Chapter 25
"What shall I do to get rid of it?" asks a victim. Think less of yourself and more of others. Mingle freely with people. Become interested in things outside of yourself. Do not brood over what is said to you, or a.n.a.lyze every simple remark until you magnify it into something of the greatest importance. Do not have such a low and unjust estimate of people as to think they are bent on nothing but hurting the feelings of others, and depreciating and making light of them on every possible occasion. A man who appreciates himself at his true value, and who gives his neighbors credit for being at least as good as he is, cannot be a victim of over-sensitiveness.
One of the best schools for a sensitive boy is a large business house in which he will be thrown among strangers who will not handle him with gloves. In such an environment he will soon learn that everyone has all he can do to attend to his own business. He will realize that he must be a man and give and take with the others, or get out. He will be ashamed to play "cry baby" every time he feels hurt, but will make up his mind to grin and bear it. Working in compet.i.tion with other people, and seeing that exactly the same treatment is given to those above him as to himself, takes the nonsense out of him. He begins to see that the world is too busy to bother itself especially about him, and that, even when people look at him, they are not usually thinking of him.
A college course is of inestimable value to a boy or girl of over-refined sensibilities. Oftentimes, when boys enter college as freshmen, they are so touchy that their sense of honor is constantly being hurt and their pride stung by the unconscious thrusts of cla.s.smates and companions. But after they have been in college a term, and have been knocked about and handled in a rough but good-humored manner by youths of their own age, they realize that it would be the most foolish thing in the world to betray resentment. If one shows that he is hurt, he knows that he will be called the cla.s.s b.o.o.by, and teased unmercifully, so he is simply forced to drop his foolish sensitiveness.
Thousands of people are out of positions, and cannot keep places when they get them, because of this weakness. Many a good business man has been kept back, or even ruined, by his quickness to take offense, or to resent a fancied slight. There is many a clergyman, well educated and able, who is so sensitive that he can not keep a pastorate long. From his distorted viewpoint some brother or sister in the church is always hurting him, saying and thinking unkind things, or throwing out hints and suggestions calculated to injure him in the eyes of the congregation.
Many schoolteachers are great sufferers from over-sensitiveness.
Remarks of parents, or school committees, or little bits of gossip which are reported to them make them feel as if people were sticking pins in them, metaphorically speaking, all the time. Writers, authors, and other people with artistic temperaments, are usually very sensitive. I have in mind a very strong, vigorous editorial writer who is so p.r.o.ne to take offense that he can not hold a position either on a magazine or a daily paper. He is cut to the very quick by the slightest criticism, and regards every suggestion for the improvement of his work as a personal affront. He always carries about an injured air, a feeling that he has been imposed upon, which greatly detracts from an otherwise agreeable personality.
The great majority of people, no matter how rough in manner or bearing, are kind-hearted, and would much rather help than hinder a fellowbeing, but they have all they can do to attend to their own affairs, and have no time to spend in minutely a.n.a.lyzing the nature and feeling of those whom they meet in the course of their daily business. In the busy world of affairs, it is give and take, touch and go, and those who expect to get on must rid themselves of all morbid sensitiveness. If they do not, they doom themselves to unhappiness and failure.
Self-consciousness is a foe to greatness in every line of endeavor. No one ever does a really great thing until he feels that he is a part of something greater than himself, until he surrenders to that greater principle.
Some of our best writers never found themselves, never touched their power, until they forgot their rules for construction, their grammar, their rhetorical arrangement, by losing themselves in their subject.
Then they found their style.
It is when a writer is so completely carried away with his subject that he cannot help writing, that he writes naturally. He shows what his real style is.
No orator has ever electrified an audience while he was thinking of his style or was conscious of his rhetoric, or trying to apply the conventional rules of oratory. It is when the orator's soul is on fire with his theme, and he forgets his audience, forgets everything but his subject, that he really does a great thing.
No painter ever did a great masterpiece when trying to keep all the rules of his profession, the laws of drawing, of perspective, the science of color, in his mind. Everything must be swallowed up in his zeal, fused in the fire of his genius,--then, and then only, can he really create.
