against one. We will have to enlarge our plant if we keep on like this much longer. I make it my business to get everything I think will help to increase my prosperity. When I find a new machine that's better than the old, I throw the old one away and put in the new. This is a great country, and I have the best business in it. I keep track of what's going on." Read what the most successful men say about their enterprises. Get the best books. A good book is a good investment, though you get but one idea out of it. A single idea has often lifted a man out of obscurity and made him immortal. THINGS TO THINK ABOUT. MISCELLANEOUS. Don't be overcautious. The man who never risks anything will never have anything. If you are working for a man, do more for him than he expects ; that is the only way you can give satisfaction. Don't be shrewd; don't try to look out for number one, and make little sharp deals. You may win in every one of them. You may get all the concessions you ask, but in getting them you get a handicap that is hard to overcome. Don't take advantage of technicalities; there are plenty of them, but unless you are as rich as Croesus you can't afford such a luxury. Men make mistakes through misunderstand- ing and oversight; they promise what they can't perform without sacrifice. You can make them pay; you have their promise and they, you say, have no right to be careless. Yes, you can take (169) 170 READY MONEY your pound of flesh, but you can't take it with safety to your own integrity. The other man may pay it and say nothing, but you can't take it and feel nothing. Do you know why people are losing positions by the hundreds and by the thousands? I'll tell you. They are not loyal. No man is big enough or smart enough to serve two masters. As Lawson says: "I never yet have known a man who could take pay from both sides and do his work properly." He can't do good work and be loyal and spend half his time or any of his time figuring how he can get more out of his company than he is reasonably entitled to. "If I get you a nice business this week in addition to my regular work, how much is there in it for me?" I care not in what business a young man is engaged or how generous his firm may be, if he thinks that is the way to get ahead he is foolish and short-sighted in the extreme. If he insists upon looking out for himself, the firm can't afford to look out for him. Look after the firm's interests as if you were the firm, and they will make enough more money on your business to double your salary and they will do more for THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 171 you than you can possibly do for yourself. Your raise may be a little slower in coming, but when it does come it will be something worth while, and it comes ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Don't become intoxicated. Liquors are not the only things that intoxicate. Men are very frequently intoxicated by success. I have seen men ruined because the letters received from the firm were too complimentary. Exceptions? Yes. There really are not many such men, but as long as there are any there are too many. Because your firm wishes to be generous and appreciative don't assume that you are the whole thing. Stay down on the ground. Don't become intoxicated. For that kind of intoxica- tion is usually fatal. When a man is told that he is one of the best representatives the firm ever had it is sometimes unwise to think too long on the subject. Better go ahead and make good. If the statement is literally true he won't need to ask for a raise; if it is not, asking will only put the contemplated raise off indefinitely. As a rule, it doesn't pay to ask for a raise. One might get it for the asking, but it might turn 172 READY MONEY out to be a handicap that would stand in the way of a better raise later on. The employer who keeps the salary of the employe down to the lowest possible figure is cutting his own profits in two. People are not capable of doing their best on a starvation .basis. It sometimes demoralizes an employe to over- pay him, but it ruins the whole business to underpay. The average employe is not an unreasonable man; he must live, and no one has a moral right to prevent him from living as he should. The employer who forces the employe to live on half rations and get no enjoyment out of life is the one who is respon- sible for the strike, and the misery and desola- tion that follow in its wake. For success a great price must be paid, but that price is not martyrdom. To strive for success, which is a high and holy aim, is the greatest blessing of life; it is nature's perfect plan. The more you give the more you keep. The more joy, enthusiasm, and gratitude you put into your work, the more you have left. It is the skill acquired in striving for success that makes a man great. THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 173 If you see a man occupying a good position with short hours and big pay, don't envy him. He is there for just one reason. He has worked early and late, toiled and struggled in a way that the average man never dreamed of. There's not very much difference between him and the man who isn't there, except that he has done the work. If you see a man ahead of you in the race, don't envy him and think he is lucky, but try to discover what he has done that you haven't done, and then go do it. BEING SATISFIED. Be satisfied, and don't be satisfied. There's nothing that keeps a man back so much as being dissatisfied with everything around him, and there's nothing that puts a man ahead so much as being a little dissatisfied with his own efforts. Small victories are easy to win, and necessary, but sometimes a man is content to let it go at that. He's satisfied. As soon as a man is satisfied with himself he ceases to grow. Cyrus W. Field wasn't satisfied until he had successfully laid the Atlantic cable. James J. Hill wasn't satisfied until he had not only built 174 READY MONEY the Great Northern Railroad, but had made people prosperous on both sides of it for a thousand miles. The great man is never satis- fied with his own success, but endeavors to make all around him successful. it's little things that count. No one has ever accomplished great things who hasn't first accomplished a great many little things. A great success is naturally and inevitably the result of many little successes. An accumulation of little successes enables one to take giant strides later on. A man doesn't do anything great in a day; not even commit a great crime. A man who robs the cash box doesn't often do it on impulse; he has been allowing evil thoughts to accumulate in his mind, little by little, until he is overpowered. Just as surely as little drops of water make the ocean, so the little successes of to-dav are fitting one for greater successes by and by. Any great body implies an accumulation of a large number of little bodies. Even the mighty mountain range is made of the tiniest particles of matter, and the greatest successes known THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 175 to man are the result of the same law; the result of the accumulation of little successes, so small, some of them, that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Yet, if they were not there a great success would be impossible. APPRECIATION. There's nothing more helpful to a man, either employer or employe, than to be appreciated. The man who feels that he is getting more than he is worth, but is going to make a desperate effort to deserve it, appreciates his salary and it will keep getting larger all the time. The employer who thinks he can't do enough for the employes appreciates them and they will keep doing better all the time, and become more valuable. It pays a man first, last, and all the time to assume that he is appreciated, and when an employer is not finding fault with his employes, it's ten to one that he does appre- ciate them very much. Whether one is an office-boy, the head of a department, or the manager of a great enterprise, it pays him to be modest and to realize that his services are appreciated. If he has been feeding his mind 176 READY MONEY on suspicion and doubt, some little incident will occur that wUl put him out of business. This thing of feeling imposed upon is just as likely to find lodgment in the mind of the head of a department as anyone else. People who think their services are invaluable are some- times afflicted with this malady. A person who has been promoted and therefore thinks the firm couldn't get along without him usu- ally feels abused if he isn't promoted quite fre- quently, and such a feeling is detrimental to all growth. It makes a man more sensitive and turns the picture of success to the wall, whether it is in the office, or in the home, and it is nearly always the result of harbormg in the mind imaginary slights. Usually a man is promoted because of pure merit; because he deserves promotion. This is true nine times out of ten, but when a person is promoted because there is no one else to do the work, it may upset his equilibrium, and sometimes such a one, instead of trying to measure up to his new environment, concludes that he is indispen- sable. This indispensable idea gets lonesome after a time, and, "I'm not appreciated as I should be," is invited in as a sort of room-mate THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 177 and a pair of such ideas is enough to drive anybody out of business. It pays to appreciate and to be appreciated, and at the same time to stay down on the ground. TRIFLES. Haven't a good many men confused the word "detail" with the word "trifle?" Every book that's written on "Success" emphasizes the importance of being up on detail. "Look after the little things and the big things will take care of themselves" is good doctrine. A person would hardly be expected to write a book on "Success" without giving such advice, but isn't it overdone? It is true that a man can't make much of a success without looking after the details of his business; but it is also true that he may look after the details for a lifetime and have nothing. The more attention a man gives to detail, the less time he has for growth, the less time he has for management and for reaching out for other things. I have reference now to those who have mastered the details of their business and should be directing others. 178 READY MONEY If a young man is going into business for himself, I would advise him to do the detail work until he can get someone else to do it for him; then let him devote his energy to planning and managing and buUding up the business. There are men who pride themselves on their knowledge of detail; pride themselves on their memory. They try to remember every little thing instead of making a note of it. They load their memory down with trifles and leave no room in their mind for anything else. Such men, as a rule, can make a success in only one way — -doing detail work for someone else. They can do little things, save the pennies, patch up torn postage stamps, and look after the many little things that must be taken care of. Such men are often valuable to a concern. They can't be so valuable to themselves, be- cause they must do the little things; they won't leave them to anyone else and they have, there- fore, no time left to get business. 1 SAY JUST WHAT I THINK. If you don't like a man what's the use of telling him so? It only makes him dislike you. THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 179 It doesn't pay to be blunt. A man doesn't need to be blunt in order to be truthful. A man who prides himself on saying just what he thinks, usually exaggerates that "think" untn he doesn't believe it himself. Better not say what you think. What you think may be true, but if your thoughts are of the wrong kind keep them to yourself. It isn't what you say, any more than what you don't say, that keeps peace in the establishment. Blunt, harsh statements can't do any good and sometime in the future when one needs that particular indi- vidual he is an enemy instead of a friend. It doesn't pay to make enemies. The employe who is blunt can hold his posi- tion only in one way: by doing more than the others. When the dull season comes he is the first to go. If he is unusually capable, he will stay in spite of his bluntness. He will stay as long as he is indispensable to the firm, but as soon as they find they can get along without him they let him go. Don't say things that hurt if you can help it. If your statements are true it is all the more reason why you should keep them to yourself. We cannot run counter to the prejudices of i8o READY MONEY people and maintain harmony. Radical dif- ferences are not made less different by blunt argument and positiveness. Our politics or our religion or our conviction on any subject may be satisfactory to us. We may be satisfied that our position is the only correct one, but we cannot win people to our cause by blunt or sarcastic statements. The "I say just what I think" man is not a success. His presence is as unpleasant and depressing as a cold, drizzling rain. He says meaner things to a man's face than he says behind his back. He prides himself on his shrewdness in seeing flaws. He is a teacher who doesn't teach, an honest man who isn't honest, and a friend who is not a friend. Another bad thing about this sort of man whose "thinker" gets out of tune, he looks for the wrong thing. It might not be so bad to say what he thinks if he had the right kind of thoughts. His mind dwells upon the bad in people instead of the good. You can often see evil where it does not exist, but even if it already exists, what is the use of looking for thorns when the bush is full of roses? We could say mean things about some people, THINGS TO THINK ABOUT i8i but what's the use? We can say good things about every one; why not do it? TAKING ADVICE. It's a great thing to get advice from a man who knows, but it's an unfortunate thing to get advice when he doesn't know. Taking advice is like taking medicine; a little is some- times a good thing, but it is usually dangerous. Follow the advice of people and fail, and they have nothing for you but contempt. Pay no attention to them and succeed, and they wUl follow in your footsteps. A man must either be a leader or be led; take everyone's advice and nothing is accomplished. A person who does that gets to be good for nothing. Take one person's advice who doesn't know as much about it as you do and it is just as bad. It is a great thing to get advice, but a greater thing to quietly listen, and then pay very little atten- tion to it. Sacrifice your own individuality, do what you think wUl please your friends, and you have elected yourself to be a follower, and a follower without a leader. Put life and energy into a thing; do it your own way, and i82 READY MONEY you will be the leader. It dosen't pay to be a slave to outside influence. A person has a cold, but he can't afford to take everything his friends tell him is good for the cold. A man can't believe everything he is told, and act upon all the suggestions of others and stUl have a mind of his own. Some men vote for the last man who talks to them. They take the advice of the last man, especially if it can be followed without exertion. While a man must have some advice, and must have friends, and co-operation and intercourse with his fellows, yet if he is going to get along well he must do his own thinking and his own deciding; use his own mind for the purpose for which it was given him; not by being stubborn, but by being positive and courageous. One can culti- vate decision by thinking decision and actually deciding. Do things that require immediate de- cision, and decide promptly, and in that way decision and positiveness are developed. The ability to decide promptly and to discriminate between this and that, is a trait of character which means success. One always knows more about what he is going to do than anyone else is likely to know THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 183 about it. He should not, therefore, be misled by those who are not particularly interested. Every man has twenty friends to tell him "he can't" to one who tells him "he can." Unless a man is possessed of some decision and knows what he is doing, he listens to this one and that one until he finds himself an old man with nothing done. When a young man tries to decide on the suggestions of his friends it develops in him an indecisive, vacillating nature. "What wUl they think about it?" ought not to be much of a consideration; if the thing is honorable and promises success that's enough. In his endeavor to be well thought of he forgets that he has an individuality of his own. The people he is trying to please seldom give him a second thought; those who give the most advice often care the least. Go to those who are a little better at saying than doing, and they will tell you that the professions are overcrowded; that business is a pretty hard proposition, and that a man can't succeed on a farm. Go to a successful man and he will tell you that prospects were never so bright; a man's chances for success never so great in any line. The people who have done things are those who i84 READY MONEY have gone ahead on their own initiative without paying attention to the advice of their friends. People give advice to a man of decision and force, but with him it doesn't count; it is a mere incident in his Hfe; a sort of bumblebee trying to stop the Overland Limited. Decide; start, and then go like a cannon-ball. Whatever a young man is going to do he has given it more thought and is able to see greater possibilities in it than can his neighbors who haven't thought of it at all; therefore, why should he let them decide for him? He is moving around from place to place looking for "openings;" he is told that is a poor town; business dull; nothing doing, etc., and he moves on, forgetting that whatever success he has is quietly sleeping under his own hat. THE MODERN BOOK. A volume could be written on any subject in this book and many have been, but no one has time to read them and thresh it out. People don't want to buy books as a farmer sometimes buys wheat, in the shock; they want it threshed; they want simply the wheat, not the chaff and THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 185 straw. Many splendid things are written — ideas worth hundreds of dollars — but since it costs practically as much to make a little book as a big one, the author will stuff in a couple of hundred pages of "chaff" as filling, and it spoils the whole thing. People in this age of progress haven't time to go through a whole straw pUe for a few kernels of wheat, so the book goes unread. People no longer buy a book by the yard or avoirdupois. They ask what is in it. If the book contains brain and energy and ideas, and is small enough so a man can get those ideas and make them his own without feeling that he must take a week off, he buys the book and gets his money's worth a hundred times on every page. The informa- tion which the book imparts may not be so valuable, but the ideas which that information suggests, the thoughts it stimulates, are what make it valuable. The value of a book is deter- mined not only by what is put into it, but by what is left out of it. Books conspicuous for their size are no longer in demand. Neatness, taste, art, and quality in the printing and binding of a book, and ideas, originality, life, and inspiration in its i86 READY MONEY pages give us a book that appeals to every cultured reader and arouses to greater deeds and nobler actions every person in whom there is a spark of the glory of conquest. BRAINS AND MUSCLE. Mix brains with your work and one man's hands can do the work of ten. The poor man who is toiling hard from morning till night could, with the proper utilization of his mind, do more in six hours than in ten without it. In the midst of toil and strife, hustle and bustle, crowding and pushing, it pays to stop long enough to find out what one is going after and how he is going to obtain it. Head-work is what counts. I would not underestimate the value of manual labor, yet without thought and skill and intel- ligence and real practical head-work it would amount to very little. It is not right that one man should have to do all the laboring and another man stand over him and tell him how. Just so long as the laboring man refuses to mix his brains with his work he will have to have a man stand over him, and he will have to earn enough money to pay that man his salary. THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 187 We need a greater number of intelligent labor- ers and a fewer number of unintelligent bosses. A man who stands over a crowd of men and refuses to take off his coat and help is not fit to be a boss. Mix brains with work and you make it a pleasure and add to its value a hun- dred fold. Fail to mix brains with it, and it makes a man a slave. Make work drudgery under a hard master and you make the worker a slave. Make work natural and you make it a blessing to humanity. This is a country in which we have intelligent labor. The American laborer is the most intelligent workman in the world. lie does more reading and more think- ing than all the rest of the working men in the world combined. Yet more thought is what we want. More head-work, more inspiration, more ideas. WHAT ARE YOU CUT OUT FOR? Statistics have been made to say that 95 per cent, of the business men of the United States fail. Even if this were true, it doesn't mean that they fail absolutely, but it means that they failed to make a success of the busi- ness in which they started, and are now trying something else — perhaps not to carry it through. If not, then that man has made two failures as statistics would have it; but in reality he has only lost two battles. "There's daylight enough left to win another," said Napoleon, and another and another if need be. A man should never consider himself a failure so long as there is an opportunity or life to make one. It's natural for a man to be strong, robust, and powerful, full of energy and nerve and everything that goes to make a great success. If 95 per cent, of our business men fail, I believe that about 85 per cent, of the failures are due to lack of prepa- ration, lack of knowledge of the business, and lack of knowledge of self. Some people say it is because a man gets into the wrong place, he (189) I go READY MONEY doesn't know for what he is fitted, and gets work for which he is not adapted. In other words, he makes a failure and justifies himself by saying he was not "cut out" for the busi- ness. "I am not cut out for it" is a cowardly makeshift of an excuse. The man who teaches that you may expect to make a failure of every- thing until you find your calling — the work that was intended for you (the work you were born for, as some say), ought to be stamped the big- gest fake in the country. It is nothing less than a calamity for a man to believe that he was not cut out for what he happens to be doing. It puts him in the wrong mental atti- tude; it gives him a decidedly erroneous idea of things. He thinks he is not cut out for his work, and so putters along for years without getting his head high enough to see the sun, all the time waiting for Providence to bring him the job he was cut out for. Sometimes a person becomes so confirmed in his belief that he finds fault with Providence if it doesn't make good. I don't believe Providence has anything very special for such a man to do, and if there is a job on earth that was intended for him it is hid- ing for fear he will find it and make a botch of WHAT ARE YOU CUT OUT FOR? 191 it. If a man isn't doing well and is under the impression that he hasn't found what he is cut out for, why doesn't he cut himself out over again for the work that he has found? That is one thing for which a man's will-power was given him. How foolish to waste your life because you think you haven't found your work. It would be just as wise to say, "I haven't found the kind of food that was intended for me so I won't eat." There are a good many eatables which people can quite conveniently adapt themselves to after a twenty-four hour fast. A person can adapt himself to just as many dif- ferent kinds of work and make a glorious success of any of them. A man who can do well at one thing can do well at a good many other things, because he has a good, level head and common sense, and is determined to succeed, and that is what does most of the "cutting out." A man who spends much time fretting because he hasn't found what he was cut out for, hasn't been "cut out" at all, and never will be until he gets rid of such nonsense and puts his whole heart and soul into whatever he undertakes. The chances are, the man is above the 192 READY MONEY average, but has been looking in the wrong direction. What he needs is to develop enough will-power to adapt himself to circumstances, then work up energy and go after things. The only place to which a person can actually be an ornament or credit is the one he makes for him- self by sheer force of character, by energy and enthusiasm, and by a " sink-or-swim, survive- or-perish" determination. One trouble with too many men is lack of thorough preparation. They haven't gone rate their business clear to the centre and back to the circumference, and dug up every foot of it for points. A man who only half prepares finds that all the profits are in the other half. He goes into a certain business and expects to make a success of it simply because some one else has made a great success of the same business. He thinks he is just as capable as the other man, and that, therefore, he will make as great a success. The chances are that he is just as capable — often times more so — but he has not made the preparation that the other did; he has not done the things that the other man did to learn the business. Knowing. your business means success; not knowing it means failure. WHAT ARE YOU CUT OUT FOR? 193 If a man wants to be a hardware merchant, why shouldn't he go into a hardware store and work there at any kind of work until he under- stands the hardware business ? Then, if he has executive ability and a sufficient amount of capital, he can go into business for himself and make the success he deserves to make. Aren't many men too impatient to get to the money-making part of their business? They don't want to spend time learning; they want to jump right into the swim, but usually find that the swim is too much for them. It takes patience at the start, and it takes patience all the way through. The "get-rich-quick" schemes are not durable, yet a man must not jump to the other extreme and think he has to plod along all his life to make a scant living. He should make it a point to know more about his business than is found right on the surface. Men work hard enough, but oftentimes their work doesn't count, simply because they haven't taken advantage of the hidden possibilities which could be discovered in their own busi- ness, if they would get right down to bed-rock and work the thing out. To know your busi- ness thoroughly, means that you can talk it 13 194 READY MONEY intelligently and present the many good points to your customers or to anyone with whom you are dealing, and it means that you know what to do and what not to do — that you can see your business from all sides. But that is not all. A real, thorough knowledge of your busi- ness shows you so many good points about it that it enthuses you, and when a man becomes enthusiastic over his business he is all. right. However, knowing your business is not all the preparation that is necessary. If it were there would not be so many failures. A man can't succeed unless he knows his business; yet he may know his business and not be able to succeed. To make the success he deserves he must know himself; and that is often a more difficult problem than to know his business, and it is harder to learn; but most important of all, he must know people, know human nature, and know how to handle men. He isn't doing his best if he doesn't learn this, and he isn't doing himself or any one else justice. Cultivate the art of seeing possibilities in others. This is an age in which a man can't succeed alone. He must be associated with men, and must know how to judge men and WHAT ARE YOU CUT OUT FOR? 195 how to select those who can do things — men who can hit the bull's-eye once in a while, or he'll find himself ahead at the bottom instead of at the top. There's an education for a man in college, and he ought to have it. There's a great world- wide education for a man outside of college, and he must have that. College education alone will never put a man in the United States Senate, but a knowledge of the world and how to deal successfully with men will. The great need of the hour, for every man, is a better knowledge of human nature. We are dealing with men now more than we ever did before. If you are going to sell a man a bill of goods or a piece of real estate, trade horses with him, or buy what he has to sell, you have to get his confidence and his good will; otherwise he will go else- where for what he wants, because he knows he can get it elsewhere. He will sell his pro- duce to others, if he doesn't like you. The business in hand, therefore, is not half so im- portant as the men who are back of that busi- ness. You may go into business with plenty of capital, and with the best goods on the market; but unless you know how to handle people your 196 READY MONEY goods won't make you any money. Of course, if you had a monopoly people would have to buy from you whether they liked you or not, but you haven't a monopoly and you haven't anything unless you have the ability to serve the public in the way it likes. If you have that you have everything. I don't mean that you should be wishy-washy nice or so polite that you wear your neck out bowing. Be yourself. Be yourself if you are pleasant and courteous and frank, and know that you are treating people right. If you are cold and distant, don't try