The Young Man and the World Part 2

This process keeps up until really first-cla.s.s men are reduced to very small men.

Let a man go each year to the everlasting mountains; to the solitude of the ancient forests; to the eternal ocean with its manifestation of power and repose. Let him sit by its solemn sh.o.r.e listening to it sing that song which for a million years before our civilization was thought of it had been singing, and which for a million years after our civilization has become merely a line in history it will continue to sing, and he will realize how unimportant are the things which only a few weeks before seemed to him of such vast moment. Perhaps the words of the old Khayyam will come to him:

"And fear not lest Existence, closing your Account and mine, should know the like no more; The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour."

Or,

"When You and I behind the Veil are pa.s.sed, Oh! but the long, long while the World shall last, Which of our Coming and Departure heeds As the sea's self should heed a pebble cast."

Then you will come back to your work and see things in their proper dimensions. You will expend your energy on things that require it, and you will smile at the things that do not deserve your attention, and pa.s.s them by. You will subst.i.tute duty for ambition, and you will go your way with sanity for perhaps ten months. Then you will need again the elemental lesson of the forest, the mountain, or the sea.

I do not mean that you shall take a vacation until you have deserved it. What right have you to rest before you have labored--before you have earned a thread that clothes you or a mouthful that nourishes you. There are men whose whole lives are a vacation. These words are not for them. From my viewpoint, such men might as well be dead. The men upon whom I am urging the wisdom of taking periods for recuperation are those who have been pulling with the team and keeping their traces taut. And I a.s.sume that you who read are one of these worth-while men. Very well! I want you to last a long time.

On this subject, many is the talk I have had with friends who are business men. "Well," my business friend has said, "I just cannot get away this summer. Next summer I will go away, but I cannot go away this summer. You see, I have a 'deal' which I am about to close; it demands my personal attention. It would be treason to my business to leave this summer."

Yes, quite true, no doubt. But so has Nature a "deal" on with this same business man; and it will be treason to Nature if he does not go away and let Nature's ministers attend him. If he has got to be false to his business or to Nature, he had better be false to the former. It is a fine thing to be true to one's business. But be sure that you are _really_ true to your business; and that means that, first of all, you shall look to your health. Your _business_ demands that. Good health is good "business."

I knew a business man who was so true to his business that he was unfaithful to himself. The machinery of his superb mind had been running at highest speed for ten months. It needed a rest--oil on the heated bearings, a reburnishing of the soiled steel, a rest from the high tension. He would have given just such care to an automobile, or an engine, or any inanimate mechanism. He would have given much greater care to his horse.

But did he give it to himself? No. He had a "deal" on of large proportions; that "deal" must be consummated before attending to the mind and body that put it through. So the lever was pulled back another notch; the machine was driven to its highest burst of speed and power, and the "deal" was a success.

Mark now what followed. The next day this splendid man did not feel very well--a headache. And on the following day there was an eternal end to all his "deals." I do not call that good business. Therefore, my friend, the sea, the mountains, the forests; therefore Nature, with her medicine for body and mind and soul.

"Turn yourself out to pasture," said a wise old country doctor to an exhausted city man. Certainly, that's the thing to do--"turn yourself out to pasture."

Singular advice for young men, you will say, this counseling of restraint, calmness, and the husbanding of his powers. Yes; but I would prevent you from exhausting yourself. No nervous prostration at forty; no arrested development at fifty; no mental vacuity at fifty-five. Too many Americans cease to count after middle life. They have wasted their ammunition and are sent to the rear--there is no longer use for them on the firing-line. Youth is so strong that it wastes power like a millionaire of vitality. But you will need all this dissipated energy later on--every ounce of it.

And so, while I would have you labor to the last limit of your strength while you are about your work, I would also have you regain the strength thus consumed. I would have you let Nature fill up your empty batteries. Hence the suggestion of vacations, a level mind, and books of serenity.

While you _do_ work, pour your full strength into every blow; but having done your best do not spoil it by lying awake over it. No half-heartedness in your task, however. If you try to save yourself while you are about your business--if you "try to do things easy"--you will neither work well nor rest well nor do anything else well.

I know there are those who cannot, for long, quit work--those who "have their noses to the grindstone," to borrow one of those picture-sentences of the people. In the far off end to which evolution tends, civilization will doubtless reach the point where every human being may have his solid month of play, repose, and recuperation--though this cannot be, of course, while nation competes with nation. A universal industrial agreement alone can compa.s.s that happy end. And do we not here perceive, afar off, one of the vast and glorious tasks for the statesmen of the future?

