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PREFACE

In presenting this book of cheerful counsel to his youthful friends, and such of the seniors as are not too old to accept a bit of friendly admonition, the author desires to offer a word of explanation regarding the history of the making of this volume.

So many letters have been received from people of all classes and ages requesting copies of some of the author’s lines best suited for the purpose of engendering a sense of self-help in the mind of youth, that he deems it expedient to offer a number of his verses in the present collected form. While he is indebted to a great array of bright minds for the prose incidents and inspiration which constitute a large portion of this volume, he desires to be held personally responsible for all of the rhymed lines to be found within these covers.

It may be especially true of advice that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but it is hoped that in this present form of tendering friendly counsel the precepts will be accepted in the same cheerful spirit in which they are offered.

The author realizes that no one is more urgently in need of good advice and the intelligence to follow it than is the writer of these lines, and none cries more earnestly the well-known truth —

 
Oh, fellow men and brothers,
Could we but use the free
Advice we give to others,
How happy we should be!
 

While the title of this book and the character of its contents make it obvious that it is a volume designed primarily for the guidance of youth, no one should pass it by merely because he has reached the years of maturity, and presumably of discretion. As a matter of fact Time cannot remove any of us very far from the fancies and foibles, the dreams and dangers of life’s morning hours.

 
Age bringeth wisdom, so they say,
But lots of times we’ve seen
A man long after he was gray
Keep right on being “green.”
 

N. W.

CHAPTER I
THE AWAKENING

Nothing is impossible to the man who can will. – Mirabeau.

Ho, my brave youth! There’s a “Boy Wanted,” and – how fortunate! – you are the very boy!

Who wants you?

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you. – Joubert.

The big, busy, beautiful world wants you, and I really do not see how it is going to get on well without you. It has awaited your coming so long, and has kept in store so many golden opportunities for you to improve, it will be disappointed if, when the proper time arrives, you do not smilingly lay hold and do something worth while.

When are you to begin?

Things don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up. – Garfield.

Oh, I sincerely hope that you have already begun to begin; that is, that you have already begun to train your hand and head and heart for making the most of the opportunities that await you. In fact, if you are so fortunate as to own thoughtful, intelligent parents, the work of fitting you for the victories of life was begun before you were old enough to give the subject serious consideration.

Work has made me what I am. I never ate a bit of idle bread in my life. – Daniel Webster.

“When shall I begin to train my child?” asked a young mother of a wise physician.

“How old is the child?” inquired the doctor.

“Two years.”

In the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks. – Holland.

“Then you have already lost just two years,” was his serious response.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, when asked the same question, said: “You must begin with the child’s grandmother.”

Without courage there cannot be truth; and without truth there can be no other virtue. – Walter Scott.

But no matter what has or has not been done for you up to the present time, you and I know that from now on your future welfare will be largely of your own making and in your own keeping. If you will thoughtfully plan your purpose as definitely as conditions will permit and then learn to stick to it through thick and thin, your success in life is quite well assured, and you need not fear that at the end of the journey you will have to say, as does many a man while retrospectively viewing his years:

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement – these are the martial virtues which must command success. – Phelps.

 
O’er life’s long and winding pathway,
Looking backward, I confess
I have not at looking forward
Been a genuine success.
 

What is there for you to do?

Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. – Tolstoi.

Everything and anything you can do or care to do. You are to take your pick of all the trades, professions, and vocations of mankind. Look about you and note the thousand and one things now being done by the men of to-day. It will not be so very long till all of these men will be old enough to retire from active service, and then you and the other boys, who in the meantime have grown to man’s estate, will be called upon to perform every one of the tasks these men are now doing. Doesn’t it look as if there would be plenty of honest, earnest, wholesome toil for hand and head in store for you as soon as you are ready to undertake it? You cannot wonder that the busy old world is ever and always hanging out its notice —

“BOY WANTED”

People do not lack strength; they lack will. – Victor Hugo.

 
“Wanted – A Boy.” How often we
This quite familiar notice see.
Wanted – a boy for every kind
Of task that a busy world can find.
He is wanted – wanted now and here;
There are towns to build; there are paths to clear;
There are seas to sail; there are gulfs to span,
In the ever onward march of man.
 

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. – Froude.

