Chapter-2
Prince Wolkonsky, during a visit to this country, declared that “Business is the alpha and omega of American life. There is no pleasure, no joy, no satisfaction. There is no standard except that of profit. There is no other country where they speak of a man as worth so many dollars. In other countries they live to enjoy life; here they exist for business.” A Boston merchant corroborated this statement by saying he was anxious all day about making money, and worried all night for fear he should lose what he had made.
“In the United States,” a distinguished traveller once said, “there is everywhere comfort, but no joy. The ambition of getting more and fretting over what is lost absorb life.”
“Every man we meet looks as if he’d gone out to borrow trouble, with plenty of it on hand,” said a French lady, upon arriving in New York.
“The Americans are the best-fed, the best-clad, and the best-housed people in the world,” says another witness, “but they are the most anxious; they hug possible calamity to their breasts.”
“I question if care and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly on the faces of any other population,” says Emerson; “old age begins in the nursery.”
How quickly we Americans exhaust life! With what panting haste we pursue everything! Every man you meet seems to be late for an appointment. Hurry is stamped in the wrinkles of the national face. We are men of action; we go faster and faster as the years go by, speeding our machinery to the utmost. Bent forms, prematurely gray hair, restlessness and discontent, are characteristic of our age and people. We earn our bread, but cannot digest it; and our over-stimulated nerves soon become irritated, and touchiness follows,—so fatal to a business man, and so annoying in society.
“It is not work that kills men,” says Beecher; “it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction.”
It is not so much the great sorrows, the great burdens, the great hardships, the great calamities, that cloud over the sunshine of life, as the little petty vexations, insignificant anxieties and fear, the little daily dyings, which render our lives unhappy, and destroy our mental elasticity, without advancing our life-work one inch. “Anxiety never yet bridged any chasm.”
“What,” asks Dr. George W. Jacoby, in an “Evening Post” interview, “is the ultimate physical effect of worry? Why, the same as that of a fatal bullet-wound or sword-thrust. Worry kills as surely, though not so quickly, as ever gun or dagger did, and more people have died in the last century from sheer worry than have been killed in battle.”
Dr. Jacoby is one of the foremost of American brain doctors. “The investigations of the neurologists,” he says, “have laid bare no secret of Nature in recent years more startling and interesting than the discovery that worry kills.” This is the final, up-to-date word. “Not only is it known,” resumes the great neurologist, counting off his words, as it were, on his finger-tips, “that worry kills, but the most minute details of its murderous methods are familiar to modern scientists. It is a common belief of those who have made a special study of the science of brain diseases that hundreds of deaths attributed to other causes each year are due simply to worry. In plain, untechnical language, worry works its irreparable injury through certain cells of the brain life. The insidious inroads upon the system can be best likened to the constant falling of drops of water in one spot. In the brain it is the insistent, never-lost idea, the single, constant thought, centered upon one subject, which in the course of time destroys the brain cells. The healthy brain can cope with occasional worry; it is the iteration and reiteration of disquieting thoughts which the cells of the brain cannot successfully combat.
“The mechanical effect of worry is much the same as if the skull were laid bare and the brain exposed to the action of a little hammer beating continually upon it day after day, until the membranes are disintegrated and the normal functions disabled. The maddening thought that will not be downed, the haunting, ever-present idea that is not or cannot be banished by a supreme effort of the will, is the theoretical hammer which diminishes the vitality of the sensitive nerve organisms, the minuteness of which makes them visible to the eye only under a powerful microscope. The ‘worry,’ the thought, the single idea grows upon one as time goes on, until the worry victim cannot throw it off. Through this, one set or area of cells is affected. The cells are intimately connected, joined together by little fibres, and they in turn are in close relationship with the cells of the other parts of the brain.
“Worry is itself a species of monomania. No mental attitude is more disastrous to personal achievement, personal happiness, and personal usefulness in the world, than worry and its twin brother, despondency. The remedy for the evil lies in training the will to cast off cares and seek a change of occupation, when the first warning is sounded by Nature in intellectual lassitude. Relaxation is the certain foe of worry, and ‘don’t fret’ one of the healthiest of maxims.”
