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

which I have never been and never shall

be extricated as long as I live.” His Autobiography shows but too

painfully how embarrassment in money matters produces poignant

distress of mind, utter incapacity for work, and constantly

recurring humiliations. The written advice which he gave to a

youth when entering the navy was as follows: “Never purchase any

enjoyment if it cannot be procured without borrowing of others.

Never borrow money: it is degrading. I do not say never lend, but

never lend if by lending you render yourself unable to pay what you

owe; but under any circumstances never borrow.” Fichte, the poor

student, refused to accept even presents from his still poorer

parents.

 

Dr. Johnson held that early debt is ruin. His words on the subject

are weighty, and worthy of being held in remembrance. “Do not,”

said he, “accustom yourself to consider debt only as an

inconvenience; you will find it a calamity. Poverty takes away so

many means of doing good, and produces so much inability to resist

evil, both natural and moral, that it is by all virtuous means to

be avoided… . Let it be your first care, then, not to be in any

man’s debt. Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have spend less.

Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys

liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others

extremely difficult. Frugality is not only the basis of quiet, but

of beneficence. No man can help others that wants help himself; we

must have enough before we have to spare.”

 

It is the bounden duty of every man to look his affairs in the

face, and to keep an account of his incomings and outgoings in

money matters. The exercise of a little simple arithmetic in this

way will be found of great value. Prudence requires that we shall

pitch our scale of living a degree below our means, rather than up

to them; but this can only be done by carrying out faithfully a

plan of living by which both ends may be made to meet. John Locke

strongly advised this course: “Nothing,” said he, “is likelier to

keep a man within compass than having constantly before his eyes

the state of his affairs in a regular course of account.” The Duke

of Wellington kept an accurate detailed account of all the moneys

received and expended by him. “I make a point,” said he to Mr.

Gleig, “of paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the

same; formerly I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them,

but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great

surprise, duns of a year or two’s standing. The fellow had

speculated with my money, and left my bills unpaid.” Talking of

debt his remark was, “It makes a slave of a man. I have often

known what it was to be in want of money, but I never got into

debt.” Washington was as particular as Wellington was, in matters

of business detail; and it is a remarkable fact, that he did not

disdain to scrutinize the smallest outgoings of his household—

determined as he was to live honestly within his means—even while

holding the high office of President of the American Union.

 

Admiral Jervis, Earl St. Vincent, has told the story of his early

struggles, and, amongst other things, of his determination to keep

out of debt. “My father had a very large family,” said he, “with

limited means. He gave me twenty pounds at starting, and that was

all he ever gave me. After I had been a considerable time at the

station [at sea], I drew for twenty more, but the bill came back

protested. I was mortified at this rebuke, and made a promise,

which I have ever kept, that I would never draw another bill

without a certainty of its being paid. I immediately changed my

mode of living, quitted my mess, lived alone, and took up the

ship’s allowance, which I found quite sufficient; washed and mended

my own clothes; made a pair of trousers out of the ticking of my

bed; and having by these means saved as much money as would redeem

my honour, I took up my bill, and from that time to this I have

taken care to keep within my means.” Jervis for six years endured

pinching privation, but preserved his integrity, studied his

profession with success, and gradually and steadily rose by merit

and bravery to the highest rank.

 

Mr. Hume hit the mark when he once stated in the House of Commons—

though his words were followed by “laughter”—that the tone of

living in England is altogether too high. Middle-class people are

too apt to live up to their incomes, if not beyond them: affecting

a degree of “style” which is most unhealthy in its effects upon

society at large. There is an ambition to bring up boys as

gentlemen, or rather “genteel” men; though the result frequently

is, only to make them gents. They acquire a taste for dress,

style, luxuries, and amusements, which can never form any solid

foundation for manly or gentlemanly character; and the result is,

that we have a vast number of gingerbread young gentry thrown upon

the world, who remind one of the abandoned hulls sometimes picked

up at sea, with only a monkey on board.

