Thoughts of a fool
hive. Life consists in repairing, in compensating, for the inevitable
waste. Death is the result of neglect.
And ruminating thus I fell asleep, and dreamed a dream of Wonderland.
There is no law, as yet, against dreaming. The nihilist may dream
in Russia without awaking in Siberia. The most pious Methodist may
dream of dancing without being in danger of the council, and he may
escape brimstone and other satanic chemicals if his dream shift from
the waxed floor to the poker table. William Morris dreamed a dream
of anarchic communism and labeled it “News from Nowhere.” Perhaps he
derived more real pleasure from the dream than he could have realized
from a “coming true” of the filmy fabric of his fatigue.
Professor Triggs dreamed that he was in a city of comrades. He dreamed
a little too loud and woke Charlie Hutchinson, who in turn woke the
professor.
In my dream of Wonderland, I seemed to be surrounded by the kindliest
and most charitable beings that I had ever known. I saw able-bodied and
alert-witted men and women who accepted charity as though it were their
due. They did nothing for themselves nor for others, yet their every
want and need was gratified by the dear people of Wonderland.
The dolers of this charity kept for themselves barely enough to repair
their own waste. Such beautiful self-immolation I had never seen. I
saw the toilers working on the farms, cultivating grain that was being
fed to fatten the cattle designed for the food of the beneficiaries
of their charitable efforts. Others were building slaughter-houses,
and others again were converting the live cattle into porterhouse and
tenderloin, and still others were preparing these dainty cuts for the
table of the recipients of this charity. And the latter required savory
and piquant sauces of mushrooms and capers and the like, in order that
their appetites might be properly aroused and stimulated. The workers,
less dainty, needed none of these artful aids to appetite; for the
bones and gristle and entrails they reserved for themselves.
In my vision of Wonderland I saw others endangering their lives in
quarries, cutting out marble to ornament the beautiful mansions which
the charitable were building for their wards. Many were content to be
cooped up in stuffy factories manufacturing beautiful rugs and carpets
to be enjoyed by the helpless ones for whom they were serving. I saw
earnest men designing artistic furniture and inlaid musical instruments
to adorn the elegant mansions of the beneficiaries of all this
charitable endeavor. And the wives of the toilers were in the kitchen
and their sisters in the laundry and their children in the shops, all
striving to relieve the slightest need of the helpless class.
The workers themselves stole away to rest in cramped and poorly
furnished garrets, damp basements, or under sidewalks.
The wards of charity were never beaten or ill-used. No harsh words were
spoken to them, nor were they reproached for their dependent condition.
In this dreamland the charity wards were not set to work on the street
nor sent to soup-houses for food, as is the case in the wideawake
world. Instead, they were furnished fine carriages, drawn by spirited
horses, while the donors of charity sat in livery. These accommodating
dream-people were very considerate, responding to each nod and beck of
their wards.
Believe me, Wonderland is the ideal place. Nowhere have I seen
self-sacrifice and brotherly love exemplified in such perfection.
A loud voice woke me from my beautiful dream. It was the landlord,
demanding the rent.
INVENTORY
The term inventory is readily understood when used in commerce
by persons who are engaged in some manner with the supply of the
satisfaction of man’s desire. If your industries figure into the
millions, or if you are a clerk selling calico; if you are spending
an allowance, or are a housekeeper depending on your husband’s or
children’s wages, you take stock. The method and time of taking
stock varies. In vast industrial or commercial enterprises it is
not so frequent as with the man of meager resources. The large
commercial dividend-paying houses ought to take stock before they
declare dividends. If they don’t take inventory of the assets and the
liabilities, they take inventory of the stockholders. The ones who can
be easily frozen out of their stock considered as assets, the ones who
cannot are marked as liabilities, for they have to be taken along in
the combine when reorganization takes place.
The man who sells his labor at one dollar per day need not work
overtime to take stock; he takes stock mentally. “I get six dollars per
week; can’t have champagne for dinner; saloon must be my club; free
lunch and ‘schooner’ is my bill of fare; one dollar for the week’s
lodging, fifty cents to Lizzie or Mary, and by Christmas I will have
enough to get me a second-hand suit of clothes and an overcoat.”
Success in business does not depend so much on the largeness of the
capital as upon the knowledge of how to use this capital to the best
advantage. You find when you take stock what goods sold best, what
paper is the best advertising medium, who is your best clerk, what
departments you are to enlarge, and from what charity donation you
got the most benefit. All must focus to this one point if you wish to
succeed--to increase the assets, decrease the liabilities, get as much
as possible, give as little as you can, and have the people satisfied.
The taking of stock is not only in what we call legitimate business.
Even the criminals have a way of taking stock. The assets are the
plunder, the liabilities are the risks. They have to figure as to the
price of the policeman on the beat, what a pull with the alderman will
cost, and how about straw bail. The robber has his way, the preacher
his way; there is not one that can escape it.
