--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Whitney, Horace G. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 22 number: 8 published: 1919-06 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Whitney, Horace G., "Our Best Laid Plans," *Improvement Era* 22, no. 8 (June 1919): 692–699.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2208unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2208unse start_page: 692 end_page: 699 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1919-06) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2208unse publication_year: 1919 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1919, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Our Best Laid Plans 694 IMPROVEMENT ERA amateur talent of the city took part, and a goodly purse was realized. My brother was jubilant. Next morning an envelope, marked Box B, arrived at his home. Opening it, he found it contained a call for a mission to the eastern states, signed by Brigham Young. It was probably his first great trial, but he answered the call, and changed the whole course of his life. I fancy I can see the twinkle in my father's eye as he murmured, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee." I am not sure, at this distance, that this may ;not have been the guiding hand that sent those plans "ganging aft." Either his, or that of the bishop's mother, a deeply religious woman, who did not sympathize with the stage aspirations of her son. In any event, but for that change there would have been no Bishop Whitney of the 18th Ward, no Church historian or poet, and no Apostle Whitney of today. I think he himself learned to feel that "there is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." Speaking of that particular saying and of Dr. Park, recalls that he, too, was a great lover of the literary masters, and in his classes of rhetoric or grammar, he made it a rule to give out a quotation which some student would be called on to write on the blackboard and analyze. One day he read that sentiment, "There is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." A tall somewhat bashful boy from the country, was called to the board. He looked a little troubled and uncertain, but finally he wrote out in clear characters, "There is a divinity which shakes our ends " He got no further. Dr. Park himself led in the roars of laughter which followed, and the boy in bewilderment went back to his seat. I had forgotten who the boy was until years afterward; in company, one evening, the story was told, and Prof. Horace H. Cummings, the present able head of the Church educational system, said he could vouch for the yarn because the boy at the blackboard was himself. Dr. Park himself was an illustration of the truth of the saying he loved to quote. He, the father of our great University, and the first to hold the office of superintendent of education under statehood, started life in a small way as a doctor, in Tiffin, Ohio. He was practicing medicine when the call of the Civil War came, and he joined the Union army. To be a successful surgeon was his highest ambition. Who could have dreamed that the end of the war would send him to Utah where he attained one of the highest positions within the gift of the state' In a few weeks, we shall all unite at the University he founded in dedicating the great Administration Building and giving it his name, later erecting within its walls a majestic bronze statue in his memory. The pages of history are crowded with instances of great ! — OUR BEST LAID PLANS 695 men whose careers turned out radically different from what their early lives foreshadowed. How many of them, looking back from the pinnacle of their greatness, must have marveled at the fate, providence, chance or destiny — call it what they might which so diverted their steps from the paths that seemed marked out for them. Take the three great figures which bestride the — world like a trio of colossi today Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd- George and Clemenceau. Twelve years ago, the name of Woodrow Wilson was almost unheard of, outside of the precincts of a limited educational circle. His youth was uneventful, almost commonplace, and he was so sickly that he twice had to give up his attempts to obtain an education. His father, a preacher, hoped to make his son a successful village doctor. That was the ambition of both. Lloyd-George started life as a lawyer in a little town in Wales. All his early associates were Welsh laboring people, his greatest hope was that he might be able to plead the case of Welsh litigants in Welsh courts of law. He was a radical who detested titles and aristocrats. Clemenceau began his career as a physician, and was content to prescribe physic for the poor in his native village. Which of the three, in his wildest imaginings, ever dreamed of the places among the seats of the mighty which the future was reserving for them Think of George, once the radical Welsh lawyer, who jeered at titles and advocated wiping out the House of Lords — filling the seat that Pitt, North, Palmerston, Wellington, Gladstone and D'Israeli occupied, hand in glove today with the dukes and mar- — quises right hand man to the king! Think