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Douglas Fairbanks

MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE

A modern Musketeer

MAKING LIFE
WORTH WHILE

By
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS

Author of “Laugh and Live”

New York
BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1918, by Britton Publishing Company

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

 

PAGE

I

Little Grains of Sand 13

II

As the Twig Is Bent 23

III

The New Order of Living 31

IV

Feeding the Intellect 41

V

Backing Up the Flag 49

VI

Half-Baked Knowledge 57

VII

Harnessing the Brain 65

VIII

Exalting the Ego 73

IX

Genius Plus Initiative 81

X

The Big Four 87

XI

Applying the Rule of Reason 95

XII

Through Difficulties to the Stars 109

XIII

In Answer to Many Friends 115

XIV

Things That Money Won’t Buy 127

XV

The Boy Across the Sea 133

XVI

Superior—Superiority—Super 139

XVII

When the Boys Come Home 147

XVIII

Regeneration 153

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A Modern Musketeer—(Frontis)
——and his brother John
Teaching his dog to smile
“And her name is Maud”
A pointed argument
“Smile when you say it”
Companions
“What ho!” says the King. “Ho, hum!” replied his guest
Tweedle-dee—Tweedle-dum
Where once one equals two
A quick getaway
A rattling good story
A one-minute reverie
A studio confab
Alone with the Grand Canyon
“In tune with the Infinite”

Decorations by Harold A. Van Buren

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

In Laugh and Live, my sole purpose was to emphasize our first duty toward ourselves, which consists of doing our level best at everything we undertake, and making the best of every situation that arises to confront us.

All through my early life I read inspirational books and liked them best of all. They seemed to beckon me on. I could feel myself being pulled along by an unseen hand.

Let there be no mistake about Making Life Worth While. It has no particular plan or sequence whereby to back up its title. Nearly everything has to do with such a subject and that is what the book contains—everything in general—and nothing in particular—just such things as came to mind that seemed worth while.

As a follow up to Laugh and Live here’s hoping that it will fill the bill.

D. F.

CHAPTER I
LITTLE GRAINS OF SAND

Holding down a seat in the rocking chair fleet out on the shady piazza is most certainly not making the most out of life.

We all remember the line—“If wishes were fishes we’d have some fried.” That is the answer to those who rock and dream, and hope for something to turn up instead of turning up something on their own account.

Of course, there is a time for everything, even the stealthy, creeping rocking chair—and that’s about bedtime. In the estimation of an eminent neurologist there is no crime against nature in the home that cannot be traced to this monstrous thief of time, which, while apparently screeching and groaning under its load, is, in reality, shouting with joy at the job it is putting up on its occupant.

Taking the most out of life is the proper label for this old squeaker—breeder of idle contentment, day-dreams, inertia. Like everything else that saps the energy from mind and body, it counts its victims by the score, and throws them up on the sands of time.

——and his brother John

Speaking of sand may serve to remind the reader of a well-known poem handed down from Grandmother days, which holds a lot of precious wisdom—probably more than any poem of its length—its breadth and depth being equal to the world in which we live. In childhood days this poem took my fancy, being short, to the point, and easy to remember. I was ready to recite it immediately and automatically upon request. I had no thought then as to its meaning, but as the years rolled by it tagged along in memory until now I find in it a sort of statement of fact upon which to build my theory of making life worth while. Here it is:

Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Maketh the mighty ocean And a pleasant land.

To those who adopt the idea of finding out just why little drops of water and little grains of sand accomplish so much, will come the greatest reward in the way of mental satisfaction—and, meanwhile, they’ll keep busy.

There is unbounded happiness in the pursuit of knowledge; a wonderful satisfaction in building up one’s treasure house of information. It’s all so easy, requiring nothing more than a healthy, enquiring mind—and a zest for the sport.

Zest is a big word. It has to do with get up and git, which has been most appropriately boiled down into the word pep. Lazy people, mentally or bodily, seldom get anywhere. What they do get is either accidental or by absorption—if by the latter process, more likely through the pores than the brain. No use to talk to them about making life worth while.

