Newspaper Page Text
- ARG
he Men Who
“Had Money but Lost It”
¥ RN AWS ) T AW |
& : By Orison Swett Marden.
B ol iy Ll Y
> PROMINENT New York lawyer of wide experience says
" { { that, in his opinion, ninety-nine out of ~every hundred of
: thoze who make money or inherit it, loge it, sooner or later.
How many thonsands of good, honest men and women
there are in this country who have worked very hard and
all sorts of sacrifices of comfort and luxury in order to lay
§ f ur something for the future, and yet have reached middle
P Qeerl) lifc or later without having anything to show for it; many
of them, indeed, finding themselves without a home or any
probability of getting one, without property or a cent of money laid by for
sickness, for the Ipevitable emergency, or for their declining years!
For the sake of your home, for the protection of hard earnings, for your
peace, of mind, your self-respect, your self-confidence whatever elde you do,
do not neglect a good, solid business training, and get it as early in life as
possible, It will save you from many a fall, from a thousand embarrassments,
and, perhaps, from the humiliation of being compelled to face your wife and
children and confess that you have been a failure. It may £ave you from
the mortification of having to move from a gocd home to a poor one, of see
ing your property slip out of your hands, and of having to acknowledge your
weakness and your lack of foresight and thoughtfulness, or your being made
the dupe of sharpers.
Many men who once had good stores of their own, are working as clerks,
floorwalkers, or superintendents of departments in cther people’s stores, just
because they risked and lost everything in some venture. As they now have
others depending on them, they do not dare to take the ricks which they took
in young manhood, and go they struggle along in mediocre positions, still
mocked with ambitions which, they have no chance to gratify,
Thongands of pecple who were onee in easy circumstances are living in
poverty and wretchedness today because they failed to put an understanding
or an agieement in writing, or to do business in a business way, Families
have been turned out of house and home, penniless, because they trusted
to a relative or a friend to “do what was right” by them, without making
a hard and fast, practical business arrangement with him.
It does not matter how honest people are, they forget, and it is so easy
for misunderstondings to arise that it is never safe to leave anything of im
portance to a mere statement. Reduce it to writing. It ccsts but little, in
time or money, and when all parties interested are agreed, that is the best
time to formulate the agreement in exact terms. This will often save lawsuits,
bitterness, and alienations, How many friendships have been broken by not
putting understandings in writing. Thousands of cases are in the courts to
day because agreements were not put in writing. A large part of lawyers’ in
comes is derived from the same source.
Business talent is as rare as a talent for mathematics. We find boys and
girls turned out of schooi and college full of theories, and of all sorts of
knowledge or smatterings of knowledge, but without auility to protect them
selves from human thieves who are trying to get something for nothing. No
girl or boy should be allowed to graduate, especially from any of the higher
institutions, without heing well grounded in practical business methods.
Parents who send their children out in life, without seeing that they are
well versed in ordinary business principles, do them an incalculable injustice,
-~Juccess Magazine.
Good and Bad Features 1
0 s OF |
1 ' ]
nternational Marriages
T R N T I e LTS
3 The Rev. Dr. R. §. MacArthur.
i Wik
Nm BCENT newspaper reports of married troubles between
smmmseeecen g titled foreigners and American women who have become their
wives fill the hearts of all true Americans with mingled pity
:and humiliation, That some of these marriages are most
o happy is quite certain; some of them, without the slightest
o doubt, are true love matches. There is also political, finan
e =B clal, and. social gain at times in these international mar-
M“,’; rlages. Some American women have exercised much political
. influence in Great Britain and in other countries beyond
the sea,
They have carried American democratic ideas with them into ancient
balaces; they have helped shape policies of political parties, and have done
much toward the Americanization of Great Britain. They have really been,
in a number of cases, the power behind the political thrones. At the great
Durbar in India, an American woman, Lady Curzon, filled a place of power
and honor second only to that filled by the Queen of Great Britain. She
honored America and was a benediction to India and to the British Empire
at large.
Unfortunately, there are other types of women who have coniracted
international matches., Mrs, Hammersley, at whose mirriage I refused to
officiate. was the first American woman to carry great wealth with her to
England when she became the wife of the Duke of Marlborough. Several
other women since have given their husbands much wealth in return for
the little they have received.
Some American women have paid an enormously high price for their
titles, There is a type of Americans fonder of titles than are the people
of the old world. Boasting of their democratic ideas, they will do more to
secure a foreign title than RKuropeans would do. What is the price these
American women and their ambitious fathers and mothers are willing to pay
for titles? . Some time ago during a famine in Russia we read that many poor
peasants sold their daughters with which to buy bread. This announcement
shocked the civilized, world. ‘American parents have done more and worse
than did. these starving peasants. American girls have sold their woman
hood, their country, their language, and their religion for husbands who are
peculiarly contemptible cads and altogether worthless, although having an
clent titles, .
That it is a matter of sale and purchase cannot be doubted, These
abominable transactions bring the blush to the cheek of every honorable
American man and woman. Recent events in England and France are a re
proach to noble manhood and true womanhood on both sides of the sea.
Some of these titled foreigners deserve and receive the contempt of all true
American men and women.. How can these women so far forget a worthy
and. religions American ancestry as to forswear the religion of their fathers
and the country of their own birth? \
370 Vil b i
A Friendly Deadlock %
AR AR S D SAR
f Ey J. O. Fagan. d
AP AN 8
e HEN people are killed, when property is wrecked, we have
nothing to say. It is for the management to figure out rea-
W gons and remedies. Of course, as individuals, we are in
| terested and sorry when accidents happen, but personally
|E— we do not bestir ourselves, nor do we call upon our organiza
) o tions to bestir themselves in the matter. We simply stand
pat on our rights, If a prominent railroad man is ques
tioned .on the subject of railroad accidents, he will shrug his
shoulders and say, “Human nature.’’ So far as he is con
cerned, railroad men are to be protected, not criticized. If you turn to the
management your errand will be equally fruitless. The superintendent will
have little to say. Generally speaking, he has no fault to find with the men,
and the men have little fault to find with him. This seems to be a tacit under
standing in the interests of harmony. It being impossible to move without
treading on somebody’s toes, by all nieans let us remain motionless. As for
the public interests, they must shift for themselves. Consequently, in place
of earnest co-operation in the interests of efficiency and improved service,
there is something in the nature of a friendly deadlock between men and
“€wpßgement.—The Atlantic. :
THE OLD SOUTH ORCHARD.
R AAPPPRA RANUL R ATV AR
By L. M. 'M:)NTQOMEP.Y. !
Tt is now more than seventy years
since it had its beginning, when
grandfather brought his bride home.
Before the wedding he had fenced fig
the big south meadow that sloped !
the sni; it was the finest, most fer
tile field on the farm and the nelgh
bors told young Abraham King that
he would raise many a crop of wheat
in that meadow. Abraham King
smiled, and, being a man of few
words, said nothing, but in his mind
he had‘a vigion of the years to be,
and in that vision he saw, not rippling
acres of harvest gold, but great leaty
avenues of wide-spreading trees,
laden with fruit to gladden the eyes
of children and grandchildren yet un
born. It was a vision to davelop
slowly into fulfillment. Grandfather
King was in no hurry. He did Wot
set his whole orchard out at once, tfi;
he wished it to grow with his life m,d
history and be bound up with all ot
good and joy that came to the house
hold he had founded. So on the
morning after he had brought hifi
young wife home they went together
to the south meadow and planted
their bridal trees. These two trees
were yet living when we of the third
generation were born, and every
spring bedecked themselves in blos
som as delicately tinted as Elizabe{h
King's face when she walked through
the old south meadow in the morn
of her life and love. ¥ o e
That was the beginning of the fa
mous King orchard. When a 33
was born to Abraham and Elizabe h
a tree was planted in the orchard%or
him. They had ten echildren in Q,
and each child had its birthtree. Ev
ery family festival was commemo‘?t
ed in like fashion, and every beloved
visitor who spent a night under their
roof was expected to plant a tree i
the orchard. So it came to pass fh*r‘
every tree in it was a fair green mon
ument to some love or delight of the
past years. i
We, the grandchildren of Abrabam
and Elizabeth, were born into this
heritage. The orchard was old when
we came to know it, and, for us, \ufi1
one of the things that must have ex
isted forever, like the sky and the
river and the stars. We could not
think of a world without the old
south orchard. Each grandchild—and
there were many of us, both on the
homestead where father lived and
scattered abroad in far lands—had its
tree there, set out by grandfather)
when the news of its birth was ah-|
nounced to him. ¥ e
In our day there was a high stone
wall around it instead of grandfath
er's split rail fence. Our uncles a‘,_f
father had built the wall in their.
