making them believe they were on the wrong track, and that somewhere else, in some other field, they would have a better chance. So he has kept people moving about all over the world, shifting, changing, never finding the satisfaction and happiness they crave because they are round pegs in square holes. ISCOURAGEMENT is a disease that is universal in some form. Everybody in greater or less degree is the victim of its poison. I frequently get letters from young men and women on the threshold of their active careers, with fine possibilities ahead of them, telling me how discouraged they are. A recent one from a young woman, after detailing a pitiful list of her troubles and discouragements, the things which she says are keeping her down and making her prematurely old, closes with, "Yours from the depths of the blues." Now, people who live in "the depths of the blues" are sure marks for the devil's wedge. Our habitual moods have everything to do with our success, and the man or woman who encourages the "blues" instead of driving them away is bidding for failure. Encouraging the "blues" usually ends in chronic discouragement, and when any one allows himself to fall into this state, no one outside of himself can do anything for him. Unless he turns about face, shuts out the devil and his wedge, and finds the God in himself there is no hope for him. S 0 long as life remains, no matter what your age or sex or condition, you can regain your lost hope and courage. You can drive out fear, worry, the "blues," all forms of discouragement, all the enemies of your success and happiness, by claiming your divine inheritance and asserting your kinship with God. The Creator never made any one to be a coward, to run away from difficulties. It is only the devil's wedge that does that. We were made to hold up our heads, to look the world in the face without flinching, to conquer every difficulty that opposes us in our efforts to do the thing we were sent here to do. We were made to succeed in our work, to be happy in it, and if we fail, it is because we turn coward in the battle of life; for it is cowardice, lack of faith in the Creator, that drives people to despair and suicide. No matter how depressing your present condition, or what your troubles, if you take your higher self, the man or woman God made you to be for your guide, you can recover your footing, you can be the brave, successful, happy being the Creator planned. T DON'T PUT OFF HE hard problem, the tough job. Tackle it first. Writing to your mother or father, or brother or sister, and in other ways showing your affection for them. The putting on of new clothes. Don't put off putting up a good front, making a good appearance that will tally with the thing you are after in life. Keeping fit, looking after your physical and mental welfare. The daily bath and the perfect grooming of your self. Self-improvement. While it is never too late to learn, it is better to begin early. Attending to your friendships. Friends will leave us if we give them no attention, and one of the greatest regrets of multitudes of men, as they near the end of life, is that they have put off their friendships-put off cultivating them while they were making money. Getting acquainted with your family, giving time to your children, showing interest in their sport and having fun with them. Be their pal and you will not regret it later. Being kind to others; saying and doing the helpful, considerate thing to-day. Trying to control your unbridled temper or cruel tongue. Giving time and attention to your home life, and contributing toward a beautiful home atmosphere. Registering your vow for better things. Being honest and square in your dealings. The higher impulses until they cease to plead with you. The beginning of the thing your heart longs for, and that you feel able to accomplish. Making a decision until it is useless or you lose your power to decide. Getting out of a rut. The present is a good time to make the effort. Turning over a new leaf and reforming your bad habits. Do it now! -O. S. M. into Their Kingdoms How Leigh Hunt, Admiral Farragut, Salmon P. Chase, David Livingston, Karl Harriman, Peter Clark MacFarlane and Others Who Became Successful Started for Their Goals "Y By WILLIAM L. STIDGER "OU'RE fired!' said the managing editor of The man who was thus suddenly informed that fate no longer wanted him around these parts as a substantial part of the pay roll grinned. He grinned just as some men grin when they face their executioner, but his heart was as heavy as a three-ton truck. He had been married only a month. All during that month, in the enthusiasm of youthful optimism, he casually informed his wife that the next move for him would probably be the city-editor's desk. Instead, the next move was through the front door. "But it was the best thing that ever happened to me!" this same man said to me a few days ago, as I sat in his office in Chicago. He