In a life of constant worrying, we are as much behind the times as if we were to go back to use the first steam engines that wasted ninety per cent. of the energy of the coal, instead of having an electric dynamo that utilizes ninety per cent. of the power. Some people waste a large percentage of their energy in fretting and stewing, in useless anxiety, in scolding, in complaining about the weather and the perversity of inanimate things. Others convert nearly all of their energy into power and moral sunshine. He who has learned the true art of living will not waste his energies in friction, which accomplishes nothing, but merely grinds out the machinery of life.
It must be relegated to the debating societies to determine which is the worse—A Nervous Man or A WORRYING WOMAN.
“I’m awfully worried this morning,” said one woman. “What is it?” “Why, I thought of something to worry about last night, and now I can’t remember it.”
A famous actress once said: “Worry is the foe of all beauty.” She might have added: “It is the foe to all health.”
“It seems so heartless in me, if I do not worry about my children,” said one mother.
Women nurse their troubles, as they do their babies. “Troubles grow larger,” said Lady Holland, “by nursing.”
The White Knight who carried about a mousetrap, lest he be troubled with mice upon his journeys, was not unlike those who anticipate their burdens.
“He grieves,” says Seneca, “more than is necessary, who grieves before it is necessary.”
“My children,” said a dying man, “during my long life I have had a great many troubles, most of which never happened.” A prominent business man in Philadelphia said that his father worried for twenty-five years over an anticipated misfortune which never arrived.
We try to grasp too much of life at once; since we think of it as a whole, instead of living one day at a time. Life is a mosaic, and each tiny piece must be cut and set with skill, first one piece, then another.
A clock would be of no use as a time-keeper if it should become discouraged and come to a standstill by calculating its work a year ahead, as the clock did in Jane Taylor’s fable. It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week and next year, that whiten our heads, wrinkle our faces, and bring us to a standstill.
“There is such a thing,” said Uncle Eben, “as too much foresight. People get to figuring what might happen year after next, and let the fire go out and catch their death of cold, right where they are.”
Nervous prostration is seldom the result of present trouble or work, but of work and trouble anticipated. Mental exhaustion comes to those who look ahead, and climb mountains before reaching them. Resolutely build a wall about to-day, and live within the inclosure. The past may have been hard, sad, or wrong—but it is over.
Why not take a turn about? Instead of worrying over unforeseen misfortune, set out with all your soul to rejoice in the unforeseen blessings of all your coming days. “I find the gayest castles in the air that were ever piled,” says Emerson, “far better for comfort and for use than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people.”
What is this world but as you take it? Thackeray calls the world a looking-glass that gives back the reflection of one’s own face. “Frown at it, and it will look sourly upon you; laugh at it, and it is a jolly companion.”
“There is no use in talking,” said a woman. “Every time I move, I vow I’ll never move again. Such neighbours as I get in with! Seems as though they grow worse and worse.” “Indeed?” replied her caller; “perhaps you take the worst neighbour with you when you move.”
“In the sudden thunder-storm of Independence Day,” says a news correspondent, “we were struck by the contrast between two women, each of whom had had some trying experience with the weather. One came through the rain and hail to take refuge at the railway station, under the swaying and uncertain shelter of an escorting man’s umbrella. Her skirts were soaked to the knees, her pink ribbons were limp, the purple of the flowers on her hat ran in streaks down the white silk. And yet, though she was a poor girl and her holiday finery must have been relatively costly, she made the best of it with a smile and cheerful words. The other was well sheltered; but she took the disappointment of her hopes and the possibility of a little spattering from a leaky window with frowns and fault-finding.”
“Cries little Miss Fret, In a very great pet: ‘I hate this warm weather; it’s horrid to tan! It scorches my nose, And it blisters my toes, And wherever I go I must carry a fan.’
