The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 24, 1907, Page 2

By Ellis Parker Butler HENEVER I see a man with & boil I want to /go right up to him and te!l him that honey and /Y/ flour made into & poultice and applied to the boll s the very best thing to cure that boil, but never do it, because there are few things so sensitive a man with a boll, except the boil itself. A boil is the haughty and unsociable thing on earth. It just resents famillarity. It is as proud as a felon d hurts about as much when it is rudely interrupted n its peaceful business of coming to a head. But I never knew anything that cured & boil so nicely naturally and =o sweetly as honey and flour. I knew & young man once—I remember him well, becauss be borrowed $10 of me and never returned f{t—and he had per- tectly good habits in eve boil hing but bolls, but he rather business into the ground. He was a regular ler in bolls; seemed to be trying to cor- 18 whole visible supply; never satisfied but when he 1ad & neck full of them. And all he would ever do for them was to dab the head of them with a drop of diluted It killed the boll, but as soon as the prem- s neck were seen to be vacant two other boils in and set up housekeeping there, and then he them, and four more would meve in, and so would keep fncreasing until he had & neck full, and ngs got overcrowded, and thers was too much com- petition, and then the trust would be formed and there ould be one great big boll instead of a lot of little ones, and the round of joy would begin all over again. But he would never take my advice and take honey and flour. One of the worst places in the world to have a boll Especlally if you are position and like to smlile. A man never atured he is and how often he smiles boll on the side of his mouth, and just then 16 gr est, grandest sense of humor that as ever known, and every time he smiles the W 1 likes to be considered a serious affair, gets Y es him a sort of reminder of its presence between the sting of a hornet and a tooth- ran the carbolic 1ses on would m would kill s right at the side of yvour mouth. of a happy di knows 1@ e dev fiat was wjere T had my last boil—on the side of my i made me laugh out of the other side, as and I di for I have a happy disposition, ing. That is to say, I laughed out of the while the boil wes young and Inexperienced, that for one day, for the next day the botl ot let me laugh at all. A good sized healthy bofl, t is in full operation, 1s sufficfent to absorb all of a attention. He can’'t seem to get his mind oft the e Is nothing in & boll to make & man laugh. bright and sparkling gems of wit that friends drop at such a time, such as, “That's a lovely pét you've got there,” do not seem so funny as they 4id when you said them to vour friends when they had boils. The boil came as a surprise to my friends. Even my family ‘was surprised. I had not told them I way' intend- ng to have anything of that kKind. I had not even thought of having one myself, but that shows hew travel broadens one and enlarges his opportunities. If I had not go to Des Moines I might never have had & boll at all. But I went to Des Moine: .‘1‘5 P8 nolsevhewt-A teip, apg [ was thers =ty W0, but 1 made the st 64 my opportunities. If there had been any souvenir postcards then I expect I should have bought a lot of them in Des Moines to send to my dear ones at homs, but there were no souvenlir postcards, so I brought home the boll. 5 T aid not think much of it as & boll while T was in Des Moines. I was much more impressed by the State cap- itol building, which was much larger, but that was bechuse the boll was young. By the time I reached home the boll felt much larger than the State capitol building. Perhaps this is an exaggeration. Perhaps it felt only as large as the capltol, for the Iowa State capitol 1s a large building and the pride of the State, but the boil was nearer to me than the pitol bullding when I reached home, and was mere sentient, as I might say. And a thing seems larger when it is on the side of your mouth than when it is set out in the middle of a big plot of sround. I do not want to exaggerats the boil, but I do mnot want to belittle it, for it was the last boil I have had, L et S e WHAT IS IT ACH day checks up its Iist of fallures and successes. With every turn of the wheel of fate there are men who go down aud out—men whom the world may have thought stood a good chance of reach- are geniuses at failing. Suppose they are not. /1' Suppose, on ing the goal! marked with the shiniag letters “s ess.” And there are other through these portals of trumpets, while agape and wonders men who pass without the blare ands ; chance got them through. Is it Juck end is it chance that makes for success or faflure? 1Is it training or Is it birth, is it character, environment or force of circumstances that enables one mah to succeed where another fails? There have always been struggles among mankind for supre- macy. They have fought and conquered or been conquered. At first the strong- est man won, then the man who used his braln to direct his muscle becamé He it was who succeeded mayhap physically the victor. where others, stronger, = failed. But the conditions under which he struggled then were far different from those confronting a man today. Now success in life does not depend en- tirely upon physical strength. Some- thing more than brawn makes for vie- tory, and even the combination of mus- cle and brain may finally spell failure if & man deoviates froth the path which is his road to the longed-for goal. ‘When the professional man succeeds ils suceess brings the highest honor and self-gratification, while it bestows rich benefits upon posterity and does not lack