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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed, by Orison Swett Marden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: How to Succeed
+       or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune
+
+Author: Orison Swett Marden
+
+Release Date: February 3, 2007 [EBook #20513]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO SUCCEED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Karina Aleksandrova
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Notes:
+
+  1. Several misprints corrected. A complete list of corrections may be
+     found at the end of the text.
+
+  2. Symbol of a hand pointing right has been replaced with a right
+     arrow: ==>.
+
+
+
+
+                    HOW TO SUCCEED;
+
+                          OR,
+
+         Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune.
+
+                    [Illustration]
+
+                       ...BY...
+
+            ORISON SWETT MARDEN, A.M., M.D.
+
+                       Author of
+
+ "Pushing to the Front; or, Success Under Difficulties," and
+    "Architects of Fate; or, Steps to Success and Power."
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      PUBLISHED BY
+                 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
+                LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor,
+                 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+                    Copyright, 1896,
+                    BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     CHAPTER.                           PAGE.
+
+         I. First, Be a Man,                5
+        II. Seize Your Opportunity,        14
+       III. How Did He Begin?              27
+        IV. Out of Place,                  49
+         V. What Shall I Do?               58
+        VI. Will You Pay the Price?        66
+       VII. Foundation Stones,             81
+      VIII. The Conquest of Obstacles,     99
+        IX. Dead in Earnest,              115
+         X. To Be Great, Concentrate,     128
+        XI. At Once,                      140
+       XII. Thoroughness,                 149
+      XIII. Trifles,                      160
+       XIV. Courage,                      169
+        XV. Will Power,                   183
+       XVI. Guard Your Weak Point,        192
+      XVII. Stick,                        209
+     XVIII. Save,                         220
+       XIX. Live Upward,                  229
+        XX. Sand,                         238
+       XXI. Above Rubies,                 256
+      XXII. Moral Sunshine,               275
+     XXIII. Hold Up Your Head,            287
+      XXIV. Books and Success,            296
+       XXV. Riches Without Wings,         318
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO SUCCEED.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FIRST, BE A MAN.
+
+     The great need at this hour is manly men. We want no
+     goody-goody piety; we have too much of it. We want men who will
+     do right, though the heavens fall, who believe in God, and who
+     will confess Him.
+     --REV. W. J. DAWSON.
+
+     All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want
+     a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand.
+     This man--it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!... How to
+     constitute one's self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not
+     how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.
+     --ALEXANDER DUMAS.
+
+
+"I thank God I am a Baptist," said a little, short Doctor of Divinity,
+as he mounted a step at a convention. "Louder! louder!" shouted a man in
+the audience; "we can't hear." "Get up higher," said another. "I can't,"
+replied the doctor, "to be a Baptist is as high as one can get."
+
+But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a
+_man_.
+
+Rousseau says: "According to the order of nature, men being equal, their
+common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well
+educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to
+fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters little
+to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar.
+To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him,
+it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _Let
+him first be a man_; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another, as
+she pleases, he will be always found in his place."
+
+"First of all," replied the boy James A. Garfield, when asked what he
+meant to be, "I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I
+can succeed in nothing."
+
+"Hear me, O men," cried Diogenes, in the market place at Athens; and,
+when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully, "I called for
+men, not pigmies."
+
+One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good
+animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the
+coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must
+have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. It
+is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and
+beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal
+existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse
+throughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when
+scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice.
+
+Dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping out
+of debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by being
+industrious.
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Godfrey Kneller, the artist, to a Guinea slave
+trader, who entered the room where his uncle was talking with Alexander
+Pope, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world."
+"I don't know how great men you may be," said the Guinea man, as he
+looked contemptuously upon their diminutive physical proportions, "but I
+don't like your looks; I have often bought a much better man than either
+of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."
+
+A man is never so happy as when he suffices to himself, and can walk
+without crutches or a guide. Said Jean Paul Richter: "I have made as
+much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should
+require more."
+
+"The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage," wrote Voltaire to
+Helvetius; "these are what we require to be happy."
+
+Although millions are out of employment in the United States, how
+difficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent,
+industrious man or woman, young or old, for any position, whether as a
+domestic servant, an office boy, a teacher, a brakeman, a conductor, an
+engineer, a clerk, a bookkeeper, or whatever we may want. It is almost
+impossible to find a really _competent_ person in any department, and
+oftentimes we have to make many trials before we can get a position
+fairly well filled.
+
+It is a superficial age; very few prepare for their work. Of thousands
+of young women trying to get a living at typewriting, many are so
+ignorant, so deficient in the common rudiments even, that they spell
+badly, use bad grammar, and know scarcely anything of punctuation. In
+fact, they murder the English language. They can copy, "parrot like,"
+and that is about all.
+
+The same superficiality is found in nearly all kinds of business. It is
+next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his
+trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling
+good material and wasting valuable time.
+
+In the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness,
+but usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moral
+breadth.
+
+The merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a sense
+an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removed
+alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence of
+human converse. In society, the most accomplished man of mere
+professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality in
+his dexterity.
+
+"The aim of every man," said Humboldt, "should be to secure the highest
+and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and
+consistent whole."
+
+Some men impress us as immense possibilities. They seem to have a sweep
+of intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal; they
+seem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seen
+everything. Nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. But
+somehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. They raise
+great hopes only to dash them. They are men of great promise, but they
+never pay. There is some indefinable want in their make-up.
+
+What the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit, who
+does not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and who would
+give the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into three
+classes: men, women and ministers. Wanted, a clergyman who does not look
+upon his congregation from the standpoint of old theological books, and
+dusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the merchant as in his store, the
+clerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading before the jury, the
+physician standing over the sick bed; in other words, who looks upon the
+great throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing, scheming, ambitious,
+impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of their number, who can
+live with them, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and
+experience their sensations.
+
+The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every
+profession, every occupation, every calling: "Wanted--A Man."
+
+Wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a mere
+walking bundle of precedents.
+
+Wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. A
+man should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and symmetrical
+in his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that no one
+would suspect how he gets his living.
+
+Nothing is more apparent in this age of specialties than the dwarfing,
+crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions.
+Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the
+professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the
+age tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business
+man to a mere money-making career.
+
+Think of a man, the grandest of God's creations, spending his life-time
+standing beside a machine for making screws. There is nothing to call
+out his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, judging,
+deciding.
+
+He stands there year after year, until he seems but a piece of
+mechanism. His powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, to
+inferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the machine he
+tends.
+
+Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who
+has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"
+though all the world say "Yes."
+
+Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not
+permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his
+manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt
+or paralyze his other faculties.
+
+Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low
+estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a
+living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture,
+discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.
+
+As Nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewarding
+their observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes their
+violation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induce
+us to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implanted
+within us. She nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all great
+blessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding up
+before us glittering prizes, which we may almost touch, but never quite
+possess. She covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of character
+building through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over the
+future; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and she
+fail in her great purpose. How else could Nature call the youth away
+from all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting to
+his imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunt
+his dreams until he resolves to make them real. As a mother teaches her
+babe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child may
+reach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength,
+compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so Nature goes before us
+through life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with one
+object in view--the development of the man.
+
+In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which
+stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure on
+the canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its real
+significance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds its
+true expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object of
+creation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to the
+central figure of the created universe--Man. Nature writes this thought
+upon every leaf; she thunders it in every creation; it exhales from
+every flower; it twinkles in every star.
+
+     Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide,
+     And let in manhood--let in happiness;
+     Admit the boundless theatre of thought
+     From nothing up to God ... which makes a man!
+     --YOUNG.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SEIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY.
+
+     "The blowing winds are but our servants
+     When we hoist a sail."
+
+     You must come to know that each admirable genius is but a
+     successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your
+     own.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     Who waits until the wind shall silent keep,
+       Who never finds the ready hour to sow,
+     Who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap.
+     --HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
+
+     The secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for his
+     opportunity_ when it comes.
+     --DISRAELI.
+
+     Do the best you can where you are; and, when that is
+     accomplished, God will open a door for you, and a voice will
+     call, "Come up hither into a higher sphere."
+     --BEECHER.
+
+     Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a
+     distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
+     --CARLYLE.
+
+
+"When I was a boy," said General Grant, "my mother one morning found
+herself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some from a
+neighbor. Going into the house without knocking, I overheard a letter
+read from the son of a neighbor, who was then at West Point, stating
+that he had failed in examination and was coming home. I got the butter,
+took it home, and, without waiting for breakfast ran to the office of
+the congressman for our district. 'Mr. Hamer,' I said, 'will you
+appoint me to West Point?' 'No, ---- is there, and has three years to
+serve.' 'But suppose he should fail, will you send me?' Mr. Hamer
+laughed. 'If he don't go through, no use for you to try, Uly.' 'Promise
+me you will give me the chance, Mr. Hamer, anyhow.' Mr. Hamer promised.
+The next day the defeated lad came home, and the congressman, laughing
+at my sharpness, gave me the appointment. Now," said Grant, "it was my
+mother's being without butter that made me general and president." But
+he was mistaken. It was his own shrewdness to see the chance, and the
+promptness to seize it, that urged him upward.
+
+"There is nobody," says a Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visit
+once in his life; but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she
+goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy.
+The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or
+clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly,
+and catch it when on the wing.
+
+The utmost which can be said about the matter is, that circumstances
+will, and do combine to help men at some periods of their lives, and
+combine to thwart them at others. Thus much we freely admit; but there
+is no fatality in these combinations, neither any such thing as "luck"
+or "chance," as commonly understood. They come and go like all other
+opportunities and occasions in life, and if they are seized upon and
+made the most of, the man whom they benefit is fortunate; but if they
+are neglected and allowed to pass by unimproved, he is unfortunate.
+
+"Charley," says Moses H. Grinnell to a clerk born in New York City,
+"take my overcoat tip to my house on Fifth Avenue." Mr. Charley takes
+the coat, mutters something about "I'm not an errand boy. I came here to
+learn business," and moves reluctantly. Mr. Grinnell sees it, and at the
+same time one of his New England clerks says, "I'll take it up." "That
+is right, do so," says Mr. G., and to himself he says, "that boy is
+smart, he will work," and he gives him plenty to do. He gets promoted,
+gets the confidence of business men as well as of his employers, and is
+soon known as a successful man.
+
+The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes
+and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own
+advancement, who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him
+on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every
+opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him
+to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds
+it up into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart open
+that he may catch every noble impulse and everything which may inspire
+him, will be sure to live a successful life; there are no ifs or ands
+about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from success.
+
+_Zion's Herald_ says that Isaac Rich, who gave one million and three
+quarters to found Boston University of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
+began business thus: at eighteen he went from Cape Cod to Boston with
+three or four dollars in his possession, and looked about for something
+to do, rising early, walking far, observing closely, reflecting much.
