Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

is the devil’s workshop, and a

lazy man the devil’s bolster. To be occupied is to be possessed as

by a tenant, whereas to be idle is to be empty; and when the doors

of the imagination are opened, temptation finds a ready access, and

evil thoughts come trooping in. It is observed at sea, that men

are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least

employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do,

would issue the order to “scour the anchor!”

 

Men of business are accustomed to quote the maxim that Time is

money; but it is more; the proper improvement of it is self-culture, self-improvement, and growth of character. An hour wasted

daily on trifles or in indolence, would, if devoted to self-improvement, make an ignorant man wise in a few years, and employed

in good works, would make his life fruitful, and death a harvest of

worthy deeds. Fifteen minutes a day devoted to self-improvement,

will be felt at the end of the year. Good thoughts and carefully

gathered experience take up no room, and may be carried about as

our companions everywhere, without cost or incumbrance. An

economical use of time is the true mode of securing leisure: it

enables us to get through business and carry it forward, instead of

being driven by it. On the other hand, the miscalculation of time

involves us in perpetual hurry, confusion, and difficulties; and

life becomes a mere shuffle of expedients, usually followed by

disaster. Nelson once said, “I owe all my success in life to

having been always a quarter of an hour before my time.”

 

Some take no thought of the value of money until they have come to

an end of it, and many do the same with their time. The hours are

allowed to flow by unemployed, and then, when life is fast waning,

they bethink themselves of the duty of making a wiser use of it.

But the habit of listlessness and idleness may already have become

confirmed, and they are unable to break the bonds with which they

have permitted themselves to become bound. Lost wealth may be

replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by

temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone for ever.

 

A proper consideration of the value of time, will also inspire

habits of punctuality. “Punctuality,” said Louis XIV., “is the

politeness of kings.” It is also the duty of gentlemen, and the

necessity of men of business. Nothing begets confidence in a man

sooner than the practice of this virtue, and nothing shakes

confidence sooner than the want of it. He who holds to his

appointment and does not keep you waiting for him, shows that he

has regard for your time as well as for his own. Thus punctuality

is one of the modes by which we testify our personal respect for

those whom we are called upon to meet in the business of life. It

is also conscientiousness in a measure; for an appointment is a

contract, express or implied, and he who does not keep it breaks

faith, as well as dishonestly uses other people’s time, and thus

inevitably loses character. We naturally come to the conclusion

that the person who is careless about time will be careless about

business, and that he is not the one to be trusted with the

transaction of matters of importance. When Washington’s secretary

excused himself for the lateness of his attendance and laid the

blame upon his watch, his master quietly said, “Then you must get

another watch, or I another secretary.”

 

The person who is negligent of time and its employment is usually

found to be a general disturber of others’ peace and serenity. It

was wittily said by Lord Chesterfield of the old Duke of Newcastle-

-“His Grace loses an hour in the morning, and is looking for it all

the rest of the day.” Everybody with whom the unpunctual man has

to do is thrown from time to time into a state of fever: he is

systematically late; regular only in his irregularity. He conducts

his dawdling as if upon system; arrives at his appointment after

time; gets to the railway station after the train has started;

posts his letter when the box has closed. Thus business is thrown

into confusion, and everybody concerned is put out of temper. It

will generally be found that the men who are thus habitually behind

time are as habitually behind success; and the world generally

casts them aside to swell the ranks of the grumblers and the

railers against fortune.

 

In addition to the ordinary working qualities the business man of

the highest class requires quick perception and firmness in the

execution of his plans. Tact is also important; and though this is

partly the gift of nature, it is yet capable of being cultivated

and developed by observation and experience. Men of this quality

are quick to see the right mode of action, and if they have

decision of purpose, are prompt to carry out their undertakings to

a successful issue. These qualities are especially valuable, and

indeed indispensable, in those who direct the action of other men

on a large scale, as for instance, in the case of the commander of

an army in the field. It is not merely necessary that the general

should be great as a warrior but also as a man of business. He

must possess great tact, much knowledge of character, and ability

to organize the movements of a large mass of men, whom he has to

feed, clothe, and furnish with whatever may be necessary in order

that they may keep the field and win battles. In these respects

Napoleon and Wellington were both first-rate men of business.

 

Though Napoleon had an immense love for details, he had also a

vivid power of imagination, which enabled him to look along

extended lines of action, and deal with those details on a large

scale, with judgment and rapidity. He possessed such knowledge of

character as enabled him to select, almost unerringly, the best

agents for the execution of his designs. But he trusted as little

as possible to agents in matters of great moment, on which

important results depended. This feature in his character is

illustrated in a remarkable degree by the ‘Napoleon

Correspondence,’ now in course of publication, and particularly by

the contents of the 15th volume, {25} which include the letters,

orders, and despatches, written by the Emperor at Finkenstein, a

little chateau on the frontier of Poland in the year 1807, shortly

after the victory of Eylau.