 
Wanted – the world wants boys to-day
And it offers them all it has for pay.
’Twill grant them wealth, position, fame,
A useful life, and an honored name.
Boys who will guide the plow and pen;
Boys who will shape the ways for men;
Boys who will forward the tasks begun,
For the world’s great work is never done.
 

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination. – Napoleon.

 
The world is eager to employ
Not just one, but every boy
Who, with a purpose stanch and true,
Will greet the work he finds to do.
Honest, faithful, earnest, kind, —
To good, awake; to evil, blind, —
A heart of gold without alloy, —
Wanted – the world wants such a boy.
 

While we are considering when to begin, it is often too late to act. – Quintilian.

No, the world does not insist that you are to accept a position and begin work with your hands at once, but it wishes you to begin to think right things. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” What you think will have much to do in determining what you are to become.

 
The mind is master of the man,
And so “they can who think they can.”
 

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins. – Young.

Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools. – Napoleon.

This influence of the mind in thus shaping the man is very well set forth by James Allen, who says: “A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind-elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny.”

I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard. – Garrison.

So it is not too early for you to begin to think bravely and resolutely and hopefully upon the life you intend to live, and to cultivate the mental and physical strength that shall help you later on to put your good thoughts into permanent good deeds. Certainty of victory goes far toward winning battles before they are fought. The boy who thinks “I can” is much more likely to succeed in life than is the one who thinks “I can’t.”

“COULDN’T” AND “COULD”

While you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both. – Dr. Johnson.

 
“Couldn’t” and “Could” were two promising boys
Who lived not a great while ago.
They had just the same playmates and just the same toys,
And just the same chances for winning life’s joys
And all that the years may bestow.
 

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. – Franklin.

 
And “Could” soon found out he could fashion his life
On lines very much as he planned;
He could cultivate goodness and guard against strife;
He could have all his deeds with good cheer to be rife,
And build him a name that would stand.
 

When passion is on the throne, reason is out of doors. – Matthew Henry.

 
But poor little “Couldn’t” just couldn’t pull through
All the trials he met with a sigh;
When a task needed doing, he couldn’t, he knew;
And hence, when he couldn’t, how could he? Could you,
If you couldn’t determine you’d try?
 

I wasted time, and now time doth waste me. – Shakespeare.

 
So “Could” just kept building his way to success,
Nor clouding his sky with a doubt,
But “Couldn’t” strayed into the slough of Distress,
Alas! and his end it is easy to guess —
Strayed in, but he couldn’t get out.
 
 
And that was the difference ’twixt “Couldn’t” and “Could”;
Each followed his own chosen plan;
And where “Couldn’t” just wouldn’t “Could” earnestly would,
And where one of them weakened the other “made good,”
And won with his watchword, “I can!”
 

Weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them. – Marden.

By reading between the lines we can infer from the foregoing that what the world really wants is men – good men. But the world is old enough and wise enough to know that if it does not train up some good boys, there will be no good men, by and by. “As the twig is bent the tree is inclined.” “The child is father of the man.”

Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. – Emerson.

So the world simply wishes to inform you, here and now, that it will count on your assistance as soon as you have had sufficient time and opportunity to prepare properly for the many chances it has in store for you. It notifies you in good season of the important use it hopes to make of you. It does not wish you to be confronted suddenly with a life problem you cannot solve intelligently. You must be so well equipped that you will not make life a “fizzle.”

When I don’t know whether to fight or not, I always fight. – Nelson.

A “fizzle,” as defined by the dictionaries, is a bungling, unsuccessful undertaking.

What is a gentleman? I’ll tell you: a gentleman is one who keeps his promises made to those who cannot enforce them. – Hubbard.

Life is, or ought to be, a splendid undertaking. Some make a success of it; some make a “fizzle;” some make a sort of half-and-half. Every one who lives his or her life must make something of it. What that “something” is depends very largely on the individual person. Heredity has something to do with it; environment has something to do with it; yet we like to think it is the individual who has most to do with the finished product.

All men are to some degree “self-made,” although they are slow to admit it except in instances where the work has been well done.

When one begins to turn in bed it is time to turn out. – Wellington.

 
The loser declares it is Fate’s hard plan,
But the winner – ho, ho! – he’s a “self-made” man.
 

