Failure

1901

"Failure," says Keats, "is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid."

Defeats and failures have played a great part in the history of success. It is not pleasant to think that more or less of defeat is absolutely necessary to great success. But that it is true every student of history knows. Defeats and failures are great developers of character. They are the gymnasia which have strengthened the muscles or manhood, the stamina, the backbone which have won victories. They have made the giants of the race by giving titanic muscles, brawny sinews, far reaching intellects.

How true it is that poverty often bides her charms under ugly masks! Thousands have been forced into greatness by their very struggle to keep the wolf from the door. She is often the only agent nature can employ to call a man out of himself and push him on toward the goal which she had fitted him to reach. Nature cares little for his ease and pleasure. It is the man she is after, and she will pay any price or resort to any expedient to lure him on. She masks her own ends in man's wants and urges him onward, oftentimes through difficulties and obstacles which are well nigh disheartening, but ever onward and upward toward the goal. — Register.

Do and Think

1917

If you wish to be or do anything great in this world you will find every hour and every day an opportunity in some way. If nothing else the lull in routine is opportunity to study up for future reference and use.

If your mind is full of plans and ideas for carrying them out you can make almost any situation or circumstance work in to help you.

It is not so much how you go at a thing as to get at it.

Begin by doing something. Do and think at the same time. That think will help in the next do, and by always doing what you know how to do, first, you will find the next step easier.

It is not the talkers and the arguers who accomplish the most in this world.

Try some plan while the next one is talking about it, and you will be surprised at how easy it is to keep in the front row of the procession. — Minneapolis Tribune.

The Cheerful Man

1906

By O.S. Marden

The cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man.

The cheerful man sees that everywhere the good outbalances the bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm.

A habit of cheerfulness enables one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings.

He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright side of things, has a great advantage over the chronic dyspeptic who sees no good in anything.

The cheerful man's thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner with grace.

It was Lincoln's cheerfulness and sense of humor that enabled him to stand under the terrible load of the civil war.

If we are cheerful and contented all nature smiles with us; the air is balmier, the sky clearer, the earth has a brighter green, the trees have a richer foliage, the flowers are more fragrant, the birds sing more sweetly and the sun, moon and the stars are more beautiful. All good thought and good action claim a natural alliance with good cheer. High-minded cheerfulness is found in great souls, self-poised and confident in their own heaven-aided powers.

Serene cheerfulness is the great preventive of humanity's ills.

Grief, anxiety and fear are the great enemies of human life and should be resisted as we resist the plague. Cheerfulness is their antidote.

Without cheerfulness there can be no healthy action, physical, mental or moral, for it is the normal atmosphere of our being. — Success.

Grafting In a New Root — Renew Your Old Life, Do Something New

1921

By DR. WM. E. BARTON

IF THE top of a tree dies down, or does not bear a satisfactory kind of fruit, new branches can be grafted in. But what if it be the root that dies? Is there any way of grafting in a new root?

In Riverside, California, stand the two parent navel orange trees. If I have the information correctly, the entire navel orange industry on the Pacific coast began with the successful propagation of that kind of orange from these two trees.

One of them stands on Magnolia avenue, and the other was transplanted by President Theodore Roosevelt, and stands in front of the Mission Inn.

Both these trees are very old and manifestly dying. But they are trying the experiment of creating a new root for one of them. If that succeeds, I presume they will do the same for the other.

They take a vigorous young tree, cut off its top, plant it as close to the old tree as possible and at an angle, and graft the top into the side of the old tree a little above the root.

They have grafted in several such young roots, and they appear to be growing and to be saving the life of the old tree.

Such an undertaking lends itself to reflection. There are men who are dying at the top because they have not sufficient root. Why not dig down near the root, and put in a new one?

You can learn Greek at forty, or study Browning at fifty, or become an expert on psychoanalysis at sixty, or make yourself either a learned man or a fool at seventy.

Maybe you do not care for those particular studies — in that case there are others.

Why should not a man who lacked opportunities, in his youth for higher education, set about it in middle life, and pursue a course of good reading? Why not study astronomy, or botany, or literature?

Many men die a good many years before the undertaker carts them away. A man begins to die when he ceases to grow. Why not graft in a new root?

Writer Says Age Doesn't Matter, Keep Going for Success

1921

Emerson Hough Says No "Dead Line" at 40, Former S.U.I. Man

By DALE E. CARRELL

There has long been a sort of "unwritten law," or at least common belief, that if a man didn't make his mark in the world or achieve real success by the time he was 40, he never would. After 40, it has been held, a man simply fights to hold his own or start down-grade.

But, along comes Emerson Hough, and proceeds to rip to pieces this so-called iron-clad rule which would end man's climbing of the ladder of fame at the age of 40. Mr. Hough very emphatically says, there is no dead line at two score "milestones," and the noted author points to his own life as an example and illustration to prove his point.

Emerson Hough is well known personally to many Iowans and Iowa City and University people for he is a graduate of S. U. I, having won his degree in 1880, just 41 years ago. The University of Iowa is very proud of her eminent alumnus and he is just as proud of his alma mater. And, those who do not know Mr. Hough personally, know him thru having read his delightful novel, "The Mississippi Bubble," which made him famous, almost overnight. Therefore, Mr. Hough's declaration will make Hawkeyes, especially, sit up and take notice.

Mr. Hough is now 63 years age and his big success in life did not come until he was 45. Up to the time that success came, he had tried numerous occupations and couldn't make good, or keep happy in any of them, but the former S. U. I. man never once gave up. He soon found, in writing, the real star to follow and he hitched his wagon to it. He is now an author and wealthy. He says "It is within your soul — this question of achievement. It is not decided by the clock or the calendar."

Mr. Hough's statement should hearten a lot of fellows who haven't really found themselves after the 40 mark has been passed, and his own career should serve to inspire confidence and instill new energy in some of the faithful plodders who have almost given up hope. Hough didn't give up during the days of adversity — that is the main thing to remember. Keep on trying and even if you are nearer 60 than you are 40, you can still strike, in the vernacular of the oil field, a "gusher" in some field of endeavor, that means real success. Let no one set a "dead line" for you — you have everything to say about that yourself. The movie director continually yells for "action" when he is making the film you are soon to enjoy on the screen. If you can provide plenty of "action" in your struggle for success, you will not only achieve it, but keep pushing that "dead line" farther and farther away. There is no "dead line" at 40!

—Iowa City Press-Citizen, Iowa City, IA April 11, 1921, p. 1.