Love, Life & Work, Elbert Hubbard [the best electronic book reader TXT] 📗

than a dwarf, but who had such Spiritual Gravity—such Poise—that to enter a room where he was, was to feel his presence and acknowledge his superiority. To allow Sympathy to waste itself on unworthy objects is to deplete one's life forces. To conserve is the part of wisdom, and reserve is a necessary element in all good literature, as well as in everything else.

Poise being the control of our Sympathy and Knowledge, it implies a possession of these attributes, for without having Sympathy and Knowledge you have nothing to control but your physical body. To practise Poise as a mere gymnastic exercise, or study in etiquette, is to be self-conscious, stiff, preposterous and ridiculous. Those who cut such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make angels weep, are men void of Sympathy and Knowledge trying to cultivate Poise. Their science is a mere matter of what to do with arms and legs. Poise is a question of spirit controlling flesh, heart controlling attitude.

Get Knowledge by coming close to Nature. That man is the greatest who best serves his kind. Sympathy and Knowledge are for use—you acquire that you may give out; you accumulate that you may bestow. And as God has given unto you the sublime blessings of Sympathy and Knowledge, there will come to you the wish to reveal your gratitude by giving them out again; for the wise man is aware that we retain spiritual qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom brings wisdom; and at the last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the Infinite, and the smallness of man's Sympathy when compared with the source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with perfect Sympathy, Knowledge, and Poise.

Love and Faith

No woman is worthy to be a wife who on the day of her marriage is not lost absolutely and entirely in an atmosphere of love and perfect trust; the supreme sacredness of the relation is the only thing which, at the time, should possess her soul. Is she a bawd that she should bargain?

Women should not "obey" men anymore than men should obey women. There are six requisites in every happy marriage; the first is Faith, and the remaining five are Confidence. Nothing so compliments a man as for a woman to believe in him—nothing so pleases a woman as for a man to place confidence in her.

Obey? God help me! Yes, if I loved a woman, my whole heart's desire would be to obey her slightest wish. And how could I love her unless I had perfect confidence that she would only aspire to what was beautiful, true and right? And to enable her to realize this ideal, her wish would be to me a sacred command; and her attitude of mind toward me I know would be the same. And the only rivalry between us would be as to who could love the most; and the desire to obey would be the one controlling impulse of our lives.

We gain freedom by giving it, and he who bestows faith gets it back with interest. To bargain and stipulate in love is to lose.

The woman who stops the marriage ceremony and requests the minister to omit the word "obey," is sowing the first seed of doubt and distrust that later may come to fruition in the divorce court.

The haggling and bickerings of settlements and dowries that usually precede the marriage of "blood" and "dollars" are the unheeded warnings that misery, heartache, suffering, and disgrace await the principals.

Perfect faith implies perfect love; and perfect love casteth out fear. It is always the fear of imposition, and a lurking intent to rule, that causes the woman to haggle over a word—it is absence of love, a limitation, an incapacity. The price of a perfect love is an absolute and complete surrender.

Keep back part of the price and yours will be the fate of Ananias and
Sapphira. Your doom is swift and sure. To win all we must give all.

Giving Something for Nothing

To give a man something for nothing tends to make the individual dissatisfied with himself.

Your enemies are the ones you have helped.

And when an individual is dissatisfied with himself he is dissatisfied with the whole world—and with you.

A man's quarrel with the world is only a quarrel with himself. But so strong is this inclination to lay blame elsewhere and take credit to ourselves, that when we are unhappy we say it is the fault of this woman or that man. Especially do women attribute their misery to That Man.

And often the trouble is he has given her too much for nothing.

This truth is a reversible, back-action one, well lubricated by use, working both ways—as the case may be.

Nobody but a beggar has really definite ideas concerning his rights.
People who give much—who love much—do not haggle.

That form of affection which drives sharp bargains and makes demands, gets a check on the bank in which there is no balance.

There is nothing so costly as something you get for nothing.

My friend Tom Lowry, Magnate in Ordinary, of Minneapolis and the east side of Wall Street, has recently had a little experience that proves my point.

A sturdy beggar-man, a specimen of decayed gentility, once called on Tammas with a hard-luck story and a Family Bible, and asked for a small loan on the Good Book.

To be compelled to soak the Family Bible would surely melt the heart of gneiss!

Tom was melted.

Tom made the loan but refused the collateral, stating he had no use for it.

Which was God's truth for once.

In a few weeks the man came back, and tried to tell Tom his hard-luck story concerning the Cold Ingratitude of a Cruel World.

Tom said, "Spare me the slow music and the recital—I have troubles of my own. I need mirth and good cheer—take this dollar, and peace be with you."

"Peace be multiplied unto thee," said the beggar, and departed. The next month the man returned, and began to tell Tom a tale of Cruelty, Injustice and Ingratitude.