boyhood, so that it was old enough
to be beautiful with moss, and gretn
things growing out of its crevices,
violets purpling at its base in early
spring days, and goldenrod and asters
making a September glory in its cor
ners,
Grandmother, as long as she was
able, liked to go through the orchard
with us, down to the farther gate.
where she never omitted to kiss us
all good-bye, even if we were to be
gone for no more than an hour. She
would wait at the gate, her sweet face
all aglow, until we were'out of sight;
then she would visit Uncle Stephen’s
avenue hefore going back to the
house.
“Uncle Stephen's avenue,” as we
always called it, was a double row of
apple trees running down the western
side of the orchard—a great green
bowery arcade it was. To walk
through it in blossom time was some
thing not to be forgotten. It realized
for us our most extravagant dreams
of fairyland wherein we wandered
under the gorgeous arches of king'sf
palaces over pavements of pearl and
emerald. Heaven, we thought, must
surely be an endless succession of
Uncle Stephen’s avenues in blossom
that never faded. :
Uncle Stephen was that first-born
whose birthtree stood nearest to the
two gnarled old patriarchs in the cen
tre of the orchard. Father, who was
one of the youngest members of the
family, had but one remembrance of
him-—as a handsome youth of eigh
teen home from a long sea voyage,
with all the glamor of faraway lands
and southern seas about him. In
Uncle Stephen the blood of a seafar
ing race claimed its own. He had
none of grandfather’s abiding love of
woods and meadows and the kindly
ways of the warm red earth; to sea
he must go, despite the fears and
pleadings of the reluctant mother,
and it was from the sea he came to
set out his avenue in the south
orchard with trees brought from his
voyage. ;
Then he sailed away again, and the
ship was never heard of more. The
gray first came in grandmother's
brown hair in those months of wait
ing. Then, for the first time in its
lite, the old orchard heard the sound
of weeping and was consecrated by a
SOITow. £ !
‘To us children Uncle Stephen was
only a name, but a name to conjure
with. We never wearied of speculat
ing on his fate and harrowing our
small souls in fearful imaginations
concerning his last moments, He
played an important part in many of
our games and make-believes; he was
always the good fairy who appeared
mysteriously in the nick of time and
rescued us from all difficulties. He
was all the more delightful in that
he never grew old like our other
uncles. For us he was always the
curly-headed youngster, with the
laughing blue eyes, of the framed
daguerreotype hanging up in grand
mother's room. If he had ever come
back in reality we would have ex
pected him to look just like that. We
all, I think, cherished a secret heifef
that he was yet living—probably on
a desert island—and would some day
return home, glittering with the gold
znd jewels of the pirate hoard Ais
covered on the said island. 'To this
day we middle-aged men and wemen
who were the children of that old
south orchard do not say “when my
‘ship comes in,” but “when Uncle
Stephen comes home.”
There was another spot in the
orchard which had a great attraction
for us, albeit mingled with something
of awe and fear. This was “Aunt
Una’s seat,” a bench of mossy stone
glabs arched over by a couple of
gnaried pear trees and grown thickly
about with grasses and violets. We
never cared to play there—it would
have seemed like desecration, but in
our quiet moods we sought the old
stone bench to dream.™ Aunt Una
mingled in those dreams, but not
after the fashion of Uncle Stephen,
for there was no doubt concerning
her fate. She had died thirty years
before, on her twentieth birthday.