+Soon he had an idea: he bought three bushels of oysters, hired a
+wheelbarrow, found a piece of board, bought six small plates, six iron
+forks, a three-cent pepper-box, and one or two other things. He was at
+the oyster-boat buying his oysters at three o'clock in the morning,
+wheeled them three miles, set up his board near a market, and began
+business. He sold out his oysters as fast as he could get them, at a
+good profit. In that same market he continued to deal in oysters and
+fish for forty years, became king of the business, and ended by founding
+a college. His success was won by industry and honesty.
+
+"Give me a chance," says Haliburton's Stupid, "and I will show you." But
+most likely he has had his chance already and neglected it.
+
+"Well, boys," said Mr. A., a New York merchant, to his four clerks one
+winter morning in 1815, "this is good news. Peace has been declared. Now
+_we_ must be up and doing. We shall have our hands full, but we can do
+as much as anybody."
+
+He was owner and part owner of several ships lying dismantled during the
+war, three miles up the river, which was covered with ice an inch thick.
+He knew that it would be a month before the ice yielded for the season,
+and that thus the merchants in other towns where the harbors were open,
+would have time to be in the foreign markets before him. His decision
+therefore was instantly taken.
+
+"Reuben," he continued, addressing one of his clerks, "go and collect as
+many laborers as possible to go up the river. Charles, do you find
+Mr.----, the rigger, and Mr.----, the sailmaker, and tell them I want
+them immediately. John, engage half-a-dozen truckmen for to-day and
+to-morrow. Stephen, do you hunt up as many gravers and caulkers as you
+can, and hire them to work for me." And Mr. A. himself sallied forth to
+provide the necessary implements for icebreaking. Before twelve o'clock
+that day, upward of an hundred men were three miles up the river,
+clearing the ships and cutting away ice, which they sawed out in large
+squares, and then thrust under the main mass to open up the channel. The
+roofing over the ships was torn off, and the clatter of the caulkers'
+mallets was like to the rattling of a hail-storm, loads of rigging were
+passed up on the ice, riggers went to and fro with belt and knife,
+sailmakers busily plied their needles, and the whole presented an
+unusual scene of stir and activity and well-directed labor. Before night
+the ships were afloat, and moved some distance down the channel; and by
+the time they had reached the wharf, namely, in some eight or ten days,
+their rigging and spars were aloft, their upper timbers caulked, and
+everything ready for them to go to sea.
+
+Thus Mr. A. competed on equal terms with the merchants of open seaports.
+Large and quick gains rewarded his enterprise, and then his neighbors
+spoke depreciatingly of his "good luck." But, as the writer from whom we
+get the story says, Mr. A. was equal to his opportunity, and this was
+the secret of his good fortune.
+
+A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and
+supposed it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward,
+she walked the streets near the Peabody Institute to get money to
+purchase food. She cut up an old, worn out, ragged cloak to make a hood
+of, when lo! in the lining of the cloak, she discovered the diamond
+bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth thirty-five hundred
+dollars, but did not know it.
+
+Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities if we could
+only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more
+than diamond bracelets, in power to do good.
+
+In our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four
+out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand,
+and in meeting common everyday wants. It is a sorry day for a young man
+who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do
+better somewhere else. Several Brazilian shepherds organized a party to
+go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of clear pebbles
+to play checkers with on the voyage. They discovered after arriving at
+Sacramento, after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, that they
+were all diamonds. They returned to Brazil only to find that the mines
+had been taken up by others and sold to the government.
+
+The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold for forty-two
+dollars by the owner, to get money to pay his passage to other mines
+where he thought he could get rich.
+
+Professor Agassiz told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm
+of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to
+sell out and try some more remunerative business.
+
+He studied coal measures and coal oil deposits, and experimented for a
+long time. He sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into the
+oil business two hundred miles away. Only a short time afterward the man
+who bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which the
+farmer had ignorantly tried to drain off.
+
+A man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Boston talking with
+a friend as to what he could do to help mankind. "I should think it
+would be a good thing," said the friend, "to begin by getting up an
+easier and cheaper chair."
+
+"I will do it," he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair. He
+found a great deal of rattan thrown away by the East India merchant
+ships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it. He began the manufacture of
+rattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by what
+he has done with what was before thrown away. While this man was
+dreaming about some far off success, he at that very time had fortune
+awaiting only his ingenuity and industry.
+
+If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will
+find millions of others have the same wants, the same demands. The
+safest business is always connected with men's prime necessities. They
+must have clothing, dwellings; they must eat. They want comforts,
+facilities of all kinds, for use and pleasure, luxury, education,
+culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any
+methods which men use, supply any demand or contribute in any way to
+their well-being, can make a fortune.
+
+But it is detrimental to the highest success to undertake anything
+merely because it is profitable. If the vocation does not supply a human
+want, if it is not healthful, if it is degrading, if it is narrowing,
+don't touch it.
+
+A selfish vocation never pays. If it belittles the manhood, blights the
+affections, dwarfs the mental life, chills the charities and shrivels
+the soul, don't touch it. Choose that occupation, if possible, which
+will be the most helpful to the largest number.
+
+It is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionaire
+manufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles on which
+they made their fortune.
+
+One of the greatest hindrances to advancement and promotion in life is
+the lack of observation and the disinclination to take pains. A keen,
+cultivated observation will see a fortune where others see only poverty.
+An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could
+ill afford to get another pair, said to himself, "I will make a metallic
+lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather." He succeeded in
+doing so and now he is a very rich man.
+
+An observing barber in Newark, N. J., thought he could make an
+improvement on shears for cutting hair, and invented "clippers" and
+became very rich. A Maine man was called from the hayfield to wash out
+the clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to
+wash before. He invented the washing-machine and made a fortune. A man
+who was suffering terribly with toothache, said to himself, "There must
+be some way of filling teeth to prevent them aching;" he invented gold
+filling for teeth.
+
+The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means.
+Want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the
+mother of all great inventions. Ericsson began the construction of a
+screw-propeller in a bath-room. John Harrison, the great inventor of the
+marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts
+of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of
+an old church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his
+famous reaper in an old grist-mill. The first model dry-dock was made in
+an attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass.,
+began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse-shed.
+
+Opportunities? They crowd around us. Forces of nature plead to be used
+in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his
+attention to electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to
+develop the God-given powers within him.
+
+There is power lying latent everywhere, waiting for the observant eye to
+discover it.
+
+First find out what the people need and then supply that want. An
+invention to make the smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a
+very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent
+office at Washington is full of wonderful devices, ingenious mechanism;
+not one in hundreds is of earthly use to the inventor or to the world,
+and yet how many families have been impoverished and have struggled for
+years mid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless
+inventions. These men did not study the wants of humanity. A. T.
+Stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was one
+dollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which people would not
+purchase. After that he made it a rule never to buy anything which
+people did not want.
+
+The first thing a youth, entering the city to make his home there, needs
+to do is to make himself a necessity to the person who employs him,
+according to the Boston _Herald_. Whatever he may have been at home, it
+counts for nothing until he has done something that makes known the
+quality of the stuff that is in him. If he shirks work, however humble
+it may be, the work will soon be inclined to shirk him. But the youth
+who comes into a city to make his way in the world, and is not afraid of
+doing his best whether he is paid for it or not, is not long in finding
+remunerative employment. The people who seem so indifferent to employing
+young people from the country are eagerly watching for the newcomers,
+but they look for qualities of character and service in actual work
+before they manifest confidence or give recognition. It is the youth who
+is deserving that wins his way to the front, and when once he has been
+tested his promotion is only a question of time. It is the same with
+young women. There are seemingly no places for them where they can earn
+a decent living, but the moment they fill their places worthily there is
+room enough for them, and progress is rapid. What the city people desire
+most is to find those who have ability to take important places, and the
+question of gaining a position in the city resolves itself at once into
+the question of what the young persons have brought with them from home.
+It is the staying qualities that have been in-wrought from childhood
+which are now in requisition, and the success of the boy or girl is
+determined by the amount of energetic character that has been developed
+in the early years at home. Take up the experience of every man or
+woman who has made a mark in the city for the last hundred years, and it
+has been the sterling qualities of the home training that have
+constituted the success of later years.
+
+Don't think you have no chance in life because you have no capital to
+begin with. Most of the rich men of to-day began poor. The chances are
+you would be ruined if you had capital. You can only use to advantage
+what has become a part of yourself by your earning it. It is estimated
+that not one rich man's son in ten thousand dies rich. God has given
+every man a capital to start with; we are born rich. He is rich who has
+good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head,
+a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands,
+with five chances on each. Equipped? Every man is equipped as only God
+could equip him. What a fortune he possesses in the marvelous mechanism
+of his body and mind. It is individual effort that has accomplished
+everything worth accomplishing in this world. Money to start with is
+only a crutch, which, if any misfortune knocks it from under you, would
+only make your fall all the more certain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+HOW DID HE BEGIN?
+
+     There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day,
+     using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began life
+     as poor boys.
+     --SETH LOW.
+
+     Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul
+     within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into
+     Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them
+     to lotus dreams.
+     --OUIDA.
+
+     'Tis a common proof,
+     That lowliness is young ambition's ladder
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+"Fifty years ago," said Hezekiah Conant, the millionaire manufacturer
+and philanthropist of Pawtucket, R. I., "I persuaded my father to let me
+leave my home in Dudley, Mass., and strike out for myself. So one
+morning in May, 1845, the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and,
+dressed in our Sunday clothes, father and I started for Worcester. Our
+object was to get me the situation offered by an advertisement in the
+Worcester County _Gazette_ as follows:
+
+     BOY WANTED.
+
+     WANTED IMMEDIATELY.--At the _Gazette_ Office, a well disposed
+     boy, able to do heavy rolling. Worcester, May 7.
+
+"The financial inducements were thirty dollars the first year,
+thirty-five the next, and forty dollars the third year and board in the
+employer's family. These conditions were accepted, and I began work the
+next day. The _Gazette_ was an ordinary four-page sheet. I soon learned
+what 'heavy rolling' meant for the paper was printed on a 'Washington'
+hand-press, the edition of about 2000 copies requiring two laborious
+intervals of about ten hours each, every week. The printing of the
+outside was generally done Friday and kept me very busy all day. The
+inside went to press about three or four o'clock Tuesday afternoon, and
+it was after three o'clock on Wednesday morning before I could go to
+bed, tired and lame from the heavy rolling. In addition, I also had the
+laborious task of carrying a quantity of water from the pump behind the
+block around to the entrance in front, and then up two flights of
+stairs, usually a daily job. I was at first everybody's servant. I was
+abused, called all sorts of nicknames, had to sweep out the office,
+build fires in winter, run errands, post bills, carry papers, wait on
+the editor, in fact I led the life of a genuine printer's devil; but
+when I showed them at length that I had learned to set type and run the
+press, I got promoted, and another boy was hired to succeed to my task,
+with all its decorations. That was my first success, and from that day
+to this I have never asked anybody to get me a job or situation, and
+never used a letter of recommendation; but when an important job was in
+prospect the proposed employers were given all facilities to learn of my
+abilities and character. If some young men are easily discouraged, I
+hope they may gain encouragement and strength from my story. It is a
+long, rough road at first, but, like the ship on the ocean, you must lay
+your course for the place where you hope to land, and take advantage of
+all favoring circumstances."
