The Book of Courage Part 12

And the people, respecting his humility, followed him silently, never speaking to him about his miracles. Little by little, they even came to forget his name, and called him only "The Holy Shadow."

It would be a splendid thing if all would learn the lesson taught in the fable--that the man who would do good should have the courage to be unconscious of the good he is doing, and so as unlike as possible the rich woman of whom some one has told, who turned a deaf ear to every pet.i.tion for help unless there was a subscription paper circulated and she was given the chance to head the list. "But no poor person came into her house who said, 'May G.o.d reward you!' She never experienced the pleasure of making a poor woman on the back stairs happy with a cup of warm coffee, or hungry children with a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, or an infirm man with a penny. Perhaps she satisfied her conscience by saying that she did not believe in indiscriminate charity. Frequently that excuse is given conscientiously but how often the real meaning is, 'I do not believe in charity that does not make people talk of my generosity.'"

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taught the folly of giving in such a manner. The lesson was enforced by two pictures--a man standing on the street, giving alms to the poor, while attention is called to his generosity by the sounding of a trumpet which everyone must hear, and a man whose giving is so much a matter of secrecy that he does not think of it a second time. There is no rolling of it over as a sweetmeat under his tongue, as if to say, "What a generous man I am!" Nor is there any motive in the giving but pure desire to glorify G.o.d. All this is properly included in the interpretation of "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."

VII

EXPENSIVE ECONOMY

A magazine editor offered a prize for the best account by a reader of the adjustment of income and expenditure made necessary by the vaulting prices of recent years. The prize was awarded to one whose revised budget showed the revision downward of many items, and the elimination of two or three other items. The comparison of the budgets was interesting and helpful; most readers would be apt to approve heartily all but one of the changes and eliminations. This was the exception: the earlier budget allowed five dollars per month for "church and charity," while the revised budget made no mention of the claims of others, no provision for the privilege of giving.

If you had been a judge in that contest, would you have felt like giving the prize to a paper that suggested such an omission? Suppose you had the task of cutting your budget, would you feel like revising downward the provision for giving? What do you think of the statement of a famous business man who, having insisted in time of financial reverses on making gifts as usual, said to objecting friends, "Economy should not begin at the house of G.o.d." Why not let economy begin there?

What answer would have been given to such a query by the poor tenement dweller in New York City who, though compelled to earn the support of her family by scrubbing floors in a great office building, set aside a dollar and a half per week for the care of four orphans in India who but for her gifts would have starved?

What answer would have been made by the Polish Jew, long resident in America, who directed in his will that regular gifts be made at Christmas and Easter to the Christians as well as to the Jews of his home town in Europe? That bequest was made in memory of days and nights of terror when, as a boy, he hid in the house from the fiendish persecutions of so-called Christians who thought Easter and Christmas favorable times for the intimidation of the Jews. What would he have said to the idea of economy that forgets the needs of others and makes no provision for satisfying the hungry, to help the suffering?

What would have been the comment of Him who told the parable of the rich man who built great barns to hold the surplus product of his lands, thinking that there was nothing better in life than to eat, drink, and be merry; who compared the gifts of the rich man and the poor widow; who commended the love of the woman who poured out the costly ointment upon His head; who promises glorious recognition to those who give, in His name, to any who are in need?

A successful manufacturer, whose eyes have been opened to the folly of attempting to save by cutting off gifts, has written a series of essays on "The Business Man and His Overflow," his purpose being to show that happiness is dependent on helpfulness. "Who is the most successful business man?" he asks. "The man who has the largest bank account? Not necessarily.... The most successful business man is he who renders the greatest service to mankind and whose life is most useful."

Two paths are open to us: we can give, and we can give more, or we can economize in giving until we give nothing.

Which is the path of courage?

CHAPTER SEVEN

_COURAGE THROUGH COMPANIONs.h.i.+P_

THE world is full of lonely people--people who keep to themselves, turning away from every approach of others, from all invitations to come out of retirement. They persist in living alone, thinking their own thoughts, pleasing only themselves.

"I can have no place in my life for friends.h.i.+p," one of these unfortunates says.

"I can't be expected to devote myself to my family; it is all I can do to make a living," is the complaint of another.

"I live in the present," says a third; "the past has no interest for me, and the future holds nothing but worries."

"Live more out-of-doors, you say!" is the word of a fourth. "Why should I bother about Nature when Nature does nothing but thwart me?"

