The ones who live the longest and best lives are the cheerful workers, those who find a good excuse for liking the task that comes to their hands. The greatest joy and the truest success do not come to the idler, nor the one who overworks, nor yet to the one who does things by fits and starts, but to
LONGFELLOW’S BIRTHPLACE PORTLAND ME.
“If I had the time!”
Yes, indeed! Time is a very necessary factor in the doing of things. Time is money. Money is capital. Capital is power. The one who is in the possession of the most power and uses it to the best purpose has the best chance for winning success.
Other things being equal, the boy who devotes an extra half-hour every morning or evening to the study of the forthcoming day’s lessons will get on better than his classmates who do not thus mentally fortify themselves.
So in the world’s big life-school, the man who finds time to think about and to study the tasks and duties that confront him will make a better showing than the ones who thoughtlessly and in an unprepared manner blunder into the work that is before them.
“If I had the time!”
That is the sorry cry coming from the lips of thousands of unhappy persons of all classes and ages. But the saddest feature of it all is, that they have the time and do not know it. Or, if they do know it, they still go on trying to deceive themselves and others by repeating the same old, threadbare excuse the world has always offered as the reason why it has not made the progress it should have done.
Now, my boy, stop a moment and honestly think it over. Haven’t you the time? Isn’t it the disposition to make the most of your opportunities that is lacking? How much time did you waste yesterday? How much time are you going to waste to-day?
Let us not lose sight of the sorry fact that in wasting an hour we suffer a double loss and commit a double wrong. We not only lose that particular hour, but we are suffering a moral weakness to impair the strength of our life purpose, which will result in making us more likely to waste other golden hours yet to come.
And what is a wasted hour? This is a question well worth considering. Moments spent in bright, healthful, joyous play are not wasted. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It should be remembered, also, that “All play and no work makes Jack a dull shirk.”
We should play with the same keen zest with which we should work. We must not work all the while; we must not play all the while. Good, vigorous play prepares one for the enjoyment of work; good, vigorous work prepares one for the enjoyment of play. Those who dawdle in a listless, half-and-half way find no joy in working or playing.
It is an error to think that play cannot be made to serve a good and useful purpose. Give one boy a knife and a stick and he will produce only a lot of shavings as the result of his whittling. Give another boy a knife and a stick and he will carve out some object or invention of use and beauty. Give one man leisure and he will produce nothing or worse than nothing to show for his wasted hours. Give another man leisure and he will master some trade or profession or theme of study that will make him of happy worth to himself and the world.
It is not the lack of time, but the lack of the will to improve our spare moments, that keeps us from going toward success. We mean to do great things some time, but we haven’t the will to begin to build just now. We prefer to belong to that great host of procrastinators who are known as
“Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.” How clearly these words of Horace Mann set forth the experience of thousands of persons, day by day.
Channing tells us, “it is astonishing how fruitful of improvement a short season becomes when eagerly and faithfully improved. Volumes have not only been read, but written, in flying journeys. I have known a man of vigorous intellect, who has enjoyed few advantages of early education, and whose mind was almost engrossed by the details of an extensive business, but who composed a book of much original thought, in steamboats and on horseback, while visiting distant customers.”
The thought recorded by Jeremy Taylor is well worth remembering, that he who is choice of his time will also be choice of his company, and choice of his actions; lest the first engage him in vanity and loss, and the latter, by being criminal, be throwing his time and himself away, and going back in the accounts of eternity.
The plea, “If I had the time,” is well met by Matthew Arnold, who says: “And the plea that this or that man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin to examine seriously into our present use of time.”
“Oh, what wonders have been performed in ‘one hour a day,’” says Marden. “One hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits, and profitably employed, would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. One hour a day would make an ignorant man a well-informed man in ten years. One hour a day would earn enough to pay for two daily and two weekly papers, two leading magazines, and a dozen good books. In an hour a day a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully—over seven thousand pages, or eighteen large volumes, in a year. An hour a day might make all the difference between bare existence and useful, happy living. An hour a day might make—nay, has made—an unknown man a famous one, a useless man a benefactor to his race. Consider, then, the mighty possibilities of two—four—yes, six hours a day that are, on the average, thrown away by young men and women in the restless desire for fun and diversion.”