+
+"Don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give
+you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." Horace Greeley
+looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed how seedy
+they were, and replied: "You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new
+place, and I want to help him all I can." He had spent but six dollars
+for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive one hundred
+and thirty-five from Judge J. M. Sterrett of the Erie _Gazette_ for
+substitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to
+his father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania,
+and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from
+wolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, with
+tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice, he resolved to seek
+his fortune in New York City. Slinging his bundle of clothes on a stick
+over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to Buffalo,
+rode on a canal boat to Albany, descended the Hudson in a barge, and
+reached New York, just as the sun was rising, August 18, 1831.
+
+For days Horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores of
+buildings and asking if they wanted "a hand;" but "no" was the
+invariable reply. His quaint appearance led many to think he was an
+escaped apprentice. One Sunday at his boarding-place he heard that
+printers were wanted at "West's Printing-office." He was at the door at
+five o'clock Monday morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven.
+The latter had no idea that the country greenhorn could set type for the
+Polyglot Testament on which help was needed, but said: "Fix up a case
+for him and we'll see if he _can_ do anything." When the proprietor came
+in, he objected to the newcomer and told the foreman to let him go when
+his first day's work was done. That night Horace showed a proof of the
+largest and most correct day's work that had then been done. In ten
+years Horace was a partner in a small printing-office. He founded the
+_New Yorker_, the best weekly paper in the United States, but it was not
+profitable. When Harrison was nominated for President in 1840, Greeley
+started _The Log Cabin_, which reached the then fabulous circulation of
+ninety thousand. But on this paper at a penny a copy, he made no money.
+His next venture was the New York _Tribune_, price one cent. To start it
+he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five thousand copies of the
+first number. It was difficult to give them all away. He began with six
+hundred subscribers, and increased the list to eleven thousand in six
+weeks. The demand for the _Tribune_ grew faster than new machinery could
+be obtained to print it. It was a paper whose editor always tried to be
+_right_.
+
+At the World's Fair in New York in 1853 President Pierce might have been
+seen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. He was attracted
+by the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed that
+he would become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed like
+small business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but he did it
+well and with enthusiasm. In fact he was bound to do it as well as it
+could be done. Young Gould supported himself by odd jobs at surveying,
+paying his way by erecting sundials for farmers at a dollar apiece,
+frequently taking his pay in board. Thus he laid the foundation for the
+business career in which he became so rich.
+
+Fred. Douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not
+own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his
+master's debts. To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he
+had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he
+would become President of the United States. He saw his mother but two
+or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve miles
+to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn.
+He had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of the
+plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. But somehow,
+unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of
+paper and patent medicine almanacs, and no limits could then be placed
+to his career. He put to shame thousands of white boys. He fled from
+slavery at twenty-one, went North and worked as a stevedore in New York
+and New Bedford. At Nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak in an
+anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he was
+made agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Massachusetts. While traveling
+from place to place to lecture, he would study with all his might. He
+was sent to Europe to lecture, and won the friendship of several
+Englishmen, who gave him $750, with which he purchased his freedom. He
+edited a paper in Rochester, N. Y., and afterward conducted the _New
+Era_ in Washington. For several years he was Marshal of the District of
+Columbia. He became the first colored man in the United States, the peer
+of any man in the country, and died honored by all in 1895.
+
+"What has been done can be done again," said the boy with no chance who
+became Lord Beaconsfield, England's great prime minister. "I am not a
+slave, I am not a captive, and by energy I can overcome greater
+obstacles." Jewish blood flowed in his veins, and everything seemed
+against him, but he remembered the example of Joseph, who became prime
+minister of Egypt four thousand years before, and that of Daniel, who
+was prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuries
+before the birth of Christ. He pushed his way up through the lower
+classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes,
+until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of political
+and social power. Rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down in the House
+of Commons, he simply said, "The time will come when you shall hear me."
+The time did come, and the boy with no chance but a determined will,
+swayed the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.
+
+"I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a
+day," said William Cobbett. "The edge of my berth, or that of the
+guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit
+of board lying on my lap was my writing table, and the task did not
+demand anything like a year of my life. I had no money to purchase
+candles or oil; in winter it was rarely that I could get any evening
+light but that of the fire, and only my turn, even of that. To buy a pen
+or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of my food,
+though in a state of half starvation. I had no moment of time that I
+could call my own, and I had to read and write amidst the talking,
+laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of
+the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their
+freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the _farthing_ I had to
+give, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a
+great sum to me. I was as tall as I am now, and I had great health and
+great exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was
+_twopence a week_ for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon
+one occasion I had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, on a
+Friday, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which I had destined
+for the purchase of a red herring in the morning, but when I pulled off
+my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life,
+I found that I had lost my half-penny. I buried my head under the
+miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child.
+
+"If I, under such circumstances, could encounter and overcome this
+task," he added, "is there, can there be in the world, a youth to find
+any excuse for its non-performance?"
+
+"I have talked with great men," Lincoln told his fellow-clerk and
+friend, Greene, according to _McClure's Magazine_, "and I do not see how
+they differ from others."
+
+He made up his mind to put himself before the public, and talked of his
+plans to his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walked
+seven or eight miles to debating clubs. "Practicing polemics," was what
+he called the exercise.
+
+He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. Grammar
+was what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, and asked
+his advice.
+
+"If you are going before the public," Mr. Graham told him, "you ought to
+do it."
+
+But where could he get a grammar? There was but one in the neighborhood,
+Mr. Graham said, and that was six miles away.
+
+Without waiting for more information the young man rose from the
+breakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, borrowed this rare
+copy of Kirkham's Grammar, and before night was deep in its mysteries.
+From that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his leisure to
+mastering the contents of the book. Frequently he asked his friend
+Greene to "hold the book" while he recited, and when puzzled by a point
+he would consult Mr. Graham.
+
+Lincoln's eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood became
+interested. The Greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept him in
+mind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper let him
+come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright to
+read by at night. It was not long before the grammar was mastered.
+
+"Well," Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, Greene, "if that's what they
+call science, I think I'll go at another."
+
+He had made another discovery--that he could conquer subjects.
+
+The poor and friendless lad, George Peabody, weary, footsore and hungry,
+called at a tavern in Concord, N. H., and asked to be allowed to saw
+wood for lodging and breakfast. Half a century later he called there
+again, but then George Peabody was one of the greatest millionaire
+bankers of the world. Bishop Fowler says: "It is one of the greatest
+encouragements of our age, that ordinary men with extraordinary industry
+reach the highest stations."
+
+Greeley's father, because the boy tried to yoke the off ox on the near
+side, said: "Ah! that boy will never get along in the world. He'll
+never know enough to come in when it rains."
+
+He was too poor to wear stockings. But Horace persevered, and became one
+of the greatest editors of his century.
+
+Handel's father hated music, and would not allow a musical instrument in
+the house; but the boy with an aim secured a little spinet, hid it in
+the attic, where he practiced every minute he could steal without
+detection, until he surprised the great players and composers of Europe
+by his wonderful knowledge of music. He was very practical in his work,
+and studied the taste and sensitiveness of audiences until he knew
+exactly what they wanted; then he would compose something to supply the
+demand. He analyzed the effect of sounds and combinations of sounds upon
+the senses, and wrote directly to human needs. His greatest work, "The
+Messiah," was composed in Dublin for the benefit of poor debtors who
+were imprisoned there. The influence of this masterpiece was tremendous.
+It was said it out-preached the preacher, out-prayed prayers, reformed
+the wayward, softened stony hearts, as it told the wonderful story of
+redemption, in sound.
+
+A. T. Stewart began life as a teacher in New York at $300 a year. He
+soon resigned and began that career as a merchant in which he achieved a
+success almost without precedent. Honesty, one price, cash on delivery,
+and business on business principles were his invariable rules. Absolute
+regularity and system reigned in every department. In fifty years he
+made a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars. He was nominated
+as Secretary of the Treasury in 1869, but it was found that the law
+forbids a merchant to occupy that position. He offered to resign, or to
+give the entire profits of his business to the poor of New York as long
+as he should remain in office. President Grant declined to accept such
+an offer.
+
+Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by
+astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of
+astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting
+precious time over horoscopes. "I supplicate you," he writes to
+Moestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at Tübingen, do what you can
+to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and
+other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on
+beans." He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served
+anyone who would pay him.
+
+Who could have predicted that the modest, gentle boy, Raphael, without
+either riches or noted family, would have worked his way to such renown,
+or that one of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inches
+square (the Mother of Jesus), would be sold to the Empress of Russia,
+for $66,000? His Ansedei Madonna, was bought by the National Gallery for
+$350,000. Think of Michael Angelo working for six florins a month, and
+eighteen years on St. Peter's for nothing!
+
+Dr. Johnson was so afflicted with king's-evil that he lost the use of
+one eye. The youth could not even engage in the pastimes of his mates,
+as he could not see the gutter without bending his head down near the
+street. He read and studied terribly. Finally a friend offered to send
+him to Oxford, but he failed to keep his promise, and the boy had to
+leave. He returned home, and soon afterward his father died insolvent.
+He conquered adverse fortune and bodily infirmities with the fortitude
+of a true hero.
+
+Ichabod Washburn, a poor boy born near Plymouth Rock, was apprenticed to
+a blacksmith in Worcester, Mass., and was so bashful that he scarcely
+dared to eat in the presence of others; but he determined that he would
+make the best wire in the world, and would contrive ways and means to
+manufacture it in enormous quantities. At that time there was no good
+wire made in the United States. One house in England had the monopoly of
+making steel wire for pianos for more than a century. Young Washburn,
+however, had grit, and was bound to succeed. His wire became the
+standard everywhere. At one time he made 250,000 yards of iron wire
+daily, consuming twelve tons of metal, and requiring the services of
+seven hundred men. He amassed an immense fortune, of which he gave away
+a large part during his life, and bequeathed the balance to charitable
+institutions.
+
+John Jacob Astor left home at seventeen to acquire a fortune. His
+capital consisted of two dollars, and three resolutions,--to be honest,
+to be industrious and not to gamble. Two years later he reached New
+York, and began work in a fur store at two dollars a week and his board.
+Soon learning the details of the business, he began operations on his
+own account. By giving personal attention to every purchase and sale,
+roaming the woods to trade with the Indians, or crossing the Atlantic to
+sell his furs at a great profit in England, he soon became the leading
+fur dealer in the United States. His idea of what constitutes a fortune
+expanded faster than his acquisitions. At fifty he owned millions; at
+sixty his millions owned him. He invested in land, becoming in time the
+richest owner of real estate in America. Generous to his family, he
+seldom gave much for charity. He once subscribed fifty dollars for some
+benevolent purpose, when one of the committee of solicitation said, "We
+did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars." "Ah!"
+chuckled the rich furrier, "William has a rich father. Mine was poor."
+
+Elihu Burritt wrote in a diary kept at Worcester, whither he went to
+enjoy its library privileges, such entries as these: "Monday, June 18,
+headache, 40 pages Cuvier's 'Theory of the Earth,' 64 pages of French,
+11 hours' forging. Tuesday, June 19, 60 lines Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10
+lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of stars, 10 hours' forging.
+Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines Syriac, 11 hours' forging."
+He mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. He became
+eminent as the "Learned Blacksmith," and for his noble work in the
+service of humanity. Edward Everett said of the manner in which this boy
+with no chance acquired great learning: "It is enough to make one who
+has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame."
+
+"I was born in poverty," said Vice-President Henry Wilson. "Want sat by
+my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has none
+to give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served an
+apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each year,
+and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and six
+sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum of
+one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was born
+till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel weary
+miles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * In the
+first month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the woods,
+drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before daylight
+and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of six
+dollars for the month's work! Each of these dollars looked as large to
+me as the moon looks to-night."
+
+"Many a farmer's son," says Thurlow Weed, "has found the best
+opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while
+tending 'sap-bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At night
+you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having
+been gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we would
+always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazing
+bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned
+to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passed
+many a delightful night in reading. I remember in this way to have read
+a history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained from it a
+better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the
+actors in that great national tragedy, than I have received from all
+subsequent reading. I remember also how happy I was in being able to
+borrow the books of a Mr. Keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow,
+shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet."
+
+"That fellow will beat us all some day," said a merchant, speaking of
+John Wanamaker and his close attention to his work. What a prediction to
+make of a young man who started business with a little clothing in a
+hand cart in the streets of Philadelphia. But this youth had _the
+indomitable spirit of a conqueror in him_, and you could not keep him
+down. General Grant said to George W. Childs, "Mr. Wanamaker could
+command an army." His great energy, method, industry, economy, and high
+moral principle, attracted President Harrison, who appointed him
+Postmaster-General.
+
+Jacques Aristide Boucicault began his business life as an employé in a
+dry goods house in a small provincial town in France. After a few years
+he went to Paris, where he prospered so rapidly that in 1853 he became a
+partner and later the sole proprietor of the Bon Marché, then only a
+small shop, which became under his direction the most unique
+establishment in the world. His idea was to establish a combined
+philanthropic and commercial house on a large scale. Every one who
+worked for him was advanced progressively, according to his length of
+employment and the value of the services he rendered. He furnished free
+tuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employés; a
+provident fund affording a small capital for males and a marriage
+portion for females at the expiration of ten or fifteen years of
+service; a free reading room for the public; and a free art gallery for
+artists to exhibit their paintings or sculptures. After his sudden death
+in 1877, his only son carried forward his father's projects until he,
+too, died in 1879, when his widow, Marguerite Guerin, continued and
+extended his business and beneficent plans until her death in 1887. So
+well did this family lay the foundations of a building covering 108,000
+square feet, with many accessory buildings of smaller size, and of a
+business employing 3600 persons with sales amounting to nearly
+$20,000,000 annually, that every department is still conducted with all
+its former success in accordance with the instructions of the founders.
+They are here no longer in their bodily presence, but their spirit,
+their ideas, still pervade the vast establishment. Everything is still
+sold at a small profit and at a price plainly marked, and any article
+which may have ceased to please the purchaser can, without the slightest
+difficulty, be exchanged or its value refunded.
+
+When James Gordon Bennett was forty years old, he collected all his
+property, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two
+barrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher,
+newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer's devil, he started the
+New York _Herald_. In all his literary work up to this time he had
+tried to imitate Franklin's style; and, as is the fate of all imitators,
+he utterly failed.
+
+He lost twenty years of his life trying to be somebody else. He first
+showed the material he was made of in the "Salutatory," of the _Herald_,
+viz., "Our only guide shall be good, sound and practical common-sense
+applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life.
+We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and
+care nothing for any election or any candidate from President down to
+constable. We shall endeavor to record facts upon every public and
+proper subject stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when
+suitable, just, independent, fearless and good-tempered."
+
+Joseph Hunter was a carpenter, Robert Burns a ploughman, Keats a
+druggist, Thomas Carlyle a mason, Hugh Miller a stone mason. Rubens, the
+artist, was a page, Swedenborg, a mining engineer. Dante and Descartes
+were soldiers. Ben Johnson was a brick layer and worked at building
+Lincoln Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket.
+Jeremy Taylor was a barber. Andrew Johnson was a tailor. Cardinal Wolsey
+was a butcher's son. So were Defoe and Kirke White. Michael Faraday was
+the son of a blacksmith. He even excelled his teacher, Sir Humphry Davy,
+who was an apprentice to an apothecary.
+
+Virgil was the son of a porter, Homer of a farmer, Pope of a merchant,
+Horace of a shopkeeper, Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a money
+scrivener, Shakespeare of a wool stapler, and Oliver Cromwell of a
+brewer.
+
+John Wanamaker's first salary was $1.25 per week. A. T. Stewart began
+his business life as a school teacher. James Keene drove a milk wagon in
+a California town. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York _World_,
+once acted as stoker on a Mississippi steamboat. When a young man, Cyrus
+Field was a clerk in a New England store. George W. Childs was an errand
+boy for a bookseller at $4 a month. Andrew Carnegie began work in a
+Pittsburg telegraph office at $3 a week. C. P. Huntington sold butter
+and eggs for what he could get a pound or dozen. Whitelaw Reid was once
+a correspondent of a newspaper in Cincinnati at $5 per week. Adam
+Forepaugh was once a butcher in Philadelphia.
+
+Sarah Bernhardt was a dressmaker's apprentice. Adelaide Neilson began
+life as a child's nurse. Miss Braddon, the novelist, was a utility
+actress in the provinces. Charlotte Cushman was the daughter of poor
+people.
+
+Mr. W. O. Stoddard, in his "Men of Business," tells a characteristic
+story of the late Leland Stanford. When eighteen years of age his father
+purchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as he
+wished. He told Leland that he could have all he could make from the
+timber if he would leave the land clear of trees. A new market had just
+then been created for cord wood, and Leland took some money that he had
+saved, hired other choppers to help him, and sold over two thousand
+cords of wood to the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad at a net profit of
+$2600. He used this sum to start him in his law studies, and thus, as
+Mr. Stoddard says, chopped his way to the bar.
+
+It is said that the career of Benjamin Franklin is full of inspiration
+for any young man. When he left school for good he was only twelve years
+of age. At first he did little but read. He soon found, however, that
+reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to
+act upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable to
+understand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle,
+and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But
+the printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely
+inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the _third time_
+the "_Cocker's Arithmetic_," _which had baffled him at school_, and
+_ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure_. He then mastered a
+work upon navigation, which included the rudiments of geometry, and thus
+tasted "the inexhaustible charm of mathematics." He pursued a similar
+course, we are told, in acquiring the art of composition, in which, at
+length, he excelled most of the men of his time. When he was but a boy
+of sixteen, he wrote so well that the pieces which he slyly sent to his
+brother's paper were thought to have been written by some of the most
+learned men in the colony.
+
+Henry Clay, the "mill-boy of the slashes," was one of seven children of
+a widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, where
+he was drilled only in the "three R's." But he used every spare moment
+to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among
+self-made men.
+
+The most successful man is he who has triumphed over obstacles,
+disadvantages and discouragements.
+
+It is Goodyear in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure until
+the pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is Edison biding his time in
+baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power
+glows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler's bench
+nourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of love
+to benighted India;--these are the cases and examples of true success.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+OUT OF PLACE.
+
+     The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be
+     born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment
+     and happiness.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     The art of putting the right man in the right place is perhaps
+     the first in the science of government, but the art of finding
+     a satisfactory position for the discontented is the most
+     difficult.
+     --TALLEYRAND.
+
+     It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the
+     misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order
+     to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who
+     now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share
+     they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to
+     them by such a division.
+     --ADDISON.
+
+     I was born to other things.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     How many a rustic Milton has passed by,
+     Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
+     In unremitting drudgery and care!
+     How many a vulgar Cato has compelled
+     His energies, no longer tameless then,
+     To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail.
+     --SHELLEY.
+
+
+"But I'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was
+about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a
+salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful," said the
+youth. "How? Tell me how." "I don't know, sir, I don't know." "Nor do
+I," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "Only
+don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. Try me at something besides
+selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell." "I know that, too," said
+the principal; "that is what is wrong." "But I can make myself useful
+somehow," persisted the young man; "I know I can." He was placed in the
+counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and
+in a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, but
+an eminent accountant.
+
+"Out of an art," says Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake
+him for an imbecile--at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and
+how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of
+which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden
+key, admits you to follow, an humble reverent visitor."
+
+A man out of place is like a fish out of water. Its fins mean nothing,
+they are only a hindrance. The fish can do nothing but flounder out of
+its element. But as soon as the fins feel the water, they mean
+something. Fifty-two per cent of our college graduates studied law, not
+because, in many cases, they have the slightest natural aptitude for it,
+but because it is put down as the proper road to promotion.
+
+A man never grows in personal power and moral stamina when out of his
+place. If he grows at all, it is a narrow, one-sided, stunted growth,
+not a manly growth. Nature abhors the slightest perversion of natural
+aptitude or deviation from the sealed orders which accompany every soul
+into this world.
+
+A man out of place is not half a man. He feels unmanned, unsexed. He
+cannot respect himself, hence he cannot be respected.
+
+You can enter all kinds of horses for a race, but only those which have
+natural adaptation for speed will make records; the others will only
+make themselves ridiculous by their lumbering, unnatural exertions to
+win. How many truck and family-horse lawyers make themselves ridiculous
+by trying to speed on the law track, where courts and juries only laugh
+at them. The effort to redeem themselves from scorn may enable them by
+unnatural exertions to become fairly passable, but the same efforts
+along the line of their strength or adaptation would make them kings in
+their line.
+
+"Jonathan," said Mr. Chace, when his son told of having nearly fitted
+himself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on Monday
+morning." It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop to
+work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a United
+States Senator from Rhode Island.
+
+Galileo was sent to the university at Pisa at seventeen, with the
+strict injunction not to neglect medical subjects for the alluring study
+of philosophy or literature. But when he was eighteen he discovered the
+great principle of the pendulum by a lamp left swinging in the
+cathedral.
+
+John Adams' father was a shoemaker; and, trying to teach his son the
+art, gave him some "uppers" to cut out by a pattern which had a
+three-cornered hole in it to hang it up by. The future statesman
+followed the pattern, hole and all.
+
+There is a tradition that Tennyson's first poems were published at the
+instigation of his father's coachman. His grandfather gave the lad ten
+shillings for writing an elegy on his grandmother. As he handed it to
+him, he said; "There, that's the first money you ever earned by your
+poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last."
+
+Murillo's mother had marked her boy for a priest, but nature had already
+laid her hand upon him and marked him for her own. His mother was
+shocked on returning from church one day to find that the child had
+taken down the sacred family picture, "Jesus and the Lamb," and had
+painted his own hat on the Saviour's head, and had changed the lamb into
+a dog.
+
+The poor boy's home was broken up, and he started out on foot and alone
+to seek his fortune. All he had was courage and determination to make
+something of himself. He not only became a famous artist, but a man of
+great character.