of Clemenceau, his insignificant beginning, and the power he now wields as premier of France! Then think of our own president, a few years since an obscure doctor, then a school master, now head of a nation whose soldiers saved the world when it was tottering to destruction, and who himself has been acclaimed in the capitals of Europe, as no hero or statesman was ever acclaimed before! Recalling the ovations given President Wilson in Europe, brings to mind forcibly the oft told tale of how Benjamin Franklin, the ambassador from America to the foreign courts, once upheld the dignity of his country. Clad in his modest homespun, he was once a guest at a banquet, attended by nobles of both England and France. Toasts were the order of the evening. The English ambassador arose and said "Here's to old England, the sun of the universe." The French ambassador said, "Here's to La Belle France, the moon of the universe," and Benjamin Franklin, being called upon, quietly arose and said, "Here's to — the United States, the Joshua of the universe, who said to the sun and the moon 'Stand still,' and they obeyed him." Wilson, George and Clemenceau! Who can doubt that they — — 696 IMPROVEMENT ERA are men raised up by Providence for a special mission, the architects who shall reconstruct and piece together again the shattered world? Dr. Park used to hold up two great English poets as models for his classes. One was Oliver Goldsmith, the other Thomas Gray. Goldsmith failed as a physician, but who else could have written the "Deserted Village" and the "Vicar of Wakefield?" Gray, whose one poem, "An Elegy in a Country Church Yard," made him immortal, was a humble clerk, too poor to pay for the examination to become a lawyer, but he lived to write the Elegy, and to decline the position of Poet Laureate of England. To hear Dr. Park repeat the lines from the Elegy beginning, "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day," was like hearing someone else sing. Students will remember that the great English General, Sir James Wolfe, the night before he attacked Quebec, while lying at his camp fire on the Heights of Abraham, had his secretary read to him Gray's poem, and at its conclusion he said, "I would rather be the author of those verses than to have conquered Quebec." When he came to the noble verse reading: "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave Await alike the inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave" he mused as if deeply impressed. His mood was 'prophetic, for he himself went to his grave in the battle charge, next day. The boy William Shakespeare used to haunt the doors of the London theatres where he was happy if he could earn a penny by holding a horse of some gentleman who went to the playhouse. His sole desire was to secure a position within the theatre, and when he became an actor his heart's desire was satisfied. Little did he dream of the niche reserved for him in the halls of fame, and of what his name should one day mean in all the theatres of the world. Oliver Cromwell was a farmer at 40. Moody, of Moody and Sankey fame, in his youth was an indifferent shoe salesman. In middle life, he became one of the world's greatest evangelists. Barnum failed in fourteen different occupations before he discovered that he was a born show man. John Jacob Astor's father wanted to make a butcher out of his boy, but he ran away and founded the family fortunes in America. The father of Daniel Webster determined that Daniel OUR BEST LAID PLANS 697 should be a farmer, but work how he would, he could not make the scythe hang to suit Daniel, until the old man in despair exclaimed, "Get out of the field and hang the scythe to suit yourself." Daniel hung the scythe in a tree, and said, "It suits me hanging there," and left farming to become one of the country's greatest statesmen. John D. Rockefeller, now worth nearly a billion, began as a grocer's clerk, and his first job paid him $25 a month. Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, at 13 was an office boy for the Western Union Telegraph Company, in New York. Theodore P. Shonts, the great engineer, head of the railroad system in New York City, not many years back had a small law office in Iowa. Woolworth, just deceased, controlling 500 or 600 stores, originator of the 5, 10 and 15-cent merchandise system, head of a $65,000,000 concern, grew up on a farm, and was a grocer's clerk when he began business. Galileo, inventor of both the microscope and the telescope, was set apart by his parents for a physician, but he hid his study books and worked out in secret his difficult problems. One of the most interesting studies to be found anywhere in the world, is that afforded by the gallery of our presidents in Washington. A survey of the famous paintings of the twentyeight originals, from George Washington down to Woodrow Wilson, reveals some wonderful contrasts, thinking of the circumstances under which nearly all of them began life and those under which they ended it. Imagine those portraits hanging on the walls here in the order of their terms. Beginning with the undying Washington, followed by Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson; there is an illustrious seven, mostly