Morning journal and courier., 1880-04-13
Rard-Headed People.

The hard-head6d man IS almost 1nyArlaDly successful. ''Luck !" he says. "There's no such thing ss luck. I built my own fortune brick by brick. I simply took no steps back ward'' But the truth is that Fate gave him in his cradle sharper sight and cooler brain than the rest of us and he has been cooling and sharpening them ever since. No nurse could frighten them with bugaboos or the dark and no clergyman's talk of remorse or the judgment-day affects him now. He has never done wrong; why should he be afraid ? Nobody ever mistook his character. He was known az s'long- headed fellow" when he played mumble-the-peg and wore petticoats. His father never romped with him; and his m mother, telling the dear old Bible storles, stammered when she caught his keen, incred- uIous eye. Angels, she remembered, did seem so very unlikely after all, when one looked at things in ccmmon-sense way :! and as for the old heroes and martyrs she was ashamed to let him see the glow of soul with which she thought of them. Could they have really found no more practical method of introducing the gospel than by going through the rack and fire?
 He was a cynical little doubter as boy, but now as map, he is well known as Christian to all his customers, and as tradesman to all Christians Not that he is hypoorfte. But he prefers church going people as patrons ; they pay their bills promptly. And he thinks that the Christian religion teaches sound bus mess principles. It is honesty that wins in the long run in the market; and it is the fair dealer whose profits are the biggest. He is 70 successful man that the public always give him credit either for genius or luck; but he has neither the one nor the other. He simply knows the market, and has no higher aim than to please it. If he is a tradesman, he catches the farthest glimpse of the coming whim of fashion and fills his shop with it. If he is an author his are the "made" books, which nobody can do without. His pictures, if he has given himself to art, are those popu- lar studies of babies and young mothers at prayer which ara first marked 'sold' in exhl- bition rooms. If he has devoted his life to science he seizes the crude invention of some visionary fellow, gives it a practical use, pat ents it, and makes his fortune. If he is a physician, he is always at hand as an expert on trials you will seldom miss his name out of the papers. If he is clergyman, he is always master of the sensation of the hour, ready to preach upon any subject upon which the public has temporarily gone mad. It really does not matter to him where the horse goes, so that he sits astride it. Other men, in short, tumble sometimes upon good fortune hiding in the field he lies in wait for it, catches it when it is fattest. He knows how to bide his time; he is le chat qui dort.
 If he happens not to be man, but woman, you usually find this shrewd, hard headed citi- zen thin Tipped. pale eyed leader of the "best society,"" whether fast and fashionable or sternly pious depends altogether on the &C., cident of her position. She is usually, how ever, 30 immaculate as to her own morals as to have no mercy for any shortcomings in others. The New Testament system of chari- ty, in her opinion, is crude and lax. If she had been there she would have given the man beset by thieves ticket for. work to @ ward committee, instead of oil and wine and she would have handed the Magdalene over to a policeman, to make sure that she sinned no more. This lady is always known a capital manager of servants, seamstresses, church suppers or her sons wives She get an in- credible amount of work for small wages out of the people in her kitchen. Her peighbors (easy, thriftless creatures, to her mind) look on with envy. Neither she nor her mascu line congener has at heart the slightest fai th in any man or woman but themselves. It is they who can lay an unerring finger on the one black spot of character which your friend keeps hidden, be it freckle bloodstain. They know human nature. You shall not humbug theml
 The possessions of wealth, of public es- teer, and of ideas of this hard headed citizen are all so substantial that he is the man whom the world always envies most. It does not love him probably half so much as some luck less, lovable, sinful Lazarus starving at his gate, who had not the crumbs from the rich mans table here, and is not at all sure of Abraham's bosom hereafter. But what of that He has been shfeWd. rational, pracu- cal He has sought solid goods in the world {; money, influence, respect-and he has gained them. As for that vague, cloudy world of love, friendship, imagination, he knows nothing about it he has invested nothing in it and he expects no dividends. His neighbor, widow in rusty black Gone of the easy irrational sort), gave all of her labor and thoughts to sickly husband and son, who are now both dead. What improvident folly that was Now, the most real things in the world to her are the love they gave her, the heaven to which they are gone, the God who cares for her and them. He listens to her as to dying man who babbles of green fields that live only in his fevered fancy. God and heaven and love are to him only poetic names.
 Perhaps, as he hears the end, the withered little atom of heart in him stirs feebly an6 craves late tenderness from some one, a son, or more often grandchild. It is not often given. It was not for love he worked. Then, one day, he lies down in the middle of his sol i'd goods and goes out They all are left, but he is gone. His hands yonder must be quite empty. His forlorn little neighbor is gone too; but people talk with smile of the home which was ready for her and the friends who were waiting. There are certainties which outlast money or goods upon which our hard. headed friend did not lay his hand.