+
+"Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned," says
+Thackeray, "have a great tenderness and pity for the folks who are not
+endowed with the prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a
+regard for dunces,--those of my own school days were among the
+pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest
+in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by
+the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble
+prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before
+his beard grew."
+
+"In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon the town of
+Sidmouth, the tide rose to a terrible height. In the midst of this
+sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach,
+was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her
+mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the
+Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was
+up: but I need not tell you the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean
+beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she
+should not have meddled with a tempest."
+
+How many Dame Partingtons there are of both sexes, and in every walk of
+life!
+
+The young swan is restless and uneasy until she finds the element she
+has never before seen. Then,
+
+           "With archéd neck
+     Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
+     Her state with oary feet."
+
+What a wretched failure was that of Haydon the painter. He thought he
+failed through the world's ingratitude or injustice, but his failure was
+due wholly to his being out of place. His bitter disappointments at his
+half successes were really pitiable because to him they were more than
+failures. He had not the slightest sense of color, yet went through life
+under the delusion that he was an artist.
+
+"If it is God's will to take any of my children by death, I hope it may
+be Isaac," said the father of Dr. Isaac Barrow. "Why do you tell that
+blockhead the same thing twenty times over?" asked John Wesley's father.
+"Because," replied his mother, "if I had told him but nineteen times,
+all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand and
+remember."
+
+A man out of place may manage to get a living, but he has lost the
+buoyancy, energy and enthusiasm which are as natural to a man in his
+place as his breath. He is industrious, but he works mechanically and
+without heart. It is to support himself and family, _not because he
+cannot help it_. Dinner time does not come two hours before he realizes
+it; a man out of place is constantly looking at his watch and thinking
+of his salary.
+
+If a man is in his place he is happy, joyous, cheerful, energetic,
+fertile in resources. The days are all too short for him. All his
+faculties give their consent to his work; say "yes" to his occupation.
+He is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are
+at play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of his
+faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of
+forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling of
+exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded
+cattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman's study,
+composing sermons to put the congregation to sleep.
+
+To be out of place is demoralizing to all the powers of manhood. We
+can't cheat nature out of her aim; if she has set all the currents of
+your life toward medicine or law, you will only be a botch at anything
+else. Will-power and application cannot make a farmer of a born painter
+any more than a lumbering draught horse can be changed into a race
+horse. When the powers are not used along the line of their strength
+they become demoralized, weakened, deteriorated. Self-respect,
+enthusiasm and courage ooze out; we become half-hearted and success is
+impossible.
+
+Scott was called the great blockhead while in Edinburgh College. Grant's
+mother called the future General and President, "Useless Grant," because
+he was so unhandy and dull.
+
+Erskine had at length found his place as a lawyer; he carried everything
+before him at the bar. Had he remained in the navy he would probably
+never have been heard from. When elected to Parliament, his lofty spirit
+was chilled by the cold sarcasm and contemptuous indifference of Pitt,
+whom he was expected by his friends to annihilate. But he was again out
+of his place; he was shorn of his magic power and his eloquent tongue
+faltered from a consciousness of being out of his place.
+
+Gould failed as a storekeeper, tanner and surveyor and civil engineer,
+before he got into a railroad office where he "struck his gait."
+
+When extracts from James Russell Lowell's poem at Harvard were shown his
+father at Rome, instead of being pleased the latter said, "James
+promised me when I left home, that he would give up poetry and stick to
+books. I had hoped that he had become less flighty." The world is full
+of people at war with their positions.
+
+Man only grows when he is developing along the lines of his own
+individuality, and not when he is trying to be somebody else. All
+attempts to imitate another man, when there is no one like you in all
+creation, as the pattern was broken when you were born, is not only to
+ruin your own pattern, but to make only an echo of the one imitated.
+There is no strength off the lines of our own individuality.
+
+Anywhere else we are dwarfs, weaklings, echoes, and the echo even of a
+great man is a sorry contrast to even the smallest human being who is
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WHAT SHALL I DO?
+
+     No man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents,
+     nor a good one who mistook them.
+     --SWIFT.
+
+     Blessed is he who has found his work,--let him ask no other
+     blessing.
+     --CARLYLE.
+
+     Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line
+     of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will
+     succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times
+     worse than nothing.
+     --SYDNEY SMITH.
+
+     He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom,
+     and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
+     --BEECHER.
+
+     I am glad to think
+     I am not bound to make the world go round;
+     But only to discover and to do,
+     With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.
+     --JEAN INGELOW.
+
+
+"Do that which is assigned you," says Emerson, "and you cannot hope too
+much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance
+brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of
+the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all
+these."
+
+"I felt that I was in the world to do something, and thought I must,"
+said Whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. It is the man
+who must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any other of
+the overstocked professions, who will succeed. His certain call--that
+is, his love for it, and his fidelity to it--are the imperious factors
+of his career. If a man enters a profession simply because his
+grandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants him to, with no
+love or adaptability for it, it were far better for him to be a day
+laborer. In the humbler work, his intelligence may make him a leader; in
+the other career he might do as much harm as a boulder rolled from its
+place upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express.
+
+Lowell said: "It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not,
+that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in
+the rough."
+
+"The age has no aversion to preaching as such," said Phillips Brooks,
+"it may not listen to your preaching." But though it may not listen to
+your preaching, it will wear your boots, or buy your flour, or see stars
+through your telescope. It has a use for every person, and it is his
+business to find out what that use is.
+
+The following advertisement appeared several times in a paper without
+bringing a letter:
+
+     "WANTED.--Situation by a Practical Printer, who is competent to
+     take charge of any department in a printing and publishing
+     house. Would accept a professorship in any of the academies.
+     Has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship,
+     geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. Has had some
+     experience as a lay preacher. Would have no objection to form a
+     small class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in
+     the higher branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he would be
+     invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass or
+     tenor singer in a choir."
+
+At length there appeared this addition to the notice:
+
+     "P.S. Will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than
+     the usual rates."
+
+This secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen no
+more.
+
+Don't wait for a higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge the
+position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. Fill it
+as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more
+thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow-workmen. Study
+your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your
+employer points. The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in
+simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in
+surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a
+larger salary.
+
+"He that hath a trade," says Franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hath
+a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs is
+higher than a gentleman on his knees."
+
+_Follow your bent._ You cannot long fight successfully against your
+aspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the
+longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks;
+but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine
+it and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or
+in some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to
+practice in perfection." Nature hates all botched and half-finished
+work, and will pronounce her curse upon it.
+
+Your talent is your _call_. Your legitimate destiny speaks in your
+character.
+
+If you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of every
+faculty of your being.
+
+If possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount of
+your experience and tastes. You will then not only have a congenial
+vocation, but will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge,
+which is your true capital.
+
+There is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his own
+peculiar part in life. A very few--the geniuses, we call them--have this
+marked in an unusual degree, and very early in life.
+
+A man's business does more to make him than anything else. It hardens
+his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his
+mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his
+wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition,
+makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's
+work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. No
+man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. A man without
+employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a
+man. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. A
+good cranium full of brains is not a man. The bone and muscle and brain
+must know how to do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a
+man's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before they
+constitute a man.
+
+Whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. Most people look
+upon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a living.
+What a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the great
+school of life, the great man-developer, the character-builder; that
+which should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into symmetry,
+harmony and beauty, all the God-given faculties within us! How we shrink
+from the task and evade the lessons which were intended for the
+unfolding of life's great possibilities into usefulness and power, as
+the sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the flower.
+
+"Girls, you cheapen yourselves by lack of purpose in life," says Rena
+L. Miner. "You show commendable zeal in pursuing your studies; your
+alertness in comprehending and ability in surmounting difficult problems
+have become proverbial; nine times out of ten you outrank your brothers
+thus far; but when the end is attained, the goal reached, whether it be
+the graduating certificate from a graded school, or a college diploma,
+for nine out of every ten it might as well be added thereto, 'dead to
+further activity,' or, 'sleeping until marriage shall resurrect her.'
+
+"Crocheting, placquing, dressing, visiting, music, and flirtations, make
+up the sum total for the expense and labor expended for your existence.
+If forced to earn your support, you are content to stand behind a
+counter, or teach school term after term in the same grade, while the
+young men who graduated with you walk up the grades, as up a ladder, to
+professorship and good salary, from which they swing off into law,
+physics, or perhaps the legislative firmament, leaving difficulties and
+obstacles like nebulæ in their wake.--You girls, satisfied with
+mediocrity, have an eye mainly for the 'main chance'--marriage. If you
+marry wealthy,--which is marrying well according to the modern popular
+idea,--you dress more elegantly, cultivate more fashionable society,
+leave your thinking for your husband and your minister to do for you,
+and become in the economy of life but a sentient nonentity. If you are
+true to the grand passion, and accept with it poverty, you bake, brew,
+scrub, spank the children, and talk with your neighbor over the back
+fence for recreation, spending the years literally like the horse in a
+treadmill, all for the lack of a purpose,--a purpose sufficiently potent
+to convert the latent talent into a gem of living beauty, a creative
+force which makes all adjuncts secondary, like planets to their central
+sun. Choose some one course or calling, and master it in all its
+details, sleep by it, swear by it, work for it, and, if marriage crowns
+you, it can but add new glory to your labor."
+
+Dr. Hall says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's
+right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and
+smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;
+girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and
+the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to
+dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense,--girls who have
+a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are
+independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a
+trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of
+defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theatre, or lacerate
+their feet with high heels and endanger their health with corsets;
+girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers
+at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want
+good girls,--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to
+the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sin
+and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirl
+of ten has all too often. And we want careful girls and prudent girls,
+who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in
+comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may
+have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between
+the essentials and non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to
+spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in
+the home rather than an expense and a useless burden. We want girls with
+hearts,--girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that
+flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own
+beautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls,
+and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and
+impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with
+little desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls
+scattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather
+does under the spell of summer showers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+WILL YOU PAY THE PRICE?
+
+     The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     All desire knowledge, but no one is willing to pay the price.
+     --JUVENAL.
+
+     There is no royal path which leads to geometry.
+     --EUCLID.
+
+     There is no road to success but through a clear, strong
+     purpose. A purpose underlies character, culture, position,
+     attainment of whatever sort.
+     --T. T. MUNGER.
+
+     Remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is not
+     action; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whose
+     law of improvement is not energy.
+     --E. B. HALL.
+
+     "We have but what we make, and every good
+     Is locked by nature in a granite hand,
+     Sheer labor must unclench."
+
+
+"Oh, if I could thus put a dream on canvas!" exclaimed an enthusiastic
+young artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. "Dream on canvas!"
+growled the master, "it is the ten thousand touches with the brush you
+must learn to put on canvas that make your dream."
+
+"There is but one method of attaining excellence," said Sydney Smith,
+"and that is hard labor."