Teaching his dog to smile

The greatest of human possessions are a well-trained mind, a body to match, and a love of achievement, without which a man is old before his time. After that comes energy—the great propeller! What the brain directs the body will carry out—if the propeller is working. No hesitation—when the will commands the body acts. They synchronize—they are attuned, harmonious, fraternal, so to speak. And to hitch them together is just as easy as getting wet by standing bareheaded in the rain.

There is no intention of littering up this chapter with ways and means of putting one’s upper story in fine working order—or the physical structure below. That is first-reader information. If we treat ourselves right, the brain will behave and the body will follow suit. Activity, mental and physical, is the meat in the cocoanut. Seeking knowledge leads along the sunlit paths of life where happiness abounds. The alternative is mental shiftlessness, leading from nowhere to nothing at all.

Cain killed Abel because, undoubtedly, of the shiftless life he led. Indolence and ignorance being the order of his day, he lacked the stamina with which to control his mind. His physical forces merely acted in consonance with his rage at Abel’s popularity. Cupidity led him on, but if Cain hadn’t lost his head through lack of will to control himself the example of murder might never have been set before mankind.

Centuries have come and gone and still the passion to kill continues upon the face of the earth. To stop it is but a matter of correcting human thought through physical and mental training so that those notions which interfere with a normal, healthy brain tendency, will cease to exist. This done, the degenerate born of indolence somewhere along the line, will disappear from the face of the earth in jig time.

New intellectual forces will do the trick; forces built up from healthy, right thinking, energetic investigation, and consequent acquisition of knowledge.

How the world will wag a few years hence depends upon Mothers and Fathers of today. As great trials are strengthening to character, the prospect seems bright.

CHAPTER II
AS THE TWIG IS BENT

Temperament looms large in the game of life, and, like all other human brain tendencies, is subject to regulation through the exercise of ordinary horse sense. We often hear one person speak of another’s temperamental qualities in the light of an incurable disease, and more than likely in an apologetic way. A faulty tendency is usually laid at the door of a doughty grandsire on one or both sides of the house and left there as a piece of ordinary table gossip to be resumed any old time without notice.

We’ve all heard someone dispose of another with quick dispatch by the casual remark, “He’s temperamental.” It all depends upon the inflection of the speaker’s voice whether his words are intended as a knockout blow or an apology in behalf of the culprit. But any time you want to pursue the subject you’ll hear about some obdurate old ancestor who passed the buck on to his posterity.

While we most assuredly do inherit various mental attitudes from our ancestors, there’s nothing we cannot get rid of if we resolve to do so. There is nothing fatal about preconceived notions handed down to us. Mental culture through education and association is the royal road. If, through ignorance, or narrow-mindedness, one should prefer to hang on to certain personal or mental crudities just for the sake of posing as a “chip off of the old block,” then let the punishment fit the crime.

Temperament plays a big part in making life worth while and is more largely due to the time in which we live and with whom we associate than to inheritance. It is the physical department that is really handed down to us—the blood in our veins rather than the dents on our brains. To be subject to scrofula from infancy is no fault of our own, but to continue an eccentricity under the claim of inherited temperament is excusable only upon the score of ignorance.

People do inherit brain tendencies, but they are all subject to control through the will to do or don’t, as the case may be. Supposing grandfather used to swear like a trooper—and he probably did—the habit was temperamental to the extent of being in tune with the times in which he lived. But what grandson of to-day would think of claiming exemption by reason of inherited temperament if addicted to the same vulgar habit? On the other hand, if we are born with rheumatic tendencies we may expect to fight with them all our lives. One is a brain tendency, subject to control; the other is a blood-inheritance that we may never correct.

