"Too Fond of Geography."
That phrase was let slip by one of our elevator men the other day. He was describing a young fellow who had not succeeded in business because he never stuck to one thing long enough to succeed. He was "too fond of geography."
A bright way to put it. Geography is a fine science, a favorite study of mine, but not in that way. I am fond of travel, but I do not care to travel from one job to another. Most travel is educative and profitable; that kind is neither.
Stay put, young man! Take root in your situation! Shut your eyes to the glittering promise of "big chances," "advancing salary," and "possible partnership." Do not make a change from your present work unless you have the very best of reasons—no reasons but the very best.
Remember the wise proverb about the rolling stone. You do not want to gather moss? You would avoid being a mossback? Well, the kind of moss that this proverb means is dollars, and reputation, and friends, and all kinds of good success. You have no objection to gathering these things, I am sure.
Life is cumulative, when it is lived in one place and spent in one occupation. Every removal dissipates influence, and wastes experience, and loses momentum. Stop a cannon-ball, and even if you put it in a larger cannon than it was in before, it must begin all over again, with an entirely fresh charge of powder behind it. Change the direction of the ship, and you lessen its speed. Move, if you must—to another house, another town, another farm, another business. But count the necessity a misfortune; and if you are not obliged to move, be grateful for the opportunity of steady growth.
Gyroscopic Spirits.
A New York inventor, Elmer A. Sperry, and his son have made an interesting application of the gyroscope to the airplane. The gyroscope is a heavy metallic disk rapidly rotated. It is the tendency of such a disk through the inertia of matter to remain in the plane in which it is rotating. The common top is an illustration of this. If the gyroscope is attached to some unstable vehicle, such as a steamship, it will impart to it much of its own stability. Already the application to the steamboat has been made to a slight extent, and to the one-rail locomotive. Now it has been applied to the most unstable of all vehicles, the air-ship.
Mr. Sperry's apparatus weighs only forty pounds, and measures about eighteen inches across by twelve inches high. It is driven by electricity generated by the engine of the airplane. There are two pairs of gyroscopes, one pair for stabilizing the elevating planes and the other pair for the lateral planes.
The results are marvelous. The airship is automatically balanced, though everything is done to throw it out of balance. The pilot may 'climb all over the airplane without disturbing its equilibrium. It is claimed that the contrivance renders the navigation of the air perfectly safe.
Ah, that is what we need in navigating our ship of life amid the dangerous eddies and currents and storms that attack it. We cannot find exterior stability; we must find it within. There is no safety except in a heart firmness that will not yield to the push of this and that temptation, to the many meddlesome calls and incitements that assail us.
And that is what religion does for a man. It emancipates him from the earth gravity that centers in self and places him under the control of higher impulses. To try to live a life without religion is to invite overturn, collapse, and death. To accept religion as a guide in life is to range through the highest heavens of enjoyment, attainment, and achievement.
Too Light.
It is easily possible to make an airplane too light. It will soar beautifully, perhaps, but it may collapse in mid-air, killing its occupant, as was the case with the lamented Delagrange.
This Frenchman doubled the weight and power of his engine, but did not strengthen the frame of his air-ship. He got the swiftness he was after, but it was a swift destruction for him also.
Not lightness alone, but the proper curves and the proper arrangement of surfaces produce speed in this new science of air navigation. Some of the heaviest machines, such as the Wright brothers', do the best work. Here is one more case among many where safety need not be sacrificed to rapidity.
There is a life lesson here that is well worth learning, if anyone cares to take the trouble to think it out.
Be a Stabilizer.
President Wilson, addressing an important body of Methodists in a very strong speech, spoke of the invention of stabilizers for airplanes—contrivances for counteracting the gusts of wind and the irregular air-currents and keeping the air-ship on an even keel. Such stabilizers, he said, are the stanch, conservative body of church people who keep affairs moving steadily while certain folks—fortunately "lightweights"—try to rock the boat.
Now, to be a stabilizer one must not be sluggish, for a stabilizer must be quick to adapt itself to every changing need. One must be sensitive as well as sensible. One must be courageous as well as calm. A stabilizer often has to rebuke the excitable mischief-makers.
With this proviso, let us all become stabilizers.
The Problem of Smokeless Powder.
Smokeless powder has revolutionized the art of gunnery. It has done this not only because of the absence of smoke, thus enabling the gunner to see his target clearly and constantly, but its enormous power has greatly increased the range of our guns and the accuracy with which they may be fired, and the effect of the impact when they hit the mark at which they are aimed.
But all of this has not come about without disadvantages. A modern man-of-war is about as dangerous to its occupants in time of peace as in the midst of a battle. More than one great war-ship during recent years has been blown up by the stupendous explosion of its powder magazine. The terrible accidents that have occurred in target practice in our own navy are familiar to all.
The fact is that this new agent of destruction, smokeless powder, is a chemical compound in a state of unstable equilibrium. Heat is certain to decompose it, with the result of a disastrous explosion. But often when it is kept very cold the elements of which it is formed are liable to separate, with the same terrible result. It is possible to keep the magazines cold by means of refrigerator plants supplying air at a very low temperature, but this chemical decomposition has not yet been remedied, though very likely some day it will be.
What is wanted in all kinds of warfare is a powder that combines great energy with great stability.
In all kinds of warfare, I say; for in men, as in this tremendous but risky form of matter, those that possess great strength and force are only too often in a state of unstable equilibrium. They are liable to "go off" at wrong times, and when there is no enemy in sight. They do not "keep cool." Their impulsive, unexpected explosions scatter about them a mass of wreckage which, though it is spirit and not matter, is quite as ruinous as any that ever littered the decks of a war-ship.
Sometimes—for the secret has been found in men though not in things—sometimes we see great spiritual force united with great spiritual stability. And then we have a man to whom the world bows down.