If you want a practical illustration of how giving something for nothing works, pick out some one who has no real claim on you—­an old college friend who’s too strong to work, or a sixteenth cousin who’s missed connections with the express to Fortune—­and say:  “You’re a pretty good fellow, and I want to help you; after this I’m going to send you a hundred dollars the first of every month, until you’ve made a new start.”  He’ll fairly sicken you with his thanks for that first hundred; he’ll call you his generous benefactor over three or four pages for the second; he’ll send you a nice little half-page note of thanks for the third; he’ll write, “Yours of the first with inclosure to hand—­thanks,” for the fourth; he’ll forget to acknowledge the fifth; and when the sixth doesn’t come promptly, he’ll wire collect:  “Why this delay in sending my check—­mail at once.”  And all the time he won’t have stirred a step in the direction of work, because he’ll have reasoned, either consciously or unconsciously:  “I can’t get a job that will pay me more than a hundred a month to start with; but I’m already drawing a hundred without working; so what’s the use?” But when a fellow can’t get a free pass, and he has any sort of stuff in him, except what hoboes are made of, he’ll usually hustle for his car fare, rather than ride through life on the bumpers of a freight.

The only favor that a good man needs is an opportunity to do the best work that’s in him; and that’s the only present you can make him once a week that will be a help instead of a hindrance to him.  It’s been my experience that every man has in him the possibility of doing well some one thing, no matter how humble, and that there’s some one, in some place, who wants that special thing done.  The difference between a fellow who succeeds and one who fails is that the first gets out and chases after the man who needs him, and the second sits around waiting to be hunted up.

When I was a boy, we were brought up to believe that we were born black with original sin, and that we bleached out a little under old Doc Hoover’s preaching.  And in the church down Main Street they taught that a lot of us were predestined to be damned, and a few of us to be saved; and naturally we all had our favorite selections for the first bunch.  I used to accept the doctrine of predestination for a couple of weeks every year, just before the Main Street church held its Sunday-school picnic, and there are a few old rascals in the Stock Yards that make me lean toward it sometimes now; but, in the main, I believe that most people start out with a plenty of original goodness.

The more I deal in it, the surer I am that human nature is all off the same critter, but that there’s a heap of choice in the cuts.  Even then a bad cook will spoil a four-pound porterhouse, where a good one will take a chuck steak, make a few passes over it with seasoning and fixings, and serve something that will line your insides with happiness.  Circumstances don’t make men, but they shape them, and you want to see that those under you are furnished with the right set of circumstances.