How to Get on in the World | Page 5

the reputation is deserved, otherwise his life is false,
and sooner or later he will stand discovered before the world.
Sudden success makes reputation, as it is said to make friends; but very
often adversity is the best test of character as it is of friendship.
It is the principle for which the soldier fights that makes him a hero, not
necessarily his success. It is the motive that ennobles all effort.
Selfishness may prosper, but it cannot win the enduring success that is
based on the character with a noble purpose behind it. This purpose is
one of the guards in times of trouble and the reason for rejoicing in the
day of triumph.
"Why should I toil and slave," many a young man has asked, "when I
have only myself to live for?" God help the man who has neither
mother, sister nor wife to struggle for and who does not feel that toil
and the building up of character bring their own reward.

The home feeling should be encouraged for it is one of the greatest
incentives to effort. If the young man have not parents or brothers and
sisters to keep, or if he find himself limited in his leisure hours to the
room of a boarding house, then if he can at all afford it, he should
marry a help-meet and found a home of his own. "I was very poor at
the time," said a great New York publisher, "but regarding it simply
from a business standpoint, the best move I ever made in my life was to
get married. Instead of increasing my expense's as I feared, I took a
most valuable partner into the business, and she not only made a home
for me, but she surrendered to me her well-earned share of the profits."
A wise marriage is most assuredly an influence that helps. Every young
man who loves his mother, if living, or reveres her memory if dead,
must recall with feelings of holy emotion, his own home. Blest, indeed
is he, over whom the influence of a good home continues.
Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there that
every civilized being receives his best moral training, or his worst; for
it is there that he imbibes those principles that endure through manhood
and cease only with life.
It is a common saying that "Manners make the man;" and there is a
second, that "Mind makes the man;" but truer than either is a third, that
"Home makes the man." For the home-training not only includes
manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the heart
is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened, and
character moulded for good or for evil.
From that source, be it pure or impure, issue the principles and maxims
that govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes. The tiniest
bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterward
issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are
gathered out of nurseries, and they who hold the leading strings of
children may even exercise a greater power than those who wield the
reins of government.
It is in the order of nature that domestic life should be preparatory to
social, and that the mind and character should first be formed in the

home. There the individuals who afterward form society are dealt with
in detail, and fashioned one by one. From the family they enter life, and
advance from boyhood to citizenship. Thus the home may be regarded
as the most influential school of civilization. For, after all, civilization
mainly resolves itself into a question of individual training; and
according as the respective members of society are well or ill trained in
youth, so will the community which they constitute be more or less
humanized and civilized.
Thus homes, which are the nurseries of children who grow up into men
and women, will be good or bad according to the power that governs
them. Where the spirit of love and duty pervades the home--where head
and heart bear rule wisely there--where the daily life is honest and
virtuous--where the government is sensible, kind and loving, then may
we expect from such a home an issue of healthy, useful, and happy
beings, capable, as they gain the requisite strength of following the
footsteps of their parents, of walking uprightly, governing themselves
wisely, and contributing to the welfare of those about them.
On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and
selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and
grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more dangerous to
society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of what is called
civilized