The Golden Censer. John McGovern
Our Money, but we will Never Sell Our Hope at any Price—The Celebrated Shield—Hope Unjustly Defamed.
Be Correct.
God's Exactitude—One at a Time is the Way Rats Get into a Granary—The First Rat Eats Out the Hole—Story of Sag Bridge—The Collision—The Horror—The Cause—Imitate the Detectives—Story of a Cashier Who Left Off a "Simple Cipher," which Stood for a Hundred Thousand Dollars in Cash to His Employers—How to Mail a Letter—"We Never Make Mistakes—The Way People Are Convinced That Care Is Necessary—How a Careless Clerk Can Drive Away Custom—The Lightning Calculator—He Is Simply a Hard Worker—Our Multiplication-Table Does Not Run High Enough—The Freaks of Figures—Correct Your Spelling—Learn to Avoid Foolish Exaggeration—Force of Habit—"A Man of Good Habits" Is a Man Who Would Be Positively Uncomfortable and Unhappy if He Attempted to Become Dissolute.
Success.
Hard-Pan Reason Why Nothing Succeeds So Well as Success—Your Good Fortune in Living on American Soil—Missing Battles and Allowing Others to Be Promoted Instead of Yourself—No City Ever Withstood a Good Siege—Get into the Strong Sunshine of active Life—The Safe Time to Become Discontented—What Praise Means—What Gloomy Predictions Mean When Your Employer Makes Them—Practice—Example in Proof-Reading—Captains are Made out of First Lieutenants—The Retail Business—Fools Rushing in Where Angels Fear to Tread—The Successful Grocery—No Wonder Success Sits on That Corner—The Painter Who Mixed His Colors With Brains—Story of The Man Who Could Imitate Birds—Do not Attempt Impossible Journeys—Stop at Each Inn.
Companions.
Truth of the adage that a Man Is Known by the Company He Keeps—Tam O'Shanter's Habits—Building a House With a Party-Wall—Playing Billiards at Noon-Time—Smelling of the Smoke of the Kitchen—Bar-Room Manners—Judging a Man by His Clothes—A Piece of Impertinence which Cost the Keeping of Five Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars—"The Companion of Fools Shall Be Destroyed"—Learn to Admire Rightly—Charm which the Look of Certain Loafers Has for Many Young Men—Getting a Sitting in Church—Keep in Company Where You Will Be Under a Pleasant Restraint—Either Wise Bearing or Ignorant Carriage Is Caught, as Men Take Diseases One from Another.
On The Road.
Natural Depression—Certainty of Its Discontinuance—The Best Salesmen Have Been Very Soft-Hearted on Their Early Trips—Entering the Town—Riding One Block for Half a Dollar—A Poor Meal—Getting Your Wind—Planning the Charge—Canvassing Yourself—What Is the Almost Limitless Power of Persuasion?—Abraham Lincoln—The Whisky Which Made Generals Win Battles was the Kind of Whisky He Was in Search of—Your Dress—Your Entrance at Your Customer's Place—Your Speed in Getting Started—Your Ease after the Start Is Made—Never Stop the Customer—Your Perfect Accuracy as to Men and Places—Story of a Meteoric Salesman—Trouble of Putting a Stop to his Flight—Your Supper Tastes Good—The Men of Cold Exterior—Stay Out but Do not Stay Up—How to Get Vim and Sparkle—Extraordinary Value of a Man Who Can "Place Goods."
Examples.
The Tracks of Giants—Napoleonic Miracles—Webster and Astor—George Peabody—Giving Away Eight Millions of Dollars—Stewart—Andrew Johnson—Barnum and Stanford—Ulysses S. Grant—Commodore Vanderbilt—Elihu Burritt—Edgar Poe—Greeley, Chase, Garfield and William Tecumseh Sherman—Tennyson—Robert E. Lee—Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg—James Gordon Bennett—Carlyle and Victor Hugo—Garibaldi—Agassiz, Humboldt, Proctor, Seward, Farragut, Nelson, Abercrombie, Joseph E. Johnston, Longstreet, and Fifty Others—The Habit of Riding Over Obstacles—Herodotus, Seneca and Franklin on the Power of Example—Christ Never Wrote a Tract—The System of Redoubling the Effort and Coming out, after one Victory, Ahead after Reckoning all Losses.
Man.
Shakspeare's Eulogy, just as He Penned It—Emerson—A Columbus of the Skies—Carlyle's Panegyric—Whately—Man's Faults—Horace Man and Pascal—The Poet Cowley and Boileau—Fallacy of their Scoldings as Applied to all Humankind—What Is Man?—Plato's Answer—Addison's Answer—Burke's Answer—Adam Smith's Answer—Buffon's Failure to Make a Satisfactory Answer—Plutarch's Answer—"The Proper Study of Mankind is Man"—Henry Giles and John Ruskin—The Wonderful Instrument Called the Hand—The Violin Slave—Man's Opportunities—What God has Said of His Children—The Beautiful Language in Which It is Written—Nobility of Our Destiny—A Stinging Epigram.
Woman.
The Hand That Made Woman Fair Made Her Good—Wordsworth's Beautiful lines to His Wife—"She Was a Phantom of Delight"—Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope"—A Pleasant Subject—The Difference Between Love in Man and Love in Woman—Jean Paul Richter's Encomium—Schiller's Tribute—Shelley—Shakspeare—Rousseau, Barrett and Balzac—The Duke of Halifax—Addison—Boyle—Sex in The Soul—Woman's Love of Ornament—Her Dress the Perfection of What Man Demands of Her—Dr. Johnson's Explanation—Testimony of John Ledyard to the Goodness of Woman—His History—Woman's Enormous Influence over Man—How Men Live Where There Are No Women—The History of Human Sickness a Monument of the Goodness of Woman.
Father.
Overshadowing Antiquity of the Word "Papa"—The Pope Is Simply Papa, in Italian—Duties of the Son Toward the Father—Honesty of His Love for You—Patriarchal Government the Beginning and Still the Prop of Society—Old Age the Childhood of Immortality—Honor Attaching to Greatness of years in the past—Age Still a Necessity in Many of the Learned Professions—Age Is Indulgent Because It sees no Fault it Has not Itself Committed—Time the Harper, Laying His Hand Gently on the Harp of Life—Love of Little Children—The Village Blacksmith, the Mighty Man—Respect for Venerable Years a Fitting Thing in the Most Dignified of Young Men—Two Pictures, One Dark and the Other Bright.
Mother.
A Great Subject—Chords Struck by Coleridge and Tennyson—She Has Risked Her Life that Her Child Might Live—She Has Grown Spectre-Like that Her Child Might Wax Strong—She Has Forgotten the Debt Due to Her in Her Anxiety to Obtain an Acknowledgment of the Debt Due to God—Her Memory—Christmas—Her