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

incompatible with

greatness.” Not only so, but it is incompatible with economy,

decency, health, and honest living. When a youth cannot restrain,

he must abstain. Dr. Johnson’s case is the case of many. He said,

referring to his own habits, “Sir, I can abstain; but I can’t be

moderate.”

 

But to wrestle vigorously and successfully with any vicious habit,

we must not merely be satisfied with contending on the low ground

of worldly prudence, though that is of use, but take stand upon a

higher moral elevation. Mechanical aids, such as pledges, may be

of service to some, but the great thing is to set up a high

standard of thinking and acting, and endeavour to strengthen and

purify the principles as well as to reform the habits. For this

purpose a youth must study himself, watch his steps, and compare

his thoughts and acts with his rule. The more knowledge of himself

he gains, the more humble will he be, and perhaps the less

confident in his own strength. But the discipline will be always

found most valuable which is acquired by resisting small present

gratifications to secure a prospective greater and higher one. It

is the noblest work in self-education—for

 

“Real glory

Springs from the silent conquest of ourselves,

And without that the conqueror is nought

But the first slave.”

 

Many popular books have been written for the purpose of

communicating to the public the grand secret of making money. But

there is no secret whatever about it, as the proverbs of every

nation abundantly testify. “Take care of the pennies and the

pounds will take care of themselves.” “Diligence is the mother of

good luck.” “No pains no gains.” “No sweat no sweet.” “Work and

thou shalt have.” “The world is his who has patience and

industry.” “Better go to bed supperless than rise in debt.” Such

are specimens of the proverbial philosophy, embodying the hoarded

experience of many generations, as to the best means of thriving in

the world. They were current in people’s mouths long before books

were invented; and like other popular proverbs they were the first

codes of popular morals. Moreover they have stood the test of

time, and the experience of every day still bears witness to their

accuracy, force, and soundness. The proverbs of Solomon are full

of wisdom as to the force of industry, and the use and abuse of

money:- “He that is slothful in work is brother to him that is a

great waster.” “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways,

and be wise.” Poverty, says the preacher, shall come upon the

idler, “as one that travelleth, and want as an armed man;” but of

the industrious and upright, “the hand of the diligent maketh

rich.” “The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and

drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.” “Seest thou a man

diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings.” But above

all, “It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better

than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be

compared to it.”

 

Simple industry and thrift will go far towards making any person of

ordinary working faculty comparatively independent in his means.

Even a working man may be so, provided he will carefully husband

his resources, and watch the little outlets of useless expenditure.

A penny is a very small matter, yet the comfort of thousands of

families depends upon the proper spending and saving of pennies.

If a man allows the little pennies, the results of his hard work,

to slip out of his fingers—some to the beershop, some this way and

some that—he will find that his life is little raised above one of

mere animal drudgery. On the other hand, if he take care of the

pennies—putting some weekly into a benefit society or an insurance

fund, others into a savings’ bank, and confiding the rest to his

wife to be carefully laid out, with a view to the comfortable

maintenance and education of his family—he will soon find that

this attention to small matters will abundantly repay him, in

increasing means, growing comfort at home, and a mind comparatively

free from fears as to the future. And if a working man have high

ambition and possess richness in spirit,—a kind of wealth which

far transcends all mere worldly possessions—he may not only help

himself, but be a profitable helper of others in his path through

life. That this is no impossible thing even for a common labourer

in a workshop, may be illustrated by the remarkable career of

Thomas Wright of Manchester, who not only attempted but succeeded

in the reclamation of many criminals while working for weekly wages

in a foundry.

 

Accident first directed Thomas Wright’s attention to the difficulty

encountered by liberated convicts in returning to habits of honest

industry. His mind was shortly possessed by the subject; and to

remedy the evil became the purpose of his life. Though he worked

from six in the morning till six at night, still there were leisure

minutes that he could call his own—more especially his Sundays—

and these he employed in the service of convicted criminals; a

class then far more neglected than they are now. But a few minutes

a day, well employed, can effect a great deal; and it will scarcely

be credited, that in ten years this working man, by steadfastly

holding to his purpose, succeeded in rescuing not fewer than three

hundred felons from continuance in a life of villany! He came to

be regarded as the moral physician of the Manchester Old Bailey;

and where the Chaplain and all others failed, Thomas Wright often

succeeded. Children he thus restored reformed to their parents;

