The Book of Courage, John Thomson Faris [interesting books to read for teens txt] 📗
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- Author: John Thomson Faris
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The mistake made by that son is emphasized by the advice of a keen old man, spoken to a business associate: "If I were asked to give advice to a group of young men who wanted to get ahead in business, I would simply say, 'make friends.' As I sat before the fire the other night I let my mind run back, and it was with surprise that I learned that many of the things which in my youth I credited to my ability as a business man came to me because I had made influential friends who did things for me because they liked me. The man who is right has the right kind of friends, and the man who is wrong has the kind of friends who are attracted by his wrongness. A man gets what he is."
Possibly some will think that advice faulty in expression, for it seems at first glance to put friendship on a coldly calculating basis, as if it urged the maker of friends to say before consenting to try for a man's friendship, "Is there anything I can get out of such a friendship for myself?" Of course it is unthinkable that anyone should estimate friendship in that way; friendship that calculates is unworthy the name, and the calculator ought to be doomed to the loneliest kind of life. But, evidently, what the adviser had in mind is the spirit that makes friends because it is worth while to have friends for friendship's sake, that never counts on advancement through the efforts of others. Such a spirit is bound to be surprised some day by the realization that for his success he owed much to the friends whom he made without a thought of self.
One beginner in business decided that he must find his friendships in serving others. There were those who told him he was making a mistake, but he went calmly on, devoting hours each week to service with an associate in a boys' club. Nothing seemed to come of this but satisfaction to himself and joy to a group whose homes were cheerless. Yet, there was something more—the pleasure of friendship with his associate. One day he was surprised by an invitation to call on the head of a large manufacturing concern. "You don't know me," the man said, "but I know you, for you have been teaching with my son down at the boys' club. For a long time I have been on the lookout for a young man who can come into this business with a view to taking up the work with my son when I must retire. From what I have heard your friend, my son, tell of you, you are the man I have sought."
It is impossible to count on a thing like that as a result of friendship, and the man who is worthy of such a friendship never thinks of reckoning on anything but giving to his friend the best that is in him as he enjoys the comfort of association with him.
Many years ago the author of The Four Feathers wrote of such a friendship between two men:
"It was a helpful instrument, which would not wear out, put into their hands for a hard, lifelong use, but it was not and never had been spoken of between them. Both men were grateful for it, as for a rare and undeserved gift; yet both knew that it might entail an obligation of sacrifice. But the sacrifices, were they needful, would be made, and they would not be mentioned."
It has been well said that "Love gives and receives, and keeps no account on either side," but that is very different from deliberately using friendship for selfish ends.
II
SUCCESSFUL COMRADES
For days two men had been together, tramping, driving, boating, eating, sleeping, talking. And when the time for separation came, one said to the other: "Will you please give a message to your wife? Tell her for me, if you will, that she has made her husband into a real comrade."
That man would have been at a loss to tell what are the elements that go to the making up of a good comrade. In fact, he intimated as much on the last day of the excursion. "You can no more tell the things that go to make up a real comrade than you can explain the things that make a landscape beautiful; you can only see and rejoice."
Just so, it is possible to see instances of good comradeship and rejoice.
In order that there may be real comradeship between two individuals it is not at all necessary that they shall belong to the same station in life. One of those to whom John Muir, the great naturalist, proved himself a true comrade was a guide who many times went with him into the fastnesses of the high Sierras of California. "It was great to hear him talk," the guide has said. "Often we sat together like two men who had always known each other. It wasn't always necessary to talk; often there would be no word said for half an hour. But we understood each other in the silence."
