The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1910-08-18
CHOOSING A CAREER.

"In napkin smooth and white
My one talent lies tonight
Hidden from all mortal sight,
Mine to hoard, or mine to use;
Mine to keep, or mine to lose;
May l not do as choose?"
Choosing career is decision not bur-
dened solely upon youth. The unrest of
longings still beating against the spirit, the
clamor of powers still discontinued in con-
finement, may be felt by the man or woman
of forty; and forty no more than twenty
can wortbily listen to timidity or slothful-
funess. For most men or. women there are
two careers, each honorable, useful and
enriching--one is earning livelihood or
helping in its earning, the other the per-
lection of a faculty. 1t is too late in the
worlds history to repeat the affectation of
despising the pursuit of wealth, to please
ones unsuccessful self with epithets of
"money grabber,'' ''sordid heaper of
riches,' "haggling spirit of GAIN" The
making of money, more accurately the ac-
quirement of wealth, may be noble career,
not for the sake of possession, but for the
power of doing good, helping children to
higher opportunities, giving benefit, free
dom from anxiety and enjoyment of bless
ings to all whom one loves. The age in
which we live would as we'll concede in its
articulate philosophy, as it does in it's Sc
cret thoughts and common actions, the
truth of what we owe to the pursuit of
wealth. We owe our colleges, our art gal
leries, our libraries, our ships, with their
swift turbines and their rspid exchange of
commodities; our railroads, which give
neighborly acquaintance to Boston and San
Francisco, to Minneapolis and New Or
leans, the comfort of our families, the bright
and beautiful charm of our young women,
the health and vigor of our boys, the po-
tency of our nation among the mammoth
consultations of people. In the crude ver-
diets of surface talk the pursuit of wealth
bears the odium of certain misery or
plundering types which may have once
lived, and here and there may persist in
living, but are not representative of any
large class within our present knowledge.
The pursuit of wealth pays the taxes; the
taxes build bridges, improve the roads and
pave the streets, protect the poorest from
oppression and build hospitals for the weak
and afflicted. The pursuit itself is the
career which, in one way or another, we
must all, speaking broadly, adopt or fail
in our closest duties.
1t was Thomas Carlyle who wrote the
most scorching denunciation of CONNER
cism:
"There is payment which nature rig
orously exacts of men, and also of nations
and this, think, when her wrath is stern
est-in the shape of booming you to possess
money; to have your bloated vanities fos-
tered into monstrosity by it; your foul pas
sions blown into explosion by it; your heart,
perhaps your very stomach, ruined with
intoxication by it; your poor life, and all
its manful activities, stunned into frenzy
and comatose sleep by tin one word, as
the old prophets said, your soul forever lost
by it; your soul, SO that through all the
eternities you shall have no soul or manful
trace of ever having had soul, but only
for certain fleeting moments shall have had
a money bag, and have given soul and
heart, and (frightfuller stilD stomach itself,
in fatal exchange for the same -
This is the very ecstasy of scornful de-
nunciation. After Carlyle nobody can add
an effective word to the warning against
commercialism. The truth about wealth
getting is that for the sake of our duties in
the world, for the sake of wives, children,
church and country, it is the foundation of
every career.
Also the truth is that it becomes a sin
against ourselves and humanity when mere
money has monopoly of our energies.
And so there comes another truth-that
every possessor of talent, q faculty of
accomplishment, will, if he is worthy of the
supreme gift of life, have an avocation as
we'll as a vocation. If share of wealth is
desirable, it is wise to reflect that only q
small share is absolutely necessary; to one
who has it in him to make two careers, q
very small share. To man who joys in q
gift which brings no wealth there is suffi-
cient in $500 year. Even two, the man
and the woman who joy in the common
interest, the $500 suffices. If it is poetry,
they can look at each other and say, as q
poet did say in prose: