How to Succeed | Page 2

as dogs do
when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of
ice.
Dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping
out of debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by
being industrious.
"Nephew," said Sir Godfrey Kneller, the artist, to a Guinea slave trader,
who entered the room where his uncle was talking with Alexander Pope,
"you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "I
don't know how great men you may be," said the Guinea man, as he
looked contemptuously upon their diminutive physical proportions,
"but I don't like your looks; I have often bought a much better man than
either of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."
A man is never so happy as when he suffices to himself, and can walk

without crutches or a guide. Said Jean Paul Richter: "I have made as
much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should
require more."
"The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage," wrote Voltaire to
Helvetius; "these are what we require to be happy."
Although millions are out of employment in the United States, how
difficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent, industrious
man or woman, young or old, for any position, whether as a domestic
servant, an office boy, a teacher, a brakeman, a conductor, an engineer,
a clerk, a bookkeeper, or whatever we may want. It is almost
impossible to find a really competent person in any department, and
oftentimes we have to make many trials before we can get a position
fairly well filled.
It is a superficial age; very few prepare for their work. Of thousands of
young women trying to get a living at typewriting, many are so
ignorant, so deficient in the common rudiments even, that they spell
badly, use bad grammar, and know scarcely anything of punctuation. In
fact, they murder the English language. They can copy, "parrot like,"
and that is about all.
The same superficiality is found in nearly all kinds of business. It is
next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his
trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling
good material and wasting valuable time.
In the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness, but
usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moral
breadth.
The merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a
sense an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties,
removed alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy
influence of human converse. In society, the most accomplished man of
mere professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality in
his dexterity.

"The aim of every man," said Humboldt, "should be to secure the
highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete
and consistent whole."
Some men impress us as immense possibilities. They seem to have a
sweep of intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal;
they seem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seen
everything. Nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. But
somehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. They raise
great hopes only to dash them. They are men of great promise, but they
never pay. There is some indefinable want in their make-up.
What the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit,
who does not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and
who would give the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into
three classes: men, women and ministers. Wanted, a clergyman who
does not look upon his congregation from the standpoint of old
theological books, and dusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the
merchant as in his store, the clerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading
before the jury, the physician standing over the sick bed; in other words,
who looks upon the great throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing,
scheming, ambitious, impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of
their number, who can live with them, see with their eyes, hear with
their ears, and experience their sensations.
The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every
profession, every occupation, every calling: "Wanted--A Man."
Wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a
mere walking bundle of precedents.
Wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes.
A man should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and
symmetrical in his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that
no one would suspect how he gets his living.
Nothing is more