Revolutionary figures, who seemed made of stuff somewhat superior to the average of the presi- formation of dents who came after— probably because in the the government they had greater problems to deal with. No them all, or to tell again all the stories of the need to name humble beginnings which marked so many of their careers. might Washington's mother had one high hope, that her boy aristocrats, be a successful surveyor; and his family, naturally grow up good citizen under the king of Engwanted him to a permitted to see what land. If the shades of those on high are passes on earth, how Washington must have smiled when the said that English ambassador in Paris on the 4th of July ever had, and America gave them the worst thrashing they richly deserved it, and when an English delegation that they Mt. Vernon as it did recently, and laid a wreath upon visited his tomb. 698 IMPROVEMENT ERA Andrew Jackson, too, backwoodsman and Indian fighter, a saddler, called rough and uncouth, what would he have said in his youth if anyone had foretold that he would one day stand in the shoes of Washington? You know that in his case, it was again a fight against England that gained the presidency. Jackson won the battle of New Orleans in January, 1815, beating there some of the regiments which four months later defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Strange to think in passing, is it not, that that bloody battle was fought after peace had been declared, only because they had no ocean cables and had to wait the slow progress of sailing vessels, so that the tidings could not be conveyed to the armies in the field, till weeks afterward; strange to think, too, that Andrew Jackson's birthplace was so obscure that two states, North Carolina and South Carolina, both still claim him as a native son. Millard Fillmore, that great and good president, in his youth was a carder and finisher of cloth. Perhaps some of my younger hearers may not know that this great president was a friend of Utah, and that it was he who appointed President Brigham Young as the first governor of the Territory of Utah. In his honor, Millard county and the city of Fillmore were named. U. S. Grant was a tanner at 38. Andrew Johnson was a humble tailor. He became senator from Tennessee, and was the only senator from the southern states that remained faithful to the union in the Civil War. Apparently he lost everything by going over to the Union, when he could have had anything by remaining with the South; but strange to say the step took led to the presidential chair. Grover Cleveland, another of the stalwart figures among the presidents, in his youth was a teacher in a school for the blind. Theodore Roosevelt obtained his first fame as a cow boy on the plains, but the training and education there gained made him one of our strongest and most famous presidents. In some galleries where all the presidents' portraits are hung, three are always draped in mourning. They are the 16th, the immortal Lincoln, the 20th, James A. Garfield, and the 25th' William McKinley, and the mourning signifies that they died as martyrs. Garfield in his youth drove a mule on the tow path of a canal, and won his way to the presidency, by integrity, honor, ability and uprightness. He fell a victim to the bullet of the' assassin Guiteau. The guiding principles of his life were well illustrated in a speech he once made when he said, "I have represented a district in Congress whose approbation I highly de- OUR BEST LAID PLANS 699 sire. But still more do I desire the approval of one man, and his name is James A. Garfield." The great McKinley, famous as the author of the tariff bill which bears his name, was once a school teacher at $25 a month, and if he ever thought of the presidential chair, it must have seemed very remote to him. He was distinguished as one of the purest minded and ablest presidents of our later days. He, too, fell before the bullet of an assassin, the fanatic Czolgosz. His death was as impressive as his life. His last words were, "Goodbye, all, goodbye. It is God's way. His will, not ours, be done." Truly it might be said of this Christian president, as it was of Addison: "He taught us how to live, and oh, too high The price of knowledge; he taught us how to die." In the youth of Lincoln, the first of the martyred presidents, the gap that separated him from the presidency, probably seemed wider than that spanned by any who reached the position before or since. He began life as a rail splitter but the axe he wielded blazed his way to immortality. I recently read a new account of the assassination of President Lincoln, which may interest some of my youthful hearers. As you all know, he was killed in Ford's Theatre, Washington, by an actor, J. W. Booth, during a performance of "Our American Cousin." A committee, knowing the president would attend the theatre that night, decorated his box with the Stars and Stripes. A discussion took place as to whether the flag should be draped on the box below or overhead. It was decided that it should be hung over the front rail, and it was this little fact that led to the capture of the assassin. He stealthily entered the president's box at the back, and shot him from behind, he