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قراءة كتاب Love, Life & Work Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others

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Love, Life & Work
Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others

Love, Life & Work Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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spirit, for he was full of criticism and bitterness toward the institution. President Hadley came in for his share, and I was given items, facts, data, with times and places, for a "peach of a roast."

Very soon I saw the trouble was not with Yale, the trouble was with the young man. He had mentally dwelt on some trivial slights until he had gotten so out of harmony with the place that he had lost the power to derive any benefit from it. Yale college is not a perfect institution—a fact, I suppose, that President Hadley and most Yale men are quite willing to admit; but Yale does supply young men certain advantages, and it depends upon the students whether they will avail themselves of these advantages or not. If you are a student in college, seize upon the good that is there. You receive good by giving it. You gain by giving—so give sympathy and cheerful loyalty to the institution. Be proud of it. Stand by your teachers—they are doing the best they can. If the place is faulty, make it a better place by an example of cheerfully doing your work every day the best you can. Mind your own business.

If the concern where you are employed is all wrong, and the Old Man is a curmudgeon, it may be well for you to go to the Old Man and confidentially, quietly and kindly tell him that his policy is absurd and preposterous. Then show him how to reform his ways, and you might offer to take charge of the concern and cleanse it of its secret faults. Do this, or if for any reason you should prefer not, then take your choice of these: Get Out, or Get in Line. You have got to do one or the other—now make your choice. If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him.

If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him—speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution that he represents.

I think if I worked for a man, I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.

If you must vilify, condemn and eternally disparage, why, resign your position, and then when you are outside, damn to your heart's content. But I pray you, as long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution—not that—but when you disparage a concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself.

More than that, you are loosening the tendrils that hold you to the institution, and the first high wind that happens along, you will be uprooted and blown away in the blizzard's track—and probably you will never know why. The letter only says, "Times are dull and we regret there is not enough work," et cetera.

Everywhere you will find these out-of-a-job fellows. Talk with them and you will find that they are full of railing, bitterness, scorn and condemnation. That was the trouble—thru a spirit of fault-finding they got themselves swung around so they blocked the channel, and had to be dynamited. They were out of harmony with the place, and no longer being a help they had to be removed. Every employer is constantly looking for people who can help him; naturally he is on the lookout among his employees for those who do not help, and everything and everybody that is a hindrance has to go. This is the law of trade—do not find fault with it; it is founded on nature. The reward is only for the man who helps, and in order to help you must have sympathy.

You cannot help the Old Man so long as you are explaining in an undertone and whisper, by gesture and suggestion, by thought and mental attitude that he is a curmudgeon and that his system is dead wrong. You are not necessarily menacing him by stirring up this cauldron of discontent and warming envy into strife, but you are doing this: you are getting yourself on a well-greased chute that will give you a quick ride down and out. When you say to other employees that the Old Man is a curmudgeon, you reveal the fact that you are one; and when you tell them that the policy of the institution is "rotten," you certainly show that yours is.

This bad habit of fault-finding, criticising and complaining is a tool that grows keener by constant use, and there is grave danger that he who at first is only a moderate kicker may develop into a chronic knocker, and the knife he has sharpened will sever his head.

Hooker got his promotion even in spite of his many failings; but the chances are that your employer does not have the love that Lincoln had—the love that suffereth long and is kind. But even Lincoln could not protect Hooker forever. Hooker failed to do the work, and Lincoln had to try some one else. So there came a time when Hooker was superseded by a Silent Man, who criticised no one, railed at nobody—not even the enemy.

And this Silent Man, who could rule his own spirit, took the cities. He minded his own business, and did the work that no man can ever do unless he constantly gives absolute loyalty, perfect confidence, unswerving fidelity and untiring devotion. Let us mind our own business, and allow others to mind theirs, thus working for self by working for the good of all.

The Week-Day, Keep it Holy

Did it ever strike you that it is a most absurd and semi-barbaric thing to set one day apart as "holy?"

If you are a writer and a beautiful thought comes to you, you never hesitate because it is Sunday, but you write it down.

If you are a painter, and the picture appears before you, vivid and clear, you make haste to materialize it ere the vision fades.

If you are a musician, you sing a song, or play it on the piano, that it may be etched upon your memory—and for the joy of it.

But if you are a cabinet-maker, you may make a design, but you will have to halt before you make the table, if the day happens to be the "Lord's Day"; and if you are a blacksmith, you will not dare to lift a hammer, for fear of conscience or the police. All of which is an admission that we regard manual labor as a sort of necessary evil, and must be done only at certain times and places.

The orthodox reason for abstinence from all manual labor on Sunday is that "God made the heavens and the earth in six days and on the seventh He rested," therefore, man, created in the image of his Maker, should hold this day sacred. How it can be possible for a supreme, omnipotent and all-powerful being without "body, parts or passions" to become wearied thru physical exertion is a question that is as yet unanswered.

The idea of serving God on Sunday and then forgetting Him all the week is a fallacy that is fostered by the Reverend Doctor Sayles and his coadjutor, Deacon Buffum, who passes the Panama for the benefit of those who would buy absolution. Or, if you prefer, salvation being free, what we place in the Panama is an honorarium for Deity or his agent, just as our noted authors never speak at banquets for pay, but accept the honorarium that in some occult and mysterious manner is left on the mantel. Sunday, with its immunity from work, was devised for slaves who got out of all the work they could during the week.

Then, to tickle the approbativeness of the slave, it was declared a virtue not to work on Sunday, a most pleasing bit of Tom Sawyer diplomacy. By following his inclinations and doing nothing, a mysterious, skyey benefit accrues, which the lazy man hopes to have and to hold for eternity.

Then the slaves who do no work on Sunday, point out those who do as beneath them in virtue, and deserving of contempt. Upon this theory all laws which punish the person who works or plays on Sunday have been passed. Does God cease work one day in seven,

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