Meanwhile, if every man may not have an entire season of holiday, he may have every day his hour of fun and rest. For every man that, at least, is possible. And, too, he whom necessity drives hardest owns--absolutely owns--for himself one day in seven. Not so bad after all, is it? Not the ideal condition, but still quite tolerable.

Fifty-two days in three hundred and sixty-five, nearly two months in the year, already given every man by the usage of our Christian civilization for the purpose of "rest from all his work"; and with divine example encouraging and instructing him in its use.

A man can get along on these two months distributed at the intervals of one in every seven days. He can get along, that is, if he really rests--really gives himself up to the sane joy of normal repose. The humblest toiler, even in our greatest cities, can find physical renewal and soul's upliftment in forest, at river's side, or on the sh.o.r.e of lake or ocean--thanks to rapid transit and cheap fares.

So let us not get to pitying ourselves--we are pretty well circ.u.mstanced for the alternation of work and play, even in our state of partial development. It is for us to use the opportunity already afforded us; and, speaking by and large, ought we not to deserve more by using, without waste or worse than waste, what we already have? Is there not sound philosophy in the legend which Mr. Lewis tells us was inscribed on the headboard of Jack King, deceased: "Life ain't in holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well"?

My suggestion of one or two months' outing in addition to our fifty-two Sundays and several holidays is to those who have poured out in brain-work and nervous strain more than the system can possibly replenish except by a period devoted exclusively to the manufacture of force to replace that which has been unnaturally expended. There are men who toil night and day. Mostly they are young men establishing their business or getting their "start."

I know many young men who work twelve and even fourteen hours every day, and keep it up the year round. One of the greatest merchants of my acquaintance worked from five o'clock in the morning until twelve and one o'clock at night, and then slept in his little store. He was just building up his business. We all know men who literally will not stop work while awake, and when their task is near them. Such men must go away from their business and let Nature work on them awhile.

Have your doctor look you over every six months, no matter how well you feel--or oftener, if he thinks best. Have your regular physician.

Pick out a good one, and, especially, a man congenial to yourself.

Make him your friend as well as medical adviser. The true doctor is a marvelous person.

How astonishing the accurate knowledge of the accomplished physician!

How miracle-like the dainty and beneficent skill of the modern surgeon. The peculiar ability of a great diagnostician amounts to divination. And he, whom Nature has fitted for this n.o.ble profession, is endowed with a sympathy for you and an intuitive understanding of you very much akin to the peculiar sixth sense of woman--that strange power by which she "knows and understands."

Consult your doctor, therefore. Be careful of medicines he does not prescribe. The most innocent drug is a veiled force, a compound of hidden powers--the system a delicate intricacy whose condition may be different every day. The neurosis of our American life is seducing too many of our best and busiest men to the use of chemicals, mixtures, nostrums, pick-me-ups, etc., which make nerves and brain utter brave falsehoods of a strength that is not theirs.

Your doctor won't let you do this--he will stay your unconsciously suicidal hand. If your machinery is out of order, he will tell you so, and do what is necessary to repair it. He will comfort and rea.s.sure you, too, and administer to the mind a medicine as potent as powder or liquid. But you will get no false sympathy from him. If you have nothing the matter with you, yet think you have, your doctor will take you by the collar of your coat, stand you on your feet, and bid you be a man. So don't dose yourself. Be a faithful guardian of the treasures Nature gave you.

Returning now to reading: You are not to neglect books. They must be read. If you are a professional man they must be more than read; they must be studied, absorbed, made a part of your intellectual being. I am not despising the acc.u.mulated learning of the past. Matthew Arnold, in his "Literature and Dogma," quite makes this point. What I am speaking of is miscellaneous reading.

After a while one wearies of the endless repet.i.tion, the "d.a.m.nable iteration" contained in the great ma.s.s of books. You will finally come to care greatly for the Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns. Compared with these most others are "twice-told tales" indeed. Of course one must read the great scientific productions. They are an addition to positive knowledge, and are a thing quite apart from ordinary literature.

My recommendation of the Bible is not alone because of its spiritual or religious influences; I am advising it from the material and even the business view-point. By far the keenest wisdom in literature is in the Bible, and is put in terms so apt and condensed, too, that their very brevity proves its inspiration--_is_ an inspiration to you.

Carry the Bible with you, if for nothing else than as a matter of literary relaxation. The tellers of the Bible stories tell the stories and stop. "He builded him a city"--"he smote the Philistines"--"he took her to his mother's tent." You are not wearied to death by the details. Go into any audience addressed by a public speaker, and you will perceive that his hearers' interest depends on whether he is getting to the point. "Well, why doesn't he get to the point," is the common expression in public a.s.semblages. The Bible "gets to the point."