There is little excuse for continued ignorance these times. If one’s time is spent at a point remote from institutions of learning, or his days are so occupied that he cannot avail himself of their advantages, he can be a pupil in an ably conducted correspondence school, that most worthy of educational means whereby the youth in the isolated rural home, the shut-ins who by force of circumstances are prisoned within narrow walls, the night-watchman whose leisure comes at a time when all other schools are closed, the seeker after knowledge of any kind, at any time and at any place reached by the great governmental postal system, can be brought into close touch with a great fountain of learning and inspiration of which one may absorb all he will. From this time forth it will ill become any man to say that he has no chance to acquire an education, or that he has no opportunity to improve upon the mental equipment he already possesses. Instruction is within the reach of all. The schoolmaster is abroad as he has never been before. Wherever the postman can deliver a letter, in cottage or mansion, in the closely packed tenements of the city or in the remote farm homes reached by the rural free delivery routes, there the trained college professor makes his daily or weekly visits, giving his “heart to heart” talks with each of his thousands of pupils. He is with the boys as they follow the plow, the men who go down into the mines, the girls who serve at the loom and the lathe, pointing out the way that leads, through self-help, to happiness.
It is more true to-day than ever before, that “they can who think they can.” The means are more nearly at hand if one is determined to try them. Nothing but the spirit of procrastination can keep man or boy from setting about it to help himself toward better things. When to begin is the stumbling-block in the way of most persons. There is but one time when we can do anything. That time is NOW! To delay a year, a week, a day may prove most unfortunate. Indeed, trouble lies in the way of those who are disposed to defer the doing of their duty for even
If we make a careful study of the lives of the world’s great men and women, we shall find that their distinction was achieved by making the most of their spare minutes. The ordinary, commonplace, and inevitable tasks of life and the effort required to make a living are remarkably similar in the daily experience of most men and women. It is what one does with the remaining leisure moments that determines his individual taste and trend, and eventually gives him such distinction as he may attain. It is in our leisure hours that we are permitted to follow our “hobbies,” and it is in them that our truer selves find expression. Many of the greatest men in the world’s history achieved their fame outside of their regular occupations in the spare moments of time which most people think are of no serious use. Marden wisely observes that “no one is anxious about a young man while he is busy in useful work. But where does he eat his lunch at noon? Where does he go when he leaves his boarding-house at night? What does he do after supper? Where does he spend his Sundays and holidays? The great majority of youth who go to the bad are ruined after supper. Most of them who climb upward to honor and fame devote their evenings to study or work or the society of the wise and good. For the right use of these leisure hours, what we have called the waste of life, the odd moments usually thrown away, the author would plead with every youth.”
Watt learned chemistry and mathematics while working at his trade of a mathematical-instrument maker. Darwin composed most of his works by writing his thoughts on scraps of paper wherever he chanced to be. Henry Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and from a lawyer’s office. Elihu Burritt acquired a mastery of eighteen languages and twenty-two dialects by improving the fragments of time which he could steal from his occupation as a blacksmith. Hundreds of similar examples could be given in which men have achieved distinction by improving the odd moments which others waste.
And you, oh, my boy! when you have reached the age where the world has a right to expect that you will begin to prepare yourself for the work that is before you, lay hold, I beseech you, of these “spare moments,” and weld them into a beautiful purpose that shall make your life a joy to yourself and to all who shall come within the zone of your influence. Do not fail to improve the moments because they are so few. The fewer there are the more the need of improving them. Do not procrastinate, do not put off, do not defer the work of self-improvement till a more favorable time. Know that with the coming of every opportunity you have a duty to perform. That you must help yourself whenever you can, and that you must
GARFIELD AS A CANAL BOY
Let us suppose that you must go into partnership for life with some other boy, as the world is about to go into partnership with you, would you not wish him to have, first of all, a cheerful disposition?
Has it ever occurred to you that the world entertains the same thought regarding yourself?
It is easy to understand why a partnership, the members of which pleasantly pull together, is more likely to thrive than is one wherein they are always complaining of each other and sadly prophesying failure.
The world, as your partner, will be toward you what you are toward it.
“As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms,” says James Allen, “so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can result only from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and good will and serenity. There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with good will for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison-hole. But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all—such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to the possessor of such thoughts.”
Says Robert Louis Stevenson: “A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is radiating a focus of good will; and his or her entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.”