+
+"If only Milton's imagination could have conceived his visions," says
+Waters, "his consummate industry alone could have carved the immortal
+lines which enshrine them. If only Newton's mind could reach out to the
+secrets of nature, even his genius could only do it by the homeliest
+toil. The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night's dreams, but, like
+coral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed
+their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions of
+persevering labor. The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished
+like a night's phantasy, had not his industry given them permanence."
+
+Salvini contributes the following to the _Century_ as to his habits of
+study before he had established himself as a past master of tragedy: "I
+imposed upon myself a new method of study. While I was busying myself
+with the part of Saul, I read and reread the Bible, so as to become
+impregnated with the appropriate sentiments, manners and local color.
+When I took up Othello, I pored over the history of the Venetian
+Republic and that of the Moorish invasion of Spain. I studied the
+passions of the Moors, their art of war, their religious beliefs, nor
+did I overlook the romance of Giraldi Cinthio, in order the better to
+master that sublime character. I did not concern myself about a
+superficial study of the words, or of some point of scenic effect, or of
+greater or less accentuation of certain phrases with a view to win
+passing applause; a vaster horizon opened out before me--an infinite sea
+on which my bark could navigate in security, without fear of falling in
+with reefs."
+
+His method was not new, but he considered it so, and gives his opinion
+in quotation-marks. He speaks of characters with which, his name is not
+always associated by writers on the stage, but is correct, I think, in
+the main.
+
+Many years ago a little boy entered Harrow school and was put in a class
+beyond his years, wherein all the other boys had the advantage of
+previous instruction. His master used to reprove his dullness, but all
+his efforts could not raise him from the lowest place in the class. The
+boy finally procured the elementary books which the other boys had
+studied. He devoted the hours of play and many of the hours of sleep to
+mastering the elementary principles of these books. This boy was soon at
+the head of his class and the pride of Harrow. The statue of that boy,
+Sir William Jones, stands to-day in St. Paul's Cathedral; for he lived
+to be the greatest Oriental scholar of Europe.
+
+"What is the secret of success in business?" asked a friend of Cornelius
+Vanderbilt. "Secret! there is no secret about it," replied the
+commodore; "all you have to do is to attend to your business and go
+ahead." If you would adopt Vanderbilt's method, know your business,
+attend to it, and keep down expenses until your fortune is safe from
+business perils.
+
+"Work or starve," is nature's motto,--and it is written on the stars and
+the sod alike,--starve mentally, starve morally, starve physically. It
+is an inexorable law of nature that whatever is not used, dies. "Nothing
+for nothing," is her maxim. If we are idle and shiftless by choice, we
+shall be nerveless and powerless by necessity.
+
+The mottoes of great men often give us glimpses of the secret of their
+characters and success. "Work! work! work!" was the motto of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, David Wilkie, and scores of other men who have left their mark
+upon the world. Voltaire's motto was "Toujours au travail" (always at
+work). Scott's maxim was "Never be doing nothing." Michael Angelo was a
+wonderful worker. He even slept in his clothes ready to spring to his
+work as soon as he awoke. He kept a block of marble in his bedroom that
+he might get up in the night and work when he could not sleep. His
+favorite device was an old man in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it,
+bearing this inscription: "Ancora imparo" (still I'm learning). Even
+after he was blind he would ask to be wheeled into the Belvidere, to
+examine the statues with his hands. Cobden used to say, "I'm working
+like a horse without a moment to spare." It was said that Handel, the
+musician, did the work of a dozen men. Nothing ever daunted him. He
+feared neither ridicule nor defeat. Lord Palmerston worked like a slave,
+even in his old age. Being asked when he considered a man in his prime,
+he replied, "Seventy-nine," that being his own age. Humboldt was one of
+the world's great workers. In summer he arose at four in the morning for
+thirty years. He used to say work was as much of a necessity as eating
+or sleeping. Sir Walter Scott was a phenomenal worker. He wrote the
+"Waverley Novels" at the rate of twelve volumes a year. He averaged a
+volume every two months during his whole working life. What an example
+is this to the young men of to-day, of the possibilities of an earnest
+life! Edmund Burke was one of the most prodigious workers that ever
+lived.
+
+George Stephenson used to work at meal time, getting out loads of coal
+while the miners were at dinner in order that he might earn a few extra
+shillings to buy a spelling-book and an arithmetic. His associates
+thought he was very foolish, and asked him what good it would do to
+learn to read and cipher. He told them he was determined to improve his
+mind; so he studied whenever he could snatch a minute before the
+engine's fire, and in every possible situation until he had a good,
+practical, common-sense education.
+
+Garibaldi's father decided that Guiseppe should be a minister, because
+the boy was so sorry for a cricket which lost its leg. Samuel Morse's
+father concluded that his son would preach well because he could not
+keep his head above water in a dangerous attempt to catch bait in the
+Mystic River. President Dwight told young Morse he would never make a
+painter, and hinted that he never would amount to much any way if he did
+not study more. Although under the teaching of West and Allston in
+London, he became a tolerable portrait painter, he did not find his
+sphere until returning from England on a sailing vessel, he heard
+Professor Jackson explain an electrical experiment in Paris, when the
+thought of the telegraph flashed into his mind and he found no rest,
+until he flashed over the wire the first message, "What hath God
+wrought!" on the experimental line between Baltimore and Washington:
+this was May 24, 1844.
+
+William H. Vanderbilt was by far the wealthiest man in the world.
+Chauncey M. Depew estimated his fortune at two hundred millions. He left
+his eight children ten millions each, except Cornelius and William K.,
+who had sixty-five millions each. Commodore Vanderbilt, his father,
+amassed a fortune of eighty millions of dollars in his own lifetime, and
+that too at a time when it was more difficult to make money than it is
+now.
+
+Mr. C. P. Huntington is a good example of a self-made man. His father
+was a Connecticut farmer. The farm was left to him, but he traded it off
+for a lot of clocks which he peddled in mining districts for gold dust
+and nuggets. He and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened a
+hardware store in California. They united with Leland Stanford in the
+construction of a railroad, and they all got rich rapidly. Mr.
+Huntington is one of the greatest railroad operators of the country. He
+always acted upon the principle that he would control the stock of any
+road in which he was interested. He is one of the most methodical men of
+all the millionaires of this country. He is very plain in his manner,
+strictly temperate, and very abstemious in his living. He said he never
+knew what it was to be tired.
+
+Russell Sage used to keep a grocery store in Troy, N. Y. He finally
+associated himself with Jay Gould, who used to be a constant borrower of
+money of him. Mr. Sage probably keeps more ready money on hand than any
+other millionaire. He can nearly always control ten millions or more at
+call. He has never speculated in stocks to any extent. Mr. Sage's word
+is as good as any bond. He has no taste for ordinary diversions, except
+driving.
+
+Philip D. Armour, who has the appearance of a prosperous farmer, was
+born on a farm near Watertown, N. J. He became fired with a desire to
+see the "Boundless West." His mind seemed to run to hogs, and with a
+financial instinct he made up his mind that there was a fortune in
+transporting the hogs from where they were so plenty to where there were
+so few of them and so many to eat them. He could now purchase every hog
+in the world and then have money left to buy a railroad or two.
+
+Mrs. Hetty Green is probably the richest woman in the world. Her fortune
+has grown from the little industry of her father in New Bedford, Mass.
+She has raised the nine millions left her by her father and nine
+millions left her by her aunt to thirty millions. She is a woman of
+great ability and courage. She once took with her five millions of
+dollars of securities in a satchel on a street car to deposit with her
+banker on Wall street.
+
+The probabilities are that billionaires will be as plentiful in the
+twentieth century as millionaires are to-day, through hard work,
+self-denial, rigid economy, method, accuracy, and strict temperance, for
+not one of the self-made millionaires are intemperate. John D.
+Rockefeller never tastes intoxicating liquor. He seems as unvarying in
+his method and system as the laws of the universe. Jay Gould did not use
+wine or intoxicating liquor of any kind. Mr. Huntington does not even
+drink coffee, while William Waldorf Astor merely takes a sip of wine
+for courtesy's sake. Not one of the leading millionaires uses tobacco,
+and not one of them is profane. Very rich men are almost always honest
+in their dealings, so far as their word is concerned. William Waldorf
+Astor, until recently, has been considered the richest man in the world,
+but John D. Rockefeller surpasses him now, it is said. The whole wealth
+of Croesus was little more than the income of this modern Croesus
+for one year. Mr. Rockefeller controls about eighty or ninety millions
+of capital stock in the Standard Oil Trust. The Standard Oil Company is
+one of the best managed corporations in the world.
+
+Two centuries and a quarter ago, a little, tempest-tossed,
+weather-beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wild Atlantic,
+landed upon the bleakest shore of New England. From her deck disembarked
+a hundred and one careworn exiles.
+
+To the casual observer no event could seem more insignificant. The
+contemptuous eye of the world scarcely deigned to notice it. Yet the
+famous vessel that bore Cæsar and his fortunes, carried but an ignoble
+freight compared with that of the Mayflower. Though landed by a
+treacherous pilot upon a barren and inhospitable coast, they sought
+neither richer fields nor a more congenial climate, but liberty and
+opportunity.
+
+A lady once asked Turner the secret of his great success.
+
+"I have no secret, madam, but hard work."
+
+"This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because
+they fail to learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from
+ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing."
+
+See Balzac, in his lonely garret, toiling, toiling, waiting, waiting,
+amid poverty and hunger, but neither hunger, debt, poverty nor
+discouragement could induce him to swerve a hair's breadth from his
+purpose. He could wait, even while a world scoffed.
+
+"Mankind is more indebted to industry than to ingenuity," says Addison;
+"the gods set up their favors at a price and industry is the purchaser."
+
+Rome was a mighty nation while industry led her people, but when her
+great conquests of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above work,
+that moment her glory began to fade, and vice and corruption, induced by
+idleness, doomed the proud city to an ignominious history. Even Cicero,
+Rome's great orator, said, "All artisans are engaged in a disgraceful
+occupation;" and Aristotle said, "The best regulated states will not
+permit a mechanic to be a citizen, for it is impossible for one who
+lives the life of a mechanic, or hired servant, to practice a life of
+virtue. Some were born to be slaves." But, fortunately there came a
+mightier than Rome, Cicero or Aristotle, whose magnificent life and
+example forever lifted the false ban from labor and redeemed it from
+disgrace. He gave dignity to the most menial service, and significance
+to labor.
+
+Christ did not say, "Come unto me all ye pleasure hunters, ye indolent
+and ye lazy;" but "Come all ye that _labor_ and are _heavy laden_."
+
+Columbus was a persistent and practical, as well as an intellectual
+hero. He went from one state to another, urging kings and emperors to
+undertake the first visiting of a world which his instructed spirit
+already discerned in the far-off seas. He first tried his own countrymen
+at Genoa, but found none ready to help him. He then went to Portugal,
+and submitted his project to John II., who laid it before his council.
+It was scouted as extravagant and chimerical. Nevertheless, the king
+endeavored to steal Columbus's idea. A fleet was sent forth in the
+direction indicated by the navigator, but, being frustrated by storms
+and winds, it returned to Lisbon after four days' voyaging.
