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Bok Edward William
Successward: A Young Man's Book for Young Men

It is strange how reluctant young men are to accept as the most vital truth in life that the most absolute honesty is the only kind of honesty that succeeds in business. It is not a question of religion or religious beliefs. Honesty does not depend upon any religious creed or dogma that was ever conceived. It is a question of a young man's own conscience. He knows what is right and what is wrong. And yet, simple as the matter is, it is astonishing how difficult it is of understanding. An honest course in business seems too slow to the average young man. "I can't afford to plod along. I must strike, and strike quickly," is the sentiment. Ah yes, my friend, but not dishonestly. No young man can afford to even think of dishonesty. Success on honorable lines may sometimes seem slower in coming, but when it does come it outrivals in permanency all the so-called successes gained by other methods. To look at the methods of others is always a mistake. The successes of to-day are not given to the imitator, but to the originator. It makes no difference how other men may succeed – their success is theirs and not yours. You cannot partake of it. Every man is a law unto himself. The most absolute integrity is the one and the only sure foundation of success. Such a success is lasting and the only one which wins respect. Other kinds of successes may seem so, but it is all in the seeming and not in the reality. Let a young man swerve from the path of honesty and it will surprise him how quickly every avenue of a lasting success is closed against him. Making money dishonestly is the most difficult thing to accomplish in the world, just as lying is the practice most wearing to the mind. It is the young man of unquestioned integrity who is selected for the important position. No business man ever places his business in the hands of a young man whom he feels he cannot absolutely trust. And to be trusted means to be honest. Honesty, and that alone, commands confidence. An honest life well directed is the only life for a young man to lead. It is the one life that is compatible with the largest and surest business success.

A religious life, whether in business or out of business, is one which every young man not only should, but can follow. It partakes of no gloom, as many suppose; it means no depression of spirits. It means simply the living of an upright life, a life of respectability. Religion is nothing more nor less than an adherence to the simple code I have presented: a recognition of a God, and an allegiance in manner of life to that God. And that manner of living is simply a healthy development of the spiritual nature – keeping close to one's best instincts. The communion of a man with his Creator comes with such a manner of living. But this is all that a religious life means. That comprises true religion, at once the easiest and the safest element for any young man to take into his life. It will stand the severest test, and will prove a veritable Rock of Gibraltar to him in time of anxiety and trouble.

VIII
HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN

THE attitude which a young man assumes toward women is one of the surest index-fingers to his character, and nothing stamps him with such unerring accuracy before men. And if this be true in a general sense of his attitude toward the whole sex, it applies with particular force to his position as son. "As is the son so will be the husband," is a well-known saying, and it is likewise true that as is the son so is the man. When a young man reverences his mother it is easy for him to believe in the nobility of the sex to which she belongs. And it is a correct belief.

That women are morally better and spiritually nobler than men should be believed by every young man. No ideal of the best and truest qualities of womanhood is too high for him to set for himself. Such a belief of his young manhood will become a conviction of his later manhood. I know that it is the fashion of some men to speak lightly of women and womanhood; and young men in their susceptible years are sometimes apt to listen to these low standards, and inclined to accept them or be influenced by them. But of one thing every young fellow may be assured: that the man who speaks of woman in any but the most respectful terms is either a knave or a fool – very often he is both. And this is one of the few rules in life to which there is no exception. I wish that young men would more closely associate their mothers with women in general, and realize that every slur cast upon women as a sex is a slur upon their mothers. This is the feeling which prompted General Grant to give a lesson in politeness which will always be told of him. The story is doubtless familiar to all how one evening an officer came into camp, and in a rollicking mood said to those assembled:

"I have such a rich story that I want to tell you. There are no women present, are there?"

Whereupon General Grant, lifting his eyes from the paper which he was reading, and looking his officer square in the eye, said slowly, but deliberately:

"No, but there are gentlemen present."

