The San Francisco call., 1913-08-24
Character and Destiny Are One;
What a Man Does Decides Career
By c. S. MADDOCKS

| strong, bites into a mans life harder
and harder as youthful energies ebb.
And 1t bites into his physical. his in
tellectual and moral self.
HOW LINCoLN's CHARACTER GREW
If we turn to Phillips Brooks for his
description of how the character OF
Abraham Lincoln was built up, we
have a recognition of how a quality of
character-it is just the same when 1t
Is a bad quality as when good one
affects a mans physical structure, his
mental structure and his moral self.
He says:
From his boyhood up he lived in
direct and vigorous contact with men
and things. not as In older states and
easier conditions with words and the
cries, and both his moral convictions
and his intellectual opinions gathered
from that contact a supreme degree Of
that character by which men knew
him, that character which is the most
distinctive possession of the best
American nature. that almost appears
in the physical structure as health. in
the moral constitution as honesty, IN
the mental structure as sagacity, and
in the region Of active life as practi-
calness.
This one character, with many sides.
all shaped in the same essential force
and testifying to the same inner infiu-
ences, was what was powerful in him
and decreed for him the life he was to
live and the death he was to die. We
must take no smaller view than this
of what he was. Even his physical
conditions are not to be forgotten In
making up his character. We make
too little always of the physical; GER
tainly we make too little of 1t here II
we lose out OF sight the strength and
muscular activity, the power of doing
and enduring which the backwoods boy
Inherited from generations of hard liv-
ing ancestors, and appropriated for his
own by a long discipline of bodily toll.
He brought to the solution OF labor In
this country not merely a mind but
body thoroughly IN sympathy with Ia
Dor, full OF the culture Of labor, bear
ing witness to the dignity and excel
lence OF work IN every muscle that
work had toughened and every sense
that work had made clear and true.
He could not have brought the nina
for his task so perfectly unless he had
first brought the body whose rugged
and stubborn health was always con-
tradicting to him the false theories of
labor and always asserting the true"
WORK UNDoNE
BRINGS DISCONTENT
The man thoroughly imbued with
labor culture is doing his work In this
world Independently and not worrying
for fear he Is doing more than some
body else and getting less pay. There
is a great reward in labor done. all
done, which few people have any con-
things undone is to be discontented;
the discontented are always finding ex-
cuse for their discomfort. and 1t is
human" to find that 1t is somebody's
fault rather than their own.
The debris of life collects fast
enough II we do our utmost to keep it
daily cleared away. and the sanitary
laws which have been applied to keep
dust and decaying debris promptly
cared for are beginning to have their
influence, by analogy, in other spheres.
There are few weights to bear like a
burden of Intentions not carried out.
1t takes a stout heart to clear out any
long gathering collection, and the one
who has such has not usually culti-
vated the muscles of the Hercules
needed for the task.
But men do get second wind. Cole
ridge, after years of morphine death.
did Sloth and negligence are drugs
quite as fearful in their workings as
opium and morphine, and just as de-
structive of true respect. But men can
drag themselves up out of the degrada-
ton of any drug, and so can they
emancipate themselves from their pro-
crastinations of negligence and sloth
A daily exercised will. a new depend
ence upon self. and persistence will
do II.