  Resolve to cultivate a cheerful spirit, a smiling countenance, and a soothing voice. The sweet smile, the subdued speech, the hopeful mind, are earth’s most potent conquerors, and he who cultivates them becomes a very master among men.—Hubbard. “Boy Wanted” Are you the boy? If you have carefully read and digested the foregoing chapters you have a pretty clear understanding of the sort of boy the world prefers for a life partner. You have learned that you must Ask no favors of “luck,”—win your way like a man; Be active and earnest and plucky; Then your work will come out just about as you plan And the world will exclaim, “Oh, how lucky!” They also serve who only stand and wait.—Milton. In studying the history of the lives of successful men we are constantly being impressed with the thought that they make the most out of their surroundings, whatever their surroundings may be. They do not wait for a good chance to succeed; they take such chances as they can get and make them good. We very soon learn that Two things fill me with awe: the starry heavens above, and the moral sense within.—Kant. The ones who shall win are the ones who will toil; The future is all in our keeping; Though fortune may give us the seed and the soil, We must still do the sowing and reaping. The realities of to-day surpass the ideals of yesterday.—Frothingham. The person who considers everything will never decide on anything.—Italian. We learn, also, that one may achieve a full measure of success without accumulating much money, and may accumulate much money without achieving success. “Mere wealth is no more success than fools’ gold is real gold,” says one of our wise essayists. “Collaterals do not take the place of character. A man obtains thousands or millions of dollars by legal or illegal thieving, and society, instead of sending him to prison, receives him in its parlors. Men bow low when he passes, as in the fable the people bowed to the golden idols that were strapped on the back of a donkey, who was ass enough to swell with pride in the thought that all this reverence was for him. The man who puts his trust in gold and deposits his heart in the bank, and thinks money means success, is like the starving traveler in the desert, who, seeing a bag in the distance, found in it, instead of food which he sought, nothing but gold, and flung it from him in disappointment, and died for want of some Nobody can carry three watermelons under one arm.—Spanish. It is along such lines of thinking that I offer these thoughts ON GETTING RICHWhen men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.—Plato. Get riches, my boy! Grow as rich as you can; ’Tis the laudable aim of each diligent man Of life’s many blessings his share to secure, Nor go through this world ill-conditioned and poor. Get riches, my boy! Ah, but hearken you, mind! Get riches, but those of the genuine kind. Get riches,—not dollars and acres unless You thoughtfully use them to brighten and bless. The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-being and well-doing, and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.—Samuel Smiles. Get riches, not such as with money are bought, But those that with love and high thinking are wrought; Get rubies of righteousness, jewels of grace, Whose brightness Time’s passing shall never efface. Get riches! Do not, as the foolish will do, In getting your money let money get you To steal life’s high purpose from heart and from head And prison the soul in a pocket instead. Get riches! Get gold that is pure and refined; Get light from above; get the love of mankind; Get gladness through all of life’s journey; and then Get heaven, forever and ever. Amen. He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.—Greek. The wide-awake boy will see the advantage of carrying in his thought these words of Lavater: “He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man.” Stones and sticks are flung only at fruit-bearing trees.—Persian. The man of words and not of thoughts Is like a great long row of naughts. “There is a gift beyond the reach of art, of being eloquently silent,” says Bovee, and Caroline Fox tells us that “the silence which precedes words is so much grander than the grandest words because in it are created those thoughts of which words are the mere outward clothing.” To speak to no purpose is as idle as the clanging of tinkling cymbals. Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.—Sydney Smith. A thoughtful man will never set His tongue a-going and forget To stop it when his brain has quit A-thinking thoughts to offer it. “If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest once,” says Penn, “thou wilt speak twice the better for it.” It is this matter of thinking, of con It is an uncontroverted truth that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.—Swift. It is this habit of careful thinking that is going to make you remember that you owe it not only to yourself to make your life the truest success you can, but you owe it to your family, your friends, your enemies—if such you have—to the whole world with which you are in partnership, and to the stars above you. The great successes of the world have been affairs of a second, a third, nay, a fiftieth trial.—John Morley. But above all others there is one who, either in spirit or in her living presence, must ever and always be near to you, and for whose sake you will—God helping you!—stand up in your boots and be a man! THE MOTHER’S DREAMBe what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.—Sydney Smith. Boy, your mother’s dreaming; there’s a picture pure and bright That gladdens all her gracious tasks at morning, noon and night; A picture where is blended all the beauty born of hope, A view that takes the whole of life within its loving scope. Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be.—Pythagoras. She’s dreaming, fondly dreaming, of the happy future when Her boy shall stand the equal of his grandest fellow men Her boy, whose heart with goodness she has labored to imbue, Shall be, in her declining years, her lover proud and true. Courage consists, not in blindly overlooking danger, but in meeting it with the eyes open.—Jean Paul Richter. She’s growing old; her cheeks have lost the blush and bloom of spring, But oh! her heart is proud because her son shall be a king; Shall be a king of noble deeds, with goodness crowned, and own The hearts of all his fellow men, and she shall share his throne. Boy, your mother’s dreaming; there’s a picture pure and bright That gladdens all her gracious tasks at morning, noon and night; A view that takes the whole of life within its loving scope; O Boy, beware! you must not mar that mother’s dream and hope. Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Some minor corrections of spelling and puctuation have been made. |
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