is Karl Harriman, now editor of the Red Book Magazine, with supervision over two other magazines. "Why do you consider being fired such a glorious experience?" I asked him. "Because, if I hadn't been fired I would be writing copy to-day for that paper at a meager salary. As it was, being fired compelled me to dig out for myself. I went to Philadelphia and applied for a job with a publishing house in that city, and, in a few years' time, Mr. Edward Bok invited me to be the managing editor of The Ladies' Home Journal. "So that's why you believe now that the managing editor did you a good turn when he fired you?" I asked, with a smile of understanding. "I sure do!" "Did you at the time you were fired?" "No! I considered it a great calamity then. That's why I am anxious to tell others that getting fired from that job was the best trick that fate ever played me." "You were, then, literally and figuratively kicked into your little kingdom here in this office, weren't you?" "Kicked is right; kicked just like the boy peeping under the tent when along came a circus roustabout and, the first thing the boy knew, he was sitting in the lap of a clown: 'How did you get here?' asked the clown. I was kicked in,' answered the boy. "Then in you stay!' said the clown. 'You are my guest from now on.' That boy, I would say, was, to use your phrase, literally kicked into a boy's kingdom." Thus spake the editor from his little room on the top floor of a big Chicago officebuilding. His is truly a little kingdom. The bell rang and in came an artist. The decision as to whether an illustration should be cut for two pages or run clear across double pages was made in a few seconds, and made by the editor. A young woman entered. "Mr. Blank, to see you." I recognized the name as that of a wellknown author. It was fascinating to watch Karl Harriman at work, and to realize that, as is the case of any successful editor, more than a million people are a part of his kingdom; a part of his audience; a part of his congregation; a part of his political constituency; a part of his great group of unknown. His is truly a little kingdom of power, and he had been kicked into it. I How Peter Clark MacFarlane Left KNOW a successful writer. He is Peter Clark MacFarlane. Fate kicked him out of the theater. He was an actor. As he walked home he saw a little church boarded up, a sign on the front door stating that the church was closed because it didn't have a preacher. MacFarlane had always had a hankering to preach, so he hunted up the deacons and said that he would fill the pulpit until they could engage a regular preacher. He captivated the congregation, and the result was that he became a successful preacher. Then fate gave him another kick. This time it was sickness, and he landed in Panama where he interviewed George W. Goethals, the engineer who built the Panama Canal. It was the first time that the great American had ever been successfully interviewed, although many magazines had made an attempt. MacFarlane was a sick man. He had to have a sea voyage for a rest. His friend, Captain Yardley, then commanding a small coast-wise ship, out of San Francisco, bantering him, said, "Bring your family and take a trip with me down to Panama." "I had no idea he would take me up," Captain Yardly told me, as I talked with him in San Francisco. "But, when the ship was ready to sail, Peter showed up with his whole family. They were a great crowd. I remember that the children told the passengers their father was the janitor of a New York apartment house. That was their idea of a man of power." MacFarlane had no idea of interviewing Goethals when he took the sea trip for his health. "It was only to get rid of a serious malady that threatened my life. In fact I didn't know what I was to do. I was blue and discouraged, with no money and no possibility of going back to preaching, because of my health. When we landed in Panama, I decided to have a talk with Goethals, if that were possible. It I landed a real interview. It won attention, and then came others. They were followed by stories and books." was. "So you, too, were kicked into your kingdom' by fate?" I said to him. "I certainly was! And I still bear the prints of the hobnails on my anatomy!" he said with a grin. "So far as that is concerned,” said MacFarlane, "Theodore Roosevelt was kicked into his kingdom' too, by fate." "What do you mean; into the Presidency?” I asked him. "No, I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of the time he suddenly faced the fact that he was a weakling, physically, and had to go West for his health. That was the turning point in Roosevelt's career. He told me so himself; so bad health literally kicked him in, too!" Leigh Hunt and Farragut Were Misfits THE HEN, I thought of Leigh Hunt. He had been a misfit through all his early days. In school and college, he was one of the men who didn't fit in. A sudden sickness came while he was in New