+
+Columbus returned to Genoa, and again renewed his propositions to the
+Republic, but without success. Nothing discouraged him. The finding of
+the New World was the irrevocable object of his life. He went to Spain,
+and landed at the town of Palos, in Andalusia. He went by chance to a
+convent of Franciscans, knocked at the door and asked for a little bread
+and water. The prior gratefully received the stranger, entertained him,
+and learned from him the story of his life. He encouraged him in his
+hopes, and furnished him with an admission to the Court of Spain, then
+at Cordova. King Ferdinand received him graciously, but before coming to
+a decision he desired to lay the project before a council of his wisest
+men at Salamanca. Columbus had to reply, not only to the scientific
+arguments laid before him, but to citations from the Bible. The Spanish
+clergy declared that the theory of the antipodes was hostile to the
+faith. The earth, they said, was an immense flat disk; and if there was
+a new earth beyond the ocean, then all men could not be descended from
+Adam. _Columbus was considered a fool._
+
+Still bent on his idea, he wrote to the King of England, then to the
+King of France, without effect. At last, in 1492, Columbus was
+introduced by Louis de Saint Angel to Queen Isabella of Spain. The
+friends who accompanied him pleaded his cause with so much force and
+conviction that he at length persuaded the queen to aid him.
+
+Lord Ellenborough was a great worker. He had a very hard time in getting
+a start at the bar, but was determined never to relax his industry until
+success came to him. When he was worked down to absolute exhaustion, he
+had this card which he kept constantly before his eyes, lest he might be
+tempted to relax his efforts: "Read or Starve."
+
+Show me a man who has made fifty thousand dollars, and I will show you
+in that man an equivalent of energy, attention to detail,
+trustworthiness, punctuality, professional knowledge, good address,
+common sense, and other marketable qualities. The farmer respects his
+savings bank book not unnaturally, for it declares with all the
+solemnity of a sealed and stamped document that for a certain length of
+time he rose at six o'clock each morning to oversee his labors, that he
+patiently waited upon seasonable weather, that he understood buying and
+selling. To the medical man, his fee serves as a medal to indicate that
+he was brave enough to face small pox and other infectious diseases, and
+his self-respect is fostered thereby.
+
+The barrister's brief is marked with the price of his legal knowledge,
+of his eloquence, or of his brave endurance during a period of
+hope-deferred brieflessness.
+
+A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing for his album.
+Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you only
+five minutes," objected the rich man. "Yes, but it took me thirty years
+to learn how to do it in five minutes."
+
+"I prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an
+hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "In that,"
+said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they also
+thought nothing of it."
+
+Virgil seems to have accomplished about four lines a week; but then they
+have lasted eighteen hundred years and will last eighteen hundred more.
+
+Seven years Virgil is said to have expended in the composition of the
+Georgics, and they could all be printed in about seven columns of an
+ordinary newspaper. Tradition reports that he was in the habit of
+composing a few lines in the morning and spending the rest of the day in
+polishing them. Campbell used to say that if a poet made one good line a
+week, he did very well indeed; but Moore thought that if a poet did his
+duty, he could get a line done every day.
+
+What an army of young men enters the success-contest every year as raw
+recruits! Many of them are country youths flocking to the cities to buy
+success. Their young ambitions have been excited by some book, or fired
+by the story of some signal success, and they dream of becoming Astors
+or Girards, Stewarts or Wanamakers, Vanderbilts or Goulds, Lincolns or
+Garfields, until their innate energy impels them to try their own
+fortune in the magic metropolis. But what are you willing to pay for
+"success," as you call it, young man? Do you realize what that word
+means in a great city in the nineteenth century, where men grow gray at
+thirty and die of old age at forty,--where the race of life has become
+so intense that the runners are treading on the heels of those before
+them; and "woe to him who stops to tie his shoestring?" Do you know that
+only two or three out of every hundred will ever win permanent success,
+and only because they have kept everlastingly at it; and that the rest
+will sooner or later fail and many die in poverty because they have
+given up the struggle.
+
+There are multitudes of men who never rely wholly upon themselves and
+achieve independence. They are like summer vines, which never grow even
+ligneous, but stretch out a thousand little hands to grasp the stronger
+shrubs; and if they cannot reach them, they lie dishevelled in the
+grass, hoof-trodden, and beaten of every storm. It will be found that
+the first real movement upward will not take place until, in a spirit of
+resolute self-denial, indolence, so natural to almost every one, is
+mastered. Necessity is, usually, the spur that sets the sluggish
+energies in motion. Poverty, therefore, is often of inestimable value as
+an incentive to the best endeavors of which we are capable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FOUNDATION STONES.
+
+     In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should
+     be made.
+     --CICERO.
+
+     How great soever a genius may be, ... certain it is that he
+     will never shine in his full lustre, nor shed the full
+     influence he is capable of, unless to his own experience he
+     adds that of other men and other ages.
+     --BOLINGBROKE.
+
+     It is for want of the little that human means must add to the
+     wonderful capacity for improvement, born in man, that by far
+     the greatest part of the intellect, innate in our race,
+     perishes undeveloped and unknown.
+     --EDWARD EVERETT.
+
+     If any man fancies that there is some easier way of gaining a
+     dollar than by squarely earning it, he has lost his clue to his
+     way through this mortal labyrinth and must henceforth wander as
+     chance may dictate.
+     --HORACE GREELEY.
+
+     What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on
+     what we already are; and what we are will be the result of
+     previous years of self-discipline.
+     --H. P. LIDDON.
+
+     Learn to labor and to wait.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+"What avails all this sturdiness?" asked an oak tree which had grown
+solitary for two hundred years, bitterly handled by frosts and wrestled
+by winds. "Why am I to stand here useless? My roots are anchored in
+rifts of rocks; no herds can lie down under my shadow; I am far above
+singing birds, that seldom come to rest among my leaves; I am set as a
+mark for storms, that bend and tear me; my fruit is serviceable for no
+appetite; it had been better for me to have been a mushroom, gathered in
+the morning for some poor man's table, than to be a hundred-year oak,
+good for nothing."
+
+While it yet spoke, the axe was hewing at its base. It died in sadness,
+saying as it fell, "Weary ages for nothing have I lived."
+
+The axe completed its work. By and by the trunk and root form the knees
+of a stately ship, bearing the country's flag around the world. Other
+parts form keel and ribs of merchantmen, and having defied the mountain
+storms, they now equally resist the thunder of the waves and the murky
+threat of scowling hurricanes. Other parts are laid into floors, or
+wrought into wainscoting, or carved for frames of noble pictures, or
+fashioned into chairs that embosom the weakness of old age. Thus the
+tree, in dying, came not to its end, but to its beginning of life. It
+voyaged the world. It grew to parts of temples and dwellings. It held
+upon its surface the soft tread of children and the tottering steps of
+patriarchs. It rocked in the cradle. It swayed the limbs of age by the
+chimney corner, and heard, secure within, the roar of those old,
+unwearied tempests that once surged about its mountain life. All its
+early struggles and hardships had enabled it to grow tough and hard and
+beautiful of grain, alike useful and ornamental.
+
+"Sir, you have been to college, I presume?" asked an illiterate but
+boastful exhorter of a clergyman. "Yes, sir," was the reply. "I am
+thankful," said the former, "that the Lord opened my mouth without any
+learning." "A similar event," retorted the clergyman, "happened in
+Balaam's time."
+
+Why not allow the schoolboy to erase from his list of studies all
+subjects that appear to him useless? Would he not erase every thing
+which taxed his pleasure and freedom? Would he not obey the call of his
+blood, rather than the advice of his teacher? Ignorant men who have made
+money tell him that the study of geography is useless; his tea will come
+over the sea to him whether he knows where China is or not; what
+difference does it make whether verbs agree with their subjects or not?
+Why waste time learning geometry or algebra? Who keeps accounts by
+these? Learning spoils a man for business, they tell him; they begrudge
+the time and money spent in education. They want cheap and rapid transit
+through college for their children. Veneer will answer every practical
+purpose for them, instead of solid mahogany, or even paint and pine will
+do.
+
+It is said that the editors of the Dictionary of American Biography
+who diligently searched the records of living and dead Americans, found
+15,142 names worthy of a place in their six volumes of annals of
+successful men, and 5326, or more than one-third of them, were
+college-educated men. One in forty of the college educated attained a
+success worthy of mention, and but one in 10,000 of those not so
+educated; so that the college-bred man had two hundred and fifty times
+the chances for success that others had. Medical records, it is said,
+show that but five per cent. of the practicing physicians of the United
+States are college graduates; and yet forty-six per cent. of the
+physicians who became locally famous enough to be mentioned by those
+editors came from that small five per cent. of college educated persons.
+Less than four per cent. of the lawyers were college-bred, yet they
+furnished more than one-half of all who became successful. Not one per
+cent. of the business men of the country were college educated, yet that
+small fraction of college-bred men had seventeen times the chances of
+success that their fellow men of business had. In brief, the
+college-educated lawyer has fifty per cent. more chances for success
+than those not so favored; the college-educated physician, forty-six per
+cent. more; the author, thirty-seven per cent. more; the statesman,
+thirty-three per cent.; the clergyman, fifty-eight per cent.; the
+educator, sixty-one per cent.; the scientist, sixty-three per cent. You
+should therefore get the best and most complete education that it is
+possible for you to obtain.
+
+Knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hidden
+mysteries of a successful life.
+
+"I do not remember," said Beecher, "a book in all the depths of
+learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of
+art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not
+known to have been long and patiently elaborated."
+
+"You are a fool to stick so close to your work all the time," said one
+of Vanderbilt's young friends; "we are having our fun while we are
+young, for when will we if not now?" But Cornelius was either earning
+more money by working overtime, or saving what he had earned, or at home
+asleep, recruiting for the next day's labor and preparing for a large
+harvest later. Like all successful men, he made finance a study. When he
+entered the railroad business, it was estimated that his fortune was
+thirty-five or forty million dollars.
+
+"The spruce young spark," says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his
+mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily
+during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast
+horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the
+business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting
+his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not
+earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a
+situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to
+despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits
+and acquiring fortune."
+
+"When a man has done his work," says Ruskin, "and nothing can any way be
+materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with
+his fate if he will; but what excuse can you find for willfulness of
+thought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on your
+decisions? A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home
+forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! A youth
+thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity
+of a moment! A youth thoughtless, when his every action is a
+foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation
+of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than
+now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly
+thoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be done
+there."
+
+"On to Berlin," was the shout of the French army in July, 1870; but, to
+the astonishment of the world, the French forces were cut in two and
+rolled as by a tidal wave into Metz and around Sedan. Soon two French
+armies and the Emperor surrendered, and German troopers paraded the
+streets of captured Paris.
+
+But as men thought it out, as Professor Wells tells us, they came to see
+that it was not France that was beaten, but only Louis Napoleon and a
+lot of nobles, influential only because they bore titles or were
+favorites. Louis Napoleon, the feeble bearer of a great name, was
+emperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happy
+accidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta and
+Solferino. But the unmasking time came in the Franco-Prussian War, as it
+always comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men.
