CHAPTER XI. THE TRIUMPHS OF ENTHUSIASM. The labor we delight in physics pain. SHAKESspeare. The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives him self for a principle. Words, money, all things else are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him. - LOWELL. Let us beware of losing our enthusiasm. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life. "It can so inform PHILLIPS BROOKS. The mind that is within them, so impress The dreary intercourse of daily life, Can e'er prevail against them, or destroy Their cheerful faith that all which they behold Is full of blessings." A region of spiritual ideas and spiritual persons where youth is perpet ual, where ecstasy is no transient mood, but a permanent condition, and where dwell the awful forces which radiate immortal life into the will. E. P. WHIPPle, WHAT a power there is in an enthusiastic adherence to an ideal! What are hardships, contumely, slander, ridicule, persecution, toil, sickness, the feebleness of age, to a soul throbbing with an overmastering purpose? In the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris is a beautiful statue conceived by a sculptor who was so poor that he lived and worked in a small garret. When his clay model was nearly done, a heavy frost fell upon the city. He knew that if the water in the interstices of the clay should freeze, the beautiful lines would be distorted. So "Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it." he wrapped his bedclothes around the clay image. In the morning he was found dead, but his idea was saved, and other hands gave it enduring form in marble. "I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important question," said Henry Clay; "but on such occasions I seem to be unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject before me, ] lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of sur rounding objects." "A bank never becomes very successful," says a noted financier, "until it gets a president who takes it to bed with him." "Men are nothing," exclaimed Montaigne, "until they are excited." Like the new and added power of the young lover to paint in hues of paradise the ugliest object, enthusiasm gives the otherwise dry and uninteresting subject or occupation a new meaning. As the young lover has finer sense and more acute vision and sees in the object of his affections a hundred virtues and charms invisible to all other eyes, so a man permeated with enthusiasm has his power of perception heightened and his vision magnified until he sees beauty and charms others cannot discern which compensate for drudgery, privations, hardships, and even persecution. Dickens says he was haunted, possessed, spirit-driven by the plots and characters in his stories which would not let him sleep or rest until he had committed them to paper. On one sketch he shut himself up for a month, and when he came out he looked haggard as a murderer. His characters haunted him day and night. John Jacob Astor would hang a fine fur in his count ing-room as other men hang pictures; he would stroke it with enthusiasm, extol its beauty, and add that it was worth five hundred dollars in Canton. "Herr Capellmeister, I should like to compose some thing; how shall I begin?" asked a youth of twelve, who had played with great skill on the piano. "Poon, pooh," replied Mozart, "you must wait." "But you be gan when you were younger than I am," said the boy. "Yes, so I did," said the great composer, "but I never asked anything about it. When one has the spirit of a composer, he writes because he can't help it." Gladstone says that what is really wanted is to light up the spirit that is within a boy. In some sense and in some degree, in some effectual degree, there is in every boy the material of good work in the world; in every boy, not only in those who are brilliant, not only in those who are quick, but in those who are stolid, and even in those who are dull, or who seem to be dull. If they have only the good will, the dullness will day by day clear away, under the influence of the good will. Gerster, an unknown Hungarian, made fame and fortune sure the first night she appeared in opera. Her enthusiasm almost hypnotized her auditors. In less than a week she had become popular and independent. Her soul was smitten with a passion for growth, and all the powers of heart and mind were devoted to selfimprovement. The artist who played Meg Merrilies in "Guy Mannering" in the usual formal way was ill, and the "util ity" woman, Charlotte Cushman, was asked to take the part. The chance for a hit flashed through her mind; she rushed upon the stage, and, to the astonishment of audience and actors alike, assumed the rôle since so famous. "I have been so busy for twenty years trying to save the souls of other people," said Livingstone, "that I had forgotten that I have one of my own until a sav age auditor asked me if I felt the influence of the religion I was advocating." All great works of art have been produced when the artist was intoxicated with the passion for beauty and form which would not let him rest until his thought was expressed in marble or on canvas. "Well, I've worked hard enough for it," said Mali. |