Personal habits of thought or action are temperamental according to the avidity with which we cling to them. George Ade has said that a man might be born with a hair lip or a club foot, but whiskers were his own fault. Thus we were handed the best possible line of demarcation between the inherited tendency and the personal temperament. So, if we were of the temperament to wear a beard because our great grandfather wore one we could, if the notion struck us, take it to the barber and have it cut away. Just so we may get out from any other temperamental habit, or thought, or action, through the very simple process of becoming masters of our own minds. Grandfather may hand us a line of tainted blood that we can’t manage, but temperament is our own to manage as we will.

Control over one’s temperament is positively necessary in making life worth while. If we are bent on securing full happiness for having lived, we are bound to contribute our share toward an ultimate world sanity in which the word temperament may not serve to cloak mental deficiency. College life takes the kink out of the untrained mind and makes it behave normally. It makes no allowance for the accentuated temperament. Fool notions brought along from the dear old home town are soon sifted into the chaff barrel and common sense comes into its own.

CHAPTER III
THE NEW ORDER OF LIVING

We’re never old until we think we are—this I say, not as a sop to those beyond the half-way station, but as a conclusion after some years of observation and association with men.

I know some young men of sixty who are putting over a sample of golf that annexes my goat. One forgets their age when he finds them up and coming on every proposition of legitimate sport and pleasure. They’ve learned how to live and are living.

There is a big change in the habits of men. The day in which we live is replete with simple enjoyments and facilities whereby to make the most of them. Achievement keeps them young, and achievement is a matter of management rather than working hours. Organization cuts the hours off of the business day which leaves ample time for the recreation needed to insure a good appetite, a healthy body, and the right kind of sleep. If there is any secret in this simple process then consider that the cat is “out of the bag.” It’s yours.

“And her name was Maud”

If we see a lean, hungry, decrepit mule wearily dragging his load along we know at a glance that he is underfed, overworked, and doesn’t receive proper care. He works too many hours a day, stands abuse from his driver, becomes morose, just the same as a human being, and finally, indifferent to what happens. Thus reduced to the depth of despair, he actually awaits the crack of the whip across his loins before answering the call to move along.

But times are changing for both men and mules. Neither will stand the abuse and neglect of years gone by. Men are no longer the slaves of the big boss. They have certain hours for work, after which their time is their own.

Fortunately the era of treating one’s self decently is on. The barroom has ceased to be the national indoor sport. Every self-respecting town or city has joined in the community of interests theory that out-of-door life is good for its citizens. The result is play-grounds for children, public parks for all of the family, and golf courses nearby for the men. It beats the old front porch rocking chair proposition forty ways.

It isn’t more than twenty-five years since the real out-of-door era began to dawn. I remember distinctly as a boy of ten how hard it was to raise a companion after the evening meal. My parents held liberal views on the subject. They trusted me in the matter of keeping out of mischief and about the only warning I received was, “Don’t go far, and don’t stay out too late.” With such elastic instructions I had very little trouble in keeping the record straight, for my parents never held me to strict account.

In my meanderings, however, I found the boys of my acquaintance pretty well hemmed in during the evening hours. The scene is easily recalled. The front stoop is plastered with rugs; the mother, father, sisters, aunts, and grandmother are seated about on the steps, hammock or porch chairs. Bob, Bill, Dick or Jim, as the case might be, was first to be noticed leaning against the front gate, or looking dreamily over the side fence. But as soon as the porch arguments began to warm up he could be seen edging along slowly, inch by inch, toward the rear—just nonchalantly, two pickets at a time, without any special semblance of hurrying. If his mother had the floor in the argument he got away speedily and he generally waited for that.

But success was not always the case. Many times have I stood impatiently out of view giving the hurry-up signal, when suddenly there came a loud call from the front that caused Robert to fall back into his own yard and walk quickly around to the whenceness of the clamor.

“What do you want, Ma?” he would enquire—as if he didn’t thoroughly well know.

“I want you to stay around here where I can keep an eye on you. Then I’ll know where you are.”

Sometimes this kind of a backset would require nearly a half hour of skilful jockeying to repair. After that only the boldest of plans stood a chance to succeed, such as walking into the house from the front as if in deep disgust, or after a drink of water in the rear of the house. Then out through the kitchen door and over the back fence in a jiffy.

