Chapter 18
was the reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator, even if he have the better judgment, will fail.
When asked how he managed to accomplish so much work, and at the same time attend to his social duties, a French statesman replied, "I do it simply by never postponing till to-morrow what should be done to-day."
It was said of an unsuccessful public man that he used to reverse this process, his favorite maxim being "never to do to-day what might be postponed till to-morrow." How many men have dawdled away their success and allowed companions and relatives to steal it away five minutes at a time!
"To-morrow, didst thou say?" asked Cotton. "Go to--I will not hear of it. To-morrow! 'tis a sharper who stakes his penury against thy plenty--who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes, and promises, the currency of idiots. _To-morrow_! it is a period nowhere to be found in all the h.o.a.ry registers of time, unless perchance in the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society with those that own it. 'Tis fancy's child, and folly is its father; wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic visions of the evening." Oh, how many a wreck on the road to success could say: "I have spent all my life in pursuit of to-morrow, being a.s.sured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me."
"But his resolutions remained unshaken," Charles Reade continues in his story of Noah Skinner, the defaulting clerk, who had been overcome by a sleepy languor after deciding to make rest.i.tution; "by and by, waking up from a sort of heavy doze, he took, as it were, a last look at the receipts, and murmured, 'My head, how heavy it feels!' But presently he roused himself, full of his penitent resolutions, and murmured again, brokenly, 'I'll take it to--Pembroke--Street to--morrow; to--morrow.' The morrow found him, and so did the detectives, dead."
"To-morrow." It is the devil's motto. All history is strewn with its brilliant victims, the wrecks of half-finished plans and unexecuted resolutions. It is the favorite refuge of sloth and incompetency.
"Strike while the iron is hot," and "Make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes,"
are golden maxims.
Very few people recognize the hour when laziness begins to set in.
Some people it attacks after dinner; some after lunch; and some after seven o'clock in the evening. There is in every person's life a crucial hour in the day, which must be employed instead of wasted if the day is to be saved. With most people the early morning hour becomes the test of the day's success.
A person was once extolling the skill and courage of Mayenne in Henry's presence. "You are right," said Henry, "he is a great captain, but I have always five hours' start of him." Henry rose at four in the morning, and Mayenne at about ten. This made all the difference between them. Indecision becomes a disease and procrastination is its forerunner. There is only one known remedy for the victims of indecision, and that is prompt decision. Otherwise the disease is fatal to all success or achievement. He who hesitates is lost.
A noted writer says that a bed is a bundle of paradoxes. We go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret. We make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
Yet most of those who have become eminent have been early risers.
Peter the Great always rose before daylight. "I am," said he, "for making my life as long as possible, and therefore sleep as little as possible." Alfred the Great rose before daylight. In the hours of early morning Columbus planned his voyage to America, and Napoleon his greatest campaigns. Copernicus was an early riser, as were most of the famous astronomers of ancient and modern times. Bryant rose at five, Bancroft at dawn, and nearly all our leading authors in the early morning. Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were all early risers.
Daniel Webster used often to answer twenty to thirty letters before breakfast.
Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his enormous achievements. He rose at five. By breakfast-time he had, as he used to say, broken the neck of the day's work. Writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel: "Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not having your time fully employed--I mean what the women call dawdling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, never before it."
Not too much can be said about the value of the habit of rising early.
Eight hours is enough sleep for any man. Very frequently seven hours is
"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, G.o.d gave them a work to do, and He also gave them a competence of time; so much that if they began at the right moment, and wrought with sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good many years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allotted time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring-lines laid alongside, the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the time. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters are posted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at the wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not break any engagement or neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval."
Some one has said that "promptness is a contagious inspiration."
Whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the practical virtues of civilization.
There is one thing that is almost as sacred as the marriage relation,--that is, an appointment. A man who fails to meet his appointment, unless he has a good reason, is practically a liar, and the world treats him as such.
"If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace Greeley, "why should he have for their money? What is the difference between taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars."
When President Was.h.i.+ngton dined at four, new members of Congress invited to dine at the White House would sometimes arrive late, and be mortified to find the President eating. "My cook," Was.h.i.+ngton would say, "never asks if the visitors have arrived, but if the hour has arrived."
When his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow, Was.h.i.+ngton replied, "Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary."
