Part 26 (1/2)
WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THESE RANK FAILURES?
Nothing. We can take warning from them. ”A failure establishes only this,” says Bovee, ”that our determination was not strong enough.” This is very nearly the truth. We fail because we feel the game to be hardly worth the candle. We are not willing to pay the price and the value of success. We had rather slide down the hill than climb up higher. When you hit your head against a door in the dark, you are stunned. You are then twice as likely as before to hurt yourself. Bear that in mind.
Stop. Move with the greatest of caution.
THIS IS WHY SHAKSPEARE SAYS
that when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
When you have failed, try and get a new start, clear of the consequences of the last disaster. You know exactly where you erred, and can guard against the weak places in your judgment, the cause of your defeat.
Above all, study the ”dead rank failure” in your community, and do everything precisely opposite to the way he invariably operates.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
GAINS AND BRAINS.
Virtue without success Is a fair picture shown by an ill light; But lucky men are favorites of heaven: All own the chief, when fortune owns the cause.--Dryden.
Lucky men are favorites of heaven, simply because they have been endowed with that charming blindness which keeps them from seeing when they are whipped in the battle of life. The man of success has usually a greater sense of the value of a ten-dollar note than his clerk who, like the braggart _Pistol_, has got the world for his oyster, and expects to open that tough old mollusk with his rusty sword. The man of success sees each young helper around him given better opportunities than he himself had to begin with. His astonishment that inexperienced young men should think they have no chance is always noticeable. He half-envies some stripling soldier in the battle who is yet a high private in the rear rank. The high private cannot understand how this envy can be possible, and will not believe it exists. If you will study the lucky man you will see that his ”luck” is usually more of a matter of course than an extraordinary happening. Reverse the thing, and you can comprehend it. Here is a brakeman. He gets killed by the cars.
WAS IT NOT ASTONIs.h.i.+NG?
Well, yes, it was; still, if anybody were going to be killed, the brakeman would be the most likely to be the victim. Go to the accident insurance office and observe how little anxious they are to take such a risk, and what an enormous premium they ask when they do take one! Here is a man running a powder-factory. The insurance men will not touch him at all! Now our man of success is like the brakeman, in a sense. He is always on the train, always between the cars, always standing in the frog. If any such thing as luck is out, it must hit him, or some other brakeman like him. Certainly, it will not touch the man asleep in his house
HALF A MILE FROM THE TRACK!
You have a very small chance to draw money in a lottery, and it is a very foolish thing to throw away earnings buying tickets--yet of two fools who expected to draw the grand prize, that one would be the greatest who had no ticket in the lottery! The man of success wants something to strike around his premises. He, therefore, has got conductors of the celestial fluid on his house, and on his barns. His chicken-coops, his corn-cribs point to heaven, and even the stumps in his back yard
BRISTLE WITH LIGHTNING-RODS.
Clap! comes the bolt; the man of success is the one who has been hit, and those persons who do not understand it are astonished at his luck!
The man of success is a stone; there are a number of eggs who are bent on dancing in the same cotillon with him; they think he has great luck to last through to such music! The man of success is a thoroughbred; his sire won a Derby; all the drayhorses believe that, when this lucky thoroughbred runs,
THE EARTH MOVES BACKWARD
beneath his feet, to help him in overcoming distance! The man of success is a lightning calculator; the spectators all think he is a lucky fellow to guess at the sum of a great block of figures so quickly and always guess right; they never could do it!
”LUCK” SAYS RICHARD COBDEN,
”is ever waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance. Labor on character.” The man of success who owns a mill is seen in the water up to his waist, dragging a log behind him. ”Is he not lucky to get his dam fixed so soon after the flood!” say the neighbors. The man of success who owns a grocery has got ten barrels of flour on the sidewalk, two casks of petroleum in the alley, and twelve barrels of sugar on his trucks. At night the barrels are all in their places, and, so far as I have ever seen,--in the retail business, at least,--it was not the clerks of the man of success who did