The Brutal Truth of the 'Workaday' Struggle

We are all getting a living. To get a living—simply and only to do that—is pitifully a common achievement. It may be that not many of us bring this prosaic, unpalatable truth home, for we are apt to be more concerned with what we are going to do than with what we are doing. We exist through our wishes, commonly unfulfilled. The only time we can call our own—the present—is the time we never appreciate and generally neglect, either to dwell on the past or to picture the future. The bulk of people, from innumerable causes, partly fortune and partly folly, fail to get a living properly for themselves. They get in through the guidance, assistance or indulgence of others; so that, after all, to get a living—simply and only that—is practically a shining excellence. We run into debt; we turn to the patience and kindness of our neighbors; in short, despite our confidence, complacency and egotism, we do not get our own living. Getting a living is nothing. Any fool can get that. A man who cannot do that ought never to have been born; he is a predestined bankrupt, an utter zero. And yet, how is it? What proportion of men, even in the Republic—where there is more selfishness and particularity than in any other nation—are really, comfortably settled and settled? Many go on making both ends meet for a certain period; but their success is ephemeral; their prosperity is self-ended. While they are climbing, they tumble down, and never, perhaps, mount as high again. To get a living means to get it all the time and at the end leave no arrears; to put surplus dollars together through a series of years, and make them an established fortune.