Year: 1870

TOW
| ings are things compelled, not things granted
| that they must be made where you want them
Life is, as it were, a face of rock without seam
or fissure. You have your way to tunnel
through, and you must set at it determined tc
quail before no obstacle, knowing that you can
use no nitro-glycerine nor hew your way by
terrific convulsions, only with the hand drill
| and the pick. You have to knock at the closed
wall as if you were its master. Itknows you and
cannot refuse. The secret sesame is In nc
cabalistic charm but in you, and in the might
born of God and of your own manhood.


have seen in life, and see them to-day as
l saw them among my comrades when life was
young, three specially hopeless classes of young
men and can write their destiny just as clearly


-. rsad the book OF fate. 81
Thu sAclasSis composed of thQseYbe beShave
no ideA ols 3 any tnfag@ah fe, but in
tend to. get through it with Just the least possi-
Bile expenditure of their own precious selves
They mean to be taken care; ;.of. Somebody
must look out for them. Here, in tffe4 morning
paper, is a case to my hand. Il is jr$t what
everywhere exists only doesn't get fteN SO
plainly spoken &.
sonal appearance, permanent homes as sons-naw IN
the bosom of a respectable family Blood no object
being already supplied Money not essential provided
surroundings agreeable. Best references given and
required"


One does not like to think that there is any
so depraved humanity about. Yet it infests
society. Young men think that their blood,
their position, their family, sometimes only
their fancied good looks, exempt them from all
part in the drudgery of life. They were crea-
ted to be cosseted, need not to soil hand or
stir foot. Homage is their due and their no.
blest condescension to accept some son-n-l law s
position, with some girl fool enough to sell it
for their paltry offer. | don't think we have
got in our language words quite strong enough
to characterize such assumption. Lam
guage can do no justice to such outrage upon
manhood. A man who sees the only opening
in life to be some snug berth in which he shall
be shielded from all care, and spend his pre-
cious existence in parasitic fattening upon an
uncles or father-in-law's or wife's, or his own
fathers money, why you might just as well
cross him off the catalogue of human existence
and done with it. He may be very precious
in his own eyes, but he is blot on the fair
fame of his sex. The smutted miner, the ru-
dest boor, more honored and more honorable
than he. Such men may consider the chance
of another mans money o fine opening for a
young man, but it is an opening which will
take out of him every moral characteristic of
a man, whatever else it purchase.


Then there come those, who might work well
enough, who are at least honest in their pur-
pose and think they would work, did only the
right thing present. A very reputable idle
ness, perhaps, this as the world goes, but a
very disastrous one-one of very fatal result,
as illustrated by the popular and growing class
of feebly philosophic Micawbers. They are
like the cripple at Bethsada waiting, at the
right moment, to be put in the way Of work /;
like the man in the fable waiting for the stream
to run by that he might cross; like the team
h 81 MI lan-
are not men of energy, equal to and conquerors
of every difficulty, men who are going to carve
their way to success. They have no backbone
of their own, but rely upon other peoples.
They are content to let the golden morning of
life run by, while they stand with listless,
empty hands, waiting, imploring others to
take pity on them and show, or make, or give
an opening-only that. 1t is all they ask.
With that they are secure Just the place on
which to poise their lever-that is all. They
will themselves heave. Why, they are asking
the whole thing In just that you see the
man By that you may cast the horoscope of
his future. He is his own fortune-teller. He
never will get out of the gristle of infancy. He
will have no career, carry no weight, make no
mark. Circumstances may push him, give
him the appearance of manhood, but it is all
in his hackers, not in himself. Such men are
in business, in politics, on the bench, in pull
pits, in armies, but they are not the men ex-
alting their stations or themselves. They are
not the men lifting the world. Those are they
who have made their own stand point, their
own opening, and from that one foothold
pushed themselves forward to the broad way
on which they firmly freedmen who have
found what Archimedes asked for, and heave
the world. Think of Columbus, or Luther, or
Arkwright, or Morse, or Kane, as waiting for
AZ opening They pushed through and Made
it, and no power on earth can close it behind
them. They had the confidence men calls
sublime, confidence in themselves and in the
end toward which they felt God was leading
them, and it mattered not that giant or lion
was in the way, difficulties or disaster, man or
circums tance, the thing was before them and
had got to come. That is the way the world
get heaved forward in its career. The planet
goes spinning through space as it was dis
missed from the Almighty hand, but the
things that develop it to man, by which man
is in turn himself developed, come out of the
hard conflicts the heavy, quick, frequent blows
of the man in earnest.


No need to 90 to world-known men. The
same truth holds with common, every day men.
The men to rely upon are those who go to
work and make their own opening first where
they stand, make it in just the material before
them, despite the obstacles that dispute them.
The men to rely on are those who will not be
idle; who will work where they can if they





not refuse labor because it is not respectable,
or because it is hard who see more cowardice
and more disgrace in standing still than in
any honorable industry, and will do with an
instant, reverent hand, some close lying even
menial duty, rather than eat the bread of indo-
lence or dependence. | chance just now to
know young man more tenderly reared than
any of YOU INDUCED as the youngest of fam
lily often is, having property enough for an
honOra hla living but inst Sitnntpd that
he cannot use it, Not finding just what he
desires, rather than be idle, he accepts the
post and does the duties of brakeman upon
railroad. Is he dishonored? Does he lose
caste Is he not infinitely above the horde Of
young, we'll dressed, reputable idlers hanging
about street corners, Immediately dressed,
waiting for the respectable thing to do? Young
men! honest work is always respectable idle
ness never is. Let society's kid glove refuse
to recognize this young friend Of mine, his
character is his passport wherever manhood
and womanhood are, and have not only
the sentiment of poetry but the authority that
is highest for believing


Who sweeps the room as for thy.cause


Makes that and the action fine.


1t is that kind of pluck that makes character
manhood. 1t is that kind we can't afford to
lose, nor society to frown upon, nor one of you
to be without. l know there poor weak
souls who cannot understand it, who see only
by social law, who call it STOPPING, and you
couldn't get any more elevated idea into their
sodden souls even though the angel Gabriel
were sounding his last trump. They have no
other standard by which to measure man than
the contemplate one of their own contemplate
respectability.


Then, there are those faint-hearted, croaking
people who don't see any room for them in the
world. They have in some stores a sign, ''9
yOu do not see qohat yoW qoa,lt ask for IT," The
world is written all over with this sign-ifyon
do not see room for you, make II. None poor
but he has some ability the world wants and
waits for, some gift for which there is room
and welcome. The world is not so full Of hon
est, sturdy workers yet--true men and women
but that every soul that has the courage to
do fully and bear bravely shall find place and
reward. Not as we will always, nor aohere we
will, not by the way that invites or the work
that pays, or the calling that elevates, not on
the broad way on which mans smiles rest,
but the narrow way from which Gods smile is
never withdrawn, in which no stout-hearted
pilgrim, weary and foot-sore as he might be,
ever found himself deserted or lost. As the
Lord Jesus trod no path of flowers, but found