How to Get on in the World | Page 8

Association. Not
only are there companions to be met in these associations of the very
best kind, but the buildings are usually fitted up with appliances for the
improvement of mind and body. Here are gymnasiums, where strength
and grace can be cultivated under the direction of competent teachers.
Here are to be found well organized libraries. Here, particularly in the

winter season, there are classes where all the branches of a high school
are taught; and there are frequent lectures on all subjects of interest by
the foremost teachers of the land.
If the young man falls under these influences, and he will experience
not the slightest difficulty in doing so; indeed, he will find friendly
hands extended to welcome and to help, the result on his character must
be most beneficial. The clumsiness of rural life will soon depart; he
will regard his home-made suit with as much pleasure as if it were
made by a fashionable tailor, and he will soon learn to distinguish
between the vicious and the virtuous, while he imitates the one and
regards the other with indifference or contempt.
Next to the association of companions met in every day life nothing so
powerfully influences the character of the young as association with
good books, particularly those that relate to the lives of men who have
struggled up to honor from small beginnings.
With such associations, and a capacity for honest persistent work,
success is assured at the very threshold of effort.
CHAPTER V
COURAGE AND DETERMINED EFFORT.
Carlyle has said that the first requisite to success is carefully to find
your life work and then bravely to carry it out. No soldier ever won a
succession of triumphs, and no business man, no matter how successful
in the end, who did not find his beginning slow, arduous and
discouraging. Courage is a prime essential to prosperity. The young
man's progress may be slow in comparison with his ambition, but if he
keeps a brave heart and sticks persistently to it, he will surely succeed
in the end.
The forceful, energetic character, like the forceful soldier on the
battle-field, not only moves forward to victory himself, but his example
has a stimulating influence on others.

Energy of character has always a power to evoke energy in others. It
acts through sympathy, one of the most influential of human agencies.
The zealous, energetic man unconsciously carries others along with
him. His example is contagious and compels imitation. He exercises a
sort of electric power, which sends a thrill through every fibre, flows
into the nature of those about him, and makes them give out sparks of
fire.
Dr. Arnold's biographer, speaking of the power of this kind exercised
by him over young men, says: "It was not so much an enthusiastic
admiration for true genius, or learning, or eloquence, which stirred the
heart within them; it was a sympathetic thrill, caught from a spirit that
was earnestly at work in the world--whose work was healthy, sustained
and constantly carried forward in the fear of God--a work that was
founded on a deep sense of its duty and its value."
The beginner should carefully study the lives of men whose undaunted
courage has won in the face of obstacles that would cow weaker
natures.
It is in the season of youth, while the character is forming, that the
impulse to admire is the greatest. As we advance in life we crystallize
into habit and "Nil admirari" too often becomes our motto. It is well to
encourage the admiration of great characters while the nature is plastic
and open to impressions; for if the good are not admired--as young men
will have their heroes of some sort-- most probably the great bad may
be taken by them for models. Hence it always rejoiced Dr. Arnold to
hear his pupils expressing admiration of great deeds, or full of
enthusiasm for persons or even scenery.
"I believe," said he, "that 'Nil admirari' is the devil's favorite text; and
he could not choose a better to introduce his pupils into the more
esoteric parts of his doctrine. And therefore I have always looked upon
a man infected with the disorder of anti-romance as one who has lost
the finest part of his nature and his best protection against everything
low and foolish."
Great men have evoked the admiration of kings, popes and emperors.

Francis de Medicis never spoke to Michael Angelo without uncovering,
and Julius III made him sit by his side while a dozen cardinals were
standing. Charles V made way for Titian; and one day when the brush
dropped from the painter's hand, Charles stooped and picked it up,
saying, "You deserve to be served by an emperor."
Bear in mind that nothing so discourages or unfits a man for an