No singer ever captivated her audience until she forgot herself, until she was lost in her song.
Could anything be more foolish and short-sighted than to allow a morbid sensitiveness to interfere with one's advancement in life?
I know a young lady with a superb mind and a fine personality, capable of filling a superior position, who has been kept in a very ordinary situation for years simply because of her morbid sensitiveness.
She takes it for granted that if any criticism is made in the department where she works,
The result is that she makes it so unpleasant for her employers that they do not promote her. And she can not understand why she does not get on faster.
No one wishes to employ anyone who is so sensitive that he is obliged to be on his guard every moment lest he wound him or touch a sore spot.
It makes an employer very uncomfortable to feel that those about him are carrying around an injured air a large part of the time, so that he never quite knows whether they are in sympathy with him or not. If anything has gone wrong in his business and he feels vexed, he knows that he is liable to give offense to these people without ever intending it.
A man wants to feel that his employees understand him, and that they take into consideration the thousand and one little vexations and happenings which are extremely trying, and that if he does not happen to approach them with a smiling face, with consideration and friendliness in his words or commands, they will not take offense.
They will think of his troubles, not their own, if they are wise: they will forget self, and contribute their zeal to the greater good.
CHAPTER XX
TACT OR COMMON SENSE
"Who is stronger than thou?" asked Braham; and Force replied "Address."--VICTOR HUGO.
Address makes opportunities; the want of it gives them.--BOVEE.
He'll suit his bearing to the hour, Laugh, listen, learn, or teach.
ELIZA COOK.
A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance, than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.--COLTON.
The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy.--ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"Tact clinches the bargain, Sails out of the bay, Gets the vote in the Senate, Spite of Webster or Clay."
"I never will surrender to a n.i.g.g.e.r," said a Confederate officer, when a colored soldier chased and caught him. "Berry sorry, ma.s.sa," said the negro, leveling his rifle; "must kill you den; hain't time to go back and git a white man." The officer surrendered.
"When G.o.d endowed human beings with brains," says Montesquieu, "he did not intend to guarantee them."
When Abraham Lincoln was running for the legislature the first time, on the platform of the improvement of the Sangamon River, he went to secure the votes of thirty men who were cradling a wheatfield. They asked no questions about internal improvements, but only seemed curious to know whether he had muscle enough to represent them in the legislature. Lincoln took up a cradle and led the gang around the field. The whole thirty voted for him.
"I do not know how it is," said Napoleon in surprise to his cook, "but at whatever hour I call for my breakfast my chicken is always ready and always in good condition." This seemed to him the more strange because sometimes he would breakfast at eight and at other times as late as eleven. "Sire," said the cook, "the reason is, that every quarter of an hour I put a fresh chicken down to roast, so that your Majesty is sure always to have it at perfection."
Talent in this age is no match for tact. We see its failure everywhere. Tact will manipulate one talent so as to get more out of it in a lifetime than ten talents will accomplish without it. "Talent lies abed till noon; tact is up at six." Talent is power, tact is skill. Talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it.
"Talent is something, but tact is everything. It is not a sixth sense, but it is like the life of all the five. It is the open eye, the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, and lively touch; it is the interpreter of all riddles, the surmounter of all difficulties, the remover of all obstacles."
The world is full of theoretical, one-sided, impractical men, who have turned all the energies of their lives into one faculty until they have developed, not a full-orbed, symmetrical man, but a monstrosity, while all their other faculties have atrophied and died. We often call these one-sided men geniuses, and the world excuses their impractical and almost idiotic conduct in most matters, because they can perform one kind of work that no one else can do as well. A merchant is excused if he is a giant in merchandise, though he may be an imbecile in the drawing-room. Adam Smith could teach the world economy in his "Wealth of Nations," but he could not manage the finances of his own household.
