Success (Second Edition)

world. It is not pride, which is a more or less just estimate of one's own power and responsibilities. It is not vanity or conceit, which co

world is an oyster, and that in opening its rough edges there is n

ot yet know enough of life to realise the price he will have to pay in the future for the brusqueness of his manner or the abruptness of his proceedings. He may even fancy that it is

er this pardon. They are annoyed by the presumption the newcomer displays, and they vi

not be without its advantages if it teaches him that justice, moderation, and courtesy are qualities wh

rare for a man who has conquered the initial difficulties of success in money-making, if his work is honest, to come to disaster. None the less, if the young

uccessive hurdles which obstructive age, or even middle-age, puts in it

disaster is as likely to breed the arrogance of despair as supreme triumph is to

uth is not sufficient to effect the cure-and it may be that no years and no experience will purge the mind of this natural tendency. When Pitt publicly announced at twenty-three that he would never take anything less than Cabinet rank he was undou

ve type of character. But it seems a pity that youth should suffer so much in the aftermat

hese things than of a flesh wound in the middle of a hand-to-hand battle. It is the after recollection on the part of the vanquished that breeds the sullen resentment rankling against the arrogance of the conqueror. Years afterwards, when all these things seem to have passed away, and the very recollection of them is dim in the mind of the young man, he will suddenly be struck by an unlooked-for blow dealt from a

of his aim. But he may yet be compelled to look with sorrow on the wreck of his idea and pay the default for the antagonisms of his youth. It is not, perhaps, in the nature of youth to be prudent. Th

not confined to any period of life. But in early age it is a tendency at once most easy to forgive and to cure. Carried into later years

inions of others. His chair in any room is soon surrounded by vacant seats or by patient sufferers. The vice has, in fact, turned inwards, and corrod

ich the mental habit brings not only disturbs any rational judgment of the values of the outer world, but poisons all sanity, calm, and hap