The Book of Courage Part 6

"Enjoyment--yes! But rest--no!" came the reply. "I wasn't done. I still had my evenings, and I kept on studying. The things I learned in these extra hours came in handy when the Superintendent asked me to become his secretary."

Service in the railroad office was interrupted by enlistment in the army, although the worker was well beyond the age of the draft. "How could I think of anything but service at the front?" he said, with a matter-of-fact accent. While in the service the habit of study in spare hours persisted; becoming familiar with the military manual he attracted the attention of his officers, and was marked for added responsibility.

At the close of the war he resumed his work for the railroad and entered a technical school which provides night courses for the ambitious.

Forty years of age, and still learning!

An employer has written of an employee who, ten years ago, was securing fifteen dollars per week. But he was studying, and he soon attracted the attention of the head of the business, who called him "a rough diamond."

He knew that the ambitious man seemed to lack some of the vital elements of success. But he watched him as he took evening courses in business psychology and salesmans.h.i.+p. "This man is paid by me to-day from $12,500 to $15,000 a year," was the gratifying conclusion of the employer's story.

A great executive recently told in a magazine article of a young man in the office of his employment director who attracted attention because of an exceptionally pleasing personal appearance. Before the director saw him the executive asked him what he was studying. "When I left school,"

was the reply, made with something of a sneer, "I promised myself I would never open a book again as long as I lived, and I'm keeping my promise."

The executive was about to leave the office for a two weeks' vacation.

First, however, he wrote a few words about the applicant, placed them in a sealed envelope, and left this with the employment director, to be kept for him. On his return he asked about the applicant, by name. The answer came, with prompt disgust:

"That fellow was the limit! Fired him two days after he was hired. Dead from the neck up!"

Then the sealed letter was produced and the message enclosed was read:

"You will hire A---- H---- on his looks. Within two weeks you will fire him. He's dead from his neck."

A writer in _a.s.sociation Men_ has made a comparison between two men, and the way they spent their leisure:

"Here is my friend Chris Hall--that is not his real name, but I a.s.sure you he is a real person. I like Chris, and so does everybody who knows him. He is honest and kind and clean, but in spite of these splendid characteristics he never makes progress. Five years ago he was promoted to his present position, and he draws as salary just about what he did then. And there is no prospect that he will ever draw much more. Yet he could make himself worth four times as much in a very short while--$200 a week instead of $50--if he would only fit himself for the job ahead.

But he lives entirely in the present. Perhaps the best way to describe him is to give his diary for a week, a record of how he spent his time when not actually working. And, please notice that everything he did was perfectly legitimate and honorable; but also notice, that everything was for immediate personal pleasure:

_Monday_--Rainy evening; went to bed early after playing a while with the kids.

_Tuesday_--Strolled over to see Mollie's brother, who is just back from France; he looks well but would not talk much about the fighting; advised him not to hurry about getting a job, as he deserved a good long spell of rest after the hard campaign.

_Wednesday_--Left office early; first big league game this year; went around to the club and talked it all over with the boys after supper.

_Thursday_--Office closed all day on account of parade of returning troops; took Mollie and children to see it; awfully tired and went to bed early.

_Friday_--Sold my two Liberty Bonds which I had bought on installments; Mollie needed summer dresses and there were several small debts I had to pay; took Mollie to the movies after supper.

_Sat.u.r.day_ (afternoon)--Whole family went to Seaside Park by steamer--children enjoyed it for a while but soon got tired and fretful; what with the heat and the crowds and the late hour of getting home it really didn't pay.

_Sunday_--In bed till nearly noon; read the papers; changed the soil in Mollie's potted plants; afternoon, Tom and his wife and Charlie Nichols and his best girl came over and all stayed to supper; strolled over to Mother's and found everyone there.

"Over against that let me put a few lines from the diary of Elihu Burritt:

_Monday_--Headache; 40 lines Cuvier's 'Theory of the Earth'; 64 pages French; 11 hours forging.

_Tuesday_--60 lines Hebrew; 30 pages French; 10 pages Cuvier; 8 lines Syriac; 10 lines Danish; 10 lines Bohemian; 9 lines Polish; 15 names of stars; 10 hours forging.

_Wednesday_--25 lines Hebrew; 8 lines Syriac; 11 hours forging.

"Who was Elihu Burritt? He was a New England blacksmith who worked on an average 10 hours a day at his forge; but who studied in his spare moments until he became known and honored all over the world as 'the learned blacksmith.' He became great--not by forging--but by the way he used his afterwork hours."

IV

WORKING HARDER

"It was the rule of his life to study not how little he could do, but how much."

These words were spoken of a great publisher and might have been made the text of the volume issued to commemorate the centenary of the business house founded by the man of whom they were spoken.

The young man was sixteen when his father drove him from their country home to the city, and apprenticed him to a firm of printers.