"Make G.o.d my friend?" a fifth asks in surprise. "Talk to me in rational terms. G.o.d doesn't bother about me; why should I bother about Him?"

Is it any wonder that the lives of so many everywhere are empty? It does not occur to them that by their determination to isolate themselves they cut themselves off from the surest road to courage, both received and given--the road of companions.h.i.+p with the people and things most worth while.

I

COMPANIONs.h.i.+P WITH FRIENDS

There are those who say that friends.h.i.+p is a lost art; that modern life is too busy for friends.h.i.+p. "Why don't you pause long enough to call on B----?" a father asked his son; "you used to be such good friends." "Oh, I haven't time for that now," was the careless reply; "if I am to get ahead, I feel I must devote myself only to those things that can be a decided help to my advancement."

The mistake made by that son is emphasized by the advice of a keen old man, spoken to a business a.s.sociate: "If I were asked to give advice to a group of young men who wanted to get ahead in business, I would simply say, 'make friends.' As I sat before the fire the other night I let my mind run back, and it was with surprise that I learned that many of the things which in my youth I credited to my ability as a business man came to me because I had made influential friends who did things for me because they liked me. The man who is right has the right kind of friends, and the man who is wrong has the kind of friends who are attracted by his wrongness. A man gets what he is."

Possibly some will think that advice faulty in expression, for it seems at first glance to put friends.h.i.+p on a coldly calculating basis, as if it urged the maker of friends to say before consenting to try for a man's friends.h.i.+p, "Is there anything I can get out of such a friends.h.i.+p for myself?" Of course it is unthinkable that anyone should estimate friends.h.i.+p in that way; friends.h.i.+p that calculates is unworthy the name, and the calculator ought to be doomed to the loneliest kind of life.

But, evidently, what the adviser had in mind is the spirit that makes friends because it is worth while to have friends for friends.h.i.+p's sake, that never counts on advancement through the efforts of others. Such a spirit is bound to be surprised some day by the realization that for his success he owed much to the friends whom he made without a thought of self.

One beginner in business decided that he must find his friends.h.i.+ps in serving others. There were those who told him he was making a mistake, but he went calmly on, devoting hours each week to service with an a.s.sociate in a boys' club. Nothing seemed to come of this but satisfaction to himself and joy to a group whose homes were cheerless.

Yet, there was something more--the pleasure of friends.h.i.+p with his a.s.sociate. One day he was surprised by an invitation to call on the head of a large manufacturing concern. "You don't know me," the man said, "but I know you, for you have been teaching with my son down at the boys' club. For a long time I have been on the lookout for a young man who can come into this business with a view to taking up the work with my son when I must retire. From what I have heard your friend, my son, tell of you, you are the man I have sought."

It is impossible to count on a thing like that as a result of friends.h.i.+p, and the man who is worthy of such a friends.h.i.+p never thinks of reckoning on anything but giving to his friend the best that is in him as he enjoys the comfort of a.s.sociation with him.

Many years ago the author of _The Four Feathers_ wrote of such a friends.h.i.+p between two men:

"It was a helpful instrument, which would not wear out, put into their hands for a hard, lifelong use, but it was not and never had been spoken of between them. Both men were grateful for it, as for a rare and undeserved gift; yet both knew that it might entail an obligation of sacrifice. But the sacrifices, were they needful, would be made, and they would not be mentioned."

It has been well said that "Love gives and receives, and keeps no account on either side," but that is very different from deliberately using friends.h.i.+p for selfish ends.

II

SUCCESSFUL COMRADES

For days two men had been together, tramping, driving, boating, eating, sleeping, talking. And when the time for separation came, one said to the other: "Will you please give a message to your wife? Tell her for me, if you will, that she has made her husband into a real comrade."

That man would have been at a loss to tell what are the elements that go to the making up of a good comrade. In fact, he intimated as much on the last day of the excursion. "You can no more tell the things that go to make up a real comrade than you can explain the things that make a landscape beautiful; you can only see and rejoice."

Just so, it is possible to see instances of good comrades.h.i.+p and rejoice.

In order that there may be real comrades.h.i.+p between two individuals it is not at all necessary that they shall belong to the same station in life. One of those to whom John Muir, the great naturalist, proved himself a true comrade was a guide who many times went with him into the fastnesses of the high Sierras of California. "It was great to hear him talk," the guide has said. "Often we sat together like two men who had always known each other. It wasn't always necessary to talk; often there would be no word said for half an hour. But we understood each other in the silence."