It is not business alone that monopolizes stocktaking. In whatever you
are trying to accomplish you must take inventory. Success does not
depend so much on vastness of resources as on the knowledge of how to
use the capital with which to work to the best advantage.
In European countries even the family is inventoried--daughters are
the liabilities, sons the assets. With an income per annum of so much,
if his children be sons he can live up to the limit; if girls he
cannot; he must be saving for the dowry. It is amusing how some try to
minimize the liabilities and maximize the assets when they are being
inspected.
The young man who calls on a girl with the intention of making an
impression upon her, dresses in his best, takes out his Sunday manners,
and shows himself off all assets and no liabilities. And she has the
parlor and sitting-room furniture dusted, massages and powders her
face, sprinkles rose-water on herself. If her cheek or her chin is
beautiful she takes pains that he may see them, so a beauty spot is
pasted that it may call attention; he cannot fail to notice it. And her
language, how choice, and her voice, how different, when her best young
man is there than when she scolds the cook. I know a lady who changes
her voice automatically whenever a stranger is near. If you see her at
that time you see a bundle of assets and no liabilities.
Stocktaking is not monopolized by man. The taking of stock goes on
everywhere; it is the most important factor in the world; it is
responsible for everything there is.
The forest with its animal life, the sea with its life, the air with
its life, owe their being to the taking of stock in the beginning by
the molecules and atoms which compose them. The world, with its pains
and its pleasures, its happiness and its misery, its arts and its
sciences, its progress and its woes, its smiles and its tears, is the
net balance of the inventory.
Natural selection is the result of the summing up as to whether you
will remain where you are and receive hard knocks, or struggle to
get ahead and change your environment to escape the knocks--and you
have decided to change--which results in evolution. It began with the
mystery of the world. It has been kept up ever since, and will continue
unto its very end. Things that came into being are records; and the
things brought into being by the things are records. The world is a
counting-house, life its book-keeper, and the net balance, man.
The balance is the working capital of the future, and while the present
balance cannot be changed, as that is the net results and is final,
yet man thinks he can and exerts himself to change the balance, and
does change it, but not for himself; the change is for the future. Man
is working for the future by working in the now--for what he thinks
the present will bring to him. Being uncomfortable where he is, he has
to move. His motives in stepping up is the betterment of himself, and
in so doing he unconsciously carves the future. Life is a series of
stocktaking, from the cradle to the grave; the figures are alive; they
are actors, spectators, and critics; some have the privilege of being
players, and some are being played upon.
Stocktaking is Judgment Day; then we get the net balance of the
past, but do not forget that the lessons for the future are the most
important in the day of inventory. If you miscalculate on that day you
shall surely “go broke.”
LIFE’S MESSAGE
I have listened to what Life says, and I will tell you a few truths as
I have them recorded. Not only have I heard, but I am the voice as well
as the sender of the voice. Not only am I the messenger, but I am also
bid to be the executor of the message.
Life desires to get acquainted with you and what concerns you, and
I would be pleased to have you know Life. As you are a stranger to
yourself, therefore I will introduce yourself in me to yourself in me.
There are so many of you in me that I can scarcely count you. There is
you who have sinned and you who have sainted; you the judge passing
sentence on you the convict.
Come, all of you in me, and get acquainted with each other. Really you
ought to like each other. Here you, shake hands with yourself! Love
each other! As there is really only one of you, and when the different
fragments of yourself shall have become united, you shall know Life.
Come! I will show you how to get at one with yourself. You are myself,
you know; that accounts for my interest in you. You become a unit by
sacrificing the different selves in you. Spare nothing. The Christ in
you must be sacrificed with the evil in you. I feel your reasoning
self say, it is unreasonable that in order to live one must sacrifice
self. I cannot help you any, for this is the law. It is reasonable
also, and the only unreasonableness about it is your reason.
The smith stands at his forge. Fragments of iron he welds into a
bar. Each piece he passes through the cleansing fire before he can
amalgamate them into the oneness of the bar. No fragment is spared this
ordeal, else it would not unite. The fragment is lost--it has been
absorbed by the bar.
Of what service think you was the tiny strength of the isolated
fragment? But behold! Its own strength it has sacrificed, but it has
inherited the power of the bar. It is performing miracles.
Of what use is your reason in separateness? Reason is a part of you,
and though it is important, it is only a small part of Life. You use
reason in placing your food into your mouth instead of into your ear,
but reason did not make the food, ear, or mouth; nor did it make
anything else. Suppose your nose, which is an important factor on your
face, should say there is no liver, because it nosed and found it not.
Does that prove that the nose knows? When your liver gets in such a
state that the nose knows about it, your liver will be out of business
as a liver. Yes, sacrifice is the law of Life.