The Investment of Influence | Page 9

lingered
on the beggar's face. His body had been cold; kindness had made his
heart warm. The good man was as a covert in time of storm. History
and experience exhibit now and then a man as unyielding as rock in
friendships. Years ago a gifted youth began his literary career. Wealth,
travel, friends, all good gifts were his. One day a friend handed him a
telegram containing news of his father's death. Then the mother faded
away. The youth was alone in the world. In that hour evil companions
gathered around him. They spoiled him of his fresh innocency. They
taught the delicate boy to listen to salacity without blushing. Soon
coarse quips and rude jests ceased to shock him. He thought to "see
life" by seeing the wrecks of manhood and womanhood. But does one
study architecture by visiting hovels and squalid cabins? Is not studying
architecture seeing the finest mansions and galleries and cathedrals? So
to see life is to see manhood at its best and womanhood when carried
up to culture and beauty.
Wasting his fortune this youth wasted also his friendships. One man
loved him for his father's sake. For several years every Saturday night
witnessed this man of oak and rock going from den to den looking for
his old friend's boy. One day he wrote the youth a letter telling him,
whether or not he found him, so long as he lived he would be looking

for him every Saturday night in hope of redeeming him again to
integrity. What nothing else could do love did. Kindness wrought its
miracle. Clasping hands the man and boy climbed back again to the
heights. At first the integrity was at best a poor, sickly plant. But his
friend was a refuge in time of storm. A good man became the shadow
of a great rock in life's weary land.
Our age is specially interested in the relation of happiness to the street,
the market and counting-room. We have not yet acknowledged the
responsibility of strength. Not always have our giant minds confessed
the debt of power to weakness; the debt of wisdom to ignorance; the
debt of wealth to poverty; the debt of holiness to iniquity. Jesus Christ
was the first to incarnate this principle. By so much as the parent is
wiser than the babe for building a protecting shield for happiness and
well-being, by that much is the mother indebted to her babe. Why is
one man more successful than another in the street's fierce conflict?
Because he has more resources; is prudent, thrifty, quick to seize upon
opportunity, sagacious, keen of judgment. All these qualities are
birth-gifts. The ancestral foothills slope upward toward the
mountain-minded. And what do these distinguished mental qualities
involve?
Recognizing the responsibility of men of leisure and wealth, John
Ruskin said: "Shall one by breadth and sweep of sight gather some
branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb of which
he is himself to be the master spider, making every thread vibrate with
the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets
of his eyes?" Shall the industrial or political giant say: "Here is the
power in my hand; weakness owes me a debt? Build a mound here for
me to be throned upon. Come, weave tapestries for my feet that I may
tread in silk and purple; dance before me that I may be glad, and sing
sweetly to me that I may slumber. So shall I live in joy and die in
honor." Rather than such an honorable death, it were better that the day
perish wherein such strength was born. Rather let the great mind
become also the great heart, and stretch out his scepter over the heads
of the common people that stoop to its waving. "Let me help you
subdue the obstacle that baffled our fathers, and put away the plagues

that consume our children. Let us together water these dry places; plow
these desert moons; carry this food to those who are in hunger; carry
this light to those who are in darkness; carry this life to those who are
in death."
Superiority is to make erring men unerring and slow minds swift. Then,
indeed, comes the better day--pray God it be not far off--when strength
uses its wealth as the net of the sacred fisher to gather souls of men out
of the deep.
In overplus of strength we have the measure of a man's greatness.
Soul-power is resource for finding and feeding the hidden springs of
life and thought in others. Not all have the same capacity. The Lord of
the vineyard still sends into the white fields ten-talent men, two-talent
men and one-talent men. Each hath his own task, and each must grasp
the