A pointed argument

A nudge from sister often nullified this subterfuge when the mother seemed about to fall for the project, and that meant the loss of another fifteen minutes during which Bobby would actually go and take a swallow of water and come back to the porch, there to stretch and yawn until told that he’d better go in and go to bed. Victory at last for Bob, showing that there was more than one way to win a battle even in those days. The slamming of an upstairs bed-room door, meant for his mother’s ears, a slide down the “rain pipe”—and over the fence for Bobby.

But what a wonderful change has come into the parental mind since then. Now all Bob does is to announce where he is going—to the “gym,” over to Bill’s, motor-boating, canoeing, bicycling, a hike in the park, or a look in on the movies. Home and to bed by ten o’clock.

And what is the result? Boys of twelve now days become officers in Boy Scout companies. They go in for everything likely to make them athletic, manly and alert. At sixteen they have more general knowledge than boys of twenty had twenty-five years ago. And their minds are cleaner, likewise their bodies. Schooling comes easier to them, although the courses are far more advanced. It takes knowledge to get started off right now days.

This is an age of pep, and the competition of today means pep vs. pep. With equal mental preparedness the man with the brawn will stand the gaff that would kill his soft competitor. Lest we forget—recreation, a good appetite, a healthy body, and the proper amount of sleep—are positive requirements in making life worth while.

CHAPTER IV
FEEDING THE INTELLECT

Feeding the intellect is naturally the most fascinating pursuit in this life and probably will be in the life to come. There is nothing like stocking up the mind, tickling the brain cells, making dents in the cerebellum, for thereby is induced the most perfect sanity and the power to think with precision.

It is bully to be able to think straight to the point, and to quickly analyze right down to the bone. Such ability loans us proper respect for ourselves and compels the respect of all with whom we may brush against.

Power to think begins with first realizations, and thereafter we have only to add fuel to the intellectual fires day by day, month by month, and year by year, until we arrive at that state of mental sufficiency which may happily be termed “the fullness thereof.”

Not until we cross this bridge are we safe—not until then will we have come into a state of sane thinking—nor will we be fully alive! On our march we will have learned to delve with patience, listen with understanding, and communicate with intelligence. Then we may give and take with common understanding with the best of them. What we get we store away for use when needed. Then may we commune with our intellectual equals on the basis of quid pro quo—horse and horse—“even Stephen.”

But what a heartache when we cannot give! What a sensation of regret when we find ourselves standing still intellectually while we watch the procession go by. Not capable of giving, likewise we are handicapped in our ability to receive—we’re hitched to a post, so to speak, along with other species of lesser understanding.

Alongside of us in our journey through life are sure to be men of more than ordinary achievement, who by dint of special genius have accomplished worthy objects most passing well—something that brought them wealth or fame and likely both—but left them dumb and speechless in the presence of intellectual persons, who, in self-defense, must pass them up for want of mental fellowship.

To speak of the “Dark Ages” is but a polite reference to that period of time when mankind generally was known to be “addle-pated.” The light refused to shine upon his thimbleful of brains, although the sun of centuries had blazed down upon a world of half-baked intellects—and even yet has work ahead. But coming through the ages, in the due course of events, a few master minds coincided in the belief that a little exercise was good for the “noddle” and set about it to experiment.

The first hard work indulged in by our early ancestry, after receiving a slight smattering of instruction, was to kill off their teachers. Many centuries were allowed to skip by before education was again utilized in stimulating the understanding.

“Smile when you say it”

Pending the dawn of the new era, man was taught only the use of his hands and feet for the sake of his stomach—his upper story becoming a warehouse for dark superstitions, and fearful forebodings. It is not unlikely that from this period descended the later day reference to certain persons as numskulls—a species of mankind known to have bats in the belfry.

