“If the world does not recognize your talents, don’t get discouraged; get mad. An angry man sometimes accomplishes something; a discouraged one never does.”
“If I were a cobbler I’d try with my might the best of all cobblers to be, and were I a tinker, no tinker on earth could mend an old kettle like me.”
JUST say that rhyme over until you know it; until it sticks in some odd corner of your brain, and keeps singing through your head and heart every day and all day. You will have more new ideas, do better work, make more money, climb higher socially and financially, be happier yourself and make those you love happier, if those four lines of rhyme come and go in your heart.
They lead you to study nights; to believe in your own impulses; to think out new ways of doing old tasks; to make an art of whatever you have in hand.
They train you for your chance, for that great chance which comes to everybody, and which is worth to you exactly as much as you are prepared to take advantage of it.
They teach you not to wish for some one else’s chess-board–but to take the one before you and play the game.
They teach you how to gain power, for “power comes from persistent and repeated effort. When you can do something better than anybody else, you are acquiring power; and if you can do this easily and pleasantly, that is your calling.”
You have built castles in the air–all of us have done so, and the best of us keep on doing so all our lives. All right! Maybe some of your castles are finished all but the foundations, and now all you have to do is to put the corner-stone and the groundwork underneath.
Go ahead this year and finish those jobs.
Build the foundations of those castles so that one of them will be ready to move into by next New Year’s Day.
Begin on one this week. Don’t stand back think?ing of all the work you will have to do to complete those castles just as you want them to be–you don’t do all the work at once, you know.
The most extravagant and costly thing you can do is to waste time. Every hour owes you some?thing in work, study, play or rest. Make it pay what it owes; that keeps the mind keen, the heart mellow, the body young, the purse full.
Your wealth does not hinge alone on what you earn, but on what you do with your earnings. It is not want of money, but rather waste of money which causes hand-to-mouth living, which makes a slave of the husband or father. It does not require any brains or virtue to save a goodly sum each year. The man who is storing up a part (no matter how small a part) of his income is his own master; his savings are to him a source of power; he radiates cheerfulness and boldness; he can sing at his work, eat three hearty meals a day, and sleep dreamlessly at night.
Wealth is just common sense. It means setting up your own standard of living, instead of letting your neighbors dictate one for you. “Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits of clothes, so as to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn; in a good double-wick lamp; and three meals; in a horse, or a locomotive to cross the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to read.”
It is told of John Hay that he once said if he had been out of his office on a given afternoon the whole current of his life would have been changed. Don’t be out.
There is also a story told that one day Mark Hanna had business which necessitated a call upon Philip D. Armour. Mark Hanna’s secretary had made the appointment for “one o’clock Tuesday, the only time Mr. Armour had at liberty.” Mark Hanna found the great packer sitting in his chair being shaved, eating his lunch, and dictating to his stenographer. It was the only leisure time he had. Work is the price men like Phil Armour pay for writing their names across every continent and in every language of the globe–and any one who wants the goods must pay the price. There are no bargain counters in nature’s store. The difference between rich men and poor men, between great men and little men is work–just four small letters, w-o-r-k; not grudging work, but enthusiastic work, the kind that turns the commonest labor into crafts?manship; the kind like this–”If I were a cobbler I’d try with my might———- “. That’s the idea–work cheerfully and save intelligently and con?sistently.
MY WORK
“Let me but do my work from day to day In field or forest, desk or loom, In roaring market place, or tranquil room. Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, This is my work, my blessing, not my doom; Of all who live, I am the one by whom This work can best be done in my own way, To suit my spirit and to prove my powers; Then shall I cheerfully greet the laboring hours And cheerful turn when the long shadows fall At eventide to play, and love and rest, Because I know for me my work is best.”
Henry Van Dyke.