CHAPTER X. Real Success

REAL SUCCESS

"Boy Wanted"

Are you the boy?

If you have carefully read and digested the foregoing chapters you have a pretty clear understanding of the sort of boy the world prefers for a life partner. You have learned that you must

Ask no favors of "luck,"--win your way like a man; Be active and earnest and plucky; Then your work will come out just about as you plan And the world will exclaim, "Oh, how lucky!"

In studying the history of the lives of successful men we are constantly being impressed with the thought that they make the most out of their surroundings, whatever their surroundings may be. They do not wait for a good chance to succeed; they take such chances as they can get and make them good. We very soon learn that

The ones who shall win are the ones who will toil; The future is all in our keeping; Though fortune may give us the seed and the soil, We must still do the sowing and reaping.

We learn, also, that one may achieve a full measure of success without accumulating much money, and may accumulate much money without achieving success. "Mere wealth is no more success than fools' gold is real gold," says one of our wise essayists. "Collaterals do not take the place of character. A man obtains thousands or millions of dollars by legal or illegal thieving, and society, instead of sending him to prison, receives him in its parlors. Men bow low when he passes, as in the fable the people bowed to the golden idols that were strapped on the back of a donkey, who was ass enough to swell with pride in the thought that all this reverence was for him. The man who puts his trust in gold and deposits his heart in the bank, and thinks money means success, is like the starving traveler in the desert, who, seeing a bag in the distance, found in it, instead of food which he sought, nothing but gold, and flung it from him in disappointment, and died for want of something that could save his life. The soul will starve if gold alone administers to its needs. Better to be a man than merely a millionaire. Better to have a head and heart than merely houses and lands."

It is along such lines of thinking that I offer these thoughts

ON GETTING RICH

Get riches, my boy! Grow as rich as you can; 'Tis the laudable aim of each diligent man Of life's many blessings his share to secure, Nor go through this world ill-conditioned and poor.

Get riches, my boy! Ah, but hearken you, mind! Get riches, but those of the genuine kind. Get riches,--not dollars and acres unless You thoughtfully use them to brighten and bless.

Get riches, not such as with money are bought, But those that with love and high thinking are wrought; Get rubies of righteousness, jewels of grace, Whose brightness Time's passing shall never efface.

Get riches! Do not, as the foolish will do, In getting your money let money get you To steal life's high purpose from heart and from head And prison the soul in a pocket instead.

Get riches! Get gold that is pure and refined; Get light from above; get the love of mankind; Get gladness through all of life's journey; and then Get heaven, forever and ever. Amen.

The wide-awake boy will see the advantage of carrying in his thought these words of Lavater: "He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man."

The man of words and not of thoughts Is like a great long row of naughts.

"There is a gift beyond the reach of art, of being eloquently silent," says Bovee, and Caroline Fox tells us that "the silence which precedes words is so much grander than the grandest words because in it are created those thoughts of which words are the mere outward clothing." To speak to no purpose is as idle as the clanging of tinkling cymbals.

A thoughtful man will never set His tongue a-going and forget To stop it when his brain has quit A-thinking thoughts to offer it.

"If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest once," says Penn, "thou wilt speak twice the better for it."

It is this matter of thinking, of considering, of weighing one's words and deeds that compels the moments, the days and the years to bring the success that some mistakenly think is only a matter of chance.

It is this habit of careful thinking that is going to make you remember that you owe it not only to yourself to make your life the truest success you can, but you owe it to your family, your friends, your enemies--if such you have--to the whole world with which you are in partnership, and to the stars above you.

But above all others there is one who, either in spirit or in her living presence, must ever and always be near to you, and for whose sake you will--God helping you!--stand up in your boots and be a man!

THE MOTHER'S DREAM

Boy, your mother's dreaming; there's a picture pure and bright That gladdens all her gracious tasks at morning, noon and night; A picture where is blended all the beauty born of hope, A view that takes the whole of life within its loving scope.

She's dreaming, fondly dreaming, of the happy future when Her boy shall stand the equal of his grandest fellow men Her boy, whose heart with goodness she has labored to imbue, Shall be, in her declining years, her lover proud and true.

She's growing old; her cheeks have lost the blush and bloom of spring, But oh! her heart is proud because her son shall be a king; Shall be a king of noble deeds, with goodness crowned, and own The hearts of all his fellow men, and she shall share his throne.

Boy, your mother's dreaming; there's a picture pure and bright That gladdens all her gracious tasks at morning, noon and night; A view that takes the whole of life within its loving scope; O Boy, beware! you must not mar that mother's dream and hope.

Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Some minor corrections of spelling and puctuation have been made.

Italic text has been marked with underscores.