We children heard much of Aunt
Una, for she was one of those people
who are not soon forgoiten, whose
personality seems to haunt the scenes
of their lives long after they have
gone hence. She had been very beau
tiful, with a strange moonlight beau
ty of white skin and night-black eyes
and hair, foreign to the fair, rosy
w style of loveliness; a dreamy,
S tual girl, one of those souls who
have no real abiding place in this
world and only tarry for a brief
while. She had been gifted with the
power of expression, and a sort of
journal she had writien was one of
fifi:dmother's treasures. She some
times read portions of it to us, and
s 0 we seemed to make a very real ac
quaintance with Aunt Una. The book
contained verses that appeared quite
wonderful to us—indeed, I think even
vet that they were wonderful—and
bits descriptive of the orchard, blent
with a girl’s dreams and longings.
Her phrases lingered in our memories
and the whole orchard seemed full of
her. DBesides, there was a bit of her
romance connected with it.
Aunt Una had had a lover. This
man was still living; he was little
more than fifty, but we thought him
”5 . 9
A Few Suggestive Don'ts.
Don'’t be afraid to think before you act. :
Don’t be afraid to use your time to advantage. It is given
you for that purpose: 4 i il e
Don’t be afraid of imitators. Originality always bears a
trade mark. .
Don’t be afraid to risk. The great successes are born of
chance.
: Don’t be afraid to make your goods known.
Don't be afraid to admit it when you are in the wrong.
Don't be afraid to obey. A man must learn to obey before
he may hope to command.
. Don’t be afraid of experience. He is the best teacher.
‘Don’t be afraid of pleasure. It is necessary for good work.
Don’t be alraid of censure. We all need toning down as well
as toning up. :
Don’t be afraid of rivals, Things may be crowded below but
there is always room on top.
Don’t be afraid to fight against odds. Most things worth
having are hard to get.
Don’t be afraid to be polite at all times and under all circum
stances. It is no disgrace to be called a gentlemau.
Don’t be afraid of rebuffs. This may be your employer’s
method of trying your grit.
Don't be afraid to trust your boss. Confidence is a necessary
part of success.
Don't be afraid of overtaxing your strength. Work kills but
few people.—The Bankazine.
very old because of his snow-white
hair. He had never married, and
lived some distance away. Every
June, on Aunt Una's bhirthday, he
made a pilgrimage to the old orchard
to see her tree, all ablow with never
failing blossoms, and sit on her
bench. At such times we children
were not allowed to go into the
orchard, but we sometimes peeped
over the wall and saw him sitting
there, a melancholy, lonely figure. It
gave us, I think, a deep and lasting
sense of the beauty and strength of
love which could thus outlive time
and death. We were too young then
to understand its full beauty. The
romance of it appealed more strongly
to us; we girls had our favorite
dream of dying young and having our
lovers come to visit our trees thirty
years after.
But the orchard had happier mem
ories, There had been a wedding in
it for one thing—long before we were
born. It was that of Aunt Iris, who
had been a celebrated beauty. She
was married in th¢ orchard under the
apple blossoms of June. We never
tired of hearing grangmother tell of
it. We had heard the story so often
that we could picture it almost as
plainly as grandmother lherself—the
lanes of white, fragrant trees, the gay
dresses of the guests, the beautiful
bride in her white silk dress and old
lace veil. It was a favorite game with
us to enact it all over, and so coveted
‘was the honor of playing the bride's
part that it had to be setiled by lot.
Aunt Iris' pear tree, planted by the
ibride herself, after the ceremony, was
iln our time a huge old tree just with
in the entrance gate. The most de
llicious pears that I have ever eaten
grew on it, There are no such pears
nowadays. I suppose they had a cata
logue name, but the old south orchard
had a nomenclature all its own, and
we knew them as “Aunt Iris’ pears.”
