Dr. War.
An English physician was asked why influenza was milder than usual the second year of the Great War. "I do not know that it is milder," he answered, "but when people are interested in something big they forget themselves and throw off a complaint more easily. Now a good naval victory would make half my patients convalescent at once."
This is a new and rather dubious use of war. Most persons would think the remedy worse than the disease. Still, the English physician was undoubtedly right: many of our sicknesses would be cured by a new and absorbing interest. And many of our physical troubles would never come to us at all if we took pains to fill our lives with such interests.
There is no excuse for stagnating in this the most varied, astounding, and fascinating age of the world. Whoever keeps his heart warm will have enough work to do. Set out to help somebody, and your headaches will go with the heartaches of the one you help. Leave your sick-room on some errand of love, and you will leave your sickness behind you. Embark on some great enterprise of worldwide moment, though you must ship as a common sailor, and you can speedily throw overboard your pains and ailments. Enlist as a good soldier of Jesus Christ in the warfare against sin, and you will drive all the influenza out of your life.
"Work Hard and Take Risks."
Railway men once got a special word from President Roosevelt, in a speech from his car at Phillipsburg, N. J. "We like to think," said Mr. Roosevelt, addressing them particularly, "that the average American is a man who is willing to work hard and to take risks. That is just what a railroad man has to do and has to be willing to do. We like to think that the average American knows how to work by himself and yet to work in combination with others. We like to think that the average American citizen knows how to take responsibilities, and yet how to play his part in our world as a whole."
"Work hard and take risks"—how characteristic is that of Theodore Roosevelt! He works with tremendous vigor, and enjoys it all as if it were play. He never hesitates to take risks, whether he is facing a bear, or a spirited horse, or a Spanish gun, or an influential set of grafters, or a knotty, world-wide problem.
"Work hard and take risks!" That is, be a plodder and a pioneer. Do your duty, and more than your duty. Obey orders, and give orders. Be faithful, and enterprising. Carry out the plans of others, but don't fail to think for yourself.
Mr. Roosevelt is right. It is just this combination of plod and pluck that has made America what it is, and incidentally has made Theodore Roosevelt.
Open the Windows!
When your work comes hard, when your nerves are a-quiver, when you seem to be plodding up and down in a treadmill—open the windows! What you need is a dose of fresh-air tonic. You have breathed the same air over and over again till it has no life left in it. There is an abundant supply outdoors. Throw wide the windows, and get it.
When you are gloomy and dispirited, open the windows! You think you have no friends left in the world, but fresh air will drive that silly notion out of your head. You think you are not appreciated, that your best efforts all end in failure, that life is a long burden and not worth living. Open your windows, and let the breezes give the lie to your gloom!
You think you have not time to open the windows. You have not time not to.
You think the fresh air will give you a cold. It will not; it will give you a warm. It will stir up all your dormant energies, it will quicken your blood, it will stimulate your nervous system, it will invigorate your mind, it will cheer your soul.
I mean the literal windows, and I mean literally fresh air. It is so cheap, and it is so precious!
Yes, and I mean also the windows of your soul. Our minds gets so stuffy!
We think over and over the same old thoughts. We feel over and over the same old feelings. We live over and over the same old lives. Open the windows! Let in a flow of new thoughts, new feelings, new life. It is out there waiting. It is beating at the glass. It will flood your soul if it has half a chance. Give it a whole chance.
Talk about hermits! Is there in all the world a hermit more deplorable than the man that shuts himself in forever with his own mind?
Birds Made to Sing.
"Birds that can sing and won't sing must be made to sing." This familiar saying was once interestingly illustrated in New York City.
The manager of a roof garden on top of one of the big hotels wanted to please his guests with the singing of a lot of live canaries—the real article. So he sent out for fifty birds, and they were promptly delivered.
But, alas! the canaries, tuneful enough all day, went fast asleep as soon as the sun went down and the crowds began to arrive at the roof garden. They had not learned to turn night into day, New York fashion.
The resourceful proprietor, however, set out to teach them. Early in the morning he covered the cages with black cloths. The birds, deprived of their alarm-clock, the sun, slept calmly on. When evening came, the cloths were lifted. Whether the canaries recognized anything strange in their new electric sunlight or not, they did not say; at any rate, they burst into grateful praise at the deferred dawn, and charmed the roof-garden patrons with their ecstatic trills.
"Songs in the night" are not "natural," but there is a way of getting them just the same.
Steal Bases.
In an article in The Baseball Magazine the famous player, Ty Cobb, makes a strong plea for base-stealing. He recognizes, of course, the value of skillful hitting, pitching, and fielding; but all of these are cut and dried, they do not introduce the element of the unexpected. But when a swift and daring runner starts out from first base on a wild career, no one knows what will happen. Rules are thrown to the wind. Programs go to tatters. The infield, the pitcher, and the catcher become demoralized. The most absurd errors are quite likely to be made, and the defense is completely rattled.
Of course, base-stealing is risky business. That is why baseball managers frown upon it. They prefer to play safe, to run the game in steady and plodding fashion. They want to hold their players to a routine and keep them from anything original and erratic. Ty Cobb has a different notion.
I believe with Ty Cobb as to baseball, and certainly I hold with him when it comes to the game of life. For here the humdrum, the scheduled, the ordinary, will answer up to a certain point, but not for the whole game. The player who confines himself to it will never get to home base. Success in the game of life largely consists in watching for unexpected opportunities and availing one's self of them; it does not consist in staying on one base until pushed off of it and then waddling along to the next one.
"I'll find a way or make one," says the gallant player of the game of life. "I'll do something different. I'll open up new avenues of service. I'll discover new methods. I'll utilize what never has been utilized before. I'll keep the devil guessing. I'll be as enterprising in the Father's business as the shrewdest business man in the world's affairs. I'll not wait for others to make hits. I'll do some running on my own account." That might be called the Ty Cobb type of Christian.