Nor is it essential that people shall be much together before they can be real comrades. Theodore Roosevelt and Joel Chandler Harris knew one another by reputation only until the red letter day when Uncle Remus entered the door of the White House, in response to an urgent letter of invitation in which the President wrote: "Presidents may come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put. Georgia has done a great many things for the Union, but she has never done more than when she gave Joel Chandler Harris to American literature." When the two animal-lovers finally came together there was real comrades.h.i.+p. That the reporters understood this was evident from the wire one of them sent to his paper: "Midnight--Mr. Harris has not returned to his hotel. The White House is ablaze with light. It is said that Mr. Harris is telling the story of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby." But the Georgian's own colloquial account of the memorable session with his comrade at Was.h.i.+ngton was more explicit:

"There are things about the White House that'll astonish you ef ever you git there while Teddy is on hand. It's a home; it'll come over you like a sweet dream the minnit you git in the door.... It's a kind of feelin'

that you kin have in your own house, if you've lived right, but it's the rarest thing in the world that you kin find it in anybody else's house.... We mostly talked of little children an' all the pranks they're up to from mornin' till night, an' how they draw old folks into all sorts of traps, and make 'em play tricks on themselves. That's the kinder talk I like, an' I could set up long past my bedtime an' listen to it. Jest at the right time, the President would chip in wi' some of his adventures wi' the children.... I felt just like I had been on a visit to some old friend that I hadn't seen in years."

When Robert Louis Stevenson and Edward Livingston Trudeau spent days together at Dr. Trudeau's Adirondack sanitarium--the one as patient, the other as physician--they proved that true comrades.h.i.+p is possible even when men's tastes are most unlike. It was possible because they knew how to ignore differences and to find common ground in the worth-while things. "My life interests were bound up in the study of facts, and in the laboratory I bowed duly to the majesty of fact, wherever it might lead," Dr. Trudeau wrote. "Mr. Stevenson's view was to ignore or avoid as much as possible unpleasant facts, and live in a beautiful, extraneous and ideal world of fancy. I got him one day into the laboratory, from which he escaped at the first opportunity.... On the other hand, I knew well I could not discuss intelligently with him the things he lived among and the masterly work he produced, because I was incompetent to appreciate to the full the wonderful situations his brilliant mind evolved and the high literary merit of the work in which he described the flights of his great genius."

Yet these two men were great companions, for in spite of differences as to details, their hopes and ambitions and ideals all pointed to the best things in life. After the author's departure, he sent to the doctor a splendidly bound set of his works, first writing in each volume a whimsical bit of rhyme, composed for the occasion.

Though all of these men were real comrades, there is a higher manifestation of comrades.h.i.+p than this. This was shown in the relation of Daniel Coit Gilman, later President of Johns Hopkins University, when he wrote to a fellow student of the deepest things in his life:

"I don't wish merely to thank you in a general way for writing as you did an expression of sympathy, but more especially to respond to the sentiments on Christian acquaintance which you there bring out. I agree with you most fully and only regret that I did not know at an earlier time upon our journey what were your feelings upon a few such topics. I tell you, Brace, that I hate cant and all that sort of thing as much as you or anyone else can do. It is not with everyone that I would enjoy a talk upon religious subjects. I hardly ever wrote a letter on them to those I know best. But when anyone believes in an inner life of faith and joy, and is willing to talk about it in an earnest, everyday style and tone, I do enjoy it most exceedingly."

Theodore Storrs Lee cultivated the relation of a comrade with his fellow students that he might talk to them, without cant, on the deepest things of life. His biographer says: "Many a time did he seek out men in lonely rooms, bewildered or weakened by the college struggles. Many a quiet talk did he have as he and his selected companion trod his favorite walk. No one else in college had so many intimate talks with so many men.... On one occasion, when he was urging a friend to give his life to Christian service, he seemed to be unsuccessful--until, on leaving the man at the close of the walk, he made a genial, large-minded remark that opened the way to the heart of his friend." ... "It was only natural that I should try to meet him half-way," the friend said later, in explanation of his own changed att.i.tude. He had been won by real comradeliness. "It was this devotion to the men in college that led him into the holy of holies of many a man's heart," wrote a friend, "causing many of us to feel in a very real way the sentiment expressed by Mrs.

Browning: