The Investment of Influence | Page 3

on a man's tomb: "_His presence made bad men good._"
This mysterious bundle of forces called man, moving through society,
exhaling blessings or blightings, gets its meaning from the capacity of
others to receive its influences. Man is not so wonderful in his power to
mold other lives, as in his readiness to be molded. Steel to hold, he is
wax to take. The Daguerrean plate and the Aeolian harp do but
meagerly interpret his receptivity. Therefore, some philosophers think
character is but the sum total of those many-shaped influences called
climate, food, friends, books, industries. As a lump of clay is lifted to
the wheel by the potter's hand, and under gentle pressure takes on the
lines of a beautiful cup or vase, so man sets forth a mere mass of mind;
soon, under the gentle touch of love, hope, ambition, he stands forth in
the aspect of a Cromwell, a Milton or a Lincoln.
Standing at the center of the universe, a thousand forces come rushing
in to report themselves to the sensitive soul-center. There is a nerve in
man that runs out to every room and realm in the universe. Only a tithe
of the world's truth and beauty finds access to the lion or lark; they look
out as one in castle tower whose only window is a slit in the rock. But
man dwells in a glass dome; to him the world lies open on every side.
Every fact and force outside has a desk inside man where it makes up

its reports. The ear reports all sounds and songs; the eye all sights and
scenes; the reason all arguments, judgment each "ought" and "ought
not," the religious faculty reports messages coming from a foreign
clime.
Man's mechanism stands at the center of the universe with
telegraph-lines extending in every direction. It is a marvelous
pilgrimage he is making through life while myriad influences stream in
upon him. It is no small thing to carry such a mind for three-score years
under the glory of the heavens, through the glory of the earth, midst the
majesty of the summer and the sanctity of the winter, while all things
animate and inanimate rush in through open windows. For one thus
sensitively constituted every moment trembles with possibilities; every
hour is big with destiny. The neglected blow cannot afterward be struck
on the cold iron; once the stamp is given to the soft metal it cannot be
effaced. Well did Ruskin say; "Take your vase of Venice glass out of
the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover
that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown
upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God's
presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to him--at least in this
world." We are accountable to God for our influence; this it is "that
gives us pause."
Gentle as is the atmosphere about us, it presses with a weight of
fourteen pounds to the square inch. No infant's hand feels its weight; no
leaf of aspen or wing of bird detects this heavy pressure, for the fluid
air presses equally in all directions. Just so gentle, yet powerful, is the
moral atmosphere of a good man as it presses upon and shapes his kind.
He who hath made man in his own image hath endowed him with this
forceful presence. Ten-talent men, eminent in knowledge and
refinement, eminent in art and wealth, do, indeed, illustrate this. Proof
also comes from obscurity, as pearls from homely oyster shells.
Working among the poor of London, an English author searched out
the life-career of an apple woman. Her history makes the story of kings
and queens contemptible. Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger,
cold and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys
sleeping in an ash-box whose lot was harder. She dedicated her heart

and life to the little waifs. During two and forty years she mothered and
reared some twenty orphans--gave them home and bed and food; taught
them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the
trades; helped others off to Canada and America. The author says she
had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead
face. It must have been so. She "had a beautiful soul," as Emerson said
of Longfellow. Poverty disfigured the apple woman's garret, and want
made it wretched, nevertheless, God's most beautiful angels hovered
over it. Her life was a blossom event in London's history. Social reform
has felt her influence. Like a broken vase the perfume of her being will
sweeten literature and society a thousand years after we are gone.
The Greek poet says men knew when