It is unfair for the loser to blame others for his deficiencies and delinquencies. No one’s reputation is likely to suffer much lasting injury as long as he keeps his character unspotted. What others may say of us is not of so much moment; the important question is, “Is it true?”

When I found I was black, I resolved to live as if I were white, and so force men to look below my skin. – Alexandre Dumas.

 
Of strife others make us, we’ve little to fear
Because we can surely defeat it;
Few persons get into hot water, ’tis clear,
But they furnish the fuel to heat it.
 

Impossible? I trample upon impossibilities! – Pitt.

On the other hand the winner is ungrateful when he credits to his own ability the help and good influence he has derived from his associates and his surroundings. No one lives by, to, or for himself, alone. A great man adds to his greatness by generously praising those who have aided in his advancement.

 
We are, most of us, selfishly slow to confess
How much others aid us in winning success;
But the Fourth of July and the oyster must see
What failures, without any crackers, they’d be.
 

When all is holiday, there are no holidays. – Lamb.

This timely notice telling you what the world is going to ask you to perform is as if you were told to prepare to take an extended and important journey. It would require some time for you to procure a trunk and a traveling-bag and to select wearing apparel suitable for the undertaking. Then, too, you would need to study maps and time-tables so as to select the best lines of travel and to make advantageous connections with trains and steamships. Furthermore, it would be for your best interests to read books describing the countries through which you were to pass, and to learn as much as possible regarding their peoples and customs.

Let’s take the instant by the forward top. – Shakespeare.

I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else. – Franklin.

I feel and grieve, but, by the grace of God, I fret at nothing. – John Wesley.

As a matter of fact you are preparing to start on an extended and important journey. You are going out into the big world, by and by, to do business. You are going into partnership with the world, after a fashion. You are to put into the business your honesty, industry, integrity, and ability, and in return for your contributions, the world is to bestow upon you all the honor, fame, goodwill, and happiness of mind that your manner of living your life shall merit. The world is only too willing to bargain for the highest and noblest and best products of the human mind with any one who can

DELIVER THE GOODS

We can sing away our cares easier than we can reason them away. – Beecher.

 
The world will buy largely of any one who
Can deliver the goods.
It is ready and eager to barter if you
Can deliver the goods.
But don’t take its order and make out the bill
Unless you are sure you’ll be able to fill
Your contract, because it won’t pay you until
You deliver the goods.
 

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle. – Michael Angelo.

 
The world rears its loftiest shafts to the men
Who deliver the goods.
With plow, lever, brush, hammer, sword, or with pen
They deliver the goods.
And while we their eloquent epitaphs scan
That say in the world’s work they stood in the van,
We know that the meaning is, “Here lies a man
Who delivered the goods.”
 

Anxiety never yet successfully bridged over any chasm. – Ruffini.

 
And rude or refined be your wares, still be sure
To deliver the goods.
Though a king or a clown, still remember that you’re
To deliver the goods.
If you find you are called to the pulpit to preach,
To the grain-fields to till, to the forum to teach;
Be you poet or porter, remember that each
Must deliver the goods.
 

CHAPTER II
“AM I A GENIUS?”

True merit is like a river, the deeper it is the less noise it makes. – Halifax.

You hope, and perchance believe, no doubt, that when you have a full opportunity to show the world what sort of timber you are made of that it will look upon you as being a “genius.” Almost every boy cherishes some such aspiration. And why not? Such a trend of thought is to be encouraged. It is proper and commendable. We would all be geniuses if we could.

We know what we are, but not what we may be. – Shakespeare.

The world admires a genius. If he is the genuine article it seeks his autograph, prints his picture in books and newspapers, and when he passes away it is likely to build a monument over his remains.

Vacillation is the prominent feature of weakness of character. – Voltaire.

And can we all be geniuses? Some say we can and some say we cannot, quite. Some say geniuses are born and some say they are self-made.

When Mr. Edison, the famous electrician and inventor, was asked for his definition of genius he answered: “Two per cent is genius and ninety-eight per cent is hard work.” On another occasion when asked: “Mr. Edison, don’t you believe that genius is inspiration?” he replied, “No! genius is perspiration.”

Conduct is three-fourths of life. – Emerson.

This definition of genius quite agrees with that given by the American statesman, Alexander Hamilton, who said: “All the genius I have lies in just this: When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings; my mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased to call genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.”

