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Save money, but save at the expense of your own vanities and weaknesses, not at the expense of those that have a right to look to you for help.

No man ever became a failure through doing too much for others.

For the chief gain in saving is the gain in character. And he who spends for others unselfishly gains more by far than he who selfishly saves.

If you want to know how difficult thought is, try to put one real thought on paper every day-then ask your friends whether it is really a thought, or only an exclamation.

The greatest teacher can put nothing in. Wise teaching brings that which is useful out.

Watch, for you know not when opportunity will come. In fact, it is here now, all around, for those that can see it.

The possession of gold is a mere fetich. It means nothing, gold is only a token. On a desert island after ten days Mr. Rockefeller would give all his gold for one ham sandwich.

To be seen, climb on a high place.

To be heard, make yourself somebody, then people will listen.

What Kind of Blinders

Do You Wear?

Every man, like many horses, has a pair of some sort. "Get rid of them" is good advice, but not so easily followed.

THE horse wears blinders, and the horse is the stupidest animal-more stupid even than the pig, according to a great French animal trainer.

The horse must wear blinders in order that he may not see things around him. His business is to go ahead in a straight line until a tug at his mouth changes the direction. Therefore we fix him up so that he can only see in a straight line.

Sitting behind the horse you behold beauty or things of interest on all sides. Over there the calf kicks up his heels and bucks his mother; yonder a great tree rises toward the clouds, and, farther still, the steam cars remind you that you can go to town if you will.

But the horse must not, and does not, see these things. He has to be grateful for even a small piece of paper to shy at. The big things, the exciting things, that would make him run away and get his name in the papers, are shut out from him.

No wonder he is the stupidest animal.

But blinders made of leather, with monogram neatly engraved, are not the only blinders.

There are as many kinds of blinders in the mental world as there are different kinds of men.

And in one way the horse is ahead of us. He has blinders forced upon him. He always resists mildly when the bridle is pushed over his ears.

We human beings make our own blinders, fit them to our eyes, and either glory in them or ignore the fact that they are there.

It is a fact that each one of us carries around in his mentality some set of prejudices, preconceived opinions that act as blinders to the intellect and effectually shut out the truth.

These blinder-prejudices are of all kinds.

Many of us are born with them.

The man born rich, or made rich, often thinks the poorer man is necessarily evil and inferior. He has mental blinders that should be at work keeping some donkey in the narrow path.

The poor man often wears a permanent delusion which tells him that all rich men are bad and aching for his heart's blood. That set of blinders makes it impossible for him to reason sensibly or to work intelligently at the improvement of his class.

Poor women-let us always speak kindly of themwalk around in their millions with blinders labeled "conventionality." They would as willingly get out of life as get out of style. They look straight ahead at the hat of the woman in front of them, and that hat they will have, though the heavens fall or the husband fail. And as in clothes so in other things women stick to conventionality, and will not even look at truth if it wears an unfamiliar face. (That is partly due to woman's mistrust of what is new, while caring for

her children. The mother among animals or humans is intensely suspicious of the unknown. But that excuse, while sound, would carry us out of the line of argument.)

Women should try to think for themselves. As that great man, Buckle, said, compressing volumes of advice into few words: "Women should learn to be ashamed of ignorance."

If women could get their blinders off and be as thoroughly ashamed of ignorance as they are of last year's hat, or of a sleeve with the idiotic ornament in the wrong place, the world would jump miles ahead. That's all about women; no man has the heart to scold them.

Young men of today are the champion wearers and manufacturers of mental blinders warranted to make breadth of view impossible.

They start out with the idea that they personally are pretty nearly "all right." They want the world to recognize their value and do the right thing by them-but they are not willing to wait long. When a young reporter has been beaten on the news for a while at a salary of thirty dollars per week and wants forty, just remind him that he is paid more than the engineer of the Empire State Express, and ask him if he is a better man. He'll show you such a pair of mental blinders as would fill the heart of a white Spanish mule palfrey with bitter jealousy.

And tell the editorial writer that he says the same thing over and over, writing very commonplace stuff at that. You'll see visualized on the instant such a

pair of self-sufficient blinders as would explain even his lack of growth.

Young men suffer from self-satisfaction most deplorably, partly because old age, with us, pays too much attention to youth; partly because we wear the old men out and make youth conceited by premature

success.

The young man who will tear off his blinders, look around at others and at himself, even if it does hurt his vanity, will grow in speed and strength, and very likely discover a short cut across lots-once the blinders have gone.

Millions of us have blinders fitted to us by unfortunate conditions of birth. Ignorance is of all things the heaviest handicap. Many suffer with it, through no fault of their own. Our public schools, happily, will tear off the blinders from the future generations more and more, as men learn the art of inculcating real knowledge, and of teaching men to use what they know. Knowledge is the great enemy of blindness, both partial and absolute.

Knowledge fights against superstition, its worst enemy, and wins every battle. Knowledge combats petty meanness, planting love of truth and justice in the poor soil where only love of money grew before.

Knowledge in time will free all of us from the blinders that we wear-producing a human race as far ahead of us as we are ahead of the horse.

But as that good day will not come in our lives, let us attend each to his individual set of blinders now.

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