Architects of Fate Part 27

Mozart, the great composer of the "Requiem," left barely enough money to bury him, but he has made the world richer.

A rich mind and n.o.ble spirit will cast a radiance of beauty over the humblest home, which the upholsterer and decorator can never approach.

Who would not prefer to be a millionaire of character, of contentment, rather than possess nothing but the vulgar coins of a Croesus? Whoever uplifts civilization is rich though he die penniless, and future generations will erect his monument.

Are we tender, loving, self-denying, and honest, trying to fashion our frail life after that of the model man of Nazareth? Then, though our pockets are often empty, we have an inheritance which is as overwhelmingly precious as it is eternally incorruptible.

An Asiatic traveler tells us that one day he found the bodies of two men laid upon the desert sand beside the carca.s.s of a camel. They had evidently died from thirst, and yet around the waist of each was a large store of jewels of different kinds, which they had doubtless been crossing the desert to sell in the markets of Persia.

The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer than he. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he who is covetous is poor though he have millions. There are riches of intellect, and no man with an intellectual taste can be called poor.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.

He is rich as well as brave who can face poverty and misfortune with cheerfulness and courage.

We can so educate the will power that it will focus the thoughts upon the bright side of things, and upon objects which elevate the soul, thus forming a habit of happiness and goodness which will make us rich.

The habit of making the best of everything and of always looking on the bright side of everything is a fortune in itself.

He is rich who values a good name above gold. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans honor was more sought after than wealth. Rome was imperial Rome no more when the imperial purple became an article of traffic.

This is the evil of trade, as well as of partisan politics. As Emerson remarks, it would put everything into market,--talent, beauty, virtue, and man himself.

Diogenes was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. His purchaser released him, and gave him charge of his household and of the education of his children. He despised wealth and affectation, and lived in a tub. "Do you want anything?" asked Alexander the Great, forcibly impressed by the abounding cheerfulness of the philosopher under such circ.u.mstances. "Yes," replied Diogenes, "I want you to stand out of my sunshine and not to take from me what you cannot give me." "Were I not Alexander," exclaimed the great conqueror, "I would be Diogenes."

Brave and honest men do not work for gold. They work for love, for honor, for character. When Socrates suffered death rather than abandon his views of right morality, when Las Casas endeavored to mitigate the tortures of the poor Indians, they had no thought of money or country.

They worked for the elevation of all that thought, and for the relief of all that suffered.

"I don't want such things," said Epictetus to the rich Roman orator who was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; "and besides," said the stoic, "you are poorer than I am, after all. You have silver vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appet.i.tes. My mind to me a kingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation in lieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you; mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied."

"Do you know, sir," said a devotee of Mammon to John Bright, "that I am worth a million sterling?" "Yes," said the irritated but calm-spirited respondent, "I do; and I know that it is all you are worth."

A bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his n.o.ble wife, "My dear, I am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of the sheriff." After a few moments of silence the wife looked into his face and asked, "Will the sheriff sell you?" "Oh, no." "Will the sheriff sell me?" "Oh, no." "Then do not say we have lost everything. All that is most valuable remains to us,--manhood, womanhood, childhood.

We have lost but the results of our skill and industry. We can make another fortune if our hearts and hands are left us."

What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of head and heart?

Paul was never so great as when he occupied a prison cell; and Jesus Christ reached the height of his success when, smitten, spat upon, tormented, and crucified, He cried in agony, and yet with triumphant satisfaction, "It is finished."

"Character before wealth," was the motto of Amos Lawrence, who had inscribed on his pocket-book, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

If you make a fortune let every dollar of it be clean. You do not want to see in it drunkards reel, orphans weep, widows moan. Your riches must not make others poorer and more wretched.

Alexander the Great wandered to the gates of Paradise, and knocked for entrance. "Who knocks?" demanded the guardian angel. "Alexander."

"Who is Alexander?" "Alexander,--the Alexander,--Alexander the Great,--the conqueror of the world." "We know him not," replied the angel; "this is the Lord's gate; only the righteous enter here."

Don't start out in life with a false standard; a truly great man makes official position and money and houses and estates look so tawdry, so mean and poor, that we feel like sinking out of sight with our cheap laurels and gold. _Millions look trifling beside character_.

A friend of Professor Aga.s.siz, an eminent practical man, once expressed his wonder that a man of such abilities should remain contented with such a moderate income as he received. "I have enough," was Aga.s.siz's reply. "I have no time to waste in making money. Life is not sufficiently long to enable a man to get rich and do his duty to his fellow-men at the same time."