We must not yield to difficulties, but strive the harder to overcome them. – Robert E. Lee.

Helvetius, the famous French philosopher, says: “Genius is nothing but a continued attention,” and Buffon tells us that “genius is only a protracted patience.”

Through every clause and part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes of the most determined men. – Emerson.

Turner, the great landscape painter, when asked how he had achieved his great success, replied: “I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they do not succeed because they do not learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty.”

All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your air, your manner, if good, may. – Chesterfield.

“The man who succeeds above his fellows,” says Lord Lytton, “is the one who early in life clearly discerns his object and toward that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.”

“Am I a genius?”

’Tis the mind that makes the body rich. – Shakespeare.

Now that you have asked the question, why not carefully think it over and determine what the answer should be? Have you patience and determination? Are you cultivating the habit of sticking to it?

STICK TO IT

To read without reflection is like eating without digesting. – Burke.

 
O prim little postage-stamp, “holding your own”
In a manner so winning and gentle.
That you’re “stuck on” your task – (is that slang?) – you will own,
And yet, you’re not two-cent-imental.
I have noted with pride that through thick and through thin
You cling to a thing till you do it,
And, whatever your aim, you are certain to win
Because you seem bound to stick to it.
 

I learnt that nothing can constitute good breeding that has not good nature for its foundation. – Bulwer.

 
Sometimes when I feel just like shirking a task
Or quitting the work I’m pursuing,
I recall your stick-to-it-ive-ness and I ask,
“Would a postage-stamp do as I’m doing?”
Then I turn to whatever my hands are about
And with fortified purpose renew it,
And the end soon encompass, for which I set out,
If, only, like you, I stick to it.
 
 
The sages declare that true genius, so called,
Is simply the will to “keep at it.”
A “won’t-give-up” purpose is never forestalled,
No matter what foes may combat it.
And most of mankind’s vaunted progress is made,
O stamp! if the world only knew it,
By noting the wisdom which you have displayed
In sticking adhesively to it.
 

To acquire a few tongues, says a French writer, is the task of a few years; but to be eloquent in one is the labor of a life. – Colton.

Genius has a twin brother whose name is Patience. The one is quite often mistaken for the other, which is not strange since they resemble each other so closely their most intimate friends can scarcely tell them apart. These two brothers usually work together, which enables the world to tell who and what they are, for whenever either of them is employed singly and alone he is hardly ever recognized.

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance. – Bishop Taylor.

One of these brothers plants the tree and the other cares for it until the fruit is finally matured. The tree which Genius plants would never amount to much if Patience were to grow tired of watering and caring for it. There are weeds to be kept down, branches to be pruned, the soil must be looked after, worms’-nests must be destroyed, and many things must be done before the fruit is ready to harvest.

Life is not so short but that there is always room enough for courtesy. – Emerson.

If Patience were to refuse to work at any time the whole undertaking would prove a failure. But he does not. He performs his plain, simple duty, day after day, year after year, until, after long waiting, there is the beautiful fruit at last. It looks very pretty, but it is not yet quite ripe. Pick it too soon and it will shrivel up and lack flavor. But Patience has learned to wait until the day and the hour of perfection is at hand, and lo! there is his great reward!

A man’s own good breeding is the best security against other people’s ill manners. – Chesterfield.

The people say: “See this wonderful fruit that grew on the tree which Genius planted!” But Genius, who is wiser than the multitude, says, “See this wonderful fruit that grew on the tree which Patience tended!”

Common sense bows to the inevitable and makes use of it. – Wendell Phillips.

Patience and perseverance are the qualities that enable one to work out his problems in school and his larger problems in the big university of the busy world.

Above all things, reverence yourself. – Pythagoras.

 
Toil holds all genius as his own,
For in his grasp a strength is hid
To make of polished words or stone
A poem or a pyramid.
 

It has been very truly said that if we will pick up a grain a day and add to our heap we shall soon learn by happy experience the power of littles as applied to intellectual processes and possessions.

To Adam, Paradise was home; to the good among his descendants, home is Paradise. – Hare.

The road to success, says one of the world’s philosophers, is not to be run upon by seven-league boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit; that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. The man who is most likely to achieve success in life is the one who when a boy learns to

KEEP PEGGING AWAY

To give happiness is to deserve happiness. – Rosseau.

