HE CAN WHO THINKS HE CAN, AN IRON WILL & PUSHING TO THE FRONT. Orison Swett Marden
themselves for poor work and mean, stingy, poverty-stricken careers, by saying “luck was against them” than by any other plea.
That door ahead of you, young man, is probably closed because you have closed it—closed it by lack of training; by a lack of ambition, energy, and push. While, perhaps, you have been waiting for luck to open it, a pluckier, grittier fellow has stepped in ahead of you and opened it himself. Power gravitates to the man who knows how. “Luck is the tide, nothing more. The strong man rows with it if it makes toward his port; he rows against it if it flows the other way.”
When Governor John A. Johnson, of Minnesota, was asked, “How do you account for your success?” he answered, simply, “I just tried to make good.” You will find, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, that the man who tries to make good is the “lucky man.” Young Johnson had to fight against poverty, heredity and environment—everything that could be put forward as an excuse for “bad luck,” or “no chance,” yet in his hard battle with fate he never once faltered, or whined, or complained that luck was against him.
One of the most unfortunate delusions that ever found its way into a youth’s brain is that there is some force or power outside of himself that will, in some mysterious way, and with very little effort on his part, lift him into a position of comfort and luxury. I never knew any one who followed the ignis fatuus,—luck—who did not follow it to his ruin. “Good luck” follows good sense, good judgment, good health, a gritty determination, a lofty ambition, and downright hard work.
When you see horses in a race, you know perfectly well that the one in the lead is ahead because he has run faster than the others, and you would not have much sympathy for the horse behind if he should bemoan his fate and declare that the horse ahead had a snap! When you see any one doing better than you are doing under similar circumstances, just say to yourself, “There must be some reason for it. There is a secret back of it, and I must find it out.” Do not try to ease your conscience or lull your ambition by pleading “hard luck” for yourself, or good fortune for another.
Napoleon said that “God is always on the side of the strongest battalions.” He is always on the side of the best prepared, the best trained, the most vigilant, the pluckiest, and the most determined. If we should examine the career of most men who are called lucky, we should find that their success has its roots far back in the past, and has drawn its nourishment from many a battle in the struggle for supremacy over poverty and opposition. We should probably find that the “lucky” man is a closer thinker than the “unlucky” man, that he has a finer judgment, that he has more system and order; that his brain acts more definitely and concisely, that he thinks more logically, more vigorously, and that he is more practical. Life is not a game of chance. The Creator did not put us where we would be the sport of circumstances, to be tossed about by a cruel fate, regardless of our own efforts.
Chapter XVII.
Success With A Flaw
“JUST now the American people are receiving some painful lessons in practical ethics,” said President Nicholas Murray Butler, recently. “They are having brought home to them, with severe emphasis, the distinction between character and reputation. . . . Of late we have been watching reputations melt away like snow before the sun. . . . Put bluntly, the situation which confronts the American people to-day is due to the lack of moral principle.”
Never before in the history of our country have the American people received a greater shock to their faith in human nature than during the past year, by the exposure of the diabolical methods practised by men in high places upon an admiring and unsuspecting people.
Every little while the public press throws X-rays upon the characters of men who have long stood high and spotless in the public eye, and have been looked up to as models of manhood, men of honorable achievement—revealing great ugly stains of dishonor, which, like the blood spot on Lady Macbeth’s hands, all the oceans of the globe cannot wash out.
A tiny flaw sometimes cuts the value of an otherwise thousand-dollar diamond down to fifty dollars or less. The defect is not noticeable to the average person. It is only the fatal magnifying glass that will detect it, and yet its presence is a perpetual menace to the commercial value of the stone.
A great many human diamonds which, a little while ago, were thought to be flawless brilliants of the first water, and which dazzled the financial and social world, when the microscope of official scrutiny was turned upon them, were found to contain great ugly flaws.
A United States senator, seventy years of age, was recently sentenced to serve a term in prison, besides paying a fine, for his connection with great land frauds. Still another senator and several representatives have been indicted for crooked work in connection with their exalted positions. Congressmen have been convicted of land frauds and army officers of peculation. The exposure of post-office contracts and the notorious “cotton statistics leak,” not long ago, showed that minor officials had sold themselves to manufacturers and Wall Street brokers.
Think of the men at the head of great public trusts juggling with sacred funds, not only taking for themselves, from the hard-earned savings of the poor, salaries two or three times as great as that of the President of the United States, but also giving enormous salaries to a large number of their relatives out of these same sacred funds of those who have struggled for years to make possible a better condition for those who should survive them! Think of their paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars for secret services of a suspicious nature, and using trust funds to effect stock manipulations for private gain!
Was there ever before such a shameful story spread before Americans? Were people ever before so mercilessly betrayed by men they looked up to, admired, and implicitly trusted? Never before has there been such colossal stealing carried on so brazenly and openly by men in high positions.
Some of these men, when they appeared in public a year ago, were applauded to the echo. Wherever they went they were followed by admiring crowds. Some months ago I saw one of them, a man who has been for many years a great public favorite, at a reception in the White House. He was pointed out by guests, and seemed to attract almost as much attention as the President himself. People seemed to regard it as a great honor to be introduced to him. Now he would hardly dare to appear before an audience for fear of being hissed.
What a humiliation for those whose names have been household words for a quarter of a century or more to be asked to withdraw from trusteeships or directorships in institutions which perhaps worked for years to secure these men, on account of their great influence, and high reputations.
What is there left worth living for when a man has lost the finest, the most sacred thing in him, and when he has forfeited the confidence and respect of his fellow men? Is there any quality which inheres in dollars that can compensate for such a loss? Is there any thing which ought to be held more precious than honor or more sacred than the esteem and confidence of friends and acquaintances?
The man who has nothing which he holds dearer than money or some material advantage is not a man. The brute has not been educated out of him. The abler a man and the more money he has, the more we despise him if he has gotten that money dishonestly, because of the tremendous contrast between what he has done and what he might have done.
What the world demands of you, whatever your career, whether you make money or lose it, whether you are rich or poor, is that you be a man. It is the man that gives value to achievement. You cannot afford success with a flaw in it. You cannot afford to have people say of you, “Mr. Blank has made money, but there is a stain on it. It is smirched. It has cost him too much. He exchanged his manhood for it.”
Every human being has it within his power to keep the foundation under him—his manhood—absolutely secure under all circumstances. Nothing can shake that but himself. The citadel can never be taken until he himself surrenders the keys. Calumny, detraction, slander, or monetary failure cannot touch this sacred thing.
Every man, whether in private or public