to be yourself; forget all about yourself, and cul- tivate warmth and sunshine, and a happy dispo- sition. Get over on the south side of life where the sun can get at you. Cut out of your own life "disgruntle" and "worry" and the petty annoyances you don't like in others. Discover yourself and your abilities. This will take systematic study, but it is the kind of study that will be a delight to you and a source of profit from the very start. If you don't cul- tivate a field it will grow up to weeds. If you don't cultivate your personality your useful- ness is limited. You can't be successful unless you can interest others in your way of thinking, WHAT ARE YOU CUT OUT FOR? 197 and you can't do that successfully without learning how. Get yourself in line for the best there is. Your possibilities are unlimited. You have in you the elements required to make a splendid personality. All they need is a little develop- ing. Then you can do the thing yourself. It's not so hard. The people who are succeeding are not more capable than those who are not. They have simply got the scent, that's all. They have discovered their possibilities and cast aside the "not cut out for it" theory. They have quit going to some cheap kitchen for their mental food. They get the best there is. Big ideas make big men. Get up above the clouds — the clouds of doubt, fear, and sus- picion. Get a man out of the notion that people are trying to beat him, and you broaden his horizon a thousand miles. Big men are not suspicious. They don't stop to quibble about not getting their money's worth. They need their energy for other things. They call for the best there is, and that's something everyone is entitled to. It's simply a matter of knowing how to "ginger up and get in the game." He can who thinks he can. PART II. BITS OF ELOQUENCE. (199) INTRODUCTION TO "BITS OF ELOQUENCE." If the following famous orations were not called "Bits of Eloquence," "Inspiration" would be a good name. In reading such eloquence one gets more than information, more than entertainment, more even than ideas. One gets an inspiration that arouses to the greatest possible endeavor every atom of strength and the noblest impulses of the soul. It unfolds to one not only a more profitable life, but a greater life. The reading of an eloquent passage not only inspires the mind of the reader, but inspires to greater activity every atom of the body. The blood is made to run with greater vigor on its course. A peculiar, indescribable feeling, akin to awe, passes over and through a person. Everyone experiences this sensation on beholding the broad expanse of the ocean, the towering mountains reaching upward to the sky, or when looking upon a beautiful work of art; but the most inspiring thing in all the world is to read the great masterpieces that have been left as a rich legacy to mankind. — G. H. K. (201) WENDELL PHILLIPS. TOUSSAINT L'oUVERTIIRE. If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts, you who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him, hated him, because he had beaten them in battle. Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army — out of what? Englishmen — the best blood in Europe. This man manufactured (203) 204 READY MONEY his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, despicable mass he forged a thunderbolt and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier. I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave trade in the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, for you read history, WENDELL PHILLIPS 205 not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hear- ing, the muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Wash- ington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue above them all the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouvertxire. DEMOSTHENES. A SPEECH AGAINST BRIBERY. [Taken from the "Third Phillipic," delivered at Athens, 341 B.C.] What is wanting to make the insolence of Philip complete? Besides the destruction of the Greek cities, does he not hold the Pythian Games, the common festival of Greece? Is he not master of Thermopylce and the passes into Greece? Does he not hold these places by garrisons and mercenaries? Has he not thrust aside Thessalians, Athenians, Dorians, the whole Amphictyonic body, and got the first audience of the Oracle? Yet the Greeks endure all this. Under these indignities we are all slack and disheartened, and look towards our neighbors, distrusting one another instead of the common enemy. But what has caused the mischief? There must be some cause, and some good reason why the Greeks were so eager for liberty then, and now are eager for servitude. Men of Athens, there was then, in the hearts of the multitude, some- {207) 2o8 READY MONEY thing which is now lacking, something which overcame the wealth of Persia and maintained the freedom of Greece, and quailed not under any battle by land or sea; the loss of which has ruined all, and thrown the affairs of Greece into confusion. What was this? Nothing subtle or clever; simply that whoever took money from political aspirants or from the corrupters of Greece were universally detested. It was a dreadful thing to be convicted of bribery; the severest punishment was inflicted on the guilty, and there was no intercession or pardon. The favorable moments for enterprise which fortune frequently offers to the careless against the vigilant, to them that will do nothing against those that discharge all their duty, could not be bought from orators or generals; no more could mutual concord or distrust of tyrants and barbarians. But now all such principles have been sold as in open market, and those imported in eji,change by which Greece is ruined and diseased. What are they? Envy where a man gets a bribe; laughter if he confesses it; mercy to the convicted ; hatred of those that denounce the crime; all the usual attendants upon cor- DEMOSTHENES ' 209 ruption. For as to ships and men and revenues and abundance of other materials, all that may be reckoned as constituting national strength, assuredly the Greeks of our day are more fully and perfectly supplied with such advantages than Greeks of the olden time. But they are all rendered useless, unavailable, unprofitable, by the agency of these traffickers. 14 MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. A PLEA FOR THE POET ARCHIAS. [Archias, the poet, was a naturalized Roman citizen. The records of his citizenship were destroyed by fire, and he had to prove his citizenship. The following is taken from Cicero's oration in his defense, delivered 62 B.C.J Shall I not love this man? Shall I not admire him? Shall I not defend him to the utmost of my power? For men of the greatest eminence and learning have taught us that other branches of science require education, art, and precept; but that the poet is formed by the plastic hand of nature herself, is quick- ened by the native fke of genius, and animated, as it were, by a kind of divine enthusiasm. It is with justice, therefore, that our Ennius bestows on poets the epithet of "venerable," because they seem to have some peculiar gifts of the gods to recommend them to us. Let the name of the poet, then, which the most barbarous nations have never profaned, be revered by you, my lords, who are so great (211) 212 READY MONEY admirers of polite learning. Rocks and deserts re-echo sounds; savage beasts are often softened by music, and listen to its charms; and shall we, with all the advantages of the best education, be unaffected with the voice of poetry? The praises of our fleet shall ever be recorded and celebrated for the wonders performed at Tenedos, where the enemy's ships were sunk and their commanders slain; such are our trophies, such our monuments, such our tri- umphs. Those, therefore, whose genius de- scribes these exploits, celebrate likewise the praises of the Roman name. We beg of you, therefore, my lords, since in matters of such importance not only the inter- cession of men, but of gods is necessary, that the man who has always celebrated your virtues, those of your generals, and the vic- tories of the Roman people; who declares that he will raise eternal monuments to your praise and mine for our conduct in our late domestic dangers; and who is of the number of those who have ever been accounted and pronounced divine, may be so protected by you as to have greater reason to applaud your generosity than to complain of your rigor. JOHN B. GOUGH. WHAT IS A MINORITY? What is a minority? The chosen heroes of this earth have been in a minority. There is not a social, poUtical, or rehgious privilege that you enjoy to-day that was not bought for you by the blood and tears and patient sufferings of the minority. It is the minority that have vindi- cated humanity in every struggle. It is the minority that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world. You wUl find that each generation has always been busy in gathering up the scattered ashes of the martyred heroes of the past, to deposit them in the golden urn of a nation's history. Look at Scotland, where they are erecting monuments to whom? To the Covenanters. Ah, they were in a minority! Read their history, if you can, without the blood tingling to the tips of your fingers. These were the minority that, through blood and tears and bootings and scourgings, dyeing the waters with their blood (213) 214 READY MONEY and staining the heather with their gore, fought the battle of religious freedom. If a man stand up for the right, though he eat, with the right and the truth, a wretched crust; if he walk with obloquy and scorn in the by- lanes and streets, while falsehood and wrong ruffle it in silken attire, let him remember that wherever the right and the truth are there are always "troops of beautiful, tall angels" gath- ered round him; and God himself stands within the dim future and keeps watch over his own. If a man stands for the right and the truth, though every man's finger be pointed at him, though every woman's lip be curled at him in scorn, he stands in a majority; for God and good angels are with him; and greater are they that are for him than all they that be against him. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN. tMMORTALITY. [Taken from Mr. Bryan's eulogy on a friend and colleague in the Fifty-third Congress.] I SHALL not believe that even now his light is extinguished. If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn, and make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, who was made in the image of his Creator? If He stoops to give to the rose-bush, whose withered blossoms float upon the breeze, the sweet assurance of another springtime, will He withhold the words of hope from the sons of men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of Nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, wUl the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation after it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay? Rather let us believe that He, who in His (215) 2i6 READY MONEY apparent prodigality, wastes not the rain drop, the blade of grass, or the evening's sighing zephyr, but makes them all to carry out His eternal plans, has given immortality to the mortal, and gathered to Himself the generous spirit of our friend. Instead of mourning, let us look up and address him in the words of the poet: ' ' Thy day has come, not gone j Thy sun has risen, not set ; Thy life is now beyond The reach of death or change, Not ended — but begun. O, noble soul ! O, gentle heart ! Hail, and farewell. ' ' HENRY WARD BEECHER. EXTRACT FROM BEECHER'S SERMON ON THE DEATH OF LINCOLN. The joy of the nation came upon us suddenly, with such a surge as no words can describe. Men laughed, embraced one another, sang and prayed, and many could only weep for gladness. In one short hour joy had no pulse. The sorrow was so terrible that it stunned sensibility. The first feeling was the least, and men wanted to get strength to feel. Other griefs belong always to some one in chief, but this belonged to all. Men walked for hours as though a corpse lay in their houses. The city forgot to roar. Never did so many hearts in so brief a time touch two such boundless feelings. It was the uttermost of joy and the uttermost of sorrow — noon and midnight without a space between. We should not mourn, however, because the departure of the President was so sudden. When one is prepared to die, the suddenness of death is a blessing. They that are taken awake and watching, as the bride- (217) 2i8 READY MONEY groom dressed for the wedding, and not those who die in pain and stupor, are blessed. Neither should we mourn the manner of his death. The soldier prays that he may die by the shot of the enemy in the hour of victory, and it was meet that he should be joined in a common experience in death with the brave men to whom he had been joined in all his sympathy and life. This blow was but the expiring rebellion. Epitomized in this foul act we find the whole nature and disposition of slavery. It is fit that its expiring blow should be such as to take away from men the last forbearance, the last pity, and fire the soul with invincible determination that the breeding system of such mischiefs and monsters shall be forever and utterly destroyed. We needed not that he should put on paper that he believed in slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with cruelty infernal, hovered round that majestic man to destroy his life. He was himself the life-long sti»g with which Slavery struck at Liberty, and he carried the poison that belonged to slavery; and as long as this Nation lasts it will never be forgotten that we have had one martyr President — never, never, while time lasts, while heaven lasts, while HENRY WARD BEECHER 219 hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten that slavery by its minions slew him, and in slaying him made manifest its whole nature and tendency. This blow was aimed at the life of the Government. Some murders there have been that admitted shades of palliation, but not such a one as this — without provocation, without reason, without temptation — sprung from the fury of a heart cankered to all that is pure and just. The blow has failed of its object. The Government stands more solid to-day than any pyramid of Egypt. Men love liberty and hate slavery to-day more than ever before. How naturally, how easily, the Government passed into the hands of the new President, and I avow my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct of liberty, true to the whole trust that is imposed in him, vigilant of the Constitution, careful of the laws, wise for liberty; in that he himself for his life long has known what it is to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from the bitter experience of his own life. Even he that sleeps has by this event been clothed with new in- fluence. His simple and weighty words will 220 READY MONEY be gathered like those of Washington, and quoted by those who, were he ahve, would refuse to listen. Men will receive a new access to patriotism. I swear you on the altar of his memory to be more faithful to that country for which he perished. We will, as we follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which in van- quishing him has made him a martyr and conquerer. I swear you by the memory of this martyr to hate slavery with an unabatable hatred, and to pursue it. We will admire the firmness of this man in justice, his inflexible conscience for the right, his gentleness and moderation of spirit, which not all the hate of party could turn to bitterness. And I swear you to follow his justice, his moderation, his mercy. How can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of God, and whom God sent before them to lead them out of the house of bondage. O, Thou Shepherd of Israel, Thou that didst comfort Thy people of old, to Thy care we commit these helpless and long-wronged and grieved. And now the martyr is moving in triumphal HENRY WARD BEECHER 221 march, mightier than one alive. The Nation rises up at every stage of his coming; cities and States are his pall-bearers, and the cannon beat the hours in solemn progression; dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David? Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man from among the people. Behold! we return him to you a mighty conquerer; not thine any more, but the Nation's — not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye prairies! in the midst of this great continent shall rest a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over mighty spaces of the West, chant his requiem! Ye people, behold the martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty! ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. THE VISION OF WAR. [This beautiful tribute to our soldiers of the Civil War was considered by the United States Government the most eloquent ever penned. They have had it framed and hung on the wall of Robert E. Lee's old home in Arlington Cemetery, where we copied it. J The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation — the music of boisterous drums — the silvery voices of heroic bugles. We see thousands of as- semblages and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women and the flushed faces of men, and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in the quiet woody places with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly (223) 224 READY MONEY part forever. Others are bending over cradles kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their heart again and again and say nothing; and some are talking with wives and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their heart the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing at the door with the babe in her arms ■ — standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves, she answers by holding high in her loving hands the child. He is gone, and forever. We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags, keeping tune to the wild, grand music of war, marching down the streets of the great cities, through the towns and across the prairies to the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right. We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory fields, in all the hos- pitals of pain, on all the weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storms and under the quiet stars. We are with them in the ravines running with blood, in the furrows of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 225 old fields. We are with them between contend- ing hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and torn with shells in the trenches of forts, and in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of steel. We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine, but human speech can never tell what they there endured. We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old man bowed with the last grief. The past rises before us, and we see four mil- lions of human beings governed by the lash. We see them bound hand and foot. We hear the strokes of cruel whips. We see the hounds tracking women through tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Outrage infinite! Four million bodies in chains — four million souls in fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, mother, father, and child trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this was done under our own beautiful banner of the free. IS 226 READY MONEY The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. The heroes die. We look. Instead of slaves we see men, women, and children. The wand of progress touches the auction block, the slave pen, the whipping-post, and we see homes and firesides and school-houses and books, and where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we see faces of the free. These heroes are dead. They died for liberty — they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free — under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of the storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars — they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for the soldiers, living and dead — cheers for the living, tears for the dead. ROBERT EMMET. plobert Emmet, the Irish patriot, was executed in 1803, when but twenty-five years of age. This remark- able speech was made just before he received the death sentence.] My lords, what have I to say that sentence of death should not be passed on me accord- ing to law. I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that will become me to say, with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say, which interests me more than life, and which you have labored (as was necessarily your office in the present circumstances of this oppressed country) to destroy. I have much to say, why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. (227) 228 READY MONEY I have no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and tram- melled as this is. I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storm by which it is at present buffeted. Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of the law which delivers my body to the execu- tioner, will, through the ministry of that law, labor in its own vindication to consign my character to obloquy; for there must be guilt somewhere, whether in the sentence of the court or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties of established prejudice; the man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish — that it may live in the respect of my countrymen — I seize upon this opportunity ROBERT EMMET 229 to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port — when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defence of their country and of virtue, this is my hope: I wish that my memory and my name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by the blasphemy of the Most High; which displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest, which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand in the name of God against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more than the gov- ernment standard — a government steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it has made. (Here Lord Norbury interrupted Mr. Em- met, saying that the mean and wicked enthu- siasts who felt as he did were not equal to the accomplishment of their wild designs.) I appeal to the Immaculate God. I swear by the throne of Heaven — before which I must 230 READY MONEY shortly appear— by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me, that my conduct has been through all this peril and through all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and by no other view .than that of their cure, and the' emancipation of my country from the super- inhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and I confidently and assuredly hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is stUl union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this most noble enterprise. Of this I speak with the confidence of im- mense knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasiness; a man who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie will not hazard his character with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, nor a pretence to impeach the probity which ROBERT EMMET 231 he means to preserve even in the grave to which tyranny consigns him. (Here he was again interrupted by the court.) Again, I say, what I have spoken was not intended for your lordships, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy — my expres- sions were for my countrymen; if there is an Irishman present let my last words cheer him in the hour of affliction. (Here he was again interrupted. Lord Nor- bury said he did not sit there to hear treason.) I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law; I have also understood the judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity, to exhort the victims of the laws, and to offer with tender benignity their opinions of the motives by which he was actu- ated in the crime of which he was adjudged guilty. That a judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt, but where is the boasted freedom of your institutions? Where is the vaunted impartiality, clemency and mildness of your courts of justice, if an unfortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and 232 READY MONEY not your justice, is about to deliver into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives shicerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was actuated? My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind by humilia- tion to the proposed ignomy of the scaffold — but worse to me than the proposed shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this Court. You, my lord, are a judge; I am the supposed culprit; I am a man, you are a man also; by a revolution of power we might change places, though we never could characters. If I stand at the bar of this Court, and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice! If I stand at this bar and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, also condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to reproach? Your execu- tioner may abridge the period of my existence, but whilst I exist I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your asper- ROBERT EMMET 233 sions; and as a man, to whom fame is dearer than hfe, I will make the last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lords, we must appear on the great day at one common tribunal, and it wUl then remain for the Searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe, who was engaged in the most virtuous actions or attached by the purest motives — by the country's oppressors, or — (Here he was again interrupted, and told to listen to the sentence of the law.) My lords, will a d5Tng man be denied the legal privilege of exculpating himself in the eyes of the community of an undeserved reproach throvm upon him during his trial, by charging him with ambition, and attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration, the liberties of his country. Why did your lordship insult me? or, rather, why insult justice in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced? I know, my lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question — 234 READY MONEY the form also prescribes the right of answering. This, no doubt, may be dispensed with, and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle before the jury was empanelled. Your lord- ships are but the priests of the oracle, and I submit; but I insist on the whole of the forms. (Here the Court desired him to proceed.) I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France! and for what end? It is alleged I wish to sell the inde- pendence of my country! and for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? and is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions? No, I am no emis- sary; and my ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country — not in power, not in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence! and for what? Was it for a change of masters? No, but for ambition! Oh, my country! was it personal ambition that could influence me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not, by my education and fortune — by the rank and consideration of my family — have placed my- self among the proudest of my oppressors? ROBERT EMMET 235 My country was my idol; to it I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment, and for it I now offer up my life. O God! No, my lord; I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering his country from the yoke of a domestic faction, which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the parricide, for the ignomy of existing with an exterior of splendor and a conscious depravity; it Vi^as the wish of my heart to extricate my country from the doubly-riveted despotism. I wished to place her independence beyond the reach of any power on earth — I wished to exalt her to that proud station in the world. Connections with France were indeed in- tended — but only as far as mutual interest would sanction or require. Were they to assume any authority inconsistent with the purest independence, it would be the signal for its destruction; we sought aid, and we sought it as we had assurance we should obtain it — as auxiliaries in war, and allies in peace. Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Yes, my countrymen, I should 236 READY MONEY advise you to meet them on the beach with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other; I would meet them with all the destructive fury of war, and I would animate my countrymen to immolate them in their boats, before they had contaminated the soil of my country. If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire before superior discipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, burn every blade of grass, and the last entrenchment of liberty should be my grave. What I could not do my- self, if I should fall, I should leave as a last charge to my countrymen to accomplish, because I should feel conscious that life any more than death is unprofitable when a foreign nation holds my country in subjection. But it was not an enemy that the succors of France were to land. I looked indeed for the succors of France; but I wished to prove to France and the world that Irishmen deserved to be assisted, that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the right and inde- pendence of their country. I wished to procure for my country the guar- antee which Washington procured for America. To procure an aid which by its example would ROBERT EMMET 237 be as important as its valor — discipline, gal- lant, pregnant with science and experience; who would perceive the good, and polish the rough points of our character; they would come to us as strangers and leave us as friends, after sharing our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my objects — not to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants. These were my views, and these only became Irishmen. It was for these ends I sought aid from France, because France, even as an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my country. (Here he was interrupted by the Court.) I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, "the life and blood of the conspiracy;" you do me honor over much; you have given to the solution all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in the conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own esti- mation of yourself, my lord ; before the splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with 238 READY MONEY respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonored to be called your friends ; who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand. (Here he was interrupted.) I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my whole life, and am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here? By you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it. (Here the judge interfered.) Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my mem- ory, by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but of my country's liberty and independence, or that I became the pliant minion of power in the oppression of the mis- eries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the Provisional Government speaks for our views; no interference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a ROBERT EMMET 239 foreign oppressor for the same reason that I would resist the present domestic oppressor. In the dignity of freedom, I would have fought on the threshold of my country, and its enemy should only enter by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my coun- try, and who have subjected myself to the dangers of a jealous and watchful oppressor and the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence — am I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to resent or repel it? No, God forbid! If the spirits of the illustrious dead partici- pate in the concerns and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life, O ever dear and venerable shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the con- duct of your suffering son, and see if I have ever for a moment deviated from those prin- ciples of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instill into my youthful mind, and for which I am now to offer up my life. My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice — the blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors that surround your 240 READY MONEY victim; it circulates warmly and unrufHed through the channels which God created for nobler purposes, but which you are bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven. Be ye patient! I have but a few words to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extin- guished; my race is run; the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom! I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world; it is the charity of its silence! Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth— then, and not until then— let my epitaph be written. I Have Done. PATRICK HENRY. AN APPEAL TO ARMS. [Address of Patrick Henry at convention of dele- gates, Richmond, Va., March 28, 1775. Delivered in the presence of only twenty-four men, but was heard around the world.] . . . . Mr. President, it is natural to men to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts! Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish 16 ( 241 ) 242 READY MONEY to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministr}' for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? Is it that insidious snule with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it wiU prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these war-like prepa- rations which darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and recon- ciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwill- ing to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Britian any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. PATRICK HENRY 243 They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive our- selves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and par- liament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There 244 READY MONEY is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free — if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon untU the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight ! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us! They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? WUl it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a Britsh guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resist- ance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hug- ging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such PATRICK HENRY 245 a country as that which we possess, are invin- cible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who pre- sides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery: Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the planes of Boston! The war is inevitable — and let it come ! I repeat it, sir, let it come ! It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gen- tlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it. Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! PERICLES. 429 B.C. When we agreed, O Aspasia! in the begin- ning of our loves, to communicate our thoughts by writing, even while we were both in Athens, and when we had many reasons for it, we little foresaw the more powerful one that has ren- dered it necessary of late. We never can meet again ; the law forbids it, and love itself enforces them. Let wisdom be heard by you as imper- turbably, and affection as authoritatively, as ever; and remember that the sorrow of Pericles can rise but from the bosom of Aspasia. There is only one word of tenderness we could say, which we have not said oftentimes before; and there is no consolation in it. The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell. Reviewing the course of my life, it appears to me at one moment as if we met but yester- day; at another as if centuries had passed within it; for within it have existed the greater part of those who, since the origin of the world, ( 247 ) 248 READY MONEY have been the luminaries of the human race. Damon called me from my music to look at Aristides on his way to exile; and my father pressed the wrist by which he was leading me along and whispering in my ear: "Walk quickly by; glance cautiously; it is there Mil- tiades is in prison." In my boyhood Pindar took me up in his arms, when he brought to our house the dirge he had composed for the funeral of my grand- father; in my adolescence I offered the rights of hospitality to Empedocles; not long after- ward I embraced the neck of Aeschylus, about to abandon his country. With Sophocles I have argued on eloquence; with Euripides on policy and ethics. I have discoursed, as became an inquirer, with Protagoras and Democritus, with Anaxagoras and Meton. From Hero- dotus I have listened to the most instructive history, conveyed in a language the most copious and the most harmonious; a man worthy to carry away the collected suffrages of universal Greece ; a man worthy to throw open the temples of Egypt, and to celebrate the ex- ploits of Cyrus. And from Thucydides, who alone can succeed to him, how recently did my PERICLES 249 Aspasia hear with me the energetic praises of his just supremacy. As if the festival of Ufe was incomplete, and wanted one great ornament to crown it, Phidias placed before us, in ivory and gold, the tutelary deity of his land, the Zeus of Homer and Olympus. To have lived with such men, to have enjoyed their familiarity and esteem, overpays all labors and anxieties. I were unworthy of the friendships I have commem- orated, were I forgetful of the latest. Sacred it ought to be, formed as it were under the Portico of Death, my friendship with the most sagacious, the most scientific, the most be- neficent of philosophers, Acron and Hippo- crates. If mortal could war against Pesti- lence and Destiny, they had been victorious. I leave them in the field; unfortunate he who finds them among the fallen. And now at the close of my day, when every light is dim and every guest departed, let me own that these wane before me, remembering, as I ido in the pride and fulness of my heart, that Athens confided her glory, and Aspasia her happiness, to me. Have I been a faithful guardian? Do I resign them to the custody 2SO READY MONEY of the gods, undiminished and unimpaired? Welcome then, welcome, my last hour! After enjoying for so great a number of years, in my public and private life, what I believe has never been the lot of any other, I now extend my hand to the urn, and take without reluctance or hesitation that which is the lot of all. WENDELL PHILLIPS. THE ELOQUENCE OP O'CONNELL. I DO not think that I should exaggerate if I said that God, since He made Demosthenes, never made a man so fit for the great work as he did O'Connell. You may think I am partial to my hero, very naturally. But John Ran- dolph, of Roanoke, who hated an Irishman almost as much as he did a Yankee, when he got to London and heard O'Connell, the old slave-holder held up his hands and said: "This is the man; these are the lips, the most eloquent that speak English in my day." And I think he was right. Webster could address a bench of judges; Everett could charm a college; Choate could delude a jury; Clay could magnetize a Senate; Tom Corwin could hold the mob in his right hand; but no one of them could do more than that one thing. The wonder of O'Connell was that he could out-talk Corwin; he could charm a college better than Everett; delude a jury better than Choate, and leave Clay him- (251) 252 READY MONEY self far behind in magnetizing a Senate. I have heard all the grand and majestic orators of America, who are singularly famed on the world's circumference. I know what was the majesty of Webster; I know what it was to melt under the magnetism of Henry Clay; I have seen eloquence in the iron logic of Cal- houn; but all three together never surpassed, and no one of them ever equalled, the great Irishman. In the first place, he had — what is half the power with a popular orator — a majestic presence. God put that -royal soul into a body as royal. He had in early youth the brow of Jove or Jupiter, and the stature of Apollo; a little O'Connell would have been no O'Connell at all. Sidney Smith said of Lord John Rus- sell's five feet, when he went down to York- shire after the Reform Bill had been carried, that the stalwart hunters of Yorkshire said: "That little shrimp! What! he carry the Re- form BiU?" "No, no," said Sidney; "no; he was a large man; but the labors of the bill shrunk him." Do you remember the story of Webster, that Russell Lowell tells, when we, in Massachusetts, were about to break up the WENDELL PHILLIPS 253 Whig party? Webster came home to Faneuil Hall to protest; and four thousand Whigs went to meet him. He lifted up his majestic pres- ence before the sea of human faces, his brow charged with thunder, and he said: "I am a Whig — a Massachusetts Whig, a Revolutionary Whig, a constitutional Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig; and if you break up the Whig party where am I to go?" And Russell Lowell says: "We held our breaths, thinking where he could go. But if he had been iive feet," said Lowell, "we would have said: 'Well, hang it, who cares where you go?'" Well, O'Connell had all that. Then he had, besides, what Webster never had, and what Clay had, the magnetism and grace that melt a million souls into his. When I saw him he was sixty-six — lithe as a boy; his very attitude was beauty; every gesture was grace. Mac- ready or Booth never equalled him. Why, it would have been delightful even to look at him, if he had not spoken at all; and all you thought of was a greyhound. Then he had — what so few Americans have — a voice that sounded the gamut. I heard him once, in Exeter Hall, say: "Americans, I send my 254 READY MONEY voice careering, like a thunder storm, across the Atlantic, to tell South Carolina that God's thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the negroes that the dawn of their redemption is break- ing." And I seemed to hear the answer come re-echoing back to London from the Rocky Mountains. And then, with the slightest pos- sible flavor of an Irish brogue, he would tell a story that would make all Exeter Hall laugh. And the next moment tears were in his voice, like an old song, and five thousand men would be in tears. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THE GETTYSBTmG SPEECH. [Delivered at the dedication of the National Cem- etery at Gettysburg, Pa., November 19, 1863, by Abra- ham Lincoln, President of the United States. The speech was written by President Lincoln on the train while on his way to the dedicatory exercises.] Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, (255) 256 READY MONEY who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedi- cated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that govern- ment of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN. [Quotations from his Chicago speech, delivered at the Democratic National Convention, 1896. J I WOULD be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a con- test between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error .... We object to bringing this question down to the level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is bom, he acts, he dies; but prin- ciples are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a busi- ness man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the mer- chant of New York; the farmer who goes forth 17 (257) 258 READY MONEY in the morning and toils all day— who begins in the spring and toils all summer — and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding-places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial mag- nates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men. Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wUderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose — the pioneers away out there (pointing to the West), who rear their children near to Nature's heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds — out there where they have erected school-houses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 259 cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead — these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them. ANDREAS HOFER. DEFENSE OF HOFER, THE TYROLESE PATRIOT. [Speech delivered just before his execution by Napo- leon, February 20, 1810.J You ask what I have to say in my defense — you, who glory in the name of France, who wander through the world to enrich and exalt the land of your birth — you demand how I could dare to arm myself against the invaders of my native rocks? Do you confine the love of home to yourselves? Do you punish in others the actions which you dignify and reward among yourselves? Those stars which glitter on your breasts, do they hang there as a recom- pense for patient servitude? I see the smile of contempt which curls your lips. You say: this brute — he is a ruffian, a beggar! That patched jacket, that ragged cap, that rusty belt ; shall barbarians such as he close the pass against us, shower rocks on our heads, and single out our leaders with unfail- ing aim — these groveling mountaineers, who (261) 262 READY MONEY know not the joys and brilliance of life, creep- ing amidst eternal snows, and snatching with greedy hand their stinted ear of com? Yet, poor as we are, we never envied our neighbors their smiling sun, their gilded palaces; we never strayed from our peaceful huts to blast the happiness of those who had not injured us. The traveller who visited our valleys met every hand outstretched to wel- come him; for him every hearth blazed; with delight we listened to his tale of distant lands. Too happy for ambition, we were not jealous of his wealth; we have even refused to partake of it. Frenchmen! you have wives and children. When you return to your beautiful cities, amidst the roar of trumpets, the smiles of the lovely, and the multitudes shouting with triumph, they wUl ask. Where have you roamed? What have you achieved? What have you brought back to us? Those laughing babes who climb upon your knees, will you have the heart to tell them, we have pierced the barren crags, we have entered the naked cottage to level it to the ground; we found no treasures but honest hearts, and those we have ANDREAS HOFER 263 broken because they throbbed with love for the wilderness around them? Clasp this old firelock in your little hands; it was snatched from a peasant of Tyrol, who died in the vain effort to stem our torrent! Seated by your firesides, will you boast to your generous and blooming wives that you have extinguished the last ember which lightened our gloom? Happy scenes! I shall never see you more! In those cold and stern eyes I read my fate. Think not that your sentence can be terrible to me! But I have sons, daughters, and a wife who has shared all my labors; she has shared, too, my little pleasures — such pleasures as that humble roof can yield — pleasures that you cannot understand. My little ones! Should you live to bask in the sunshine of manhood, dream not of your father's doom. Should you live to know it, know, too, that the man who has served his God and country with all his heart can smile at the musket levelled to pierce it. What is death to me? I have not revelled in pleasures wrung from innocence or want; rough and discolored as are these hands, they are pure. My death is nothing. O that my country could 264 READY MONEY live! O that ten thousand such deaths could make her immortal! Do I despair, then? No; we have rushed to the sacrifice, and the offering has been vain for us; but our children shall burst these fetters; the blood of virtue was never shed in vain. Freedom can never die! I have heard that you killed your king once, because he enslaved you; yet now, again, you crouch before a single man who bids you trample on all who abjure his yoke, and shoots you if you have the cour- age to disobey. Do you think that, when I am buried, there shall breathe no other Hofers? Dream you that, if to-day you prostrate Hofer in the dust, to-morrow Hofer is no more? In the distance I see the liberty which I shall not taste; behind, I look on my slaughtered countrymen, on my orphans, on my desolate fields; but a star rises before my aching sight, which points to justice, and it shall come. Before the sun has sunk below yon mountains I shall awake in a paradise which you, per- haps, may never reach. THEODORE PARKER. A REMINISCENCE OF LEXINGTON. [Extract from Theodore Parker's Speech deHvered in his own defence before the Circuit Court in Boston, April 3, 1855. He was being tried for making a speech in Faneuil Hall against the kidnapping of Thomas Simms.J One raw morning in spring — it will be eighty years the nineteenth day of this month — Han- cock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came to seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of free- dom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia came together before day- light "for training." A great, tall man, with a large head and a high, wide brow, their cap- tain — one who had seen service — marshalled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bade "every man load his piece with powder and ball. I will order the first man shot that (26s) 266 READY MONEY runs away," said he, when some faltered. "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have war, let it begin here." Gentlemen, you know what followed; those farmers and mechanics "fired the shot heard around the world." A little monument covers the bones of such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred honor to the Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their lives. I was born in that little town, and bred up amid the memories of that day. When a boy, my mother lifted me up, one Sunday, in her religious, patriotic arms, and held me whUe I read the first monumental line I ever saw: "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of IMankind." Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome in many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian obelisks have I read What was written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt; but no chiselled stone has ever stirred me to such emotions as those rustic names of men who fell "In the Sacred Cause of God and their Country." Gentlemen, the spurit of Liberty, the love THEODORE PARKER 267 of Justice, was earlji fanned into a flame in my boyish heart. That monument covers the bones of my own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green grass at Lex- ington. It was my own name which stands chiselled on that stone; the tall captain who marshalled his fellow farmers into stern array and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war of American Independence — the last to leave the field — was my father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket he that day captured from the foe I learned also another religious lesson: that "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." I keep them both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both "In the Sacred Cause of God and My Country." WASHINGTON. [This beautiful tribute to Washington was written by an Englishman and has been framed and placed in the Washington mansion at Mount Vernon.] No matter what may be the birthplace of such a man as Washington, no cHmate can claim, no country can appropriate him — the boon of Providence to the human race — his fame is eternity and his residence creation. Though it was the defeat of our arms, and the disgrace of our policy, we almost bless the convulsion in which he had his origin — if the Heavens thundered and the earth rocked, yet when the storm passed, how pure was the climate that it cleared — how bright in the brow of the firmament was the planet it revealed to us! In the production of Washington — it does really appear as if nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies preparatory to the Patriot of the new. As a general he marshalled the peasant into a veteran and supplied by discipline the absence (269) 270 READY MONEY of experience. As a statesman he enlarged the policy of the Cabinet into the most com- prehensive of general advantage; and such vsras the wisdom of his views, and the philosophy of his councils, that to the soldier and the statesman he almost added the character of the sage. A country called him to the command — liberty unsheathed his sword — necessity stayed — victory returned it. If he had passed here, history might doubt what station to assign him; whether at the head of her citizens or soldiers — her heroes or her patriots. But the last glorious act crowned his career, and banished hesitation. Who, like Washington, after having freed a country, resigned her crown, and retired to a cottage, rather than remain in a capital? Immortal man! He took from the battle its crime, and from the conquest its chains — he left the victorious the glory of his self-denial, and turned on the vanquished only the retri- bution of his mercy. Happy, proud America! The lightnings of Heaven could not resist your Sage; the temp- tations of earth could not corrupt your Soldier. JOHN BRIGHT. THE TRXJE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND. I BELIEVE there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feel- ings and conditions of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of government. The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old scimitar upon a platform as a symbol of Mars. To this scimitar they offered more costly sacrifices than to all the rest of their gods. I often ask myself whether we are at all advanced in one respect beyond the Scythians. (271 ) 272 READY MONEY What are our contributions to charity, to education, to morahty, to rehgion, to justice, and to civil government when compared with the wealth we expend in sacrifices to the old scimiter? We are assured, however, that Rome pur- sued a policy similar to ours for a period of eight centuries, and that for those eight cen- turies she remained great. But what is Rome now? The great city is dead. A poet has described it as "the lone mother of dead empires." Her language even is dead. Her very tombs are empty; the ashes of her most illustrious citizens are dispersed. "The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now." Yet I am asked, I who am one of the legislators of a Christian country, to measure my policy by the policy of ancient and pagan Rome! May I ask you to believe, as I do most devoutly believe, that. the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations, and for nations as great as this of which we are citi- zens. If nations reject and deride this moral law there is a penalty that will inevitably fol- low. It may not come at once, it may not JOHN BRIGHT 273 come in our lifetime; but rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says: "The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, nor doth it linger." We have expe- rience, we have beacons, we have landmarks enough. It is true we have not, as an ancient people had, urim and thummim, those oracular gems on Aaron's breast, from which to take council; but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us, and only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people. 18 JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES. HENRY W. GRADY. [John Temple Graves is one of the greatest editors and orators of our own day. It is by his kind permis- sion that we are able to reprint this eloquent tribute to his friend. At the conclusion of this address General John B. Gordon said : " Nothing that Henry W. Grady ever spoke or wrote has equalled or surpassed in elo- quence the incomparable eulogy which John Temple Graves has pronounced upon his life."] Ladies and Gentlemen: I am only one among the thousands who loved Henry W. Grady, and I stand with the millions who lament his death. I loved him in the promise of his glowing youth, when across my boyish vision he walked with winning grace from easy effort to success. I loved him in the flush of splendid manhood, when a nation hung upon his words, and now I love him best of all as he lies yonder under the December skies, asleep, with face as tranquil and smile as sweet as patriot ever wore. In this sweet and solemn hour all the rare and kindly adjectives that blossomed in the (27s) 276 READY MONEY shining pathway of his pen seem to have come from every quarter of the continent to lay themselves in loving tribute at their master's feet; but rich as is the music that they bring the cadences of all our eulogies sigh: ". . . for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still. ' ' And here to-day, within this hall, glorified by the echoes of his eloquence, standing to answer the impulses of my heart in the roll- call of his friends, and stricken with the empti- ness of words, I know that when the finger of death touched those eyelids into sleep there gathered a silence on the only Hps that could weave the sunlit story of his days or mete sufficient eulogy to the incomparable richness of his life. I agree with Patrick Collins that he was the most brilliant son of this Republic. No elo- quence has equalled his since Sargent Prentiss faded from the earth. No pen has ploughed such noble furrow in his country's fallow fields since the wrist of Horace Greeley rested. No age of the Republic has witnessed such marvellous conjunction of a magic pen with the velvet JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES 277 splendor of a mellow tongue, and though the warlike rival of these wondrous forces never rose within his life, it is writ of all his living that the noble fires of his genius were lighted in his boyhood from the gleam that died upon his father's sword. I have loved to follow and I love to follow now the pathway of that diamond pen as it flashed like an inspiration over every phase of life in Georgia. It touched the sick body of a desolate and despairing agriculture with the impulse of a better method, and the farmer, catching the glow of promise in his words, left off sighing and went to singing in his fields until at last the better day has come, and as the sunshine melts into the harvest with the tender rain the heart of humanity is glad in his hope, and the glow on his fields seems the smile of the Lord. Its brave point went with cheerful prophecy into the ranks of toil, until the workman at his anvil felt the dignity of labor pulse the sombre routine of the hours, and the curse of Adam, softening in the faith of silver sentences, be- came the blessing and the comfort of his days. Into the era of practical politics it dashed 278 READY MONEY with the grace of an earlier chivalry, and in an age of pushing and unseemly scramble it woke the spirit of a loftier sentiment, while around the glow of splendid narrative and entrancing plea there grew a goodlier company of youth, linked to the Republic's nobler legends and holding fast that generous loyalty that builds the highest bulwark of the state. Long after his pen had blazed his way to eminence he waked the power of that surpassing oratory that has bettered the sentiment of all his country and enriched the ripe vocabulary of the world. Nothing in the history of human speech can equal the stately steppings of his eloquence into glory. In a single night he caught the heart of the country in his warm embrace and leaped from a banquet revelry into national fame. It is, at last, the crowning evidence of his genius that he held to the end unbroken the high fame so easily won, and sweeping from triumph unto triumph without one leaf of his laurels withered by time or staled by circumstances, he died on yesterday the fore- most orator of all the world. If I should seek to touch the inward