pecuniary advantages to him- selt. Judge Tourgee once. sald, in speaking of the professional man who succeeds: “I don’t knbw about his failings 1f he works, keéps sober and sleeps at home. Lawyers, ministers and physicians live on the sins of the people, and, of course, grow fat under reasonable exertion, unless competition is too great. It requires genius to fail in any of these walks in life.” He may be right, but theré are men in the contrary, they are in the begin- ning perfectly normal creatures, sound of mind and body, with every prospect of reaching the top rung in the ladder they choose to climb, whether it is one that ascends in a business or profes- slonal career, Among just such men the world counts many failures. And Why? Men themselves must answer the question. Here is the opinion of a men who knows nething but success. Victor Herbert, whose reputation as & musical composer and leader rank him among the great successes of the day, modestly admits that he has never made a fallure of anything he under- took in his art, therefors his views are worth something. And then he has come in contact with geniuses and with failures, and whe would know better than he if geniuses, us Judge Turgee said, are cut out for failures in certain, walks in life? > “There aré two reasons why I have not made & faflure of life,” sald Mr. Herbert, “and I assume that a man Wwho makes a good living, whose cre- ative powers bring him hounor, glory and friends, is a success, and these two reasons are that I had an excellent education and the best mother in the world. With such an equipment any man of intelligence ought to be able to achieve success in anything he sets out to do. Good heart training does more to start a boy right, to give him high ideals and the stremgth and de- sire to live up to them, than anything €lse in the world. There are men who have succeeded without having enjoyed this training, but it they had had it they might have been even greater than they were. “A good education 18 one of the most important foundations for success. Give @ boy the very best he van get and CAME TO THE 1 COULD™NOT GET MY TOES. APAR " then he will be able to take his place in any profession or art he may choose. With myself I firmly believe that J would have succeeded if 1 had become & physician or a lawyer. Speaking can- didly, T never thought of anything else than success in confiection With myself. 1 think that people are born with the power to succeed or fail, Some have to work mueh hardér than others and much longer; some have greater obsta- cles to surmount than many of thelr fellow men; some attaln success fairly carly in life while to others it comes later, but the man who i born with a determation to succeed and never Jooks -upon himself as anything less than a success will succeed, sometimes, too, despite a lack of home training and higher education. These men are rare, however, in this age of eduoa- tional advantages where it is possible for everybody to scquire knowledge. “A man cannot be a musfolan of high rank or a painter of standing just be- cause he has had good home tratining and the best education his country afforded. There is something within himself which determines the art or profession to which he is to devote his life, and when he has decided upon what career he is to follow nothing but 111 health, perhaps, should stamp him a fallure. Character is a big factor in the eguation of success. Weak char- cannot stand sucgess. I have seen many of them in my time, and they have served as & warning to me. One lttle success has turned thetr heads so com- pletely that thelr future has been ut- terly spoiled. Instead of letting ome success do that & man should keep perfectly steady snd plan to make that success but & stepping stons to the greater mnext. After a successful striké a man cannot afford to i -0 gnnte sit rels. back and rest on his lau- Competition today is too keen to allow him to do that, and, besides, there are men close at his heels ready to step into his shoes if he sits down to rest. Look at the novelists, playwrights, composers, lawyers, financiers, physicians or any represen- tative of the arts and professions who follow a great success by & failure. 1t is the failure that is remembered and held up against them to take away some of the glory of their success un- til they have achieved another. “80, You see, to escape failure in the end one must work hard. Spasmodic work does not count for much in the long run. To accomplish real résults one must liave untiring energy and ap- plication, and, above all, he must not be satisfied with the ‘well enough.’ He must be determined to excel others and himselt and must bend all his energies toward the acopmplishment of this. Then will he do his best work, and to him Wil come success, grhile those who are willing to relax their energies be- cause others are pleased with what they have accomplished will be classed, eventyally, among the fallures in lite.” “What about geniuses; are they suc- cesses or failures?” was asked. “In the musical world géniuses are rare. They do not always sueceed, i & Worldly way, perhaps because they Aré 80 rare that ¢ takes the world somie time to ypderstand them. Bee- theven, Mozart gna. Schubsrt were seniuses, Wagner was not & genius o that sense, the greatness of his WOTKE being the pesult Of & extra- TY combination of intellectual &nd musical training.” Ther is another man Who is ad- mirably qualineq 1o talk about the men fall and the then Who succeed In Hte. He 1s one who makes & business a8 well as 5 pleasure of taking physi- ©al and mentai wrecks of manhood and Systematically anq solentifically restor- ing them to gopq fealth, goed spirits and mental balange, In & word, he