“Chirps little Miss Laugh: ‘Why, I couldn’t tell half The fun I am having this bright summer day! I sing through the hours, I cull pretty flowers, And ride like a queen on the sweet-smelling hay.’ ”
Happily a new era has of late opened for our worried housekeepers, who spend their time in “the half-frantic dusting of corners, spasmodic sweeping, impatient snatching or pushing aside obstacles in the room, hurrying and skurrying upstairs and down cellar.” “It is not,” says Prentice Mulford, “the work that exhausts them,—it is the mental condition they are in that makes so many old and haggard at forty.” All that is needful now to ease up their burdens is to go to OUR HAWAIIAN PARADISE.
A newspaper correspondent, Annie Laurie, has told us all about the new kind of American girls just added to our country:—
“They are as straight as an arrow, and walk as queens walk in fairy stories; they have great braids of sleek, black hair, soft brown eyes, and gleaming white teeth; they can swim and ride and sing; and they are brown with a skin that shines like bronze … There isn’t a worried woman in Hawaii. The women there can’t worry. They don’t know how. They eat and sing and laugh, and see the sun and the moon set, and possess their souls in smiling peace.
“If a Hawaii woman has a good dinner, she laughs and invites her friends to eat it with her; if she hasn’t a good dinner, she laughs and goes to sleep,—and forgets to be hungry. She doesn’t have to worry about what the people in the downstairs flat will think if they don’t see the butcher’s boy arrive on time. If she can earn the money, she buys a nice, new, glorified Mother Hubbard; and, if she can’t get it, she throws the old one into the surf and washes it out, puts a new wreath of fresh flowers in her hair, and starts out to enjoy the morning and the breezes thereof.
“They are not earnest workers; they haven’t the slightest idea that they were put upon earth to reform the universe,—they’re just happy. They run across great stretches of clear, white sand, washed with resplendent purple waves, and, when the little brown babies roll in the surf, their brown mothers run after them, laughing and splashing like a lot of children. Or, perhaps we see them in gay cavalcades mounted upon garlanded ponies, adorned by white jasmine wreaths with roses and pinks. And here in this paradise of laughter and light hearts and gentle music, there’s absolutely nothing to do but to care for the children and old people and to swim or ride. You couldn’t start a ‘reform circle’ to save your life; there isn’t a jail in the place, nor a tenement quarter, and there are no outdoor poor. There isn’t a woman’s club in Honolulu,—not a club. There was a culture circle once for a few days; a Boston woman who went there for her health organized it, but it interfered with afternoon nap-time, so nobody came.”
When, hereafter, we talk about worrying women, we must take into account our Hawaiian sisters, if we will average up the amount of worry per capita, in our nation.
A WEATHER BREEDER
It is probably quite within bounds to say that one out of three of our American farming population, women and men, never enjoy a beautiful day without first reminding you that “It is one of those infernal weather breeders.”
Habitual fretters see more trouble than others. They are never so well as their neighbours. The weather never suits them. The climate is trying. The winds are too high or too low; it is too hot or too cold, too damp or too dry. The roads are either muddy or dusty.
“I met Mr. N. one wet morning,” says Dr. John Todd; “and, bound as I was to make the best of it, I ventured:
“‘Good morning. This rain will be fine for your grass crop.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ he replied, ‘but it is very bad for corn; I don’t think we’ll have half a crop.’
“A few days later, I met him again. ‘This is a fine sun for corn, Mr. N.’
“‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but it’s awful for rye; rye wants cold weather.’
“One cool morning soon after, I said: ‘This is a capital day for rye.’
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but it is the worst kind of weather for corn and grass; they want heat to bring them forward.’”
There are a vast number of fidgety, nervous, and eccentric people who live only to expect new disappointments or to recount their old ones.
“Impatient people,” said Spurgeon, “water their miseries, and hoe up their comforts.”