immediately placed his foot on the ledge of the box, and prepared to leap to the stage, but he wore a spur and this caught on the flag drapery on the box, causing him to trip, so that when he fell on the stage, his ankle was broken. This made it impossible for him to retreat rapidly, so that by the time he reached the back door and leaped on the back of his waiting horse, his pursuers were already upon his track and he was traced to a de- serted barn, where he was shot to death a day or two later. Thus, the narrator impressively observed, the flag, to which he was a traitor, became the avenging agency which brought the murderer to his doom. And now, to conclude, let us ask what is the lesson to be drawn from these instances I have cited? Simply this, and it is the thought I would leave with you— that our lives are not the of the Universe leaves result of accident, that the great Architect nothing to chance. Every son and daughter of God, from the ' 700 IMPROVEMENT ERA loftiest to the least, came upon the earth for a purpose, and heing here they are the creatures of their Father's care until they are summoned back into his presence. He holds us in the hollow of his hand, and even the hairs upon our heads are 'umbered. Victor Hugo, in his wonderful picture of Napoleon, describing how that great conqueror's mighty plans went "aft l aglee," said: "It was not possible that Napoleon should win at Waterloo. Why? Because of Wellington? No. Because of ™i^her? No. Because of Grouchy? No; because of God!" And the thought of Napoleon recalls that other broken figure in the tragedy of all the ages, the German Kaiser. What must be his thoughts, as he broods in his exile at Amerongen today, and views all the wreck that lies behind, to say nothing of the spectres that stand before him! Only a brief twelve months at'o, he was at the head of a mighty host, seemingly invincible, advancing upon the French and English armies and rolling them back upon Paris and the English channel as a giant's hand mijrht roll up a scroll; the whole world held its /breath, and we all felt the chill of apprehension, when the boaster issued his invitations to the journalists and historians of his own and the neutral countries to march with his armies into the French capitol. But in his boastful reckonings he forgot one thing — America. At the last hour of what seemed the last day, when France and England were staggering and all civilization seemed to totter, the armies of America planted themselves before the on-rushing Huns, and formed the rock upon which they "foamed themselves away." Once more the hand of Divinity was made manifest. Truly we might echo the thought of Hugo and say: It was not possible that Germanv should triumph in this conflict. Why? Because of Foch? No. Because of Pershing? No; because of God! Home a Basis of Peace Home is a basis of peace, because when it succeeds, it cultivates the germ elements of peace, that sprout and grow in every home-built heart of mankind, until finally a great world peace garden will flourish. These precious germ elements are not only the social agents of life, liberty and happiness, but they are the force of all spiritual developments as well. The home that is to have influence in establishing world peace, must make itself a model of permanency and love: a brother, a sister, a wife, a husband, a father, a mother, these are our nearest neighbors. If the law of love is not made to work with them, what shall we expect when it is applied to a fellow townsman, not to mention an enemy in Europe. G. Gilbert Meldrum. The Mormon Battalion To the land of fair promise, the glorious West, They came with the flag that their fathers had blest. And there, on the shore of the great peaceful Sea, They planted this flag of the brave and the free. Over mountain and valley and desert and plain, They built the great highway that reached to the main; And with girdles of iron and rivets of gold They welded the East and West in one fold. They flung open the doors, and the wonders revealed Of the vaults of the ages, long hidden and sealed; And into the lap of the nation was rolled The wealth of their treasure, unreckoned, untold. By a touch that was magic, they scattered in rills The streams that rushed down from the snow-crested hills; And the valleys beneath, that were barren and gray, Were transfigured with beauty in wondrous array. It was not theirs to know what their labors had wrought Though they served with a fulness of purpose and thought. It was not theirs to reap, though the seeds that were sown Fell in rich, fertile soil and in beauty have grown. i For us is the harvest. We earner the store; And they who come after shall garner still more, for a day, For the empire they founded was not as years pass away. But in majesty rises waving grass, On the hillside they rest, 'neath the green,winds pass. Where the blossoms bend low as the Wasatch done; our heroes They are resting. The work of is called home one by one. They have been mustered out and bronze and in stone- And the future shall write them in deeds they have done, Their name and their day and the who beholds it and reads And the youth of the land lesson of deeds. read life's greatest lesson-the Shall May Belle T. Davis.