Laugh and Live | Page 7

He knows that
every lane has a turning. He may not see it at the moment. He may not
know where it is. _But that doesn't worry him._ He picks up his bundle
and trudges ahead, confident that victory awaits him somewhere along
the line.

The fact that he believes in himself, sets him apart from ordinary
mankind. Many great men have been at loss to understand why they
attained success. It is well nigh impossible for them to outline the
causes that led them to the top rungs of the ladder. The reason is that
their lack of fear of experiences was an unconscious one, rather than a
conscious one. However, they are willing to admit that acting on the
principle of profiting by experience loaned them initiative with which
to proceed. They soon came to know opportunity at sight and had only
to look around to find it.
The young man standing on the threshold of life is, from lack of
experience, puzzled over the future. He looks above him and sees the
towering successes. He reads in the papers of the massive characters
who have risen from the bottom to the top. Naturally he would like to
meet one of these giants of success and hear what he has to say. The
interview is quite needless. "Get busy and profit by experience," is
about all the advice one man can give to another. There is no way to
profit by experience until we have had experience so there is nothing to
do but get busy and experience will come as fast as we can absorb it.
Our duty is to strive for success and not expect to attain it except by
successive steps. A wholesale consignment would be our undoing.
Quick successes through luck or good fortune have not the lasting
value of those won by virtue of knowing how--of accomplishing what
we started out to do.
Faith in one's self does not come from the outside--it must spring up
naturally from within. A healthy body and a sane mind are the best
foundations for this. The young man who begins his career with these
facts in mind is given a running start over his competitors. Poverty and
failure are the result of an ignorance of the value of experience. Worry,
anxiety, fear of not doing the right thing, lack of insight into character ...
these, too, are the result of a lack of experience.
Good health is necessary to experience, but a majority neglect to take
care of it. If we are to profit by what we learn we must have the vim
with which to push forward. We must have every ounce of vitality we
possess at command--ready for use. This we conserve for the big

emergency which we know is coming. New experiences are pushing us
forward and previous experiences are helping to move the load.
Experience tells us what to do at this point and that--and at last puts its
shoulder to the wheel and "over she goes!"
Every mind is in possession of an enormous amount of dormant power
and only experience can release it into proper action. We often hear a
fond mother say that her son is full to bursting with the old nick, which
means that the youngster is overflowing with _pent-up energy_. With
experience he could find good use for it--but without it this surplus may
turn out to be a dangerous possession. Young men of this type should
be guarded most carefully and advised to "get busy" early in life at
something worth while. Many a bright fellow brimming with excess
power has gone as a lamb to the slaughter into the maelstrom of vice
because of being held back from legitimate occupation. He just had to
blow off steam so he did it in a gin mill rather than a rolling mill.
This dynamo called the mind can be trained to do anything. Not only
can it be guided at the start but it can be guided by all that follows. It
can be used for building additional dynamos to be called into action in
times of need. This statement may seem at first far-fetched. If we think
so it is proof that we have not profited by our experiences and should
get down to "stock taking" before it is too late.
The practical man, after all, is only one who takes advantage of
opportunities. He could double and triple his power if he only realized
how superficial the average setback really is. The young man has just
as much chance of being considered practical as the so-called older one,
always provided that he has a store of experiences to profit by. The first
big experience of life usually makes or breaks us. For this experience
we need