The rebuke was masterly, and it is one which young men cannot too vividly remember.

Nothing in this world stamps a man more decisively in the eyes of his fellow-men than the practice of telling "off-color" stories in which women are concerned. I have often seen this practice followed, but never yet have I seen a single instance when the story-teller did not lower himself in the estimation of his listeners. Men are prone to laugh at these stories when they are told them; but privately I have noticed that they form their own opinion of the man who tells them, and the opinion is always of one kind. It is the man who upholds womanhood who commands the respect of other men; the man who attempts to lower it invariably invites their distrust. The men who hold that "every woman has her price" are the men who, in the estimation of other men, have no price at all, commercially, socially, or morally. The man who uses such an expression regarding woman simply apes the "smart" utterance of the first fool that God ever made, and after whose pattern all the other fools in this world were created. A man who truly loves his mother, wife, sister, or sweetheart never tells a story which lowers her sex in the eyes of others. He who tells such a story is always lacking in some one respect, and generally it is common decency. I have dwelt upon this point because I should like young fellows to believe more firmly than they do that it is not "caddishness" or "babyishness" or "goody-goodyness" to refuse to listen to a story which makes light of women; it is one of the manliest qualities which a young fellow can show, and deep down in his heart every man will respect a young man for such a position. The higher order of men never forget that, being born of woman, they owe an obligation to their mother's sex which, as loyal sons and true gentlemen, forbids them to listen without protest to offensive stories in which woman is concerned. And no young man can listen to this class of stories without offending his mother, his sister, or the girl who a little later will teach him, through her own sweet life, that whatever is said to the moral detriment of her sex is a lie, and a reflection upon the two women who, one at the beginning of his life and the other at its ending, will prove his best friends – his mother and his wife.

It has often been said before, but it is one of those truths which can as often be said again, that a woman is a man's truest and most loving friend, first, last, and all the time. And particularly is this so of a mother. I know perfectly well that young men are apt sometimes to think that their mothers are unreasonable. And they are, sometimes, undoubtedly, and a little selfish, too. But one point must not be forgotten: it is an unreasonableness and a selfishness born of a mother's surest instinct for the best interests of her boy. I can look back to my earliest years of young manhood and see where, again and again, I thought my mother was either wrong or unreasonable or prone to be a trifle too cautious. But I can also look back now, and I cannot see one instance in which after-events did not prove her to be right. And to-day it is easy to say that if it has been given me to achieve even the smallest measure of success in my life thus far, it is all and entirely due to the influence of my mother, and to my absolute confidence in that influence. No woman has been so much to me, no woman is more to me at this moment that I write, than she who is my mother, my confidante, my truest and best friend – always watchful, always loving, always true, always the same. And gladly do I write this loving tribute to her, grateful that I can place it in her hands rather than on her grave.

There is no deeper or greater satisfaction to a man than to be able to have his mother live to see him fairly launched on a successful career of usefulness. If his father dies before he has made his mark in the world he does not seem to feel it so keenly. But somehow he always wants his mother to live long enough to see for herself that she did not give him life for naught, and that the world is a little better off for the being which she gave unto it. There wells up within his nature a peculiar sense of pride when some day his mother comes quietly to him, and putting her arms around his neck, says, with all the tenderness of a mother's love, "You have done well, my boy. Now I am content to go." No matter how hard a man may have worked, such approval comes to him as his sweetest and richest reward. The applause of the world is little compared with such a motherly benediction, and more precious to him is the remembrance of that short sentence in after years than all the honors that can be showered upon him or the riches that may come to him. It has been my privilege to hear this sacred thought from the lips of more than one of the most famous of American men – men who are to-day leaders in their professions, others who have gone to their graves crowned with the ripest honors and fullest laurels of the world.