How were the thousands of business men who lost every dollar they had in the Chicago fire enabled to go into business at once, some into wholesale business, without money? Their record was their bank account. The commercial agencies said they were square men; that they had always paid one hundred cents on a dollar; that they had paid promptly, and that they were industrious and dealt honorably with all men. This record was as good as a bank account. _They drew on their character_. Character was the coin which enabled penniless men to buy thousands of dollars' worth of goods. Their integrity did not burn up with their stores. The best part of them was beyond the reach of fire and could not be burned.

What are the toil-sweated productions of wealth piled up in vast profusion around a Girard, or a Rothschild, when weighed against the stores of wisdom, the treasures of knowledge, and the strength, beauty, and glory with which victorious virtue has enriched and adorned a great mult.i.tude of minds during the march of a hundred generations?

"Lord, how many things are in the world of which Diogenes hath no need!" exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at a country fair.

"There are treasures laid up in the heart--treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death when he leaves this world." (Buddhist Scriptures.)

Is it any wonder that our children start out with wrong ideals of life, with wrong ideas of what const.i.tutes success? The child is "urged to get on," to "rise in the world," to "make money." The youth is constantly told that nothing succeeds like success. False standards are everywhere set up for him, and then the boy is blamed if he makes a failure.

It is all very well to urge youth on to success, but the great ma.s.s of mankind can never reach or even approximate the goal constantly preached to them, nor can we all be rich. One of the great lessons to teach in this century of sharp compet.i.tion and the survival of the fittest is how to be rich without money, and to learn how to do without success, according to the popular standard.

Gold cannot make the miser rich, nor can the want of it make the beggar poor.

In the poem, "The Changed Cross," a weary woman is represented as dreaming that she was led to a place where many crosses lay, crosses of divers shapes and sizes. The most beautiful one was set in jewels of gold. It was so tiny and exquisite that she changed her own plain cross for it, thinking she was fortunate in finding one so much lighter and lovelier. But soon her back began to ache under the glittering burden, and she changed it for another cross very beautiful and entwined with flowers. But she soon found that underneath the flowers were piercing thorns which tore her flesh. At last she came to a very plain cross without jewels, without carving, and with only the word, "Love," inscribed upon it. She took this one up and it proved the easiest and best of all. She was amazed, however, to find that it was her old cross which she had discarded. It is easy to see the jewels and the flowers in other people's crosses, but the thorns and heavy weight are known only to the bearers. How easy other people's burdens seem to us compared with our own. We do not appreciate the secret burdens which almost crush the heart, nor the years of weary waiting for delayed success--the aching hearts longing for sympathy, the hidden poverty, the suppressed emotion in other lives.

William Pitt, the great Commoner, considered money as dirt beneath his feet compared with the public interest and public esteem. His hands were clean.

The object for which we strive tells the story of our lives. Men and women should be judged by the happiness they create in those around them. n.o.ble deeds always enrich, but millions of mere money may impoverish. _Character is perpetual wealth_, and by the side of him who possesses it the millionaire who has it not seems a pauper.

Compared with it, what are houses and lands, stocks and bonds? "It is better that great souls should live in small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses." Plain living, rich thought, and grand effort are real riches.

Invest in yourself, and you will never be poor. Floods cannot carry your wealth away, fire cannot burn it, rust cannot consume it.

"If a man empties his purse into his head," says Franklin, "no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

"There is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe," says Emerson, "that they take somewhat for everything they give. I look bigger, but I am less, I have more clothes, but am not so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit."

Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'T is only n.o.ble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

TENNYSON.

CHAPTER XIV.

OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU ARE.

To each man's life there comes a time supreme; One day, one night, one morning, or one noon, One freighted hour, one moment opportune, One rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam, One s.p.a.ce when fate goes tiding with the stream, One Once, in balance 'twixt Too Late, Too Soon, And ready for the pa.s.sing instant's boon To tip in favor the uncertain beam.

Ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait, Knows also how to watch and work and stand On Life's broad deck alert, and at the prow To seize the pa.s.sing moment, big with fate, From opportunity's extended hand, When the great clock of destiny strikes Now!

MARY A. TOWNSEND.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

LOWELL.

What is opportunity to a man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonent.i.ty.--GEORGE ELIOT.

A thousand years a poor man watched Before the gate of Paradise: But while one little nap he s.n.a.t.c.hed, It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?

W. B. ALGER.

Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.--CARLYLE.