 

The French army was then lying encamped along the river Passarge

with the Russians before them, the Austrians on their right flank,

and the conquered Prussians in their rear. A long line of

communications had to be maintained with France, through a hostile

country; but so carefully, and with such foresight was this

provided for, that it is said Napoleon never missed a post. The

movements of armies, the bringing up of reinforcements from remote

points in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, the opening of canals

and the levelling of roads to enable the produce of Poland and

Prussia to be readily transported to his encampments, had his

unceasing attention, down to the minutest details. We find him

directing where horses were to be obtained, making arrangements for

an adequate supply of saddles, ordering shoes for the soldiers, and

specifying the number of rations of bread, biscuit, and spirits,

that were to be brought to camp, or stored in magazines for the use

of the troops. At the same time we find him writing to Paris

giving directions for the reorganization of the French College,

devising a scheme of public education, dictating bulletins and

articles for the ‘Moniteur,’ revising the details of the budgets,

giving instructions to architects as to alterations to be made at

the Tuileries and the Church of the Madelaine, throwing an

occasional sarcasm at Madame de Stael and the Parisian journals,

interfering to put down a squabble at the Grand Opera, carrying on

a correspondence with the Sultan of Turkey and the Schah of Persia,

so that while his body was at Finkenstein, his mind seemed to be

working at a hundred different places in Paris, in Europe, and

throughout the world.

 

We find him in one letter asking Ney if he has duly received the

muskets which have been sent him; in another he gives directions to

Prince Jerome as to the shirts, greatcoats, clothes, shoes, shakos,

and arms, to be served out to the Wurtemburg regiments; again he

presses Cambaceres to forward to the army a double stock of corn—

“The IFS and the BUTS,” said he, “are at present out of season, and

above all it must be done with speed.” Then he informs Daru that

the army want shirts, and that they don’t come to hand. To Massena

he writes, “Let me know if your biscuit and bread arrangements are

yet completed.” To the Grand due de Berg, he gives directions as

to the accoutrements of the cuirassiers—“They complain that the

men want sabres; send an officer to obtain them at Posen. It is

also said they want helmets; order that they be made at Ebling…

. It is not by sleeping that one can accomplish anything.” Thus no

point of detail was neglected, and the energies of all were

stimulated into action with extraordinary power. Though many of

the Emperor’s days were occupied by inspections of his troops,—in

the course of which he sometimes rode from thirty to forty leagues

a day,—and by reviews, receptions, and affairs of state, leaving

but little time for business matters, he neglected nothing on that

account; but devoted the greater part of his nights, when

necessary, to examining budgets, dictating dispatches, and

attending to the thousand matters of detail in the organization and

working of the Imperial Government; the machinery of which was for

the most part concentrated in his own head.

 

Like Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington was a first-rate man of

business; and it is not perhaps saying too much to aver that it was

in no small degree because of his possession of a business faculty

amounting to genius, that the Duke never lost a battle.

 

While a subaltern, he became dissatisfied with the slowness of his

promotion, and having passed from the infantry to the cavalry

twice, and back again, without advancement, he applied to Lord

Camden, then Viceroy of Ireland, for employment in the Revenue or

Treasury Board. Had he succeeded, no doubt he would have made a

first-rate head of a department, as he would have made a first-rate

merchant or manufacturer. But his application failed, and he

remained with the army to become the greatest of British generals.

 

The Duke began his active military career under the Duke of York

and General Walmoden, in Flanders and Holland, where he learnt,

amidst misfortunes and defeats, how bad business arrangements and

bad generalship serve to ruin the morale of an army. Ten years

after entering the army we find him a colonel in India, reported by

his superiors as an officer of indefatigable energy and

application. He entered into the minutest details of the service,

and sought to raise the discipline of his men to the highest

standard. “The regiment of Colonel Wellesley,” wrote General

Harris in 1799, “is a model regiment; on the score of soldierly

bearing, discipline, instruction, and orderly behaviour it is above

all praise.” Thus qualifying himself for posts of greater

confidence, he was shortly after nominated governor of the capital

of Mysore. In the war with the Mahrattas he was first called upon

to try his hand at generalship; and at thirty-four he won the

memorable battle of Assaye, with an army composed of 1500 British

and 5000 sepoys, over 20,000 Mahratta infantry and