The Saint Paul globe., 1905-04-22
SELFISHNESS AMONG
MEN AND WOMEN
Girl Whose Mother Was So Un.
selfish That She Made Her
Family Miserable

Selfishness iG at the bottom of more
troubles in this world than we dream
Of The utterly selfish man or woman
is a blight, and the one who makes a
friend of him or her will live to regret
it. There are times in our lives when
we come to the parting of the ways:
when we discover the real value of
our friends and whether they will sac
rifice us to their own good. or will be
content with less themselves in order
to be loyal
Men have been dubbed selfish in
discriminatory, and you will hear some
cockSure woman say that all men are
selfish. 1t is not SO. There are just
as many selfish women as there are
men, and it would be hard to find a
more despicable thing than a thor
oughly selfish woman. She lives in
the shadow of herself, and the thing
grows on her until she cannot focus
her mind or her wisdom upon any
thing that does not affect her. The
selfish little girl makes the selfish
woman, although sometimes a girl rec
ogniZes her Self-absorption as fault
and strives to correct it.
The colossal vanity of some men is
on par with the selfishness of few
women. They make men and meas
GleS Denu TO Ineir way ana lOfce eN-
elythinS to their interests, no matter
who is sacrificed You will see this in
business and social life everywhere.
The man who is self-centered cannot
expect people not to know it.
All times in families one can see un-
Selfishness carried to a painful degree.
and apropos of this girl in St. Paul
said the other day: Il have the most
unselfish mother who ever lived. and
l almost wish she was the other thing,
for her unselfishness makes me so
Wretched. Giving everything to me
has become a mania with her. and she
has carried it to such an extreme that L
don't know what she wants, or wheth-
er she ever gets it. If she thinks |
want a new dress she will refuse to
have anything for a whole season;
she Will do things she hates, bore her
self to death and all in the interests of
others. l almost wish she was like a
horribly selfish woman 1 know"
If that girl had a selfish mother she
would see the difference. For some
how, being a mother is a kind of an
unseltiSh profession anyway, and when
We find one who sacrifices her children,
her husband and her friends to her
own whims, we thoroughly despise her.
Perhaps unselfishness can be carried
too far but it is hardly necessary to
state that selfishness can. And yet it
is that which makes success. In order
to be entirely successful you must
trample on others; you must not let
any heart enter into your transactions
or you are gone. The moment you
step aside for PHYS sake to help
man up you lose your place. You
must be one-ideaed, pitiless and con-
centrate solely upon your own indi-
yidual prosperity. You may not be
loved, but you will be feared and look
ed up to, which is very pleasant to
some natures.
Selfshness pays in material things.
but the other thing pays in ways that
cannot be measured. There are re-
wards that are felt but not seen, and
there would be no use of explaining
to those who have never experienced
the pleasures of self-sacrifice.
Giving up ones career or even a
temporary good, for ones fellow men
or for a friend, is not the best worldly
policy. The one who does it will be
laughed and sneered at. But there is
an invisible balance struck once in
while, and almost every man knows
on which side he stands. If he is on
the right side what others say will not
matter, but if he knows he is on the
wrong side no adulation or plaudits
from outside will make up to him for
his spiritual losses.