York. It was a sickness that was accompanied by terrible suffering. But he says of this sickness in his autobiography: "One great benefit resulted to me from this suffering. It gave me an amount of reflection, such as, in all probability, I never should have had without it. It taught me patience, it taught me charity, it taught me the worth of little pleasures, as well as the utility and dignity of great pains; it taught that evil itself contains good." This sickness made Leigh Hunt. It changed his life. D AVID FARRAGUT was kicked into his kingdom by his father. He had been rather dissolute and careless, and held the idea that a real seaman must be a swearing tyrant. According to an old story of his early life, his father called him into his own cabin after turning everybody else out, and, locking the door, remarked: “David, what do you mean to be?" "I mean to follow the sea." "Follow the sea!" said his father. "Be a poor, miserable, drunken sailor before the mast, MISFITS WHO WERE KICKED INTO THEIR KINGDOMS icked and cuffed about the world, and die in ome fever hospital in a foreign land?" “No, father," exclaimed the boy, "I will tread he quarter-deck; and command, as you do!" "No, David; no boy ever trod the quarterdeck with such principles as you have and such habits as you exhibit. You will have to change your whole course of life if you ever become a man!" Farragut admits that he was stunned by the rebuke. That was the kick that kicked him into his kingdom on the sea, as one of the world's great commanders. It took a kick to awaken him. Salmon P. Chase Would Have Stuck 41 run, Newton determined on a more intelligent mode of revenge. He decided to get busy with his books and defeat his enemy by taking his place at the head of his classes. He did it. That marked the first desire that he ever had for real studying. It was fate's way of kicking him into his kingdom, for everybody knows what Sir Isaac Newton has done for science. David Livingston, the explorer, was all set to go to China, as a missionary, when the "Opium War" broke out, and, much to his disappointment, he had to change his plans and go to Africa, a country about which he knew practically nothing; whereas he had been studying about China for years. No doubt, Livingston growled about the "Opium War," and was angry at fate for upsetting his well-laid plans. Livingston became one of history's greatest explorers. ELEN HUNT JACKSON, the one lonely pupil appeared on the opening day. Thus fate kicked him once. But it took two kicks for Chase. He then decided to get a job as a government clerk. His uncle, a senator from Vermont, might well have secured for him the coveted position. Instead, he said to Chase, "I once got a job for a nephew, and he went to the dogs. I take no more chances on another nephew!" This time fate kicked Chase into studying law. Later, he became a most successful lawyer and was made immortal by Lincoln. But, it is safe to predict that, if fate hadn't kicked him out of his first attempt at founding a school, he might have lived and died a humble teacher. A store burned down once in which George Peabody, the banker, had invested heavily. It left him desperate and stranded. But that was only fate's way of kicking him into the financial and banking kingdom; for, after that, instead of being contented with being a storekeeper he got a job with his uncle who, later, sent him to London where he became one of the world's greatest bankers. If fate hadn't kicked him out of the store, through a burning building, he might have lived his days in a small-town draper's shop. life. She was married to a naval officer, who invented a submarine gun and was killed while experimenting with it. Then a few years later, her only son died. But out of the culmination of this double grief came her first real poetry. We would never have had "Ramona," that beautiful story of the historic missions of California, if grief had not come to Helen Hunt Jackson. A' This Man Was Kicked into His Self-Respect FEW years ago, in the city of Detroit, there was a successful business man. In fact, he was earning a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year, according to his friend, Edgar Guest, the poet, who told me this tale of how fate kicked a man into a kingdom in a strangely backhanded way. "He made a success of business but he didn't make a success of living," said Mr, Guest, as we talked about the man. "In what way?" I asked him. "Well, he got to drinking, and that went from bad to worse. Finally, his wife literally kicked him out, and his children would have nothing to do with him. He was figuratively kicked out of his own home. "That not only broke his heart, but it awakened him. He suddenly realized what a fool he had been. Even his wife and children didn't want him around." “Did he buck up then?" "No, he went further and further down until he got kicked out of his big job, too. He was (Continued on page 133) |