ecause they don't
concentrate on the matter of making good at what they know is the
business of their lives--success. If you stop a moment and think of
the men you know who are not successes, but who might be successes,
you will find they are goat-feather gatherers. Anything that leads
a man aside from the straight path to his goal is a goat-feather.
Every useless side line is a goat-feather. Every unnecessary
distraction is a goat-feather. Nine tenths of the things I do are
goat-feathers.

I don't mind telling you that I consider myself a very, very
wonderful man. Nobody but a most remarkable man could spend so much
time in the goat-feather groves gathering goat-feathers and still
keep his family from starvation. I actually gasp when I think what
a great man I should have been if I had stuck to business instead
of being drawn aside by every sweet odor and pleasant sound. Then I
actually swear when I think how many hours and days and weeks I
have given to making myself look like a cross between a llama and a
stuffed owl, when I might have been writing things the editors
never have enough of, and buy as soon as they read the first
paragraph.

It is all right! I'm not jealous! I'll sit in the front row every
time Ade or Tarkington or Chambers pulls a success, and I'll
applaud as whole-heartedly as any one, but I reserve the right to
kick myself when I get outside. This article is one of the kicks,
and I hope it will have a good effect on me. I hope it will teach
me a lesson. I doubt it; I'm too old; I'm too accustomed to chasing
goat-feathers to give it up now.

So there you have the story of what is the matter with me. You know
now why, when you think of me, you think of a story I wrote twelve
years ago. I had a main goal, but I liked too well to investigate
all the cross-roads instead of keeping straight on. That's bad;
that's gathering goat-feathers. It has been bad for me, and bad for
my success as an author, and bad for my success in the only life I
have to live, but it is apt to be much worse for you to gather
goat-feathers than for me to gather them, because I can,
occasionally, weave some of them into a story, while you can't do
anything at all with those you acquire.

The time we waste in excursions off the main line of our road to
our goal is the difference between success and half-success; often
it is the difference between success and failure.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Goat-Feather