There were many plum trees in the
orchard, as well as cherries—great
luscious ox-hearts and a sweet white
kind—pears and quinces, but of
course more of apple trees tkan of
any other kind. Uncle Bob's tree was
our favorite, because it bore a delic
ious, juicy, yellow apple with a streak
of red on one side. There were two
big trees—the twins’' trees—which
were given over to us entirely, be
cause nobody except children could
eat their big, green, dead-sweet ap
ples. And there was a seedling tree
which had come up unbidden in a
sunny corner, the fruit of which we
used when our games called for a
“trial by ordeal.” The apples of it
were the sourest that ever grew;
h#=®, biiter, unpalatable. The “or
deal” consisted in eating one of them
in large bites without making a single
grimace! Tew of us ever passed it,
but there was one who never failed
—our little French cousin, Laure.
She could munch those dreadful ap
ples without so much as a change of
expression on her little dark, elfin
face. But then, Laure could do any
thing she attempted. We could
never “stump” her, as our juvenile
slang expressed it.
Every season brought new beauties
to the old orchard. It would have
been hard to say when we loved it
best. In spring it was a rare spot;
the grass would be green there when
everywhere else was only sere brown
sod; the trees were in leaf and bud a
full week earlier there than in other
orchards. Summer brought ripe lux
uriance of growth. Long ago grand
mother had sown a little plot with
caraway just inside the gate and it
had spread half over the orchard.
In July, when it came into blossom,
the long arcades were white with its
billowy waves that swayed and
foamed in the moonshine of summer
eves like seas of silver. One day a
three-year-old baby wandered into the
caraway thicket that met over her
head, lay down in it, and went to
sleep. When she was missed, great
was the consternation in the house of
King. Everybody turned out to
gsearch, distracted by direful possi
bilities of well and river, Search as
they might they could not find her,
It was sunset, with a mother in hys
terics, before an answering gurgle
came from the caraway in response to
franctic calls. Father plunged over
the stone wall and into the caraway
where he came upon a rosy sleep
warm baby curled up in a nest of her
own fasihoning and very loath to
leave it.
Autumn was, I think, the time we
loved best, for then came the apple
picking. What fun it was! The boys
would climb the trees and shake the
apples down until we girls cried for
mercy, The days were crisp and mel-
low, with warm sunshine and a tang
of frost in the air, mingled with the
woodsy odors of the withering leaves.
The hens and turkeys prowled about
picking at windfalls, and our pet Kkit
tens made mad rushes at each other
among the leaves.
Then came winter, when the
orchard was heaped with drifts. It
was a wonderful place on moonlit
nights, when the snowy arcades shone
like magic avenues of ivory and pearl
and the bare trees cast fairy-like trac
eries- over them. Uncle Stephen’s
avenue was a fine place for coasting,
and when a thaw came, followed by a
frost, we held high carnival there.
Any history of the old south
orchard would be incomplete if it
failed to mention the “King Bubble.”
This was a spring of peculiarly sweet,
pure water which gurgled up in the
southwest corner at the foot of a
gentle slope. Grandfather had
rimmed it round with a circle of hewn
stones, and in this basin the water
brimmed up like a great amber bub
ble until it found its way through
ferns and mosses to the brook below.
In our games the King Bubble played
the part of every famous fount in
song and story of which we had ever
read—especially the well of Urda and
Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth,
On summer days, tired and warm,
we would fling ourselves down on its
fern-fringed brink and drink deep
draughts from an old blue china cup
which always sat on a little stone
shelf below the brim and never
chanced to be broken despite the doz
ens of careless little hands that seized
it. To-day weary men and women
all over the world think often of that
spring and long for a cup of its
matchless water.
Near the spring was a huge granite
bowlder as high as a man's head,
straight and smooth in front, but hol
lowed out into natural steps behind.
It also played an important part in all
our games, being fortified castle, In
dian ambush, throne, pulpit or con
cert platform as occasion required. A
certain gray-haired minister, famous
in two continents for eloquence and
scholarly attainments, preached his
first sermon at the age of ten from
that old gray bowlder, and a woman
whose voice has delighted thousands
sang her earliest madrigals there.