As an apprentice he and another young man were frequently partners in working an old-fas.h.i.+oned hand press. "One applied the ink with hand-b.a.l.l.s, and the other laid on sheets and did the pulling. They changed work at regular intervals, one inking and the other pulling."

The biographer who gives this description of the work of the two, adds that his hero was accustomed to remain at his press after the other men had quit work whenever he could secure a partner to a.s.sist him.

The young man's fellow worker was often persuaded to a.s.sist him in these extra efforts--usually much against his will. While he often felt like rebelling because of his partner's ambition to do his utmost for his employers, he could not restrain his admiration for the man's industry.

Once the unwilling partner said: "Often, after a good day's work, he would say to me, 'Let's break the back of another token (two hundred and fifty impressions)--just break its back.' I would often consent reluctantly but he would beguile me, or laugh at my complaints, and never let me off till the token was completed, fair and square. It was a custom for us in the summer to do a clear half-day's work before the other boys and men got their breakfast. We would meet by appointment in the grey of the early morning and go down to the printing-room."

Fellow workmen made sport of the ambitious young man, not only because of what they felt was his excessive industry, but because of his homespun clothes and heavy cow-hide boots. He seldom retorted, but once, when jests had gone further than usual, he said to a tormentor: "When I am out of my time and set up for myself, and you need employment, as you probably will, come to me and I will give you work." The man little thought the prophecy would be fulfilled, but forty years after, when the industrious apprentice was mayor of the city and one of the world's leading publishers, he was reminded of the promise made to the tormentor, and the promised position was given to him. The workman who believed in doing more than was expected of him had won his way to fame and fortune, while his derider had made no progress.

In 1817 the industrious apprentice asked a brother--who in the meantime had served his apprentices.h.i.+p in a printing office--to go into business with him. Later two other brothers were taken into the firm. All were believers in the doctrine that had led the oldest member of the firm to success--the doctrine of doing as much instead of as little as possible.

Their readiness to work constantly enabled the four brothers, who started with little capital except their knowledge of their trade, to build up within a generation one of the world's greatest publis.h.i.+ng houses. They improved every moment. But they were never tempted to work on Sunday; business was never so pressing that they would break into the day of rest, or make their men do so. In this they were only living in accordance with purposes formed during their days of working for others.

It is stated of one of the brothers, whose employer rejoiced in his readiness to do hard work and plenty of it, that he was expected to work on Sunday, in order to get ready the catalogue of an auction sale which was to be held next day. "That I will not do," he said, respectfully but firmly: "I cannot work on Sunday." He did work till midnight; then--in spite of the threat that he would be discharged--he laid down his composing stick on the case. On Monday morning his employer apologized and asked him to return to work.

Thirty-six years after the founding of the house, it occupied five five-story buildings on one street and six on another street. Then a careless plumber started a fire that--within a few hours--destroyed the entire property. But the energetic men who knew how to work were not discouraged at the thought of beginning again. The night after the fire they met for conference. As they separated one of them remarked that the evening had seemed more like a time of social festivity than a consultation over a great calamity.

Business a.s.sociates hastened to make offers of loans. Within forty-eight hours the firm was tendered more than one hundred thousand dollars.

Publishers offered their presses, printing material and office room.

Authors wrote that they were ready to wait indefinitely for pay, while employees not only made a like suggestion, but said they were willing to have their pay reduced. While none of these offers were accepted, they were greatly appreciated, for they told of the place the brothers had won for themselves by untiring industry and sterling integrity.

After the fire the house became greater than ever, so that to-day it stands as an example of what "hard work coupled with high ideals" may accomplish. And to every young man the thought of it gives inspiration to follow in the steps of the founder who "made it the rule of his life to study not how little he could do, but how much."

V

ABUSING THE WILL TO WORK

There are times when the real test of a worker's courage is not his readiness to work but his will to curb the temptation to be intemperate in work.

When the word "intemperance" is mentioned most people think at once of strong drink; many people are unwilling to think of anything but strong drink. As if where there is no temptation to drink there can be no temptation to intemperance!

Paul had a different idea. When he wrote to the Corinthians, "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," he must have had in mind scores of different ways in which intemperance endangers success.

If people were to make a list of some of the aspects of intemperance that are characteristic of modern life, it is quite likely that a large proportion would omit one of the most serious of all--the intemperance of the man who lives to work, who drives himself to work, who is never happy unless he is working, who makes himself and others unhappy because he labors too long, and too persistently, perhaps with the result that his own promising career is wrecked and the industry of others is interfered with seriously.

One of the most striking ill.u.s.trations of intemperance in work is supplied by the life of Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, _Republican_, one of the famous editors of the generation beginning a few years after the Civil War.

Mr. Bowles was but eighteen years old when he had his first warning that his system could not stand the strain of the work to which a strong will drove him. His mother used to set a rocking chair for him at the table at meal-time, because, as she said, "Sam has so little time to rest."