 
Men seldom mount at a single bound
To the ladder’s very top;
They must slowly climb it, round by round,
With many a start and stop.
And the winner is sure to be the man
Who labors day by day,
For the world has learned that the safest plan
Is to keep on pegging away.
 

Self-respect, – that corner-stone of all virtues. – John Herschel.

 
You have read, of course, about the hare
And the tortoise – the tale is old —
How they ran a race – it counts not where —
And the tortoise won, we’re told.
The hare was sure he had time to pause
And to browse about and play,
So the tortoise won the race because
He just kept pegging away.
 
 
A little toil and a little rest,
And a little more earned than spent,
Is sure to bring to an honest breast
A blessing of glad content.
And so, though skies may frown or smile,
Be diligent day by day;
Reward shall greet you after while
If you just keep pegging away.
 

This, then, is a proof of a well-trained mind, to delight in what is good, and to be annoyed at the opposite. – Cicero.

The Chinese tell of one of their countrymen, a student, who, disheartened by the difficulties in his way, threw down his book in despair, when, seeing a woman rubbing a crowbar on a stone, he inquired the reason, and was told that she wanted a needle, and thought she would rub down the crowbar till she got it small enough. Provoked by this example of patience to “try again,” he resumed his studies, and became one of the foremost scholars of the empire.

There never was so much room for the best as there is to-day. – Thayer.

After more than ten years of wandering through the unexplored depths of the primeval forests of America in the study of birds and animals, Audubon determined to publish the results of his painstaking energy. He went to Philadelphia with a portfolio of two hundred sheets, filled with colored delineations of about one thousand birds, drawn life-size. Being obliged to leave the city before making final arrangements as to their disposition, he placed his drawings in the warehouse of a friend. On his return in a few weeks he found to his utter dismay that the precious fruits of his wanderings had been utterly destroyed by rats. The shock threw him into a fever of several weeks’ duration, but with returning health his native energy came back, and taking up his gun and game-bag, his pencils and drawing-book, he went forward to the forests as gaily as if nothing had happened. He set to work again, pleased with the thought that he might now make better drawings than he had done before, and in three years his portfolio was refilled.

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life. – Jean Ingelow.

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market. – Lamb.

There is no real life but cheerful life. – Addison.

When Carlyle had finished the first volume of his “French Revolution” he lent the manuscript to a friend to read. A maid, finding what she supposed to be a bundle of waste paper on the parlor floor used it to light the kitchen fire. Without spending any time in uttering lamentations, the author set to work and triumphantly reproduced the book in the form in which it now appears.

A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone. – Thoreau.

There is one thing in this world better than making a living, and that is making a life. – Russell.

“How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertaining to it! I will only add to what I have already written of perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success.” Such is Charles Dickens’s testimony to the value of sticking to it.

A man must be one of two things; either a reed shaken by the wind, or a wind to shake the reeds. – Handford.

One of the clever characters created by the pen of George Horace Lorimer says: “Life isn’t a spurt, but a long, steady climb. You can’t run far up hill without stopping to sit down. Some men do a day’s work, and then spend six lolling around admiring it. They rush at a thing with a whoop and use up all their wind in that. And when they’ve rested and got it back, they whoop again and start off in a new direction.”

There is nothing at all in life except what we put there. – Madame Swetchine.

Says the poet, James Whitcomb Riley, “For twenty years I tried to get into one magazine; back came my manuscripts eternally. I kept on. In the twentieth year that magazine accepted one of my articles.”

He is, in my opinion, the noblest who has raised himself by his own merit to a higher station. – Cicero.

The eminent essayist, William Mathews, tells us: “The restless, uneasy, discontented spirit which sends a mechanic from the East to the South, the Rocky Mountains, or California, renders continuous application anywhere irksome to him, and so he goes wandering about the world, a half-civilized Arab, getting the confidence of nobody, and almost sure to die insolvent.”

A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read. – Macaulay.

The boys who stick to it, and the men who stick to it, are the ones who achieve results. It does not pay to scatter one’s energies. If a man cannot succeed at one thing he is even less likely to succeed at many things. Just here would be a good place, I think, to tell how Johnny’s father taught him