en- deavors to prevent men from making failures of their lives. William Mul- dopn, or “Professor” Muldoon, as his patrons call him, has saved many a youth from starting on the road that ends in failure, and he has rescued many older men from disaster. His sanitarium has seen many a threatened failure turned into a success. So Mr. Muldoon must know the causes of fail- ure in lite. “To what\do I attribute failure in life?” said Mr. Muldoon. *To rum and tobacco, though there are several other causes; but these are the most important and the hardest to fight against. The use of rum and tobacco has already spoiled the future pros- pects of many bright voung men, and unless a halt is called in this rapidly growing habit America will be pro- ducing nothing but fallures. Middle- aged men and men who have already reared families whose male mémbers are now launched on their careers do not belong to this class of failures. If these men collapse mentally or physical- 1y or find themselves unequal to golng on with the fight it is from strain and too close attention to their business affairs. Such men are not failures. But the youth who is just starting out in life—not where his father began, for he began at the bottom and worked lijs way up—this gilded youth who be- gins the fight with every advantage that wealth and position can give, nine times out of ten wiJl be forced to give up the fight or will do %o voluntarily because he has, with ‘his vile habits, made himself incapable of succeeding or because he has not enough pride and spirit to want the honor and glory and pleasure that come with success. “Success means having goad judg- ment. The general who leads his army to victory does so not because he is a better fighter or a stronger man than his enemy, but because he possessés good judgment. The business man who millions and the lawyer who mounts fo the very top of the pro- and circulars should be malled flat and not be delivered. fession do so not because they have had a better start than some other men or because they have been better edu- cated, but because they have possessed good judgment and have use of their accomplishments. It is The San Francisco Sunday Call and while 1t lasted it was faithful in its friend never left me for a moment. ‘Well, I reached home, and so did the boil, and the ing sfter that the only solid food I could eat wa and milk, and I had to suck that through a straw. that day the boil kept getting hotter and hotter. T ¢ know how hot it got, for I was afraid to put a t mster to it, for fear the thermometer Wwould melt, but 80 hot that I couldn’t enjoy the prominence it gave the community. It was hot all through, and red on and smooth and glessy, and acling and angry and u m- fortable. And It kept getting hotter and redder = smoother and more full of ache and angrier and more 1 comfortable, an@ it did not show any mor® signs of ¢ proaching & crisis than it had ever shown, and at the ro it was growing I was afrald that by morning it would so big that it would be just one big mountain of boil a that I would be only a few incidental legs and arms things attached to it. So, then, my mother came to the rescue. She sald s knew how hard it was to keep a poultice on a boll ¢ is located just whete the sweet smile starts to wand biithely from thescorner of the mouth, and that w flaxseed poultice was a good drawer and would draw life out of most any boil, it would be hard for a pe breathe when his face was buried In a large warm p of that kind, but that she had read that when a per had & boll on the face the best kind of a poultice was of honéy and flour. The flour would do all the draw necessary, and the honey would make the four st where it belonged. So she mixed up a poultice of parts of flour and honey, and made a sort of hall of and put it on the boil. It felt cool and comforting she tied am old pillow case loosely around my head, ju to help the honey hold the flour in place, and T went bed and to sleep. One thing I hate about most poultices and plasters is that about the time you get nicely asleep they begin to « awake and insist that you geét up and keep them compa A mustard plaster is that way. So is shoemaker's on a boil, but honey and flour are not that way. gentle. I know that, because I slept all that innocent lamb, and it was a hot night, too. I dor ber a hotter night. But I did not even dre plaster. 4 I imagine it was a good thing that it was a hot nights If it had beeri very cold that honey and flour might have got o hard that it would have been necessary to take a chisel and mallet and chip them off in bits. But it was not s0. When I awakened it was with a dim idea that I had turned into a duck and that I was webfooted. T could not get my toes apart. I sat up in bed with a start and looked at my toes, and gave a sigh of rellef. I v a duck. 1 was not webfooted. It was nothing hut and flour that glued my toes together. So I prie fingers apart—they were stuck together with hon flour—and got out of bed—and the sheet came wit but I was glad of that, for when I pulled it off s tire honey and flour that had worked up around unfi back came off with it—and then I sneezed once or tw to get some of the honey and flour out of my nose, : seraped some of the honey and flour out of my ears so that I could hear if any one answered when I called down foy hot water, and while I was waiting for the Lot watfer I combed a few chunks of “the honey and flour out of my hair, and 1 scraped as much off my chest as I could with the back of the comb. ‘When the servant knocked at the dcor with the hot water I tried to g0 to get {t, but I had to pry my feet loose from the matting first, because the honey ani flour had glued me there, and I could