Nor is it essential that people shall be much together before they can be real comrades. Theodore Roosevelt and Joel Chandler Harris knew one another by reputation only until the red letter day when Uncle Remus entered the door of the White House, in response to an urgent letter of invitation in which the President wrote: "Presidents may come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put. Georgia has done a great many things for the Union, but she has never done more than when she gave Joel Chandler Harris to American literature." When the two animal-lovers finally came together there was real comradeship. That the reporters understood this was evident from the wire one of them sent to his paper: "Midnight—Mr. Harris has not returned to his hotel. The White House is ablaze with light. It is said that Mr. Harris is telling the story of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby." But the Georgian's own colloquial account of the memorable session with his comrade at Washington was more explicit:
"There are things about the White House that'll astonish you ef ever you git there while Teddy is on hand. It's a home; it'll come over you like a sweet dream the minnit you git in the door. . . . It's a kind of feelin' that you kin have in your own house, if you've lived right, but it's the rarest thing in the world that you kin find it in anybody else's house. . . . We mostly talked of little children an' all the pranks they're up to from mornin' till night, an' how they draw old folks into all sorts of traps, and make 'em play tricks on themselves. That's the kinder talk I like, an' I could set up long past my bedtime an' listen to it. Jest at the right time, the President would chip in wi' some of his adventures wi' the children. . . . I felt just like I had been on a visit to some old friend that I hadn't seen in years."
When Robert Louis Stevenson and Edward Livingston Trudeau spent days together at Dr. Trudeau's Adirondack sanitarium—the one as patient, the other as physician—they proved that true comradeship is possible even when men's tastes are most unlike. It was possible because they knew how to ignore differences and to find common ground in the worth-while things. "My life interests were bound up in the study of facts, and in the laboratory I bowed duly to the majesty of fact, wherever it might lead," Dr. Trudeau wrote. "Mr. Stevenson's view was to ignore or avoid as much as possible unpleasant facts, and live in a beautiful, extraneous and ideal world of fancy. I got him one day into the laboratory, from which he escaped at the first opportunity. . . . On the other hand, I knew well I could not discuss intelligently with him the things he lived among and the masterly work he produced, because I was incompetent to appreciate to the full the wonderful situations his brilliant mind evolved and the high literary merit of the work in which he described the flights of his great genius."
Yet these two men were great companions, for in spite of differences as to details, their hopes and ambitions and ideals all pointed to the best things in life. After the author's departure, he sent to the doctor a splendidly bound set of his works, first writing in each volume a whimsical bit of rhyme, composed for the occasion.
Though all of these men were real comrades, there is a higher manifestation of comradeship than this. This was shown in the relation of Daniel Coit Gilman, later President of Johns Hopkins University, when he wrote to a fellow student of the deepest things in his life:
"I don't wish merely to thank you in a general way for writing as you did an expression of sympathy, but more especially to respond to the sentiments on Christian acquaintance which you there bring out. I agree with you most fully and only regret that I did not know at an earlier time upon our journey what were your feelings upon a few such topics. I tell you, Brace, that I hate cant and all that sort of thing as much as you or anyone else can do. It is not with everyone that I would enjoy a talk upon religious subjects. I hardly ever wrote a letter on them to those I know best. But when anyone believes in an inner life of faith and joy, and is willing to talk about it in an earnest, everyday style and tone, I do enjoy it most exceedingly."
Theodore Storrs Lee cultivated the relation of a comrade with his fellow students that he might talk to them, without cant, on the deepest things of life. His biographer says: "Many a time did he seek out men in lonely rooms, bewildered or weakened by the college struggles. Many a quiet talk did he have as he and his selected companion trod his favorite walk. No one else in college had so many intimate talks with so many men. . . . On one occasion, when he was urging a friend to give his life to Christian service, he seemed to be unsuccessful—until, on leaving the man at the close of the walk, he made a genial, large-minded remark that opened the way to the heart of his friend." . . . "It was only natural that I should try to meet him half-way," the friend said later, in explanation of his own changed attitude. He had been won by real comradeliness. "It was this devotion to the men in college that led him into the holy of holies of many a man's heart," wrote a friend, "causing many of us to feel in a very real way the sentiment expressed by Mrs. Browning:
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul."
III
COMPANIONSHIP WITH THE PAST
What, courage from companionship with the past? The pessimist says, "Impossible! The past was so much better than the present. See how the country is going to the dogs!" and they point to the revelations of dishonesty in high places. "There were no such blots on our records when the country was young."
A public man gave an effective answer to such croakers when he said:
"As we go on year by year reading in the newspapers of the dreadful things that are occurring; wicked rich men, wicked politicians and wicked men of all kinds, we are apt to feel that we have fallen on very evil times. But
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