The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-02-15
THAT some things are wretchedly out of


says petitions for work appear from time to
time in various papers, almost abject in their
tone, from men well qualified by education to
earn a good income in the upper grades OF
avocations: they beg for work of any kind,
however humble, that will keep them and
their families from want. What is wrong
To this it answers, Every observing man
knows that there is plenty of work and wages
in this country in every profession and trade
for the industrious keen-witted man who
knows how to seize and keep them. Yet, be-
sides the lowest sodden mass of Ignorant
paupers, there is among us large class OF
idle, poor, educated people, men and women,
whose fate it is, and will be through life, to
be shabby and uncomfortable, to go to bed
every night half hungry in body and soul,
shivering with the chill of the cold winds and
the colder face which mankind turns to them.
As rule, the causes of their failure are writ
ten SO plainly that he who runs may read.
This one is a drunkard that dishonest; one
miserable fellow inherited disease and gave it
to his children; another lacks brains; his
neighbour poorer still, is hopelessly lazy.
When misfortune thus follows a recognized
cause, there is certain fitness OF justice in it
that quenches our compassion as water does
fire. But, beside these people who have
worked for and earned misery and poverty,
there is class of men that we all know, who
have struggled desperately against them in
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sober, honest, and Woodworking. But, some
how, they don't succeed They are known
in the community as "unlucky." Poor Jack,
when he applies for situation finds that it
was given away just five minutes before he
got in if he studies law, he settles in town
swarming with briefess attorneys; if medi-
cine, all the paying patients go to the
quack of the other school over the
way; he writes a book, and the first edition
stays on the shelves of his publishers; he
belongs to church, and the deacons snub
him; his wife drops out of the social circle to
which she by rights belongs; his boys cannot
find openings when they are ready to begin
life; his daughters wither at home, unsought,
while ugly, pert, forward damsels step into
happy homes as wives and mothers. Let
nobody blame him; he is good fellow, will
ing to work, scholarly sometimes, and often,
indeed almost always, man of sensitive,
delicate feeling. But dry-rot of disaster is
upon him and his family. The hurrying
world shoves them aside. He is picturesque
figure, however, and has often been sketched
in fiction. We know him well in kingly rags
as Lear or with his old coat as Tom Pinch,
or with his boy (unlucky as himself) as Colo
mel NeCc0nae. He and his fellows have done
good, lasting work in the world, too; though
when they lived well-to-do people thought
little of the shiftless, good-for-nothing fell
lows. Charles Lamb and Noll Goldsmith
and the boy Chatterton, and sad eager
crowd of unsuccessful inventors and poets
and reformers belonged to his company. In
fact, all the village Hampdens and inglorious
Millions who sleep in country church yards,
all the dead or living to whom nature gave
powers which have failed to bring them solid
comfort, fame or money, belong to his COM
pany.
"What is the secret of their ill-fortune?
Sometimes, but not always, the want of
fixed purpose.
''Always the lack of that nameless quality
which enables man to advertise himself in
the worlds market; to comprehend exactly
what the public wants, and to push upon the
public the fact that he can supply that want
Every author or artist who has won immedi-
ate great pecuniary success during his life has
had this swift insight and this cheek for
it is SO unrecognized thing that we are
driven to slang for its name
Run down the social scale to the poorest
mechanic or shop-girl, and you will find that,
given equal ability and skill, the successful
man and woman everywhere in the world is
the one who pushes himself with the tact and
discretion of merchant vending his wares
The poor fellow who is not certain of what he
can do or wants to do, not certain that the
world wants him or his work, you will find,
whatever his natural powers, in back street
or cheap boarding house, cursing his bad
luck
sit is true that it is only one kind of success
that these unlucky folk do not gain, that which
we label by dollars and cents. 1t counts for
much in this time, as it did in every other.
''It does not count for the late recognition
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