The Crown of Individuality, XVIII

The Crown of Individuality.* BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN. XVII.—The Dark Valley of Prosperity. The great test of individual character is not struggle but attainment; not failure but success; not adversity but prosperity. When nature wants to put a man through the third degree, she places near him his laurel wreaths of victory; she megaphones to him the world's plaudits of success; she parades stacks of newspaper clippings and magazine articles with his portraits; she clinks his money-bags in his ears, and she tells him confidentially of the world-changing power of his influence. She smiles on him kindly and murmurs, "Poor fellow, is he able to stand it?" Then she sends him for his test through—the dark valley of prosperity. Few pass through it immune; few acquire no perversion of mind; few escape fractures of ideals or new dents in character. But when one, through it all, remains just as good and simple and loveable as when he began the trip, remains kindly, sincere, strong, sympathetic and unspoiled, Nature is glad indeed to admit she has found—a real man, a big man, a great man. . It is called the dark valley of prosperity, because it so often dims the vision to the finer realities of life. In the early stages, in the dimness, they cannot see their old friends as they pass. There comes a peculiarity of the extensor muscle which prevents them extending the hand to some one no longer necessary to them. They acquire a form of memory impairment which prevents them * From The Crown of Individuality. Copyright, 1909, by Fleming H. Revell Company.

598 IMPROVEMENT ERA. remembering past favors and debts of gratitude due to those who stood beside them in their hours of need. They do not notice their sudden and increasing chest expansion. They find that their hats are continuously growing too small for them in a singular manner. In the dark valley, their dearest hopes and their high ideals often slip away—into the silence. For them are substituted avar. ice and ambition, dressed in a livery of gold, and the individual may near-sightedly mistake them for higher good. In the shadows, conscience, the eye of the soul, becomes, too often, dulled so that it cannot see the distinctions between genuine honor and a dishonor their lawyers inform them is technically legal. They fail, often, in their morally fading vision, to see the difference between right and wrong, between justice and the injustice of misused power. These are but samples of dangers thdt menace all, but which some overcome. Sometimes they grope along the way, unconscious of the great price that they are paying. Suddenly they may realize, under a burst of temporary sunlight in the valley, that they have somehow, somewhere lost love, sympathy, trust, confidence, sweetness of nature or something else that has been—dearest in the world to them. It has dropped away in the darkness like a locket from an unguarded chain, and they may—never find it again. It is sheer cant that would throw wealth, fame, prosperity and success into a moral dust-heap as vanities of the world. We all want them. Those who take a high moral pose against them are either envious or are elbowing their way to get front Pharisee seats in the temple of virtue. These things are not evil in themselves. They are great powers for good, but they are not—life's greatest. They are less than the real joys, like love, that—no money can buy. Their wrong is when acquired by a sacrifice of truth, honor, justice or the real virtues of life, or when they are misused or consecrated to the selfish side of living. Their danger is in the corrupting effect the individual can hardly ever keep them from having on him. Poverty, struggle, failure and adversity are not in themselves passports to saintship—though they have given moral strength and sweetness to thousands. They have their own hard, bitter

THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 599 temptations to meet face to face. Theirs is far from an easy fight—the daily hand to hand battle with fate. But their temptations are usually direct, bold, clearly defined and their joys require so little. The tempting tests of prosperity come in subtle phases, gilded, perfumed, masking in deceptive guise. Poverty knows the word "stealing;" wealth may think it "financeering." Poverty knows "envy of another's possessions;" wealth may assume taking a manufacturing plant as "a good business deal," It may then even, by some strange sophistry, justify itself by declaring they will do better for the people. Poverty knows hunger for bread; wealth may hunger for the money of the bread-earner. Poverty usually sees evil in its aggressive, hardest phases. Prosperity may find it hidden and unsuspected, like Cleopatra's asp in a boquet of flowers. "For one who can stand prosperity," says Carlyle, "one hundred can stand adversity." A very slight drop of the acid of prosperity will begin the revelation of character of the man—be he not big enough to be simple. The slightest elevation in position, the least new good fortune, some temporary elation, may reveal it. Have you ever noticed the man who has made a bit of a success in the city, and returns for a week to his native village? He says he has come back to see the folks but it is really to have the folks see him. He enjoys the envy he excites in those who have not, like him— lived in the city. He wants to get sunburned in the warmth and fervor of their admiration. He stretches at length in his tilted chair, locks his thumbs behind the armholes of his waistcoat and plays a flute solo of vanity on his breast-bone, using the buttons as stops manipulated by his fingers. He occupies the centre of the stage every minute with his monologue. There is a touch of swagger in his walk, an irritating undertone of tolerance and patronage in his speech, and that loud voice we involuntarily use with the deaf. He is his own Boswell and his own Gabriel. It is, perhaps, only a harmless brand of vanity, but it shows he is getting near to the entrance of—the dark valley. When a big, simple man of real fame comes back, the story of what he has done—usually leaks out incidentally; it is not exploded like a bomb. The author of a successful book may have won his honors

