Personality

ontacting hourly the wonders of earth, sky, sun, water, and verdure, and yet are blind and deaf to all that nature's voice is speaking. "The great wide, beautiful world, with the wonderful waters around it curled, and the wonderful grasses on its breast," are nothing at all to the lives and eyes of the dead ones they have no value as friends, companions or lovers, for all these associations call for the thrill of the quickening power of sight and sense, to make them worthwhile; they have no real value anywhere and are a drag on every situation because they have within them no power of response to any sort of external stimulation. They lack the power to press their own spring of answering enthusiasm and quickness. In the commercial world deadness makes them ciphers in the big active sum of valuations. One day in the New York subway I saw a boot shining stand. It was splendidly appointed with cabinets and chairs; there was a bootblack at each chair. As I passed I saw one of these bootblacks, with bright eyes, standing alert beside his particular booth and with a cheery ringing voice he called to every passer-by, "Shine, shine, shine 'em up, have a shine, Sir?" Everybody's attention was arrested, busy men looked down at their shoes, and one immediately sat down while three others waited their turn. The other bootblack was asleep at the corner of his booth, indolent, lazy, uninterested in life, in the crowd, or even in his own business; his drooping figure, his carelessness the drowsy snore, all told their own story, yet the world would have blamed his brutal master could they have seen him kick the bootblack into wakefulness. To sleep at such a time and in such a place was negative energy enough to link him with the law of kicks both human and divine. I looked at the picture one all life and power, the perfect picture of true success and then at the other the perfect picture of failure and my heart said, "The quick or the dead," and I knew again what we put into life we take out of it. One true eternal success law is enthusiasm, no one can ever expect to fan anything into a raging flame of completion unless they do so from the red hot coals of their own ambition, enthusiasm and aspiration. 44 Power, possession, attraction, name, fame, honor, and success are all the product of a whirlwind consciousness. It is our own life stream which rushes us on past valleys, hills and mountains to deliver our possessions to ourselves, and the one who does not g