sons and daughters otherwise lost, to their homes; and many a

returned convict did he contrive to settle down to honest and

industrious pursuits. The task was by no means easy. It required

money, time, energy, prudence, and above all, character, and the

confidence which character invariably inspires. The most

remarkable circumstance was that Wright relieved many of these poor

outcasts out of the comparatively small wages earned by him at

foundry work. He did all this on an income which did not average,

during his working career, 100l. per annum; and yet, while he was

able to bestow substantial aid on criminals, to whom he owed no

more than the service of kindness which every human being owes to

another, he also maintained his family in comfort, and was, by

frugality and carefulness, enabled to lay by a store of savings

against his approaching old age. Every week he apportioned his

income with deliberate care; so much for the indispensable

necessaries of food and clothing, so much for the landlord, so much

for the schoolmaster, so much for the poor and needy; and the lines

of distribution were resolutely observed. By such means did this

humble workman pursue his great work, with the results we have so

briefly described. Indeed, his career affords one of the most

remarkable and striking illustrations of the force of purpose in a

man, of the might of small means carefully and sedulously applied,

and, above all, of the power which an energetic and upright

character invariably exercises upon the lives and conduct of

others.

 

There is no discredit, but honour, in every right walk of industry,

whether it be in tilling the ground, making tools, weaving fabrics,

or selling the products behind a counter. A youth may handle a

yard-stick, or measure a piece of ribbon; and there will be no

discredit in doing so, unless he allows his mind to have no higher

range than the stick and ribbon; to be as short as the one, and as

narrow as the other. “Let not those blush who HAVE,” said Fuller,

“but those who HAVE NOT a lawful calling.” And Bishop Hall said,

“Sweet is the destiny of all trades, whether of the brow or of the

mind.” Men who have raised themselves from a humble calling, need

not be ashamed, but rather ought to be proud of the difficulties

they have surmounted. An American President, when asked what was

his coat-of-arms, remembering that he had been a hewer of wood in

his youth, replied, “A pair of shirt sleeves.” A French doctor

once taunted Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, who had been a tallow-chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which

Flechier replied, “If you had been born in the same condition that

I was, you would still have been but a maker of candles.”

 

Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite

independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who

devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail

to become rich. Very little brains will do; spend less than you

earn; add guinea to guinea; scrape and save; and the pile of gold

will gradually rise. Osterwald, the Parisian banker, began life a

poor man. He was accustomed every evening to drink a pint of beer

for supper at a tavern which he visited, during which he collected

and pocketed all the corks that he could lay his hands on. In

eight years he had collected as many corks as sold for eight louis

d’ors. With that sum he laid the foundations of his fortune—

gained mostly by stock-jobbing; leaving at his death some three

millions of francs. John Foster has cited a striking illustration

of what this kind of determination will do in money-making. A

young man who ran through his patrimony, spending it in profligacy,

was at length reduced to utter want and despair. He rushed out of

his house intending to put an end to his life, and stopped on

arriving at an eminence overlooking what were once his estates. He

sat down, ruminated for a time, and rose with the determination

that he would recover them. He returned to the streets, saw a load

of coals which had been shot out of a cart on to the pavement

before a house, offered to carry them in, and was employed. He

thus earned a few pence, requested some meat and drink as a

gratuity, which was given him, and the pennies were laid by.

Pursuing this menial labour, he earned and saved more pennies;

accumulated sufficient to enable him to purchase some cattle, the

value of which he understood, and these he sold to advantage. He

proceeded by degrees to undertake larger transactions, until at

length he became rich. The result was, that he more than recovered

his possessions, and died an inveterate miser. When he was buried,

mere earth went to earth. With a nobler spirit, the same

determination might have enabled such a man to be a benefactor to

others as well as to himself. But the life and its end in this

case were alike sordid.

 

To provide for others and for our own comfort and independence in

old age, is honourable, and greatly to be commended; but to hoard

for mere wealth’s sake is the characteristic of the narrow-souled

and the miserly. It is against the growth of this habit of

inordinate saving that the wise man needs most carefully to guard

himself: else, what in youth was simple economy, may in old age

grow into avarice, and what was a duty in the one case, may become

a vice in the other. It is the LOVE of money—not money itself—

which is “the root of evil,”—a love which narrows and contracts

the soul, and closes it against generous life and action. Hence,

Sir Walter Scott makes one of his characters declare that “the

penny siller slew more souls than the naked sword slew bodies.” It

is one of the defects of business too exclusively followed, that it

insensibly tends to a mechanism of character. The business man

gets into a rut, and