The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1888-05-19
LACK OF ADAPTABILITY.
The Cause of Diany Failures in Business
and Private Life.


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.
s.Why did that one fail with all his abil-
ity?" In ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred perhaps it would be found that
the one who missed success was not able
to adapt himself to the conditions of his
field of labor.
Sometimes it is an overestimate of
ones self, sometimes it is simple mod
esty that holds one from adapting his
ability to certain conditions. A friend
oftentimes with true insight has been
able to make this adjustment for anoth-
er, and help him into a channel from
which his lack of self-confdence would
have kept him.
George Eliot would have missed her
great literary mission in life if the far
seeing Lewes had not discovered it for
her and advised her to try her powers
as a 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
tthat she was not fully conscious of her
'o-wn 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
so 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
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES inclined to
lay their lack of success to fate, when
it usually belongs a their own door.
Shakespeare was wise man surely,
and spoke with an all-comprehensive
philosophy when he wrote:
There is tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune :;
Omitted, all the voyage Of their life
/ TE in ba1 in
| 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.
If man marries one who i'll 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 q wife he
ennds that as mistress of his home she
seems entirely out of place, that she
can not put herself to the conditions
and surroundings of humber home
than was formerly hers, he may chafe
and mourn as he will, but so long as
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 that
young men had better clear their vision
of loves illusions, so that they may
discern before it is too late whether the
divinity in the richly appointed parlor
of the home of her maidenhood would
become a divinity through the years of
small things in struggling mans ex-
perience. - Christian at Work.