For men, even in their most mature years, are, after all, nothing but grown boys. The fond stroke of a mother's hand is as welcome at forty as at fourteen. The world never looks so bright to a man as when he sits at his mother's side with her arms around him. A woman never seems so gentle as when she fondly strokes the recreant lock from his brow, after a trying day, and says, in that voice so familiar, but ever sweet, "You are tired, are you not, dear?" Ah, those women who come into a room when a man is almost worn out, and bring new life and new hope and new spirit with them! Those God-inspired mothers who say so much in a smile, who speak so lovingly to us in a look, who send a thrill of confidence through a man in a tender pressure of the hand! They know us so well. They knew us when we were children, but how much better they know us when we are men! We try to convince them that we are no longer boys, but only a quiet little smile and a fond little petting shows us the fallacy of our own words. They stroke our cheeks, and somehow the mind seems more restful and the brain ceases to throb. The things we try to hide from them are the very things we tell them about. They know with a single look just what is troubling us, and although they never ask us, we pour out to them our worries just as we did when we were children. The quarrels of the playground have only become the worries of business, and the baby of the cradle has simply become the baby of the mother's heart.

It is easy for a man to think well of woman when he can look at her through the eyes of a good mother. And it is this which I want every young fellow to do. His mother should be the central figure of womanhood to him – his ideal, his standard; and while necessarily other women will suffer in comparison, it will only be in the respect that to the one he is a son, while to the others he is a man. The tenderest solicitude which a young man can show to his mother, the most unremitting care he can give her, are none too good for the life he owes to her. And the more tender his feelings for her the stronger he will find his faith grow in her sex. There is no influence to be compared with that of a good woman over the life of a young man. It means everything to him, his success in every phase of life. Men are by nature coarse and brutal; it is the influence of woman which softens them. And we ought to be softened as much as we can. The good Lord knows we need it badly enough. But no influence is productive of the best and surest results unless we make ourselves susceptible to it. If we lack faith in woman, if we fail in the right ideal of womanhood, all her influence will be as naught upon us. From the beginning of the world woman has been man's leader. She has made him what he is to-day. All the qualities which we admire in men come from woman's influence. And a young man starting out in life cannot trust to an influence so sure and so safe as that which comes to him from the being of whose life he is a part, or in whose heart he finds a supreme place. Man's best friend is the woman who loves him. That should be the faith of every young man toward woman; that should be his absolute conviction, and he should show it by an attitude of respect and deference toward her.

IX
THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE

NECESSARILY the question of marriage to a young man is an important one – perhaps the most important that is given him to solve when he reaches a marriageable age. To some young men it is easy of solution. They fall in love with some girl who occupies their every thought, they are married, and, as the story-books generally have it, "they live happily ever afterward." But to others it takes the form of a problem. They are troubled with sentimental perplexities; and if these do not enter into the matter, then it is either a question of the right girl, the means with which to marry, or the proper age. That the matter takes on one of these phases with the majority of young men there can be no doubt, since few men marry the girl who first strikes their fancy.

The first point to present in this question of marriage is the principle of it: that it is unquestionably for the good of almost every young man that he shall marry. There are no two sides to this for the great majority of young men. Of course there are reasons why a man, in some special instance, should choose to lead a single life; in fact, there are excellent reasons why it is best that some men should. I have known men to have inner conflicts with themselves for years, and then resolutely decide upon celibacy. Such decisions make heroes of some men. There are circumstances which sometimes enter into a man's life that make celibacy judicious and wise – circumstances not of his own choosing. There are men whose lofty estimate of women will not permit of their asking a woman to share what God in his wisdom has chosen to have them bear. That type of men exists. But to the majority of men it is decreed to marry and that they shall live in marriage.

