TALKS WITH A KID BROTHER
"Hamlet," and how many of us care a hang about it. At best we say "Ah" and walk on. Yet both of these chaps, presumably, worked for what they have achieved, while the beggar gets his pathos by abstaining from working. "Nothing succeeds like a failure," as the Hester Street clothing merchant once remarked. We give pennies and sympathy both to the beggar who wants only our pennies. To Success, which would like merely a little of the former, we give neither.
Success doesn't need it? I have an idea it is a more available asset for success than it ever can be for failure. Sympathy alone does failure very little good, but it is sympathy only, good-will, approbation, that success really needs in its business as much as other sorts of growth need sunshine. Without it, moreover, what is the use of making the business so successful? If our friends aren't going to share the fun of it with us—if we aren't going to have any friends—where should we find any real success in success?
"In this I find I have been anticipated by Aristotle," a dear old professor of ours used
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