“Let’s see,” said a neighbour to a farmer, whose wagon was loaded down with potatoes, “weren’t we talking together last August?” “I believe so.” “At that time, you said corn was all burnt up.” “Yes.” “And potatoes were baking in the ground.” “Yes.” “And that your district could not possibly expect more than half a crop.” “I remember.” “Well, here you are with your wagon loaded down. Things didn’t turn out so badly, after all,—eh?” “Well, no-o,” said the farmer, as he raked his fingers through his hair, “but I tell you my geese suffered awfully for want of a mud-hole to paddle in.”
What is a pessimist but “a man who looks on the sun only as a thing that casts a shadow”?
In Pepys’s “Diary” we learn the difference between “eyes shut and ears open,” and “ears shut and eyes open.” In going from John o’ Groat’s House to Land’s End, a blind man would hear that the country was going to destruction, but a deaf man with eyes open could see great prosperity.
“I dare no more fret than curse or swear,” said John Wesley.
“A discontented mortal is no more a man than discord is music.”
“Why should a man whose blood is warm within Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice By being peevish?”
Who are the “lemon squeezers of society”? They are people who predict evil, extinguish hope, and see only the worst side,—”people whose very look curdles the milk and sets your teeth on edge.” They are often worthy people who think that pleasure is wrong; people, said an old divine, who lead us heavenward and stick pins into us all the way. They say depressing things and do disheartening things; they chill prayer-meetings, discourage charitable institutions, injure commerce, and kill churches; they are blowing out lights when they ought to be kindling them.
A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one jolts over every pebble; with mirth, he is like a chariot with springs, riding over the roughest roads and scarcely feeling anything but a pleasant rocking motion.
“Difficulties melt away before the man who carries about a cheerful spirit and persistently refuses to be discouraged, while they accumulate before the one who is always groaning over his hard luck and scanning the horizon for clouds not yet in sight.”
“To one man,” says Schopenhauer, “the world is barren, dull, and superficial; to another, rich, interesting, and full of meaning.” If one loves beauty and looks for it, he will see it wherever he goes. If there is music in his soul, he will hear it everywhere; every object in nature will sing to him. Two men who live in the same house and do the same work may not live in the same world. Although they are under the same roof, one may see only deformity and ugliness; to him the world is out of joint, everything is cross-grained and out of sorts: the other is surrounded with beauty and harmony; everybody is kind to him; nobody wishes him harm. These men see the same objects, but they do not look through the same glasses; one looks through a smoked glass which drapes the whole world in mourning, the other looks through rose-coloured lenses which tint everything with loveliness and touch it with beauty.
Take two persons just home from a vacation. “One has positively seen nothing, and has always been robbed; the landlady was a harpy, the bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was tough. The other has always found the coziest nooks, the cheapest houses, the best landladies, the finest views, and the best dinners.”
“WHAT IS AN OPTIMIST?”
This is the question a farmer’s boy asked of his father.
“Well, John,” replied his father, “you know I can’t give ye the dictionary meanin’ of that word any more ‘n I can of a great many others. But I’ve got a kind of an idea what it means. Probably you don’t remember your Uncle Henry; but I guess if there ever was an optimist, he was one. Things was always comin’ out right with Henry, and especially anything hard that he had to do; it wa’ n’t a-goin’ to be hard,—’t was jest kind of solid-pleasant.
“Take hoein’ corn, now. If anything ever tuckered me out, ’twas hoein’ corn in the hot sun. But in the field, ‘long about the time I begun to lag back a little, Henry he’d look up an’ say:—
“‘Good, Jim! When we get these two rows hoed, an’ eighteen more, the piece’ll be half done.’ An’ he’d say it in such a kind of a cheerful way that I couldn’t ‘a’ ben any more tickled if the piece had been all done,—an’ the rest would go light enough.
“But the worst thing we had to do—hoein corn was a picnic to it—was pickin’ stones. There was no end to that on our old farm, if we wanted to raise anything. When we wa’n’t hurried and pressed with somethin’ else, there was always pickin’ stones to do; and there wa’n’t a plowin’ but what brought up a fresh crop, an’ seems as if the pickin’ had all to be done over again.
