XVI

INCENTIVES FROM SELF-DISCOVERY

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HERE are three grand periods in life: when one is born, when one dies, and, somewhere between, when one wakes up to realize what one was born for. Some never get this second experience. Unlike Christian in Bunyan's story they do not happen to be awake when the heavenly maidens come to put the armor on them.. Perhaps there are some who do not need the awakening; they were born saints, with so much sweetness, conscientiousness, and devotion that they experience no conversion, no reformation, no prodding of their lower nature by their higher nature. Little Samuels, with ears always open to divine voices, are, however, exceptions.

When explorers have discovered a country they immediately set about to make another discovery, namely, what is it good for. Some of our readers are doubtless ready for this second inquiry. Keep eye, ear, and heart intent and you may thus discover yourself.

A young man took up the business of lifeinsurance. He was not satisfied with it, but patiently plodded his rounds. He called one

day upon a draughtsman at work drawing upon a block of wood. The agent became engrossed in the artist's strokes, and forgot to solicit a premium on his life. Let the young fellow tell his own story: After looking on for a few moments I decided that I could do such work as well as he. I learned where the blocks could be bought and went off immediately to invest in a quantity of the material. From that moment I abandoned everything else, and set to work at drawing." He was William Hamilton Gibson, who, as a naturalist, held the pen of Thoreau, according to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and as a delineator of flowers, birds, and beasts had scarcely a rival during his generation.

The head of one of our most successful schools once said, looking at a group of boys, 66 There is one fellow there who is rather backward, but I am confident that when he feels himself he will be the best man in the class, or, if not here, in after-life. He is as yet dazed with the world he has arrived at and doesn't make out any distinct roads on it. But when he sees his way he will strike a good pace." The prediction has since been verified.

Sometimes this self-revelation is postponed until toward middle life, but ordinarily it comes quite early, just after one has butted uselessly against various projects, and, perhaps, has be

gun to be discouraged; the discouragement itself adding to the zest with which one finds that he can be and do something.

That is a grand moment when the young fellow realizes himself and how he fits his environment, especially if he fits it as the belt fits the wheel in the factory, and the machinery of the man's soul begins to hum.

The first thrill may come from sports. No boy knows the enthusiasm for the game of ball until he has learned to hold it, curve it, or outspeed it between the bases. You may have a soul achingly full of music, but the ache will go and the thrill come when you can draw whatever note you please from the strings or from your own vocal cords. The poet's soul swings melodiously with the rhythm of his verses. The scholar's zeal is fired by the actual acquisition of knowledge.

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Mr. Carnegie thus describes his first enthusiasm as a business man: 'One dollar and twenty cents made by myself and given to me because I had been of some use in the world. I think this makes a man out of a boy sooner than almost anything else, and a real man too, if there be any germ of true manhood in him. It is everything to feel that you are useful."

The consciousness of being able to do something may come to us in various ways. Perhaps we are made aware of the possession of a

special talent. A college man had shrunk, until his senior year, from all public speaking. He was diffident, hushed by the sound of his own voice, said that his thoughts began to stammer as soon as he proposed to utter them. He held certain decided convictions on political matters. One night his college mates conspired to badger him, and see if they could not get the lion which they knew was in the man to at least shake his mane. They succeeded better than they or he had thought possible. He took his stand in the middle of the room, and poured forth a stream of facts and arguments, glistening like a sunlit river with rhetoric, breaking into fine invective, carrying himself and listeners away with oratorical passion. It was like the tame lion's first taste of blood with the life in it. He has roared eloquently ever since at the bar, on the platform, and in legislative halls.

Sometimes the discovery of one's power is from finding a method by which even mediocre talents are utilized for best results. A student has no taste for languages, mathematics, physics, or metaphysics, and comes to doubt his ability to acquire an education. The fault may not be in himself so much as in his instructors, who, though they may have mastered these branches, know nothing of the art of instructing. It was once said of a certain gram

mar school that four-fifths of the boys it sent to college took rank in the first fifth of the college class. The head master of the school had a marvelous ability in methodizing any study, and making it appeal to even the curiosity of the scholar. A boy who had said that Greek was to him like a mass of ant-tracks on a dusty path changed his simile, and pronounced the paradigm of the Greek verb to be as fascinating as a kaleidoscope. Professor Huxley argued that any child could be made into an enthusiastic naturalist if only taught by the proper method. Certain business houses inspire their employees by making them acquainted with the system which has brought honorable success.

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Often one discovers one's own method, the channel in which one can best think or work, in which common abilities become an uncommon ability through concentration. This is getting the knack" of doing things. A crowd of teamsters was gathered in front of a country store, testing their strength by attempting to shoulder a barrel of sugar. All had failed or made staggering work of it, when a spare fellow, without any special muscular development, accomplished the feat with comparative ease. He caught the trick of swinging the barrel in such a way as to combine in a single action all his muscles, of leg, back,