hardly move my arms, p and mush of -because so much honey and r had wandered around there. Thore wasn't & 46 b m&n of eat on me anywhere that wi OnEY 1 Trour; and what wasn't on me was conscientiousiy distributed over the bed. For weeks after th-tfll ken‘: flndl:x little Surp-tess. way of honey and flour about the room. 1t is wMqu “mfizw end Neur will go on a warm nigh But 1t fixed that boil all right! It couldn’t help but fix that boil. If that boil had been migratory in {is habits and had skipped around from spot to spot it could not have escaped that honmey and flour. Maybe it was mi- gratory, and did skip around. If it dld it d4id no good, for the honey snd flour went farther and faster and caught it at last. If the Dboil had jumped over to my psyehie entity the honey and flour would have chased it there. And would have caught it. Honey and flour is the best boll cure. I know, for I have tested it. And so economical. Why, less than a handful of honey and flour cured that boll of mine, and {Jjere was enough honey and flour left the next morning to cure a million other boils. A boil has no chance ageinst it. If the boil émigrates the poultice will go right along with it. And an amateur at applylng poultices can use it as well as a professional, for if the poultice is not put on the right spot it will get up and move around until it is on the right spot. That was the last boil I had. I am not sure—becauss I am not a medical student and don't pretend to & deep knowledge of such things—but I think the reason I have never had any more bolls is that the homey and flour poultice got so thoroughly spread over me, and so thor- oughly worked into my system, that no boi! has ever had the courage to try to get a foothold on me. PP R R BTSRRI R Y THAT'S TO BLAME FOR THE FAILURES IN LIFE? every walk in life who make utter and miserable faflures of their chances and careers without being geniuses, as the word is uhderstood today, unless they of long and careful study of men of every age and condition. Better men than I have preached against cigarette smoking, d apparently with no bet- ter results, for I am convinced that the habit is growing at an overwhelming made good this quality of good judgment which makes for success in life, and the lack of, which” stands for failure. Without it no man, however well he may be physically and mentally equipped other- wise, can hope to be anything but a failure. “But good judgment cannot stand the strain of continued use of whisky and tobacco. The man who starts out thus equipped must refrain from these per- nicious habits if he wishes to keep his judgment unimpaired. He has no greater foe than whisky and clgarettes. I know the destructive properties of both, and I speak with the knowledge L4 pace, threatening the future of the race. “The young man of today is so swal- lowed up in self-conceit that no other side of his character has a chance to develop. He is 80 per cent self-concelt, and the remaining 20 per cent is self- reliance. How can such an insignifi- cant amount of the stuff that makes men of them hope to count when thelr self-conceit is so overwhelming? Self- reliance is an admirable thing, and every manly man has plenty of it in his make-up. But if he has not enough of it to heip him to avoild constant smoking and drinking there is no help for him.” I ST ) HOW WE CAN AID THE POSTMAN VERY clvilized person uses the mails; yet it is safe to say that in no common every day utility are more mistakes made. The amount of “nixie” matier at the postof- fice proves this. A little care, a little at- tention to postal laws and the use of shundred small common sense will prove beneficial in sending malil matter and insure its safety. Letters containing oney, netes, mortgages and deeds should al- ‘ways be registered; also packages con- taining jewelrf. The cost of registra- tion is eight cents In addition to the’ regulagpostage. The Government pays an i nnity tor loss of registered let- ters and nowadays they are considered as safe as eéxpress. Thirty years ago the registry system was in such bad repute that it was sald to register a letter shmply meant that the postoffice clerk was invited to take it.” Unfortu- nately, this reputation still lingers in some localities, but as a matter of fact the system i sd perfected that ab- solute safbty is guaranteed. In case of loss the Postoffice Department will pay an_indemnity for registered letters malled at and addressed to a United “States postoffice not to exceed the value| of the comtents up to $25. ) Advertising cards, maps, calendars never rolled, unless absolutely feces sary. It ruins pictures to roll them, but there are other p A letter carrier lik addresses all one way in the order of his route. He can easily do this if he has flat packages; but a dozen or a rolls in his pa mean that he must handle them s ately and go through his bag to them at every place where he makes a delivery. A little forethought in regard to these things will prevent un- necessary work in the pestal service. A case has just been sent to the Post- office Department- at Washington for settlement. A shoe manufacturer in a large place sent out cards with leather medals attached bearing his signature. The medals ®ere. fastened to the cards by means of strings and when the postmen began to deliver them the strings became so tangled with the other mall that they found it would take hours to extricate them. In the dilemma they toak the cards back to the postoffice, whére a consultation wz held. The sender assqpted they ou to be delivered, but the matter w 2 settled by an appeal to Washington, where it was decreed that asthe malil had not been sent in & manner which rendered it easy of delivery it neca 4 A