And it has something for everybody. If you are a politician, or even a statesman, no matter how astute you are, you can read with profit several times a year the career of David, one of the cleverest politicians and greatest statesmen who ever lived. If you are a business man, the proverbs of Solomon will tone you up like mountain-air.

A young woman should read Ruth. A man of practical life, a great man, but purely a man of the world, once said to me: "If I could enact one statute for all the young women of America, it would be that each of them should read the book of Ruth once a month." But the limits and purpose of this paper do not permit a dissertation on the Bible.

Shakespeare, of course, you cannot get along without. I shall say no more about him here; for if anything at all is said about Shakespeare (or the Bible), it ought to take up an entire paper at least. "Don't read anybody's commentaries on Shakespeare--don't read mine; read _Shakespeare_," was the final advice of Richard Grant White, one of the ripest of the world's commentators on this universal poet.

From the Bible and Shakespeare roads lead down among books but little lower in elevation and outlook. Of these the essays of Emerson furnish a n.o.ble example; and the poems of the Concord philosopher are the wisdom of the ancients stated in terms of Americanism. I would have every young man spend half an hour over each page of our American Thinker's essays on Character, Manners, Power, and Self-reliance.

Indeed, wherever you turn, among the pages of our Sage, you find no desert place, but always a very forest of thought, tumultuous and vibrant with fancy and suggestion, sweet and wholesome with living truth and all helpfulness. You can form no better habit than to read a page or two of Emerson every night.

Take Emerson as an example; read books of that sort--books that are kin to the Bible and Shakespeare. There is no excuse for your poisoning your time with idle books or low books or transient books--moth volumes that flutter an instant in the light and in an instant die. For the great books are entertaining. If you want excitement, Plutarch's Lives furnish you thrilling-narrative fiction cannot surpa.s.s--and undying inspiration besides.

The great novels, too, have in them all the blood and battle-ax the stoutest nerve can crave, all the incidents of love, self-sacrifice, and gentle invention the tenderest heart can need. Yes, certainly: Read books that come to stay--the kind of books you would like to be as a man.

The Rubaiyat would deserve mention but for the danger of misunderstanding its message. Rightly read Omar Khayyam's lesson is serenity and poise and that power and happiness which come from these.

The disciple of the tent-maker is not apt to lose his bearings. He no longer regards to-day as eternity, no longer looks at the world and the universe from himself as a center. Reject the Persian poet's apotheosis of wine, absorb his philosophy of calmness, and you will do your duty regardless of consequences. And that is the chief thing, is it not?

Do your duty, have the courage of your thought, and walk off with the old fatalist's verse soothing your soul and brain, and let the disturbed ones clamor. The clamor will cease in time and turn to applause. And whether it does or not is a matter of absolutely no importance if you have done right.

There is nothing which will more conserve the nervous forces of any serious-minded young man, nothing which will give him so much of that composure of mind and necessary concentration of powers, as the resolution to do his best and let it go at that, whether the world applaud, or laugh, or rage. Be true to your deed, whatever it may have been, and if the deed was true, the end must necessarily be satisfactory.

Burns, of course, we must read. We must have him to keep the milk of human kindness flowing in our veins--to keep sweet and sincere and loving. The good that you get from Burns cannot be a.n.a.lyzed. You cannot say, "I have read Burns, and find in him of wisdom so many grains, of humor so many grains, of beauty of expression so many grains," and so forth and so on to the end.

It is the general effect of Burns that is so valuable, so indispensable. Read a little bit of Burns every day, and you will find it very hard to be unkind; you are conscious that you are more human.

A mellow and delightful sympathy for your fellow man--aye, and for all living things--warms your heart. And this human quality is more valuable than all the riches of all the lords of wealth.

At all cost keep your capacity for human sympathy.

The sharp, hard processes of our strictly business civilization tend to regulate even our sympathies into a system. It is as if we should say each day, "I have time to-day for five minutes of human sympathy,"

and promptly push the b.u.t.ton of our stop-watch when the second-hand shows that the time has expired. Burns is the best corrective of this that I know--the best, that is, outside of the Bible itself.

Indeed the more one thinks about it the clearer it is that we might throw away all other books but the Bible, and still have all our mental and moral needs ministered to by those who through all time have thought and felt most highly; for the Bible is the record of the loftiest of all human expression, not to mention its divine origin.

Put your Bible, your Shakespeare, your Burns in your bundle when you go for a journey, and you are intellectually and spiritually equipped.

Let a man have the courage of his thought--I repeat it. Courage is where we fail, not intellect. We hear much about intellect, about "brains," as the rather coa.r.s.e expression is. It is not that which is needed; it is courage.