Many great men are very impractical even in the ordinary affairs of life. Isaac Newton could read the secret of creation; but, tired of rising from his chair to open the door for a cat and her kitten, he had two holes cut through the panels for them to pa.s.s at will, a large hole for the cat, and a small one for the kitten. Beethoven was a great musician, but he sent three hundred florins to pay for six s.h.i.+rts and half a dozen handkerchiefs. He paid his tailor as large a sum in advance, and yet he was so poor at times that he had only a biscuit and a gla.s.s of water for dinner. He did not know enough of business to cut the coupon from a bond when he wanted money, but sold the whole instrument. Dean Swift nearly starved in a country parish where his more practical cla.s.smate Stafford became rich. One of Napoleon's marshals understood military tactics as well as his chief, but he did not know men so well, and lacked the other's skill and tact. Napoleon might fall; but, like a cat, he would fall upon his feet.
For his argument in the Florida Case, a fee of one thousand dollars in crisp new bills of large denomination was handed to Daniel Webster as he sat reading in his library. The next day he wished to use some of the money, but could not find any of the bills. Years afterward, as he turned the page of a book, he found a bank-bill without a crease in it.
On turning the next leaf he found another, and so on until he took the whole amount lost from the places where he had deposited them thoughtlessly, as he read. Learning of a new issue of gold pieces at the Treasury, he directed his secretary, Charles Lanman, to obtain several hundred dollars' worth. A day or two after he put his hand in his pocket for one, but they were all gone. Webster was at first puzzled, but on reflection remembered that he had given them away, one by one, to friends who seemed to appreciate their beauty.
A professor in mathematics in a New England college, a "book-worm," was asked by his wife to bring home some coffee. "How much will you have?"
asked the merchant. "Well, I declare, my wife did not say, but I guess a bushel will do."
Many a great man has been so absent-minded at times as to seem devoid of common-sense.
"The professor is not at home," said his servant who looked out of a window in the dark and failed to recognize Lessing when the latter knocked at his own door in a fit of absent-mindedness. "Oh, very well," replied Lessing. "No matter, I'll call at another time."
Louis Philippe said he was the only sovereign in Europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots. The world is full of men and women apparently splendidly endowed and highly educated, yet who can scarcely get a living.
Not long ago three college graduates were found working on a sheep farm in Australia, one from Oxford, one from Cambridge, and the other from a German University,--college men tending brutes! Trained to lead men, they drove sheep. The owner of the farm was an ignorant, coa.r.s.e sheep-raiser. He knew nothing of books or theories, but he knew sheep.
His three hired graduates could speak foreign languages and discuss theories of political economy and philosophy, but he could make money.
He could talk about nothing but sheep and farm; but he had made a fortune, while the college men could scarcely get a living. Even the University could not supply common sense. It was "culture against ignorance; the college against the ranch; and the ranch beat every time."
Do not expect too much from books. Bacon said that studies "teach not their own use, but that there is a practical wisdom without them, won by observation." The use of books must be found outside their own lids. It was said of a great French scholar: "He was drowned in his talents." Over-culture, without practical experience, weakens a man, and unfits him for real life. Book education alone tends to make a man too critical, too self-conscious, timid, distrustful of his abilities, too fine for the mechanical drudgery of practical life, too highly polished, and too finely cultured for every day use.
The culture of books and colleges refines, yet it is often but an ethical culture, and is gained at the cost of vigor and rugged strength. Book culture alone tends to paralyze the practical faculties. The bookworm loses his individuality; his head is filled with theories and saturated with other men's thoughts. The stamina of the vigorous mind he brought from the farm has evaporated in college; and when he graduates, he is astonished to find that he has lost the power to grapple with men and things, and is therefore out-stripped in the race of life by the boy who has had no chance, but who, in the fierce struggle for existence, has developed hard common sense and practical wisdom. The college graduate often mistakes his crutches for strength. He inhabits an ideal realm where common sense rarely dwells.
The world cares little for his theories or his encyclopaedic knowledge.
The cry of the age is for practical men.
"We have been among you several weeks," said Columbus to the Indian chiefs; "and, although at first you treated us like friends, you are now jealous of us and are trying to drive us away. You brought us food in plenty every morning, but now you bring very little and the amount is less with each succeeding day. The Great Spirit is angry with you for not doing as you agreed in bringing us provisions. To show his anger he will cause the sun to be in darkness." He knew that there was to be an eclipse of the sun, and told the day and hour it would occur, but the Indians did not believe him, and continued to reduce the supply of food.