Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-06-08
The Failure Of Success.

|
| The suicide of Amasa Stone, in which the
light of what was in every worldly sense
Il successful life was put out i'm Cleve-
| land Friday afternoon, inforces once
more a moral that it is to be hoped will
not have to be told too often 10 the bust
ness-men of this country. An English
| traveller who was lately in Chicago said
, TO an American friend that nothing so
| struck him in this country as the cease
| less energy with which our successful
men, after they had won great prizes of
fortune, continued to toll when they
should rest. In England man who
has amassed competency, large or
larger, hastens to en- Joy it while there
is still some capability of enjoyment left.
He buys an estate, and goes into
boards of trustees and the local magis-
| tracy, joins social club, and basks i'm
the warm sun of public interest and re-
gard that is almost certain TO attend
successful man. But in this country
work seems to become Il vice. Ii can not
be thrown aside. II clings to lis victims
like the morphine habit. II grows upon
them like an incurable affection of the
nerves, until the unhappy sot of indus
try drops out of the world before his
time.
Merchants used to retire from bust
ness when they had done well, and had
reached fifty years of age or so. But
nowadays after man has built up
fortune ut trading or manufacturing.
and has made what in the old days
would have been considered something
handsome, he thinks he has only begun.
He has now obtained not nest-egg, but
yl,<.I., f,,l
railroad building, banking, stock-job-
bing, or into some of the other WIDE
fields opened to energy, and associated
capital, and executive ability, will make
him really rich. He is not content with
the success he has achieved in his own
field. The huge fortunes that surround
him fill him with envy and nervous
restlessness to ''go them" one better.
His business experience has been but an
apprenticeship to the grander trade of
corporation management and stock ex-
change opportunities.
1t results from this narrow intensity
of the thirst for gold and power, and
this indulgence of the appetite for in
temperate eNertion, that the men who
work the hardest work without pay.
They get board wages from the world,
and that is about about all. They
work for the sake of the work. In
the hot rivalry to sell more calicoes,
build more railroads, lend more money,
put up more houses or stores than their
competitors, they strain their nerves
to the swapping point. They founder.
They run their mad race in the delusiOn
that they are working for themselves.
They wake up in the next world to see
that 1t was the community that got the
benefit of the railroads, the houses, the
banks, the manufactures, the vast
warehouses in which they embodied
their energies. Their overreaching
selfishness has failed because it has given
the fruits of their labors TO others.
They can not claim that theirs was a
success in working for others. for they
did not mean to work for anybody but
themselves.
1t was Bulwer who epitomzed human
life in the bitter phrases: youth fol-
ly, manhood a struggle, old age a re-
gret. A kinder and wiser saying comes
from Emerson: 1--WE should prize our
YOUTH The flood-tide of young energy
is the tide on which to embark for fort
une. But the cooler days that follow
are those which the wise, successful man
will give to better work than fortune
seeking. Few of us can be what the
world calls successful. ~ Those who
reach that goal should not forget that
in getting to it, human toes were the
least sensitive things they crushed.
Whether or not the world owes every
man living, every man owes the world
something out of his living. Insomnia,
nervous prostration, paralysis, prema-
ture death are poor finishing touches
to use for the apexes of what we want
the world to look at as successful ca
reers. 1t is better to stop short of ..suc-
cess" that is SO complete that it ends
in complete collapse of the successful
man. when was young.' Greek
epitaph says, !" and could enjoy life,
had nothing. Now that I am old and
can not enjoy it / have more money
than know what to do with Our
successful men would not fail as they
do from the surfeit of success if they
would learn the wisdom of making less
OF their business and more of themselves.
~-fJkif000 Tribune