Chapter 8: Making A Life

There is something better than putting money into the pocket. Put beauty into the life.

Do not focus the energies of a lifetime upon money making. Rich men hug their gold; and yet their possibilities of beauty and grandeur of character have never been developed — the priceless pearl for which they have sold all else.

But what does all this life struggle mean if the beautiful side, the tender side, the affectionate side is never to be developed? Is there nothing better than the sordid scramble for money, for place? Is selfishness, personal aggrandizement, the greatest thing in life? Is there nothing finer and dearer and more beautiful to struggle for?

One would think to go through one of our great cities, ward after ward, one barren area after another, that there is but one thing to struggle for, — the material; that the beautiful has little place. Everything suggests the material: plain, square, homely buildings of all heights, sizes, dimensions, with little idea of symmetry, of the aesthetic; bridges, approaches to parks, squares, and cities are plain and ugly to an extreme. Everything must give way to the god, the "useful." Were the inhabitants of Paris transferred to New York or Chicago they would have a perpetual headache. Their sense of the beautiful would be shocked. Most American homes are ugly in the extreme. Instead of keeping in mind the graceful, the beautiful, the artistic, everywhere it is the everlasting useful — the square, the angular, the repulsive. Instead of the graceful curve, the beautiful arched effect, the Gothic, both dwelling rooms and assembly rooms are built on the plan of the dry goods box. Are we not too severe, too hard, too practical?

Are we never to rank refined culture as superior to the sordid money-getting faculties? Are we forever to devote ourselves to the coarse side of man, while the God-side, the intellectual, the moral remains undeveloped? Who can estimate the real wealth that inheres in a fine character and a cultivated life, which brings joy and gladness into every home it enters, into every street car, store, factory, or office, — wherever it goes. It was said that the soldiers in hospitals in the Crimean War used to say they could feel when Florence Nightingale was coming, long before they could see her. They could feel her refined personality, her sweet influence radiating everywhere. These fine characters carry sunshine and gladness wherever they go. No gloom or discouragement can exist in their presence. Everything coarse and brutal flees before them as darkness and gloom flee before the rising sun. The greatest achievement possible to mortals is the cultivation of the sweetness and light which radiate from a refined and exquisite personality. How base and mean money and huge estates look in comparison. All other things fade before it. Its touch is like magic to win friendship, influence, power. Can you afford to chill, to discourage, to crush out of your life this sweet, sensitive plant, which would flower in your nature and give added glory to your life, for the sake of a few dollars, a little questionable fame?

Are the gift of life and the possibilities of man so cheap that we can afford to spend our existence in elbowing our way through life, crowding and jostling one another, trampling upon the weak in our mad greed and selfish ambition to rob them simply because we are stronger? Is might the right to which the higher civilization looks forward? If I plead for self-culture, self-improvement, for the development of the finest and the sweetest qualities of human nature, I must protest against the pace that kills them, the strenuous life that crushes them out, the mad haste, that tramples them under foot. It is incredible that men and women will pay such a price for things not worthwhile, that they will discard the imperishable in their rush for that which will fade and die.

Watch the typical businessman in the early morning as he crosses the park, or common, or public garden, all radiant with beauty, which bids for his attention on every hand, while he walks rapidly along unconscious of it all. Masses of loveliness smile from flower beds, or blossom, or shrub, or tree, without attracting even a passing glance. He passes through the country when bird and brook and wildflower are vying with one another to arouse him from his absorption in business problems with the same careless indifference. People are so .taken up with putting money into their purses that they have no time to put beauty into their lives. They are so absorbed in making a living that they have no time to make a life. Man cannot live by bread alone; his higher life demands an impalpable food.

"Few of us," says Sir John Lubbock, “realize the wonderful privilege of living; the blessing we inherit, the glories and beauties of the Universe, which is our own if we choose to have it so; the extent to which we can make ourselves what we wish to be; or the power we possess of securing peace, of triumphing over pain and sorrow.”

We go through life with our eyes steadily fixed on a distant goal, straining every nerve to reach it. We pass on our way opportunities innumerable of helping others over rough places, of brightening and beautifying the commonplace life of every day. But we see them not. Heedless of all that does not help us on the line of our particular ambition we finally arrive at our destination to find — what? We have gained what we sought at the cost of all that sweetens and beautifies, ennobles and enriches life.

Fortunate indeed is the child who is trained to see beauty in everything and everywhere. An eye so trained is a perpetual magnifying glass revealing beauties invisible to the uncultivated eye. This self-culture, if properly conducted, will open up a thousand avenues of enjoyment beyond the reach of the ignorant. Let the youth be taught to look for beauty in all he sees, to embody beauty in all he does, and the imagination will then be both active and healthy. Life will be neither a drudgery nor a dream, but will become full of God's life and love.