Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1888-05-31
LACK OF ADAPTABILiTY.
The Cause Of MANY Failures In Business
and Private Life.

The Cause Of MANY Failures In Business
and Private Life.
We see it on every side the lack OF
adaptability; in the professions, in bust.
ness, in the home; and the cry is echoed
at failures in the different channels
which are open to the use Of energy.
why did that one fail with all his abil-
ityp" In ninety-nine cases out Of
hundred perhaps it would be found that
the one who missed success was not able
TO adapt himself to tho conditions of his
field of labor.
Sometimes it is an overestimate OF
ones self, sometimes it is simple mod
esty that holds ono from adapting his
ability to certain conditions. A friend
oftentimes with true insight has been
able to mako this adjustment for anoth-
err, and help him into channel from
which his lack of self-confidence would
have kept him.
George Eliot would have missed her
great literary mission in life if the far
seeing Lcwes had not discovered it for
her and advised her to try her powers
as n novelist. 1t surely was not that
Marian Evans lacked the quality Of
adaptability that she did not find her
instincts pointing to this field before
her friend opened her eyes; it was
that she was not fully conscious of her
own resources, and dared not to hope
for the wide and true success that she
afterwards won in her works.
The world would have never known
50 much Of the genius that now graces
the different departments of art, If
some one had not discovered it for its
owner, or rather inspired him with the
courage to make it available. We
would not say that genius is not in a
sense very vague, it may be conscious
Of its undeveloped gift. Its possessor
feels its STRINGS but can not under
stand or use it. So he blindly beats
the air; happy is he if then the friend
puts him in the way of expression.
Business men who lack the essential
quality-adaptability-ar inclined to
lay their lack of success to fate, when
it usually belongs their own door.
Shakespeare wa, wise man surely,
and spoke with an all-comprehensive
philosophy when he wrote:
'There is q tide in the affairs Of men,
tolro nj ha laad IN fort
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shadows and in miseries."
1t surely is not alone in the profess
sions, in public affairs, in business, that
we need this adaptability. Perhaps
nowhere is it needed more than in the
home; its loss here is a calamity,
and creates confusion and much
Of that alienation that arises from
what seem to be very slight causes.
II man marries one who in her
girlhood's homo was attractive in
dress and manners, who could
talk entertainingly and wisely OF
books. and of the affairs of the day,
who could appreciate and even in
terpret the finest things in music and
in art, and if in taking her as wife he
finds that as mistress of his home she
seems entirely out of place, that she
can not put herself to the condition;
and surroundings of a humber home
than was formerly hers, he may chaft
and mourn as he will, but so long al
this wife lacks the power of fitting her
self to this sphere, she lacks an essen
tial quality for the creation of home
happiness. This leads us to say tina
young men had better clear their vision
of loves illusions, SO that they ma,
discern before it is too late whether tn,
divinity in the richly appointed parlo
of the home of her maidenhood woult
become divinity through the years o
small things in struggling mans ex
perience. Christian at Work.