Franklin said to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse, "I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else."
Napoleon once invited his marshals to dine with him, but, as they did not arrive at the moment appointed, he began to eat without them. They came in just as he was rising from the table. "Gentlemen," said he, "it is now past dinner, and we will immediately proceed to business."
Blucher was one of the promptest men that ever lived. He was called "Marshal Forward."
John Quincy Adams was never known to be behind time. The Speaker of the House of Representatives knew when to call the House to order by seeing Mr. Adams coming to his seat. Once a member said that it was time to begin. "No," said another, "Mr. Adams is not in his seat." It was found that the clock was three minutes fast, and prompt to the minute, Mr. Adams arrived.
Webster was never late at a recitation in school or college. In court, in congress, in society, he was equally punctual. Amid the cares and distractions of a singularly busy life, Horace Greeley managed to be on time for every appointment. Many a trenchant paragraph for the "Tribune" was written while the editor was waiting for men of leisure, tardy at some meeting.
Punctuality is the soul of business, as brevity is of wit.
During the first seven years of his mercantile career, Amos Lawrence did not permit a bill to remain unsettled over Sunday. Punctuality is said to be the politeness of princes. Some men are always running to catch up with their business: they are always in a hurry, and give you the impression that they are late for a train. They lack method, and seldom accomplish much. Every business man knows that there are moments on which hang the destiny of years. If you arrive a few moments late at the bank, your paper may be protested and your credit ruined.
One of the best things about school and college life is that the bell which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures, teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch which is a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad habits, and is an expensive investment at any price.
"Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says H. C.
Brown. "How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has acquired a reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the capital that in after years makes his success a certainty."
Promptness is the mother of confidence and gives credit. It is the best possible proof that our own affairs are well ordered and well conducted, and gives others confidence in our ability. The man who is punctual, as a rule, will keep his word, and may be depended upon.
A conductor's watch is behind time, and a terrible railway collision occurs. A leading firm with enormous a.s.sets becomes bankrupt, simply because an agent is tardy in transmitting available funds, as ordered.
An innocent man is hanged because the messenger bearing a reprieve should have arrived five minutes earlier. A man is stopped five minutes to hear a trivial story and misses a train or steamer by one minute.
Grant decided to enlist the moment that he learned of the fall of Sumter. When Buckner sent him a flag of truce at Fort Donelson, asking for the appointment of commissioners to consider terms of capitulation, he promptly replied: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner replied that circ.u.mstances compelled him "to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose."
The man who, like Napoleon, can on the instant seize the most important thing and sacrifice the others, is sure to win.
Many a wasted life dates its ruin from a lost five minutes. "Too late"
can be read between the lines on the tombstone of many a man who has failed. A few minutes often makes all the difference between victory and defeat, success and failure.
CHAPTER XV
WHAT A GOOD APPEARANCE WILL DO
Let thy attire be comely but not costly.--LIVY.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
SHAKESPEARE.
I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no one observes.--ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
As a general thing an individual who is neat in his person is neat in his morals.--H. W. SHAW.
There are two chief factors in good appearance; cleanliness of body and comeliness of attire. Usually these go together, neatness of attire indicating a sanitary care of the person, while outward slovenliness suggests a carelessness for appearance that probably goes deeper than the clothes covering the body.
We express ourselves first of all in our bodies. The outer condition of the body is accepted as the symbol of the inner. If it is unlovely, or repulsive, through sheer neglect or indifference, we conclude that the mind corresponds with it. As a rule, the conclusion is a just one.
High ideals and strong, clean, wholesome lives and work are incompatible with low standards of personal cleanliness. A young man who neglects his bath will neglect his mind; he will quickly deteriorate in every way. A young woman who ceases to care for her appearance in minutest detail will soon cease to please. She will fall little by little until she degenerates into an ambitionless slattern.
It is not to be wondered at that the Talmud places cleanliness next to G.o.dliness. I should place it nearer still, for I believe that absolute cleanliness _is_ G.o.dliness. Cleanliness or purity of soul and body raises man to the highest estate. Without this he is nothing but a brute.
There is a very close connection between a fine, strong, clean physique and a fine, strong, clean character. A man who allows himself to become careless in regard to the one will, in spite of himself, fall away in the other.