“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor,” says Dickens.
Bovee very truly says, “The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards.”
“I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies,” said Sydney Smith, “but am otherwise very happy.” How often those with whom we meet are sorely afflicted and yet their cheerful faces do not betray their troubles. They are too considerate of our happiness to sadden our minds with their woes. Those whom we deem fretful without sufficient excuse, if indeed any excuse justifies the habit of fretting, may be much more sorely afflicted than we think they are. There is a world of sympathetic truth in that old saying
“If a word will render a man happy,” said one of the French philosophers, “he must be a wretch, indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting another man’s candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.” Another wise writer says: “Mirth is God’s medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety—all the rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth.”
Orison Swett Marden, than whom no man’s golden words have done more to make the world brighter and better, says: “We should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind, as we would against a temptation to crime. A depressed mind prevents the free action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. It stops the secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the blood in the brain, and deranges the entire functions of the body.”
“Do not anticipate trouble,” says Franklin, “or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
One of our present day apostles of the gospel of cheerfulness tells us that worry is a disease. “Some people ought to be incarcerated for disturbing the family peace, and for troubling the public welfare, on the charge of intolerable fretfulness and touchiness.”
The boy whom the world wants will be wise, indeed, if he includes in his preparations for meeting the years that are before him—
“Give, O give us, the man who sings at his work!” says Thomas Carlyle. “Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time—he will do it better—he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible to fatigue while he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous—a spirit all sunshine—grateful for very gladness, beautiful because bright.”
Have you a cheerful member in your circle of friends, a cheerful neighbor in the vicinity of your home? Cherish him as a pearl of great price. He is of real, practical value to all with whom he comes in contact. His presence in a neighborhood ought to make real estate sell for a bit more a square foot, and life more prized by all who partake of his good cheer. He greets the world with a smile and a laugh—a real laugh, born of thought and feeling—not a superficial veneer of humor the falsity of which is detected by all who hear it. “How much lies in laughter,” says Carlyle “It is the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. Some men wear an everlasting simper; in the smile of another lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snicker from the throat outward, or at least produce some whiffing, husky cachination, as if they were laughing through wool. Of none such comes good.”
Do you like the boy who in a game of ball is whining all the time because he cannot be constantly at the bat?
Isn’t the real manly boy the one who can lose cheerfully when he has played the game the best he possibly could and has been honestly defeated?
Nothing is ever well done that is not done cheerfully. The one with a growl spoils whatever joy good fortune may seek to bring him. The man with whom the whole world loves to be in partnership is
The one who thinks the world is full of good people and kindly blessings is much richer than the one who thinks to the contrary. Some men live in a world peopled with princes of the royal blood; some in a world of want and wrong-doers. Those whom we distrust are likely to distrust us. To believe a man is a man helps to make him so at heart. To think him a rascal is a start for him in the wrong direction. The world smiles at us if we smile at it; when we frown it frowns. It is the armor of war and not that of love that invites trouble. He who carries a sword is the most likely to find a cause for using it. The man who remembers it was a beautiful day yesterday is a great deal happier than he who is sure it is going to storm to-morrow.
In the thousand and one little everyday affairs of life the man who is disposed to take things by the smooth handles saves himself and those about him an endless amount of worry. The pessimist is an additional sorrow in a world that holds for all of us some glints of sunshine and some shreds of song. It was of one such sorry soul that I penned the lines—
Occasionally we meet a person well along in years who has not yet acquired sufficient wisdom to understand that without some of the elements of a storm in the sky we could never look upon that most marvelously beautiful spectacle—a rainbow.
Without hunger and thirst, food and drink would be superfluous; without cold, warmth would lose its grateful charm; without weariness, rest were of no avail; without grief, gladness would lose its delight. The thoughtful, thankful soul will keep the lips from complaining and the hands from wrong-doing by always supplying them with
“Of all virtues cheerfulness is the most profitable. While other virtues defer the day of recompense, cheerfulness pays down. It is a cosmetic which makes homeliness graceful and winning. It promotes health and gives clearness and vigor to the mind; it is the bright weather of the heart in contrast with the clouds and gloom of melancholy.” These words from the writings of one of our sunniest philosophers are worth much gold to one who will ever keep them in mind.