Think Part 26

When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the envious many.

If he does a mediocre thing, he is unnoticed; if his work is a masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting.

Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was p.r.o.nounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced mutiny on his ship on the very eve of his discovery of land. Millet starved in his attic. Time has pa.s.sed, and the backbiters are all in unmarked graves. The world, until the end of time, will enjoy Wagner's music. Whistler and Millet's paintings attract artists from all over the world, and inventors reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.

[Sidenote: The Price of Greatness.]

The leader is a.s.sailed because he has done a thing worth while; the slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to prove his greatness. Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader, they seek to belittle him. But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and he remains a leader. He has made his genius count, and has given the creature of his brain and imagination to the world.

Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him, his masterpiece and his fame endure.

And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to the noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers.

In his own heart he knows he has done a thing worth while; his own conscience is clear, and he cares not for the estimate of the world.

His own character is his chief concern, and he is content in the knowledge that time will bring its reward.

If you have high ideals in business, if you achieve success on a big scale, mark well, you will be a subject of attacks, of lies, of malice, of envy, of disreputable compet.i.tion. There is no way out of it.

[Sidenote: Compensation.]

But you will be repaid. The lover of fair play, the grateful, true, honest, worth-while people will flock to your standard; the riff-raff will skulk behind bushes and throw rocks and mud, but their acts will prove to the great ma.s.s of the people that your purposes, practices and policies are right.

Therefore, courage is to be your chief a.s.set; patience, pride, perseverance, your lieutenants.

Be not weary, grow not discouraged when your progress is hampered by obstacles. Every truly great man of the past has had his backbiters and detractors.

52.

There are three periods in our lives: the youthful, or prospective period, the adult, or introspective period, and the old age, or retrospective period.

[Sidenote: Growing Old.]

Too many there are who look forward to old age with fear or dread. But old age has its joys and pleasures as well as middle age and youth, and these pleasures are the keener if the first and second periods of life were lived sanely, worthily and properly. Numerous are the great men of the past who have extolled the old-age period of human life with its wisdom and wealth of worldly experience.

If the middle period is spent in getting dollars only, then old age will be days of empty nothingness.

Youth is the planning time--the time for ideals and ambitions; middle age the building time, and old age the dividend time.

With many, old age is spent in reading the book of the past--with sadness as the reader recognizes that the ideals, plans and hopes were shattered. As age turns the page in the book of the past, he reads one hope after another vanished in smoke.

Antic.i.p.ation is seldom realized, and this is as it should be, for in time, men will learn to live each day for each day's good and each day's happiness.

Let us perform our duty to-day; let us lay away a kindly act, a smile, a word of cheer in the bank of good deeds.

Each of us has a share in this world's work. It matters little whether our actual share is what we had guessed or wished it to be.

[Sidenote: The Value of Ideals.]

Vicissitudes will cross our path here and there; so-called misfortune or bad luck will strike us when least expected. The failure of our dreams should not grieve us. We cannot reach up and grasp the stars, but like the pilot at the wheel at sea, we can steer by those stars that help us on our way.

Our ideal may not be realized, but the journey to it may still be a pleasant one.

Our ideals, plans and hopes had a real purpose, a real service; they gave us courage and made us work, and thus they were well worth while.

We must not, in the old age period, condemn ourselves because our plans failed or our castles were shattered.

There is no hard luck except incurable disease or death. It is not for us to mourn the past or weep for the flowers that are gone.

In our active days, we should realize that we are putting memories away in our brains that will come back to us in old age.

Only that which we put in our brains can we take out.

So then, Mr. Avarice, I warn you: If gold is your G.o.d, it's cold comfort you will get in your sunset days.

Build up loving ties, appreciation and the worth-while riches of good deeds, and in your evening of life, you will be welcome wherever you go.

[Sidenote: Put Not Your Faith in Gold.]

If your life was sold for gold, your evening of life will be short and miserable; legatees will grudge you your every breath; they will endure you simply because they are checking off the days from Time's calendar until the day of your pa.s.sing, and the dollars you sold your soul and heart and life for, will be lavishly spent by cold-blooded heirs who cared nothing for you.

Leave a legacy of love, example and character, and if, with these, there are a few dollars, they simply prove your frugality, economy and independence.

A few dollars left to heirs will help. Many dollars will hurt. Dollars in old age will give you pleasure by helping in tight corners. They will enable you to help your loved ones over the b.u.mps in the road.

Use the dollars to help those you love to help themselves, and your old age will be a busy, happy one, and you won't be in the way.

To prepare for that happy period of your life, the foundation must be built in the active to-day period.

Carry smiles into your old age; they will keep the heart young, the digestion good, and life will be worth while.

53.

I have traveled horseback over the great arid plains of the West, and have read the story of the ages gone before.

[Sidenote: The Remote Past.]

In Arizona and New Mexico there are ancient ruins of forts and cities built by people we know not of. Chalcedony Park with its petrified forest of mammoth trees silently testifies to a period when vegetation was rampant on what is now a desert.

In Wyoming there is coal enough to furnish fuel for the United States for several centuries.