When a young man deliberately lays out for himself a single life based upon any other than the strongest physical or mental reasons, he makes the mistake of his lifetime. If a young man refuses to marry because of a lack of faith in womanhood, or a distrust of the existence of those qualities generally attributed to woman, he errs, and he errs fatally. And the best evidence of this is found in the incontrovertible fact that the happiest men in the world to-day are the men who have believed in good womanhood, and have shown that belief by taking a good woman into their hearts and homes. There can be no disputing the fact that a man's life is never complete in its fullest happiness until that life is made whole and complete by the love of a true woman. The simplest reference to the history of men since the creation of the world will demonstrate the truth of this assertion. Man has done nothing without woman; without her counsel he has become as a cipher in the world. Left alone, aside from the question of influence, he is helpless. No man ever lived who knows, for example, how to take care of himself. The absence of a wife from home has demonstrated to many a man how large and important a part she is of it and of him. The right kind of a wife knows better what is essential to her husband's comfort than he does himself – far better. He waits for illness to come, and then combats it, frequently when too late. But the wife sees the symptoms and uses preventives. Her keen insight tells her that her husband is unwell when sometimes he is not conscious of it himself. Women, we are told, know little of business; yet when business troubles come to a man a good wife is the source of all comfort to him. When he despairs she is hopeful. By her influence, perhaps, more than by what she actually accomplishes, she brings new hope, new courage, and points the way to a new beginning. How often women have been the means of averting business disasters or the multiplying of failures with further implications the world will never know; but there are men who know it, and they are the men of whom to ask, "Is marriage a failure?"

It is an unfortunate fact that some men never get to a point where they understand woman. And yet to know woman, to properly understand her, to correctly interpret her best motives, is the deepest lesson that life can teach a man. Every man with a fair mind who clasps a good woman to his breast and calls her mother, wife, or sister will understand the import of these words. How a man can be a hater of woman I cannot conceive when through her so much can be added to his life. Nothing is such an incentive to a man to make the best of himself as the knowledge that there is some one in the world who believes he is just the cleverest fellow alive; that there are eyes, far lovelier than all the stars in heaven to him, which sparkle at his coming; that there is a loving, womanly heart which beats quicker at the sound of his footsteps; that there is a nature ever ready to sympathize with him in his troubles and gladden at his victories – a dear, sweet, loving woman, who laughs with him, and puts her soft, loving arms around him when he is in trouble, rouses him to his better self, making him feel that, after all, this world is not such a bad place to live in. This, as many a man knows, is not a picture drawn from fancy; it finds its living reflection in thousands of homes all through this land and across the sea, in homes where men are happiest and where women are most content.

The bachelor is ofttimes happy in his single state – that is, for a bachelor. He may console himself with the reflection that he accounts only to himself, that he is his own master, can go where he will and do as he chooses so long as he obeys the laws of society and of the land; but in his heart he knows he is but half of a complete thing. He knows that there is something lacking in his life which, if supplied, would make the complete whole. Business success may come to him, wealth may be his; but one way or another he feels the absence of some one to enjoy his successes with him. He wonders why it is that he does not always put forth his best efforts. He marvels whether, after all, a man does not need something outside of himself to draw him on and incite him to his utmost exertions. He may be courted for his money, he may have friendships innumerable, every comfort may be in his rooms; yet moments come to him when persistent thought points to something lacking in his life to round it out. Travel as he will, live on the best the world can provide, he feels, as I have heard it said of the millionaire owner of one of the greatest newspapers in the land, roaming from one land to another, that few men are ofttimes more miserable in their daily lives than is he. He has everything the heart can wish for; more wealth than he can spend; costly residences on this side of the ocean and on the other; swift yachts are his, and swifter horses. Yet, while driving one day, and seeing in a passing carriage a man of his acquaintance sitting beside a devoted wife and two children, he said to a friend, "That man's whole fortune is not one half of my yearly income, and yet his life is a far happier one." And when his friend asked him in what the other's happiness exceeded his, James Gordon Bennett replied, "In having a good wife, and a lovely child for each knee."