“Well, you’d’ a’ thought, to hear Henry, that there wa’n’t any fun in the world like pickin’ stones. He looked at it in a different way from anybody I ever see. Once, when the corn was all hoed, and the grass wa’n’t fit to cut yet, an’ I’d got all laid out to go fishin’, and father he up and set us to pickin’ stones up on the west piece, an’ I was about ready to cry, Henry he says:—
“‘Come on, Jim. I know where there’s lots of nuggets.’
“An’ what do you s’pose, now? That boy had a kind of a game that that there field was what he called a plasser mining field; and he got me into it, and I could ‘a’ sworn I was in Californy all day,—I had such a good time.
“‘Only,’ says Henry, after we’d got through the day’s work, ‘the way you get rich with these nuggets is to get rid of ‘em, instead of to get ‘em.’
“That somehow didn’t strike my fancy, but we’d had play instead of work, anyway, an’ a great lot of stones had been rooted out of that field.
“An’, as I said before, I can’t give ye any dictionary definition of optimism; but if your Uncle Henry wa’n’t an optimist, I don’t know what one is.”
At life’s outset, says one, a cheerful optimistic temperament is worth everything. A cheerful man, who always “feels first-rate,” who always looks on the bright side, who is ever ready to snatch victory from defeat, is the successful man.
Everybody avoids the company of those who are always grumbling, who are full of “ifs” and “buts,” and “I told you so’s.” We like the man who always looks toward the sun, whether it shines or not. It is the cheerful, hopeful man we go to for sympathy and assistance; not the carping, gloomy critic,—who always thinks it is going to rain, and that we are going to have a terribly hot summer, or a fearful thunder-storm, or who is forever complaining of hard times and his hard lot. It is the bright, cheerful, hopeful, contented man who makes his way, who is respected and admired.
Gloom and depression not only take much out of life, but detract greatly from the chances of winning success. It is the bright and cheerful spirit that wins the final triumph.
LIVING UP THANKS GIVING AVENUE
“I see our brother, who has just sat down, lives on Grumbling street,” said a keen-witted Yorkshireman. “I lived there myself for some time, and never enjoyed good health. The air was bad, the house bad, the water bad; the birds never came and sang in the street; and I was gloomy and sad enough. But I ‘flitted.’ I got into Thanksgiving avenue; and ever since then I have had good health, and so have all my family. The air is pure, the house good; the sun shines on it all day; the birds are always singing; and I am happy as I can live. Now, I recommend our brother to ‘flit.’ There are plenty of houses to let on Thanksgiving avenue; and he will find himself a new man if he will only come; and I shall be right glad to have him for a neighbour.”
This world was not intended for a “vale of tears,” but as a sweet Vale of Content. Travellers are told by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold and desolation of almost perpetual winter, that “Iceland is the best land the sun shines upon.” “In the long Arctic night, the Eskimo is blithe, and carolsome, far from the approach of the white man; while amid the glorious scenery and Eden-like climate of Central America, the native languages have a dozen words for pain and misery and sorrow, for one with any cheerful signification.”
When a Persian king was directed by his wise men to wear the shirt of a contented man, the only contented man in the kingdom had no shirt. The most contented man in Boston does not live on Commonwealth avenue or do business on State street: he is poor and blind, and he peddles needles and thread, buttons and sewing-room supplies, about the streets of Boston from house to house. Dr. Minot J. Savage used to pity this man very much, and once in venturing to talk with him about his condition, he was utterly amazed to find that the man was perfectly happy. He said that he had a faithful wife, and a business by which he earned sufficient for his wants; and, if he were to complain of his lot, he should feel mean and contemptible. Surely, if there are any “solid men” in Boston, he is one.
Content is the magic lamp, which, according to the beautiful picture painted for us by Goethe, transforms the rude fisherman’s hut into a palace of silver; the logs, the floors, the roof, the furniture, everything being changed and gleaming with new light.
“My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen; my crown is called content; A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.”