“If'you’re a King, you sing,” was a
countryside proverb in those davs,
and certainly if was true of all the
descendants of grandfather and
grandmother. We all sang more or
less, although none could equal
Laure, and among the dearest mem
ories of the old south orthard are
those of the long, mellow twilights of
summer Sundays, when old and young
assembled in the orchard and sang
hymns, grandfather beating time.
How clearly the whole scene comes
out on the wall of memory’s picture
gallery — grandfather and grand
nmother, father and mother, sitting on
Aunt Una’s bench, while we children,
with all Uncle George's brood from
the next farm, sat on the grass
around them. Two voices scund out
for me above all the others—l Laure’s
glorious and silvery, grandmother’s
sweet, quavering, tremulous. Dear
old Grandmother King! How much
she enjoyed those summer evenings
of song!
Grandmother and grandfather used
to walk much in the orchard on fine
evenings, hand in hand, lovers still,
lingering in Uncle Stephen’s arcade
or at Aunt Una’'s seat. Their devo
tion to each other was beautiful to
see. We children never thought it a
sad or unlovely thing to grow old
with so fair an example before us.
One summer grandmother grew very
frail and could not walk in the
orchard. Yet grandfather was the
first to go; they found him sitting in
his armchair on one summer after
noon, a smile on his fine old face and
the sunshine making a glory of hig
white hair. Grandmother called him
by name, but for the first time he
failed to answer her.
They ecarried Grandfather King
through the old orchard on his last
journey, It had been his wish. Chil
dren and grandchildren walked be
hind him under boughs laden with
the mellow fruit of trees his hands
had planted. The next June Grand
mother King was carried to him over
the same way—the bride going once
more to her bridegroom under the
glory of their bridal trees.
I visited the orchard not long ago
on a mellow afternoon. It did not
seem much changed., Most of the old
trees were standing; grandfather’s
and grandmother’s were gone, but
their places were fllled with two
flourishing young trees planted when
the homestead boy had brought his
bride home. Aunt Una’s seat was
there and TUncle Stephen’s avenue;
the King Bubble was as clear and
fiiparkling as of yore—truly, it was
a fountain of youth, for it never grew
old. And at the big granite bowlder
children were playing “Ivanhoe” and
besieging it valiantly with arrows and
popguns. My best.wish for them w%a,
that in the years to come the o
orchard might hold for them as many
sweet and enduring memories as it
held for me.—From the Outing Mage
azine.
WORDS GF WISDOM.
Cross bearing by proxy will not
win crowns.
In order to be humble one need
not be servile,
Infant hands can take a firm hold
on heartstrings.
Time is money, but the landlord
will not accept it.
To-morrow’s industry will not bal
ance to-day’s indolence. :
Even if you can not toot a horn
you can follow the reform band.
The pulpit would profit by looking
at it from the pewpoint once in a
while.
The more men you lift up the
fewer there are left to drag you
down.
Heaven is a gift that must be ac
cepted with clean hands and clean
heart.
False teeth do not ache, but that
is about the only good thing to be
said of them.
Widow’s weeds too carefully cul
tivated are the soonest to go to seed
and disappear.
Have you ever noticed that when
a man takes himself too seriously he
is generally a joke?
There was something wrong about
the good time of yesterday that pro
duced to-day’s headache.
We don’t think much of a man
who has a large social correspon
dence and keeps up with it.
It will take something more than
the fear of microbes and germs to
put a stop to the kissing habit. -
We never worry about the spirit
ual welfare of the man who always
sprinkles ashes on his icy sidewalk.
—From ‘“Brain Leaks,” in the Com
moner,
Jefferson’s Ten Rules,
Never put off until to-morrow what
you can do to-day.
Never trouble another for what you
can do- yourself.
Never spend your money before
you have made it.
Never buy what you don’t want be
cause it is cheap. :
Pride costs more than hunger,
thirst and cold.
We seldom regrét of having eaten
too little.
Nothing is troublesome that we do
willingly.
How much pain the evils that have
never happened have cost us.
Take things always by the smooth
handle.
When angry, count ten before you
speak; when very angry, count one
hundred.