 

There is a dreadful ambition abroad for being “genteel.” We keep

up appearances, too often at the expense of honesty; and, though we

may not be rich, yet we must seem to be so. We must be

“respectable,” though only in the meanest sense—in mere vulgar

outward show. We have not the courage to go patiently onward in

the condition of life in which it has pleased God to call us; but

must needs live in some fashionable state to which we ridiculously

please to call ourselves, and all to gratify the vanity of that

unsubstantial genteel world of which we form a part. There is a

constant struggle and pressure for front seats in the social

amphitheatre; in the midst of which all noble self-denying resolve

is trodden down, and many fine natures are inevitably crushed to

death. What waste, what misery, what bankruptcy, come from all

this ambition to dazzle others with the glare of apparent worldly

success, we need not describe. The mischievous results show

themselves in a thousand ways—in the rank frauds committed by men

who dare to be dishonest, but do not dare to seem poor; and in the

desperate dashes at fortune, in which the pity is not so much for

those who fail, as for the hundreds of innocent families who are so

often involved in their ruin.

 

The late Sir Charles Napier, in taking leave of his command in

India, did a bold and honest thing in publishing his strong

protest, embodied in his last General Order to the officers of the

Indian army, against the “fast” life led by so many young officers

in that service, involving them in ignominious obligations. Sir

Charles strongly urged, in that famous document—what had almost

been lost sight of that “honesty is inseparable from the character

of a thorough-bred gentleman;” and that “to drink unpaid-for

champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to

be a cheat, and not a gentleman.” Men who lived beyond their means

and were summoned, often by their own servants, before Courts of

Requests for debts contracted in extravagant living, might be

officers by virtue of their commissions, but they were not

gentlemen. The habit of being constantly in debt, the Commander-in-chief held, made men grow callous to the proper feelings of a

gentleman. It was not enough that an officer should be able to

fight: that any bull-dog could do. But did he hold his word

inviolate?—did he pay his debts? These were among the points of

honour which, he insisted, illuminated the true gentleman’s and

soldier’s career. As Bayard was of old, so would Sir Charles

Napier have all British officers to be. He knew them to be

“without fear,” but he would also have them “without reproach.”

There are, however, many gallant young fellows, both in India and

at home, capable of mounting a breach on an emergency amidst

belching fire, and of performing the most desperate deeds of

valour, who nevertheless cannot or will not exercise the moral

courage necessary to enable them to resist a petty temptation

presented to their senses. They cannot utter their valiant “No,”

or “I can’t afford it,” to the invitations of pleasure and self-enjoyment; and they are found ready to brave death rather than the

ridicule of their companions.

 

The young man, as he passes through life, advances through a long

line of tempters ranged on either side of him; and the inevitable

effect of yielding, is degradation in a greater or a less degree.

Contact with them tends insensibly to draw away from him some

portion of the divine electric element with which his nature is

charged; and his only mode of resisting them is to utter and to act

out his “no” manfully and resolutely. He must decide at once, not

waiting to deliberate and balance reasons; for the youth, like “the

woman who deliberates, is lost.” Many deliberate, without

deciding; but “not to resolve, IS to resolve.” A perfect knowledge

of man is in the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” But

temptation will come to try the young man’s strength; and once

yielded to, the power to resist grows weaker and weaker. Yield

once, and a portion of virtue has gone. Resist manfully, and the

first decision will give strength for life; repeated, it will

become a habit. It is in the outworks of the habits formed in

early life that the real strength of the defence must lie; for it

has been wisely ordained, that the machinery of moral existence

should be carried on principally through the medium of the habits,

so as to save the wear and tear of the great principles within. It

is good habits, which insinuate themselves into the thousand

inconsiderable acts of life, that really constitute by far the

greater part of man’s moral conduct.

 

Hugh Miller has told how, by an act of youthful decision, he saved

himself from one of the strong temptations so peculiar to a life of

toil. When employed as a mason, it was usual for his fellow-workmen to have an occasional treat of drink, and one day two

glasses of whisky fell to his share, which he swallowed. When he

reached home, he found, on opening his favourite book—‘Bacon’s

Essays’—that the letters danced before his eyes, and that he could

no longer master the sense. “The condition,” he says, “into which

I had brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation. I had sunk,

by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence than

that on which it was my privilege to be placed; and though the

state could have been no very favourable one for forming a

resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never again

sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking

usage; and, with God’s help, I was enabled to hold by the

determination.” It is such decisions as this that often form the

turning-points in a man’s life, and furnish the foundation of his

future character. And this rock, on which Hugh Miller might have

been wrecked, if he had not at the right moment put forth his moral

strength to strike away from it, is one that youth and manhood

alike need to be constantly on their guard against. It is about

one of the worst and most deadly, as well as extravagant,

temptations which lie in the way of youth. Sir Walter Scott used

to say that “of all vices drinking is the most