source of all his greatness, I would lay my hand upon JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES 279 his heart. There was the furnace wherein he fused his glowing speech. Love bore his mes- sages to the world, and the honest throb of human sympathies kept him responsive to all things great and true. Through him and through his manly eloquence the sections were learning to see each other more clearly and to love each other better. He was melting bitter- ness in the warmth of his patriotic fervors, sections were being linked in the logic of his liberality, and when he died he was literally loving a nation into peace. Fit and dramatic climax to a glorious mission that he should have lived to carry the South's last message to the centre of the nation's cul- ture, and then, with the gracious answer to his transcendent service locked in his royal heart, come home to die among the people he had served! Fitter stUl that, as he walked in final triumph through the streets of his beloved city, he should have caught upon his kingly brow that wreath of Southern roses — richer jewels than Victoria wears — plucked by the hands of Georgia women, borne by the hands of Georgia men, and flung about him with a tenderness that crowned him for his burial — 28o READY MONEY that in the unspeakable fragrance of Georgia's full and sweet approval he might "wrap the drapery of his couch about him and lie down to pleasant dreams." I thank God, as I stand above my buried friend, there is not one ignoble memory in all the shining pathway of his fame. In all the glorious gifts that God Almighty gave him, not one was ever bent to willing service in unworthy cause. He lived to make the world about him better. With all his splendid might he helped to build a happier, heartier, and more wholesome sentiment among his kind. And in fondness mixed with reverence I believe that the Christ of Calvary, who died for men, has given welcome sweet to one who fleshed within his person the golden spirit of the new commandment and spent his life in glorious living for his race. O brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a season thy precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but we fling back against all our brightening skies the thought- less speech that calls thee dead. God reigns and his purpose lives; and though thy brave lips are silent here, the seeds of this inspired JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES 281 eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the years to come and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler men. If we would speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within this city that he loved a monument tall as his services and lasting as the place he filled. No fire that can be kindled on the altars of our speech can relume the radiant spark that perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn beside the sunlight of his useful life. After aU is said there can be nothing grander than such living. I have seen the light that gleamed at midnight from the headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the dark- ness, heedless of danger and fearless of danger, and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the eastern hills in glory, driv- ing the lazy darkness like mist before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree and blade of grass glittered in the myriad diamonds of the morn- ing ray, and I thought it was grand. I have seen the hghtning leap at midnight athwart the storm-swept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling winds, tUl cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth flashed into mid- 282 READY MONEY day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the Almighty's throne, is the light of a noble and beautiful life, wrapping itself in tender benediction round the destinies of men, and finding its home in the blessed bosom of the Everlasting God. WASHINGTON. The brave — the wise — the good. WASHINGTON Supreme in war, in council, and in peace. WASHINGTON Discreet, without fear; valiant, without ambition; confident, without presumption. WASHINGTON In disaster calm ; in success moderate ; in all himself. WASHINGTON The hero, the patriot, the Christian ; the father of nations, the friend of mankind ; who, when he had won all, renounced all ; and sought, in the bosom of his family and of nature, retirement ; and in the hope of religion immortality. (283) DANIEL WEBSTER. [Extracts from "Webster's Reply to Hayne," deliv- ered in the United States Senate, January 27, 1830.] . . . Mr. President, I shall enter upon no encomium of Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there thev wUl remain forever. The bones of her sons falling in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia, and there they will lie forever. . . . Mr. • President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of (285) 286 READY MONEY which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its sponta- neous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the States, it is of most vital and essential impor- tance to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influence these great interests imme- diately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our ter- ritory has stretched out wider and wider, and DANIEL WEBSTER 287 our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its bene- fits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this Government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day at least that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last 288 READY MONEY time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored frag- ments of a once glorious Union; on States dis- severed, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and hon- ored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward;" but ever3rwhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. THE DEATH OF NATHAN HALE. [Delivered at the unveiling of the Nathan Hale statue, Hartford, Conn., June i6, 1887.] It is the deed and the memorable last words we think of when we think of Nathan Hale. For all the man's life, all his character, flow- ered and bloomed into immortal beauty in this one supreme moment of self-sacrifice, triumph, defiance. The ladder on which the deserted boy stood amidst the enemies of his country, when he uttered those last words, which all human annals do not parallel in simple patri- otism — the ladder, I am sure, ran up to heaven, and if angels were not seen ascending and descending it in that gray morning, there stood the embodiment of American courage unconquerable; American faith invincible; American love of country unquenchable ; a new democratic manhood in the world, visible there for all men to take note of, crowned already with the halo of victory, in the Revolutionary 19 ( 289 ) 290 READY MONEY Dawn. Oh, my Lord Howe ! it seemed a trifling incident to you and to your bloodhound, Provost- Marshal Cunningham; but those winged last words were worth ten thousand men to the drooping patriot army. Oh, your majesty. King George the Third! here was a spirit, could you but have known it, that would cost you an empire; here was an ignominious death that would grow in the estimation of man- kind, increasing in nobility above the fading pageantry of the exit of kings. It was on a lovely Sunday morning, Sep- tember 2 2d, before the break of day, that he was marched to the place of execution. While awaiting the necessary preparations, a cour- ageous young officer permitted him to sit in his tent. He asked for the presence of a chap- lain; his request was refused. He asked for a Bible; it was denied. But at the solicitation of the young officer he was furnished with writing materials and wrote briefly to his mother, his sister, and his betrothed. When the infamous Cunningham, to whom Howe had delivered him, read what was written, he was furious at the noble and dauntless spirit shown, and with foul oaths tore the letters CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 291 into shreds, saying afterward that "the rebels should never know that they had a man who could die with such firmness." As Hale stood upon the fatal ladder, Cunningham taunted him, and scoffingly demanded "his last dying speech and confession." The hero did not heed the words of the brute, but looking calmly on the spectators, said in a clear voice: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." GEORGE BANCROFT. THE REVOLUTIONARY ALARM. [Taken from Chapter XL, Volume I., "Bancroft's History of the American Revolution," first published in 1852.] Darkness closed upon the country and upon the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the war message from hand to hand, till vil- lage repeated it to village, the sea to the back- woods, the plains to the highlands, and it was never suffered to droop till it had been borne North and South, and East and West, through- out the land. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot; its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and ringing like bugle notes from peak to peak, over-leapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean river till the responses were echoed from the cliffs at Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale. As ( 293 ) 294 READY MONEY the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York, in one more at Philadel- phia, the next it lighted a watch-fire at Balti- more, then it waked an answer at AnnapoHs. Crossing the Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward, without a halt, to Williams- burg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emi- grants to North Carolina. It moved onward and still onward, through boundless groves of evergreen to Newbern and to Wilmington. "For God's sake forward it by night and day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots in South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and dispatched it to Charleston, and, through pines and palmettos and moss-clad live oaks, farther to the South, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond the Savannah. The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers that the "loud call" might pass through to the hardy rifleman on the Holston, the Watauga, and the French Broad. Ever renewing its GEORGE BANCROFT 295 strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky, so that hun- ters who made their halt in the valley of the Elkhom commemorated the igth day of April, 1775, by naming their encampment "Lexington." With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms; with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other, "to be ready for the extreme event." With one heart the continent cried, "Liberty or death!" HENRY W. GRADY. THE NEW SOUTH. [Henry W. Grady, journalist and author, was born in Athens, Georgia, in 185 1; died in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of thirty-eight. This address was delivered at the eighty-first anniversary celebration of the New England Society in New York, December 22, 1886, and is here printed by the kind permission of the Hudgins Publishing Company, Atlanta, Georgia, who publish the ' ' Life and Labors of Henry W. Grady, ' ' from which this address is taken.] Mr. President and Gentlemen: "There was a South of slavery and secession — that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom — that South, thank God, is Hving, breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. HUl, at Tammany Hall in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make my text to- night. Let me express to you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt acknowl- ( 297) 298 READY MONEY edgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no more than the opening sentence, it would be well if, in that sentence, I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had per- ished, so to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted through your kindness to catch my second wind, let me say that I appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to speak at this board, which bears the substance, if it sur- passes the semblance, of original New Eng- land hospitality and honors a sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my personality is lost and the compliment to my people made plain. I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as the landing afforded, into the basement; and while picking himself up had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out : "John, did you break the pitcher?" HENRY W. GRADY 299 "No, I didn't," said John, "but I be dinged if I don't!" (Laughter.) So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me with energy if not with cour- age, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you will bring your full faith in Ameri- can fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morniag. The boys finding the place, glued together the con- necting pages. (Laughter.) The next morn- ing he read on the bottom of one page: "When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was" — then turning the page — "one hundred and forty cubits long (laughter), forty cubits wide, built of gopher wood (laughter), and covered with pitch inside and out." (I^oud and continued laughter.) He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said: "My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept it as an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and won- derfully made." (Laughter.) If I could get you to hold such faith to-night I could proceed 300 READY MONEY cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of consecration. Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich eloquence of your speakers — the fact that the Cavalier as well as the Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was "up and able to be about." (Laughter.) I have read your books carefully and I find no mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving a sort of his- torical equilibrium if for nothing else. Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on this continent — that cavalier, John Smith, gave New England its very name, and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name around ever since — and that while MUes Standish was cutting off men's ears for courting a girl without her parents' consent, and forbade men to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in sight, and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the cavalier colonies, the huts in the wilder- ness being full as the nests in the woods. HENRY W. GRADY 301 But having incorporated the CavaUer as a fact in your charming Httle books, I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he has always done with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as such. The virtues and tradi- tions of both happily still live for the inspira- tion of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. (Applause.) But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first revolution; and the American citizen, sup- planting both and stronger than either, took possession of the Republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men govern- ment and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God. (Applause.) My friend, Dr. Talmage, has told you that the t)^ical American has yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. (Ap- plause.) Great types like valuable plants are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonist Puritan and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through 302 READY MONEY a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic- Abraham Lincoln. (Loud and continued applause.) He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. (Re- newed applause.) He was greater than Puri- tan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American (renewed applause), and that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government — charging it with such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that mart)Tdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. (Cheers.) Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored; and in our com- mon glory as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine. (Renewed cheering.) HENRY W. GRADY 303 In speaking to the toast with which you have honored me, I accept the term, "The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my child- hood and the traditions of my people. I would not if I could dim the glory they won in peace and war, or by word or deed take aught from the splendor and grace of their civilization — never equalled and, perhaps, never to be equalled in its chivalric strength and grace. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself, and to the consideration of which I hasten lest it become the Old South before I get to it. Age does not endow all things with strength and virtue, nor are all new things to be despised. The shoemaker who put over his door "John Smith's shop. Founded in 1760," was more than matched by his young rival across the street who hung out this sign: "Bill Jones. Established 1886. No old stock kept in this shop." Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's hand, the picture of your returning 304 READY MONEY armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war — an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory — in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equalled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever wel- comed heroes home. Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket, the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfee- bled by want and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find — let me ask you, who went to your homes eager to find in the welcome you had HENRY W. GRADY 305 justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice — what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against over- whelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his bams empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone; without money, credit, employment, material, or training; and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence — the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. What does he do — this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, in- spired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches 3o6 READY MONEY into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow; the fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and frank- ness prevailed. "Bill Arp" struck the key- note when he said: "Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now I am going to work." (Laughter and applause.) Or the soldier returning home after defeat and roasting some corn on the roadside who made the remark to his comrades: "You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going to Sandersville, kiss my wife, and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool with me any more I will whip 'em again." (Renewed applause.) I want to say to General Sherman — who is considered an able man in our parts, though some people think he is a kind of careless man about fire — that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we have caught the HENRY W. GRADY 307 sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory. (Applause.) But in all this what have we accomplished? What is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the general summary the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories and put business above politics. We have challenged your spinners in Massachusetts and your iron makers in Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually received from our cotton crop will make us rich when the supplies that make it are home- raised. We have reduced the commercial rate of interest from 24 to 6 per cent., and are floating 4 per cent, bonds. We have learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's line used to be, and hung our latchstring out to you and yours. (Prolonged cheers.) We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every household, 3o8 READY MONEY when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did "before the war." (Laughter.) We have established thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love with work. We have re- stored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sher- man's cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee, as he manu- factures relics of the battle-field in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive oil out of his cotton-seed, against any downeaster that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel sausages in the valleys of Vermont. (Continuous laughter.) Above all we know that we have achieved in these "piping times of peace" a fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to win in the forum by their eloquence or compel on the field by their swords. (Loud applause.) It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this work. Never was HENRY W. GRADY 309 nobler duty confided to human hands than the upHfting and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South, misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always. (Applause.) In the record of her social, industrial, and political illustrations we await with confidence the verdict of the w^orld. But what of the negro? Have we solved the problem he presents, or progressed in honor and equity towards the solution? Let the record speak to the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than the negroes of the South; none in fuller sym- pathy with employing and land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest pro- tection of our laws and the friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as honor, demand that he should have this. Our future, our very existence depend upon our working out this problem in full and exact justice. We under- stand that when Lincoln signed the Emanci- pation Proclamation your victory was assured; for he then committed you to the cause of human liberty, against which the arms of man cannot prevail [Applause], while those of our 3IO READY MONEY statesmen who trasted to make slavery the corner-stone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in the sight of advancing civilization. (Renewed applause.) Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill, he would have been foolish, for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New England when your fathers — not to be blamed for parting with what didn't pay — sold their slaves to our fathers — not to be praised for knowing a paying thing when they saw it. (Laughter.) The relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenceless women and children, whose hus- bands and fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the HENRY W. GRADY 311 shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion. (Applause.) Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled him, philanthropists estab- lished a bank for him, but the South, with the North, protests against injustice to this simple and sincere people. To liberty and enfran- chisement is as far as law can carry the negro. The rest must be left to conscience and common sense. It should be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future, if the South holds her reason and integrity. (Applause.) But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered — I don't say when Johnston surrendered, because I understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the time when 312 READY MONEY he "determined to abandon any further prose- cution of the struggle" — when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South became and has since been loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. (Applause.) Under the old regime the negroes were slaves to the South, the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police regulation and its feudal habit, was the only t3^e possible under slavery. Thus we gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the sub- stance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture, but leaving the body chill and colorless. (Applause.) The Old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. HENRY W. GRADY 313 The New South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular move- ment — a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface but stronger at the core — a hundred farms for every planta- tion, fifty homes for every palace, and a diver- sified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age. The New South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrUling with the con- sciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, fuU-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipa- tion came because in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten. (Applause.) This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the States was war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should 314 READY MONEY be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hills— a plain white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England — from Ply- mouth Rock all the way — would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall send my chil- dren's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil — the American Union saved from the wreck of war. (Loud applause.) HENRY W. GRADY 315 This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every foot of soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a battle-ground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to you by the blood of your brothers, who died for your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blood of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat — sacred soil to all of us, rich with mem- ories that make us purer and stronger and better, silent but staunch witnesses in its red desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless glory of American arms — speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the imperishable brotherhood of the American people. (Re- peated cheers.) Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the prejudices of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerers, when it has died in the hearts of the conquered? ("No! No!") Will she transmit this prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts, which never felt the generous ardor of conflict, 3i6 READY MONEY it may perpetuate itself? ("No! No!") Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his soldier's heart Grant offered to I^ee at Appomattox? WUl she make the vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise and glorifying his path to the grave; will she make this vision on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? (Tu- multuous cheering and shouts of "No! No!") If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not; if she accepts in frankness and sincerity this message of good- will and friendship, then wUl the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very Society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, be ver- ified in its fullest and final sense, when he said : "Standing hand to hand and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, mem- bers of the same government, united, all united now and united forever." There have been HENRY W. GRADY 317 difficulties, contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment ' ' Those opposed eyes, Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred. Did lately meet in th' intestine shock, Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, March all one way." Thoughts That Inspire IN TWO VOLUMES CONTAINS thousands of brilliant quotations on SUCCESS, PERSONALITY and POWER culled from the literature of the ages ; thoughts that have set the world on fire with enthusiasm and marked the mile-posts of progress. Every page is an inspiration. Only the best and most inspiring quotations have been selected. They contain the cream of modern writings along the line of success, energy and achieve- ment, and the best from the generations past. They are something entirely new. No book like them was ever before prepared. They represent the undivided efforts and untiring zeal of a number of energetic, ambitious men and women in their compilation. No pains have been spared to perfect them, nothing has been put in to fill up space, and the result is a beautiful and invaluable addition to any library. In addition to the regular quotations, which cover over one hundred classified subjects on success, these books contain over two hundred old sayings, a thousand bits of wisdom from the great men of every age, rules of conduct and personal maxims and sayings by both busi- ness men and philosophers, and over one hundred and fifty complete poems on success : poems that are alive with energy and breathe inspiration, encouragement and success. These poems alone are well worth the entire price of the books. Price,in handsome dark-red cloth,gold letteringon side and back, gilt top, 5^x7^4;, each ^1.68 net, postpaid. In limp teaiher, silk lining, $3.40 PERSONAL HELP PUBLISHING CO. Department Z Des Moines, Iowa Helps to Health and Purity A BOOK FOR MEN IS NEEDED ; is bought ; is prized by thousands. One free editorial in the Los Angeles Tiines brought nearly one hundred orders. For a year Dr. C. S. Carr, editor of Medical Talk, has unquali- fiedly urged young men everywhere to get a copy at once. In the truest sense it is A YOUNG MAN'S MESSAGE TO YOUNG MEN It contains points new to you and points that you will appreciate. It shows the utter foolishness of sending money to quack doctors, or so-called "specialists," who pretend to cure Lost Manhood, etc. It contains four departments ; sixty chapters ; is well bound in cloth, regular dollar binding, but we sell it for fifty cents, postpaid. Write us about our book department in general. We are selling ^looo worth of books a day. Send along fifty cents for this splendid revelation of facts, and then you can be your own " specialist." PERSONAL HELP PUBLISHING CO. Department Z Des Moines, Iowa