The unsuccessful men are all around us; and among them are those who confound all distinctions set up by society, and illustrate the great law of compensation set up by God, cutting society at right angles, and obtuse angles, and acute angles, unnoticed, or but flippantly mentioned by the careless, but giving food for intimate reflections to those for whom things suggest thoughts.
Have you not seen them,--these unsuccessful men?--men who seem not to have found their niche, but are always on somebody's hands for settlement, or, if settled, never at rest? If they are poor, their neighbors say, Why does he not learn a trade? or, Why does he not stick to his trade? He might be well off, if he were not so flighty. He has a good head-piece, but he potters rhymes; he tricks out toy-engines and knick-knacks; he roams about the woods gathering snakes and toads; and meanwhile he is out at the elbows. If he is rich, they say, Why does he not make a career? He has great resources. His brain is inexhaustible. He is equipped for any emergency. There is nothing which he might not attain, if he would only apply himself, but he fritters himself away. He sticks to nothing.
He touches on this, that, and the other, and falls off.
True, O Philosophers, he does stick to nothing, but condemn him not too harshly. It is the old difficulty of the square man in the round hole, and the round man in the square hole. They never did rest easy there since time began, and never will.
Many--perhaps the greater number--of people have no overmastering inclination for any employment. They are farmers because their fathers were before them, and that road was graded for them,--or shoemakers, or lawyers, or ministers, for the same reason. If circumstances had impelled them in a different direction, they would have gone in a different direction, and been content. It is not easy for them to conceive that a man is an indifferent lawyer, because his raw material should have been worked up into a practical engineer; or an unthrifty shoemaker, because he is a statesman nipped in the bud. Yet such things are. Sometimes these men are gay, giddy, rollicking fellows. Sometimes their faces are known at the gaming-houses and the gin-palaces.
Sometimes they go down quickly to a dishonored grave, over which Love stands bewildered, and weeps her unavailing tears. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are gloomy, sad, silent. Perhaps they are morose. Worse still, they are whining, fretful, complaining. You would even call them sour. Often they are cynical and disagreeable.
But be not too hasty, too sweeping, too clear-cut. I have seen such men who were the reverse of the Pharisees. Their faces were a tombstone. The portals of their soul were guarded by lions scarcely chained. But though their temple had no Beautiful Gate, it was none the less a temple, consecrated to the Most High. Within it, day and night, the sacred fire burned, the sacred Presence rested. There, honor, justice, devotion, and all heroic virtues dwelt. Thence falsehood, impurity, profanity, whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,-- were excluded. They are unsuccessful, because they will not lower the standard which their youth unfurled. Its folds float high above them, out of reach, but not out of sight, nor out of desire.
With constant feet they are climbing up to grasp it. You do not see it; no, and you never will. You need not strain your aching eyes;but they see it, and comfort their weary hearts withal.
These men may receive sympathy, but they do not need pity.
They are a thousand times more blessed than the vulgarly successful. The shell is wrinkled, and gray, and ugly; but within, the meat is sweet and succulent. Perhaps they will never make a figure in the world, but "True happiness abides with him alone Who in the silent hour of inward thought Can still suspect and still revere himself In lowliness of mind."And it is even better never to be happy than to be sordidly happy. It is better to be nobly dissatisfied than meanly content. A splendid sadness is better than a vile enjoyment.
I hear of people that never failed in anything they undertook.
I do not believe in them. In the first place, however, I do not believe this testimony is true. It is the honest false-witness, it is the benevolent slander of their affectionate and admiring friends. But if it were in any case true, I should not believe in the man of whom it was affirmed. It is difficult to conceive that a person of elevated character should not attempt many things too high for him. He finds himself set down in the midst of life. Earth, air, and water, his own mind and heart, the whole mental, moral, and physical world, teem with mysteries. He is surrounded with problems incapable of mortal solution. He must grasp many of them and he foiled. He must attack many foes and be repulsed. He may be stupidly blind, or selfish, or cowardly, and make no endeavor,--in which case he will of course endure no defeat.
