Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 260, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1914 — Dr. Marden’s Uplift Talks [ARTICLE]

Dr. Marden’s Uplift Talks

By ORISON SWETT MARDEN.

RUSKIN kept on his study table a handsome block of chalcedony, on which was engraved “Today.” We all know people who, according to their own account, would be very philanthropic if they had but the time; who would visit the sick, relieve the poor, and comfort the widow and the fatherless in their afflictions, did leisure permit. Others would become great authors, singers, jnventors, statesmen, if they only had the time. But, alas! they have absolutely no time —not more than one or two or three hours a day at most, and what does that amount to? An education that would adorn a man of letters, or qualify a college professor, has been secured in the fragments of leisure that are often wasted because they are so brief. Some people will pick up a good education in the odds and ends of time which others carelessly throw away, as one man saved a fortune by small economies which others disdain to practice. Who is too busy to give an hour a day for self-improvement? Great characters have ever been misers of their moments; they have always placed high value upon their time, and I have never known a man to do anything very great in this world who set a light value upon his time. A youth has the ability that does things when he sets a high value upon his time and is always trying to improve himself in his spare moments. I have never known such a youth who has not turned out well. You will never “find” time for anything* If you want time, you must make it. “There are moments,” says Dean Alford, “which are worth more than years. We cannot help is no proportion between spaces of tirftq. In Importance or in value. A stray, unthought-of five minutes may contain the event of a life. And this all-liii-portant moment —who can tell when it will be upon us? “Drive the minutes, or they will drive you.” Many a great man has snatched his reputation from odd bits of time which others, who wonder at their failure to get on, throw away. In Dante’s time nearly every literary man in Italy was a hard-working merchant, physician, statesman, judge or soldier. Rufus Choate used to lay out a course of study in the classics practically parallel with that of the young men in Harvard university, and by Improving the few spare moments which his immense practice left him would keep pace with the students, year after year.

Macaulay wrote his “Lays of Ancient Rome” In the war office while holding the post of secretary of war. Mr. Gladstone also kept in front of him this word: “Today.” This was to be a perpetual reminder to him of the rapid flight of time, the rapid slipping through his fingers of his precious life capital, and It was his determination never to allow an hour to pass through his hands from which he had not extracted every possibility. He was always storing up bits of precious knowledge, valuable information, and this colossal accumulation, this marvelous sClf-lmprovement and selfculture, were responsible for a large part of his gigantic achievement. What a rebuke is such a life to thousands of young men and women who throw away whole months, and even years, of that which the “Grand Old sfan” hoarded up to even the smallest fragments. Success lit' life is what Garfield called a question of "margins.” Tell me how a young man uses the little ragged edges of time while waiting for meals or tardy appointments, after his day’s work Is done, or evenings—what he is revolving in his mind at every opportunity—and I will tell you what that young man’s success will be. The worst of a lost hour is not so much in the wasted time as in the wasted power. “If you are idle, you are on the way to ruin, and there are few stopping places upon It. It Is rather a precipice than a road,” said Henry Ward Beecher. Let no moment pass until you have extracted from ft every possibility. Watch every grain in the hour-glass. Yet your record be for the coming new year: “No moment wasted, no power perverted, no opportunity neglected.”

SOME time ago I read a story about a young officer in India who consulted a great physician because he felt fagged from the excessive heat and long hours of service. The physician examined him and said he would write to him on the morrow. The letter the patient received informed him that his left lung was entirely gone, his heart seriously affected, and advised him to adjust his business affairs at once. “Of course, you may Hye for weeks,” it said, “but you had best not leave important matters undecided.”, ” . Naturally the young officer was dismayed by this death warrant. Re grew rapidly worse, and in 24 hours respiration was difficult and he had an acute pain lb the region of the heart. He took his bed with the conviction that ha should never rise from IL

During the night he grew rapidly worse,and his servant sent for ths doctor. “What on earth have yoii been doing to yourself?” demanded the physician. “There was no indication ol this sort when I saw you yesterday.” "It is my heart, I suppose,” weakly answered the patient in a whisper. “Tftnir heart!” repeated the doctor. ■"Your heart was all right yesterday.” “My lungs, then,” said the patient. “What is the matter with you, man? You don’t seem to have been drinking.” “Your letter, your letter?” gasped the patient “You said | had only a few weeks to live.’ 1 ! “Are you crazy?” said the doctor. “I wrote you to take a week’s vacation in the hills and you would be all right.” The patient, with the pallor of death in his face, could scarcely raise his head from the pillows, but he drew from under the bedclothes the doctor’s letter. man!” cried the physician; “this was meant for another patient! My assistant misplaced the letters.” The young officer sat up in bed immediately and was entirely well in a few hours. We are all at some time in our lives victims of the imagination. The conviction that we are desperately ill, or that we have been exposed to a terrible malady, to some incurable, contagious disease, completely upsets the entire system’ gnd reverses the processes of the various functions; the mind does not act with its customary vitality and power and there is a general dropping of physical and mental standards all along the line, until we become the victims of the thing we fear. When I was in the Harvard Medical school, one of the best professors there, a celebrated physician, who had been lecturing upon the power of the imagination, warned the students against the dangers of imagining that they, themselves, had the disease about which they studied. The professor told me that once he got it into his head that he was developing Bright’s disease in his system. The conviction became so strong that he was in the grasp of this so-called fatal disease that he preferred to die rather than be told of his condition by another physician.He lost his appetite, lost flesh rapidly, and became almost incapable of lecturing, until one day a medical friend, astonished at the change in his appearance, asked what was th® matter with him. “I have Bright’s disease,” was the reply. “I am sure of it; for I have every’ symptom.” “Nonsense,” said his friend; “you have nothing of the kind.” After a great, deal of persuasion, the professor was Induced to submit to an examination, and it was discovered that there was not the slightest evidence of Bright’s disease in his system. He rallied so quickly that even in a day those who knew him noticed the change. His appetite returned, his flesh came back, and he yas a new man. « Medical history shows that thousands of people have died the victims of their imagination. They were convinced they had diseases which in reality they never had. The trouble was not in the body, but in the mind.