Tom was riled—he had his magnate business to attend to, and he made a remark in italics. The beggar said, "Mr. Lowry, if you had your business a little better systematized, I would not have to trouble you personally—why don't you just speak to your cashier?" And the great man, who once took a party of friends out for a tally-ho ride, and through mental habit collected five cents from each guest, was so pleased at the thought of relief that he pressed the buzzer. The cashier came, and Tom said, "Put this man Grabheimer on your pay-roll, give him two dollars now and the same the first of every month."

Then turning to the beggar-man, Tom said, "Now get out of here—hurry, vamose, hike—and be damned to you!"

"The same to you and many of them," said His Effluvia politely, and withdrew.

All this happened two years ago. The beggar got his money regularly for a year, and then in auditing accounts Tom found the name on the pay-roll, and as Tom could not remember how the name got there, he at first thought the pay-roll was being stuffed. Anyway he ordered the beggar's name stricken off the roster, and the elevator man was instructed to enforce the edict against beggars.

Not being allowed to see his man, the beggar wrote him letters—denunciatory, scandalous, abusive, threatening. Finally the beggar laid the matter before an obese limb o' the Law, Jaggers, of the firm of Jaggers & Jaggers, who took the case on a contingent fee.

The case came to trial, and Jaggers proved his case se offendendo—argal: it was shown by the defendant's books that His Bacteria had been on the pay-roll and his name had been stricken off without suggestion, request, cause, reason or fault of his own.

His Crabship proved the contract, and Tom got it in the mazzard. Judgment for plaintiff, with costs. The beggar got the money and Minneapolis Tom got the experience. Tom said the man would lose the money, but he himself has gotten the part that will be his for ninety-nine years. Surely the spirit of justice does not sleep and there is a beneficent and wise Providence that watches over magnates.

Work and Waste

These truths I hold to be self-evident: That man was made to be happy; that happiness is only attainable through useful effort; that the very best way to help ourselves is to help others, and often the best way to help others is to mind our own business; that useful effort means the proper exercise of all our faculties; that we grow only through exercise; that education should continue through life, and the joys of mental endeavor should be, especially, the solace of the old; that where men alternate work, play and study in right proportion, the organs of the mind are the last to fail, and death for such has no terrors.

That the possession of wealth can never make a man exempt from useful manual labor; that if all would work a little, no one would then be overworked; that if no one wasted, all would have enough; that if none were overfed, none would be underfed; that the rich and "educated" need education quite as much as the poor and illiterate; that the presence of a serving class is an indictment and a disgrace to our civilization; that the disadvantage of having a serving class falls most upon those who are served, and not upon those who serve—just as the real curse of slavery fell upon the slave-owners.

That people who are waited on by a serving class cannot have a right consideration for the rights of others, and they waste both time and substance, both of which are lost forever, and can only seemingly be made good by additional human effort.

That the person who lives on the labor of others, not giving himself in return to the best of his ability, is really a consumer of human life and therefore must be considered no better than a cannibal.

That each one living naturally will do the thing he can do best, but that in useful service there is no high nor low.

That to set apart one day in seven as "holy" is really absurd and serves only to loosen our grasp on the tangible present.

That all duties, offices and things which are useful and necessary to humanity are sacred, and that nothing else is or can be sacred.

The Law of Obedience

The very first item in the creed of common sense is Obedience.

Perform your work with a whole heart.

Revolt may be sometimes necessary, but the man who tries to mix revolt and obedience is doomed to disappoint himself and everybody with whom he has dealings. To flavor work with protest is to fail absolutely.

When you revolt, why revolt—climb, hike, get out, defy—tell everybody and everything to go to hades! That disposes of the case. You thus separate yourself entirely from those you have served—no one misunderstands you—you have declared yourself.

The man who quits in disgust when ordered to perform a task which he considers menial or unjust may be a pretty good fellow, but in the wrong environment, but the malcontent who takes your order with a smile and then secretly disobeys, is a dangerous proposition. To pretend to obey, and yet carry in your heart the spirit of revolt is to do half-hearted, slipshod work. If revolt and obedience are equal in power, your engine will then stop on the center and you benefit no one, not even yourself.

The spirit of obedience is the controlling impulse that dominates the receptive mind and the hospitable heart. There are boats that mind the helm and there are boats that do not. Those that do not, get holes knocked in them sooner or later.

To keep off the rocks, obey the rudder.

Obedience is not to slavishly obey this man or that, but it is that cheerful mental state which responds to the necessity of the case, and does the thing without any back talk—unuttered or expressed.

Obedience to the institution—loyalty! The man who has not learned to obey has trouble ahead of him every step of the way. The world has it in for him continually, because he has it in for the world.

The man who does not know how to