Of the wisdom of marriage itself there can be no question. The knotty little problems which enter into it are another matter. Some of them find expression in the choice of the right girl. And here, naturally, is a question which no one can decide for another. It is a man's heart which directs him to the woman whom he wants for his wife, never the finger of the adviser. "Love pointeth surely" is an old proverb, and it is as true to-day as upon the day it was written. Many a young man, however, stands undecided on this question of marriage. He believes that the only holy marriage, the only marriage from which can spring happiness, is that born of love. The girl with whom such a marriage is possible is perhaps within his eye. He loves her, he feels, and yet he hesitates. Why he hesitates he cannot sometimes explain. Sometimes there is another girl in the case, whom he acknowledges to himself he does not love quite so well, and yet he feels that she would bring to him something that the other girl does not: a certain social advancement, perhaps, a furtherance of his business interests, or an advantage of one kind or another. Again, there are young men who feel drawn toward accepting the girl of their own heart and choice, but are withheld by parental opposition, or, if not exactly opposition, that parental indifference or coldness which is even more chilling and killing than open antagonism. They want the girl, and yet they do not want to offend their parents; or perhaps, as in some cases, it is friends that are considered. And so hesitancy and perplexity come in. The heart leads one way, some other interest or consideration draws another.

It is to the mind of such a young man that a girl awakens divers feelings, many of which are mistaken for love. It is love which draws him one way; it is an inherent sense of mere possession that draws him the other. And I am very free in saying that some young men are actuated in marrying simply because of this sense of mere possession. Nor do I mean the word "possession" here as applying to property. To marry a girl for her money is the most contemptuous act of which a man can be capable. It dwarfs him and it dwarfs the woman upon whom he inflicts the wrong. But it is the notion which gets into the heads of so many young men to marry a girl because of the possession of some trait, some art, some grace, which they have not themselves, and the girl's possession of it attracts them. Sometimes it is the girl's talent; at other times her education, or her traveled knowledge; again it is her beauty, her social graces, her ability to appear well, to dress well, to entertain well. The young man associates such a girl in his mind as a part of an establishment which is the dream of his young manhood. She would look well; she would always be able to entertain his friends, to help him in achieving a certain position; and he feels that he would be proud of her. And he would. But the satisfaction of a mere pride is not the satisfaction of the heart. Pride is very easily satisfied; and when it is satisfied it generally departs. In a few years he will want something more than an ornament to his home, and then he will find it wanting. For only in rare cases do we find the useful and the ornamental combined in a single woman. To marry a girl because of some possession; because he simply likes her better, perhaps, than he does other girls; because, maybe, he respects, fancies, or admires her; because she seems to sympathize with him, is to establish a wrong basis for a happy marriage. Not one of these emotions can form the foundation for any truly happy marriage. They are things which appeal to us in any dear friend, man or woman. The girl who is to be a young man's companion for life, to be with him and of him as long as she or he may live, and to be the sharer of his joys or sorrows, to be a daughter to his mother and a mother to his children, must awaken other emotions in a young man's heart. She must awaken that true, affectionate love out of which all of the things of which I have spoken spring, but none of which alone or combined constitutes love itself.

The girl that a young man should marry, and the only girl he is safe to marry, is she who fills all his life, his every thought, who guides him in his every act, whose face comes before him in everything that he does – the girl, in short, without whom he feels life would be a blank, without whom he could not live. That is the girl whom he loves, and it makes little difference whether such a girl be rich or poor, talented or not, traveled or untraveled. Enough is it for him if she is affectionate in her nature, sympathetic with his work, responsive to his thoughts, appreciative of his best qualities. These are the traits in a woman which last the longest, and remain with a man throughout his life. They are the traits in women which make good wives and better mothers. Knowledge is a good thing in a woman, but affection is infinitely better. Far wiser is the young man who marries the stupidest girl in the world, if she be affectionate, than he who marries the brightest girl in the universe, if she be cold, clammy, and unresponsive in her disposition. We laugh at sentiment, we men, when we are young; when we have lived a lifetime we reverence it, and the jest becomes the tribute.