Dollars and Sense Part 22

Don't try to be a millionaire. Don't set too big a mark. Have your ideal advancement, no matter how little that advancement is. If you go forward each week or each year you will find at forty or fifty that your substance piles up much faster than you imagine. From forty to fifty years of age most fortunes are made. From twenty to forty your efforts have been foundation work, and the foundation does not show up much above the ground. From forty to fifty you are building the superstructure, and when you commence building that your progress seems more rapid.

Healthy indebtedness is a great incentive to hard work and a material benefit in building character and gaming experience that in later years will be of untold value to you.

Brains--Birth--Boodle

One of the weaknesses of the human race is envy. No one is entirely free from envy, although the true philosopher who has studied himself and has things sized up correctly is nearly free from envy.

Human kind have three measures for gauging the other fellow. We measure the other fellow either by his knowledge--which is brains, by his pedigree--which is birth, or by the money he has acc.u.mulated--which is boodle. These three Bs are like three stars in the sky. The first star--Brains is usually the dimmest, but it is really the brightest star of all. Mankind is p.r.o.ne to look at the brighter stars of birth and boodle.

These three stars of Brains, Birth and Boodle, are three aristocracies.

The first aristocracy has no less authority than that of the Almighty.

The aristocracies of birth and boodle are sham counterfeits gotten up by man. They do not mean anything when put into the crucible and tested by fire.

The aristocracy of brains differs from the aristocracies of birth and boodle as the sun differs from the jack-o-lantern, or as the music of the soul differs from the bray of the burro, or as a pure woman's love differs from the stolen affections hashed up by the fourth husband.

Brains like air and water, are not always appreciated until we have a.n.a.lyzed and investigated thoroughly. The foolish man thinks champagne is the finest drink. The wise man knows water is the best drink, even though water costs nothing. The foolish man has for his ideal--money or birth. The wise man takes off his hat to brains.

The measure of a man is his brain and not his birth or his boodle.

Thought, reason and knowledge are possible to the man who has a brain.

No man can buy brains, and truly he is an aristocrat of the highest order who is blessed with a good brain.

Some people whose ancestors came over with the Pilgrim Fathers have a picture of the Mayflower in their homes and they seem to take a great deal of pride in the picture of the Mayflower. There seems to be a halo around the Mayflower. The descendants of the pa.s.sengers of that ship look upon the picture of the Mayflower as a sort of seal or guarantee of the good qualities of their forefathers, and consequently, being direct descendants they take unto themselves a lot of credit for something in which they had no hand in the making.

The Mayflower was afterwards used as a slave ship, but our disciples of birth do not want to know about this. Some of the pa.s.sengers in the Mayflower performed acts and violated laws and conducted themselves in such a manner that would cause people of these days to be put in jail for the same offenses. Some of these good ancestors of the present descendants of birth burned witches at the stake.

Time wipes out a lot of things, and this is probably as it should be, but certainly it is true that the world is progressing and the good man of today is probably better and broader than some of these glorious ancestors to whom so many take off their hats. Some of our forefathers in Europe were little less than pirates and buccaneers. Their descendants today knowing that they can make great claims with little fear of contradiction, extol the virtue of their forefathers and complacently take on a superior air. They have thought over the matter of birth so much that they really think they are superior beings.

Grizzly Pete of Frozen Dog, Idaho, doesn't take much stock in the aristocracy of birth. He says, "It ain't what's on a man and it ain't what his father was that counts. The only thing to judge a man by is what's in him and what kind of brains he has."

One thing about this glorious Western country of ours is that a man gets credit for and he is punished by his own individual acts. It doesn't make any difference how far back his pedigree runs, if he doesn't make good himself, people have no use for him.

The heritage of birth is mighty thin fabric and mighty weak material for a man to use in making a cloak of exclusiveness to put around him.

We antic.i.p.ate that some of our readers will take exception to our att.i.tude on the matter of birth. We wish to be plainly understood that the matter of good birth and good ancestors is a good thing to have.

The writer has a pedigree that would be his pa.s.sport into the aristocracy of birth if he chose to belong to that lodge. Your good ancestors is no handicap. It is a credit to you, but mark this down well: You, yourself, are ent.i.tled to no credit for any acts of your ancestors. Your measure is and should be taken for what your own net worth is.

The aristocracy of boodle is the slimmest aristocracy of all. Yet there are more people who try to get into that lodge than any other. The possession of the dollar seems to be the ambition of everyone, and usually the first thing we try to find out about a man is "how much is he worth?" The thinker, however, knows that the possession of money doesn't make a man any better than his neighbor who has no money--their morals and their acts being even.

Brains. That's the true aristocracy. The professor in college who has spent a lifetime in study and has devoted his talents to uplifting mankind is an aristocrat. He may be getting two or three thousand dollars a year, while his brother with lesser knowledge is getting ten times that much in another vocation. The aristocracy of brains always has been, is now and ever will be the enduring aristocracy. Even those who belong to the aristocracies of birth and boodle find they are sham counterfeits and many of them turn to study and to good impulses hoping they may get into the lodge of the aristocracy of brain.

In business the aristocracy of birth or the aristocracy of boodle is a decided handicap. They make the individual think he is superior and he is above doing things which seem to him trivial, because he thinks he is a superior being. The man with brains, however, digs as well as climbs. Without brains, business would go to the dogs, for if business were conducted by men of birth and boodle without brains, you can easily see that the whole fabric would fall to pieces.

Backbone and Wishbone

In proportion as a man's backbone weakens his wishbone seems to develop.

The ten dollar a week man spends his time saying: "I wish I had the luck other people have." He says: "I wish I had this place, or I wish I had that job." He is ever wishing.

Things in our body, whether muscle or bone, develop by usage, and if we use the wishbone all the time it will develop into huge proportions. On the other hand if we develop our backbone and use it frequently, we may not have cause to use the wishbone so much.

Brace up. Stand erect. Strengthen your backbone and, with it, your jaw bone.

Say "I will" instead of "I wish." The world bestows her prizes on men with backbone and the blanks on those who use their wishbone.

Do Good

Doing good is planting seed, the harvest may not show at present but in the future you are going to reap it.

A man is paid back precisely in the same coin he pays out. If he plants weeds or mean impulses the harvest will be weeds and mean impulses. If he plants seed of good deeds he will harvest good deeds.

Centuries ago it was said "Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you many-fold."

The man who is doing good as he goes along, who is lending help, kindly counsel and encouragement will find the world is a pretty good place to live in after all. As he journeys along through life he will find the good he has done in the past has flourished and returned to him in greatly increased proportions, like the bread cast upon the waters.

It is not only the good one actually gets for the good, he has done, but it is the profit that comes in the way of happiness he gets for his actions. The true way to obtain happiness is to do something for somebody. You get back out of the general exchequer of good in the world full payment for the good you have done, plus a profit of happiness which comes from the very doing of good.

The Get-Away

After you have driven the nail home make your get-away.

Many a solicitor has lost his prestige because, after having accomplished his point, he hung on.

It is quite an art to know when to make the get-away. Study your customer carefully, and when you have made your point clear and your proposition is presented to him in the best possible manner, then get away.

The bore is a bore because he does not know how to get away. The solicitor is always welcome if it is known he is not a hanger-on, and that he gets in and gets out quickly.

Double Equipment

For the employe there is nothing better to possess than double equipment, by which we mean the ability to do two things well.