600 IMPROVEMENT ERA. because he wrote with serious purpose. His message was supreme —fee for delivery, secondary. But he may be attacked by the vertigo of money-making and forget everything else. Inspired by his publisher, he may galvanize an old earlier book of his youth, and rush through a hasty new one to have it in print before the wave of his sudden fame has died on the shores of forgetfulness. He talks less now of art and more of mart. The new book may fail because he fell into the pitfall of commercialism in—the dark valley of prosperity. Successful artists and illustrators, in many instances do not follow up the first successes that won them fame. They slur over their work; they stand still or they degenerate. They accentuate the superficial in their style and care little for the strength that once was vital. They repeat the same characters, merely in slightly changed positions, like a cheap stock-company with a small cast and a meagre ward robe—playing in repertoire. These men often say, if one ventures to speak that kindly word of protest we should always give to the needy: "Oh, what difference does it make—it pays all right." They should find some good Samaritan to drag them from the dark valley of prosperity and put them back again in the sunlight of struggle and the inspiration of adversity. The business man who began in a small way and suddenly finds fortune emptying cornucopias of gold into his lap may find it hard to keep his feet and not to lose his head. The demon of greed may transform him—he wants more. He is like the farmer who desired only the land that adjoined his farm—each addition increased the field of desire; the more he had, the more he wanted. Then may come a million owning a man, not the man a million. To accumulate more, he may defy laws, bribe legislatures and buy judges. Like a modern Joshua, he seeks to command—the sun of justice to stand still. He chloroforms his business conscience until it sleeps so soundly that an earthquake would not jostle it. Wealth often makes men who started in bravely with high ideals and normal health, become cold, heartless, selfish and uncharitable as they walk through the dark valley of prosperity. They often become arrogant and have a tendency to expect argument to close when they speak. They seem to have a corner on

THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 601 judgment, as if their eye alone saw the sun of truth, their wisdom alone plumbed the depths of great questions. The abnormal pressure of business often forces them into pleasures of which they count not the cost nor the character. They are often too busy to take stock of the goods of their souls. The culture of the higher affections and sentiments is often killed. The very intensity of their work or their play produces a yawning, yearning ennui hard to overcome. Trifles affect them strangely; they grow irritated, impatient, irrational at finding even a crumpled rose-leaf in the golden couch of their insomnia. They become more and more suspicious, and hardly know whom to trust. They fear every one is paving the way for some deal, stealthily seeking to gain their influence or to subtract something from the useless pile of their surplus wealth. They can have but few trusted, genuine friends of the mind, heart and soul. Great wealth, like genius, isolates man from his fellows in the—closest harmonies of life. Let us live so gladly and glowingly in the sunlight of real simple love, that means our great all; with faith in those few around us that girdle our whole world, realizing the sweetness of honest, true friendships that so inspire; happy in the noble round of loyalty, consecrating today's duties to usher in a finer tomorrow; so living in the joy of our simple life on the purer lines of unselfishness, realness that—we shall be glad the trials, tests and temptations of the dark valley have actually snubbed us as too unimportant to notice. If called upon to the burdens of the greater responsibility let us bear them bravely at our best, and let nothing rob us of simplicity, sweetness, strength, sympathy and all that is sterling. The greatest men and women are ever the simplest. There are thousands who bear their great burdens of fame, success, power and prosperity,or wealth, and who remain happy as of old and little, if any, spoiled by it all. They must truly be rare characters, of fine resources of thought, heart, nature and soul, who can retain the crown of their individuality after a journey through—the dark valley of prosperity. (the end.)