Notwithstanding the seeming uselessness of many hundreds of centuries in their relation to human intelligence, there is no discounting the fact that we have finally come into an age when brain power is not counted a misdemeanor and made subject to fine and imprisonment. From the end of our Civil War to the breaking out of the great world-wide strife, the intellect of man had expanded tremendously. More important still, intellect had been discovered to be a world-asset, and of such mighty consequence that human knowledge progressed amazingly.

Pity it is that the world’s brain power could not have forestalled the great slaughter—impossible, however, at this stage of our mental development. But the time is coming—our grandchildren will see the day—when intellectuality will rule the universe. Brains and bodies of individuals are to be developed for other uses than war. Until that day arrives we are bound to continue as before, and will, with true patriotism, follow the flag of our cause.

Some day when our intellects have been fed up into a higher state of efficiency and humanity is more nearly matched in brain power, settlements between nations will be made beside the lamp of reason rather than under the flare of the cannon’s mouth.

CHAPTER V
BACKING UP THE FLAG

Loyalty is one of those three-syllable words with a big meaning all its own. Out of the letters composing it can be spelled two other words—the preposition to; and the adverb all. Loyalty to all—everything worth while; our country, our homes, our government, and the friends we have “and their adoption tried.” It seems a shame to hear this fine word used in any other connection, such as “loyal to the gang”—“loyal to his confederates”—“loyal to the enemy.” It is too fine a word to be employed in a manner possessing the significance of the word “traitor.”

Now that the word loyalty has come back into such vast everyday usage, the time is ripe to nail it down hard and fast to the principles for which it stands. Why not say “he was in cahoots with the gang”—“false to his constituency”—“dishonest with his confederates?” Then, in our mind’s eye, let us hang the word loyalty alongside of the flag and keep it there for all time.

As I write this chapter, keeping in mind the subject of Making Life Worth While, a feeling of serenity pervades my inner consciousness. I believe that loyalty practically reigns supreme in America. I believe that the fifty-fifty variety has become scarcer than hen’s teeth when measured by the whole citizenship. Only among the unenlightened, the profligates, the misanthropes and enemy aliens, are they bound to be found at all.

Thanks to governmental efficiency during times most trying, the searchlight has been turned upon the meaning of the word loyalty in this country. The flag symbolizes it and it hangs everywhere. We take off our hats to it when we pass it on the street, and when we hear the songs that match it we join our voices with the rest.

To love the flag is a soul quality and when the souls of a hundred million strong go out in support of the Stars and Stripes there is mighty little standing room for the mere onlooker.

He is either with us or against us—that’s the slogan that thins the ranks of the unbelievers in our country. It makes them sit up and stare at the truth. It makes them blink their eyes in wonder, which is first aid in thinking things over. It causes them to look around and compare their standpoint with that represented by the Star Spangled Banner.

In taking stock of the situation here is what they found to be true—that this great country stands for peace—not only for itself, but its neighbors all over the world. That peace is so desirable, and so essential that it is worth fighting for to the last man and the last dollar. That without peace nothing counts as of value in the entire inventory of things worth while and, therefore, nothing remains but to fight—and to a finish.

Companions

When your Uncle Sam rolls up his sleeves preparatory to a scrap he begins to take on size that distinguishes him from the ordinary fighter. He goes about it methodically, and allows himself the proper time in which to get in readiness. Then he takes a running jump into the middle of the ring. After this the disinterested onlooker isn’t long in catching the fact that, as a mere matter of discretion, it is far better to be with Uncle Sam than to be against him. Also it must creep into his mind that if he doesn’t want to be smashed into a proper state of mind, the best thing to do is to join in and help.

If a hundred million people want peace bad enough to fight for it, both for themselves and their neighbors, it isn’t for slackers either in thought or in spirit to stand on the side lines and watch the scrap. People of that mould do not belong in America.

Everybody must do his part and do it right. There are thousands of ways of helping on toward victory. There is more than one way of fighting. The most potent of all is to back up the man who does—except, of course, when his time comes, every man capable of pulling a trigger must pick up his pack and take his place on the firing line. Meanwhile it behooves all of us to be ready for the call.