Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden

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СКАЧАТЬ he might fulfill is baseball engagements. The games ended: and on a Sunday Watka reported to the Creek authorities (in our Indian territory) to pay his debt. A press dispatch describes what followed:

      “Watka set out alone to the public execution grounds. In due time he arrived. The crowd was waiting. The prisoner assumed his position on bended knees, with arms tied behind, and a bandage over his eyes. The rifle was in the hands of a good marksman; there was a sharp crack, and the white spot marked for the heart was instantly discolored with blood.”

      A story not unlike this is related of a Bay State Tory, Dick Johnson, in our Revolutionary war. After his arrest, upon his personal word to the sheriff, he went about his usual work, in and out; and when it was time for him to be tried for high treason he set off alone and walked through the forests to Springfield to be tried for his life. But a member of the Massachusetts council, knowing his character, rescued him from the rope.

      Then, too, we have that old story of the Punic captive, released that he might advise Rome to make peace. He advised Rome not to make peace. “But Regulus, what will become of you?” “I gave my word to return, and I will keep it; but do you refuse to make peace.”

      Who would not go far to see such men as Damon and Pythias, the one ready to die as a substitute for his friend, and the other voluntarily ready in his lace at the death block when the hour struck?

      When the sacredness of one’s word is matched in the attributes of his character throughout, all that constitutes a man, then we find that there is something in a man’s life greater than his occupation or his achievements; grander than acquisition or wealth; higher than genius; more enduring than fame. “The truest test of civilization,” says Emerson, “is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops; no, but the kind of men the country turns out.” Montaigne kept his castle gates unbarred during the wars of the Fronde, because his reputation for integrity was better defence than a regiment of horses.

      “Your lordships,” said Wellington in Parliament, “must all feel the high and honorable character of the late Sir Robert Peel. I was long connected with him in public life. I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had greater confidence.” Are not the characters of great men the dowry of a nation? Chateaubriand said he saw Washington but once, yet it inspired his whole life. To Washington, Jefferson once wrote—“The confidence of the whole nation centers in you.” Of Abraham Lincoln, his greatest antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas said that there was safety in the very atmosphere of the man.

      Manhood is above all riches and overtops all titles; character is greater than any career. “Character must stand behind, and back up everything,--the sermon, the poem, the picture, the play. None of them is worth a straw without it.” “I have read,” Emerson says, “that they who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he said.”

      It was remarked by Disraeli that “we put too much faith in systems, and look too little to men.” This was the ground of that wise remark of Samuel Johnson to travelers, in which he belittled the palaces and cities, and even the picture galleries and fine scenery; yet the seeing of eminent men he thought to be of the first importance. “Go,” said Lord Essex to the young Earl of Rutland, “a hundred miles to speak with one wise man, rather than five miles to see a fair town.”

      “The prosperity of a country,” says Luther, “depends not on the abundance of its revenues, nor on the strength of its fortifications, nor on the beauty of its public buildings; but it consists in the number of its cultivated citizens, in its men of education, enlightenment, and character.”

      The value of personal integrity to the state, at a great crisis, was singularly illustrated by George Peabody. In 1837, after he moved from America to London, there came a commercial crisis in the United States. Many banks suspended specie payments. Many mercantile houses went to the wall, and thousands more were in great distress. Edward Everett said, “The great sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit, as far as the United States were concerned, was for the time paralyzed.” Probably not half a dozen men in Europe would have been listened to for a moment in the Bank of England upon the subject of American securities, but George Peabody was one of them. His name was already a tower of strength in the commercial world. In those dark days his integrity stood four-square in every business panic. Peabody retrieved the credit of the State of Maryland, and, it might almost be said, of the United States. His character was the magic wand which in many a case changed almost worthless paper into gold. Merchants on both sides of the Atlantic procured large advances from him, even before the goods consigned to him had been sold.

      Another illustration is given us in Cockburn’s “Memorials of Francis Horner”:

      “The valuable and peculiar light in which Horner’s history is calculated to inspire every right-minded youth is this: at the age of thirty-eight he was possessed of greater influence than any other private man, admired, beloved, and trusted; and at this early age he died, deplored by all except the heartless and the base.

      “Probably no greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member. How was this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant. By wealth? Neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous sixpence. By office? He held but one, and that for only a few years, of no influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were not splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right. By eloquence? He spoke in calm, good taste, without any of the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination of manner? His was only correct and agreeable. By what was it, then? Merely by sense, industry, good principles, and a good heart, qualities which no well- constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force of his character that raised him; and this character was not impressed upon him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by himself. There were many in the House of Commons of far greater ability and eloquence. But no one surpassed him in the combination of an adequate portion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to show what moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the competition and jealousies of public life.”

      It was Horner whom Sydney Smith described as having the ten commandments stamped on his forehead. “Nature,” says Thackeray, “has written a letter of credit upon some men’s faces, which is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a ‘promise to pay’ in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to another man’s endorsement.”

      This quality, which we sometimes speak of as characterizing “a man we can tie to,” is always at a premium in a democracy. If it was said of the personal character of the first Alexander of Russia that it was equivalent to a constitution, much more, in a free land, the stability of our institutions depends upon moral excellence embodied in the citizens. “One good, strong, sound man,” said Old John Brown, of Ossawatomie, “is worth a thousand men without character in a building up a state.”

      “Give us a man, young or old, high or low,” says Dean Stanley, “on whom we know we can thoroughly depend, who will stand firm when others fail; the friend faithful and true, the adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and chivalrous,--in such a one there is a fragment of the Rock of Ages.”

      Chapter VII.

       The Wealth of the Commonwealth

       Table of Contents

      The purest treasure mortal times afford

      Is—spotless Reputation: that away,

      Men СКАЧАТЬ