I can tell you
of one who did so try and do the same. Bishop Pattison, who died some
years ago, when he was fearlessly doing his duty in the islands of the
Pacific, was, once a boy, face to face with this difficulty. He was in
the cricket eleven of his school--a good player and very fond of the
game. It had become the custom at cricket suppers for bad talk to be
indulged in. Pattison one evening rose up at the table and said, "If
this conversation is to be allowed I must leave the eleven. I cannot
share in this conversation--if you determine to continue it I shall have
no choice but to go." They did not want to lose him, and the foul
conversation was stopped.
MONEY.
The love of money is the root of all evil. Nevertheless, money in a
civilized country is a necessity. How to make it is one of the great
questions, and how to spend it aright is one of the great difficulties.
Money is power. It is power, if we use it aright, it overpowers us if we
use it badly or even carelessly. It is a great mistake to want to make
your money too quickly, and a still greater mistake to think that you are
likely to do so. Money that is the result of honest labour will, if
rightly used, be a blessing to you and yours.
1st. How to make it. By honest labour, honestly done. You have chosen
your trade or occupation--let your money be honestly earned therein, and
look more to the quality of your work than to the quantity of your money.
You have a right when you have learnt your trade to a fair day's wage for
a fair day's work, but be sure that the word fair governs both the work
and the wage--the fair work must be done before the fair wage can be
rightly claimed. There is far too much scamping work in the present day,
working simply for money and not for any interest in the work itself.
Money should not be a man's test of success, but the perfectness of his
work. Men used once to work for love of their art, and so long as the
picture was painted or the sculpture wrought, they cared little for the
money they were to gain by it, or the hardship of their lives, but now
men paint for what the public will pay for, and write and work not from
their hearts but for their pockets. And with high and low, not success
but money is the moving power--not how can I can make it more perfect,
but what can I get for it. A man who will leave a piece of work, or a
clerk who will leave a few minutes writing only because the clock has
struck the hour, is little better than a money-making machine. Work done
in such a spirit did not give us men like Wren or Stephenson. Read their
lives and you will see what I mean. If your work is thoroughly and
honestly done, you have a right to your own price for it, if you can find
a purchaser. You have a right to sell your labour at your own price, but
the master has an equal right to buy or to refuse. Combinations and
unions of working men are perfectly right, if they unite for their own
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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