+And such were the German leaders,--William, strong, upright, warlike,
+"every inch a king;" Von Roon, Minister of War, a master of
+administrative detail; Bismarck, the master mind of European politics;
+and, above all, Von Moltke, chief of staff, who hurled armies by
+telegraph, as he sat at his cabinet, as easily as a master moves
+chessmen against a stupid opponent.
+
+Said Captain Bingham: "You can have no idea of the wonderful machine
+that the German army is and how well it is prepared for war. A chart is
+made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with
+the different nations. And every officer's place in the scheme is laid
+out beforehand. There is a schedule of trains which will supersede all
+other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that
+the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take
+such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice. When the
+Franco-Prussian War was declared, Von Moltke was awakened at midnight
+and told of the fact. He said coolly to the official who aroused him,
+'Go to pigeonhole No. ---- in my safe and take a paper from it and
+telegraph as there directed to the different troops of the empire.' He
+then turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual hour in the
+morning. Every one else in Berlin was excited about the war, but Von
+Moltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who met him said,
+'General, you seem to be taking it very easy. Aren't you afraid of the
+situation? I should think you would be busy.' 'Ah,' replied Von Moltke,
+'all of my work for this time has been done long beforehand, and
+everything that can be done now has been done.'"
+
+"A rare man this Von Moltke!" exclaims Professor Wells; "one who made
+himself ready for his opportunities beyond all men known to the modern
+world. Of an impoverished family, he rose very slowly and by his own
+merit. He yielded to no temptation, vice, or dishonesty, of course, nor
+to the greater and ever present temptation to idleness, for he
+constantly worked to the limit of human endurance. He was ready for
+every emergency, not by accident, but because he made himself ready by
+painstaking labor, before the opportunity came. His favorite motto was,
+'_Help yourself and others will help you_.' Hundreds of his age in the
+Prussian army were of nobler birth, thousands of greater fortune, but he
+made himself superior to them all by extraordinary fidelity and
+diligence.
+
+"The greatest master of strategy the world has ever seen was sixty-six
+years at school to himself before he was ready for his task. Though born
+with the century, and an army officer at nineteen, he was an old man
+when, in 1866, as Prussian chief of staff, he crushed Austria at Sadowa
+and drove her out of Germany. Four years later the silent, modest
+soldier of seventy, ready for the still greater opportunity, smote
+France, and changed the map of Europe. Glory and the field-marshal's
+baton, after fifty-one years of hard work! No wonder Louis Napoleon was
+beaten by such men as he. All Louis Napoleons have been, and always will
+be. Opportunity always finds out frauds. It does not make men, but shows
+the world what they have made of themselves."
+
+Sir Henry Havelock joined the army of India in his twenty-eighth year,
+and waited till he was sixty-two for the opportunity to show himself
+fitted to command and skillful to plan. During those four and thirty
+years of waiting, he was busy preparing himself for that march to
+Lucknow which was to make him famous as a soldier.
+
+Farragut,
+
+     "The viking of our western clime
+     Who made his mast a throne,"
+
+began his naval career as a mere boy, and was sixty-four years old
+before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself; but when the great
+test of his life came, the reserve of half a century's preparation made
+him master of the situation.
+
+Alexander Hamilton said, "Men give me credit for genius. All the genius
+I have lies just in this: when I have a subject in hand I study it
+profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its
+bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make
+the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of
+labor and thought." The law of labor is equally binding on genius and
+mediocrity.
+
+"Fill up the cask! fill up the cask!" said old Dr. Bellamy when asked by
+a young clergyman for advice about the composition of sermons. "Fill up
+the cask! and then if you tap it anywhere you will get a good stream.
+But if you put in but little, it will dribble, dribble, dribble, and
+you must tap, tap, tap, and then you get but a small stream, after all."
+
+"The merchant is in a dangerous position," says Dr. W. W. Patton, "whose
+means are in goods trusted out all over the country on long credits, and
+who in an emergency has no money in the bank upon which to draw. A heavy
+deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of strength. And
+he only is intellectually strong, who has made heavy deposits in the
+bank of memory, and can draw upon his faculties at any time, according
+to the necessities of the case."
+
+They say that more life, if not more labor, was spent on the piles
+beneath the St. Petersburg church of St. Isaac's, to get a foundation,
+than on all the magnificent marbles and malachite which have since been
+lodged in it.
+
+Fifty feet of Bunker Hill Monument is under ground, unseen, and
+unappreciated by the thousands who tread about that historic shaft. The
+rivers of India run under ground, unseen, unheard, by the millions who
+tramp above, but are they therefore lost? Ask the golden harvest waving
+above them if it feels the water flowing beneath? The superstructure of
+a lifetime cannot stand upon the foundation of a day.
+
+C. H. Parkhurst says that in manhood, as much as in house-building, the
+foundation keeps asserting itself all the way from the first floor to
+the roof. The stones laid in the underpinning may be coarse and
+inelegant, but, even so, each such stone perpetuates itself in silent
+echo clear up through to the finial. The body is in that respect like an
+old Stradivarius violin, the ineffable sweetness of whose music is
+outcome and quotation from the coarse fibre of the case upon which its
+strings are strung. It is a very pleasant delusion that what we call the
+higher qualities and energies of a person maintain that self-centered
+kind of existence that enables them to discard and contemn all
+dependence upon what is lower and less refined than themselves, but it
+is a delusion that always wilts in an atmosphere of fact. Climb high as
+we like our ladder will still require to rest on the ground; and it is
+probable that the keenest intellectual intuition, and the most delicate
+throb of passion would, if analysis could be carried so far, be
+discovered to have its connections with the rather material affair that
+we know as the body.
+
+Lincoln took the postmastership for the sake of reading all the papers
+that came to town. He read everything he could lay his hands on; the
+Bible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washington and Life of
+Franklin, Life of Henry Clay, Æsop's Fables; he read them over and over
+again until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read a
+novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his
+contact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out an
+analysis of it. What a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoods
+student, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows,
+after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but could
+not afford to buy!
+
+"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this
+busy city of New York for over thirty years," said Dr. Cuyler, "and I
+find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures
+lies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success is
+oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. The
+easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time
+dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher
+of charity. They who understand and practice Abraham Lincoln's homely
+maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success."
+
+It is better to deserve success than to merely have it; few deserve it
+who do not attain it. There is no failure in this country for those
+whose personal habits are good, and who follow some honest calling
+industriously, unselfishly, and purely. If one desires to succeed, he
+must pay the price, work.
+
+No matter how weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger.
+No matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, or
+how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by
+patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty,
+grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception,
+strength and precision of thought, and moderation of desire.
+
+It would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious association of
+genius and idleness, to show that the greatest poets, orators,
+statesmen, and historians--men of the most imposing and brilliant
+talents--have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries and
+arrangers of indexes; and the most obvious reason why they have been
+superior to other men, is, that they have taken more pains.
+
+Even the great genius, Lord Bacon, left large quantities of material
+entitled "Sudden thoughts set down for use." John Foster was an
+indefatigable worker. "He used to hack, split, twist, and pull up by the
+roots, or practice any other severity on whatever did not please him."
+Chalmers was asked in London what Foster was doing. "Hard at it" he
+said, "at the rate of a line a week."
+
+When a young lawyer, Daniel Webster once looked in vain through all the
+libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of $50 the necessary
+books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his
+client was a poor blacksmith. He won his case, but, on account of the
+poverty of his client, only charged $15, thus losing heavily on the
+books bought, to say nothing of his time. Years after, as he was passing
+through New York city, he was consulted by Aaron Burr on an important
+but puzzling case then pending before the Supreme Court. Webster saw in
+a moment that it was just like the blacksmith's case, an intricate
+question of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him
+simple as the multiplication table. Going back to the time of Charles
+II., he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and
+accuracy of sequence that Burr asked, in great surprise: "Mr. Webster,
+have you been consulted before in this case?"
+
+"Most certainly not. I never heard of your case till this evening."
+
+"Very well," said Burr, "proceed." And when he had finished, Webster
+received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he
+had spent for his early client.
+
+What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and
+wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can
+spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah
+Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who
+can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;"
+a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance
+to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von
+Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for
+their first great opportunities; a Garfield, burning his lamp fifteen
+minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a Grant, fighting on
+in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and
+politicians everywhere; a Field's untiring perseverance, spending years
+and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; a
+Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel
+with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all
+remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice;
+a Titian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;" a Stephenson,
+working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a
+condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long
+years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a Thurlow Weed, walking
+two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to
+borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it
+before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in a
+world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a
+Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair" was refused
+by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret,
+whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate;
+not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men
+who can work and wait.
+
+That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He
+that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is
+impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own
+slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and
+be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college
+course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. The
+facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate
+who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and
+reflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all
+fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and
+moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means
+of it will he become what he ought to become,--man, in the highest
+sense of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge,
+it is the misdirection of the mind. "One step in knowledge," says
+Bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to
+Heaven."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES.
+
+     Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer
+     them.
+     --WENDELL PHILLIPS.
+
+     Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous
+     difficulties.
+     --SPURGEON.
+
+     The rugged metal of the mine
+     Must burn before its surface shine.
+     --BYRON.
+
+     When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens
+     which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no
+     telescope could do.
+     --BEECHER.
+
+     No man ever worked his way in a dead calm.
+     --JOHN NEAL.
+
+     "Kites rise against, not with, the wind."
+
+       Then welcome each rebuff,
+       That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+     Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go.
+     --BROWNING.
+
+
+"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" said
+one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. "Tut, you
+blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if
+there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." Just so with
+every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep
+out unworthy competitors.
+
+"Life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate
+from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks,
+that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them
+or no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to
+sleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while
+there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the
+stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and
+do its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes are not
+wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who
+labor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our temple building,
+whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life
+with cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our daily business, the
+fierce animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when
+we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of
+defeat--these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life
+ever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them? We are here, my
+brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God's quarry and on
+God's anvil for a nobler life to come." Only the muscle that is used is
+developed.
+
+"Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better
+things," said Beecher. "Far up the mountain side lies a block of
+granite, and says to itself, 'How happy am I in my serenity--above the
+winds, above the trees, almost above the flight of birds! Here I rest,
+age after age, and nothing disturbs me.'
+
+"Yet what is it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the
+cliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death.
+
+"By and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes he
+drills a hole in its top, and the rock says, 'What does this mean?' Then
+the black powder is poured in, and with a blast that makes the mountain
+echo, the block is blown asunder, and goes crashing down into the
+valley. 'Ah!' it exclaims as it falls, 'why this rending?' Then come
+saws to cut and fashion it; and humbled now, and willing to be nothing,
+it is borne away from the mountain and conveyed to the city. Now it is
+chiseled and polished, till, at length, finished in beauty, by block and
+tackle it is raised, with mighty hoistings, high in air, to be the
+top-stone on some monument of the country's glory."
+
+"It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this
+constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and
+the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. Let
+every man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy would
+follow."
+
+"Do you wish to live without a trial?" asks a modern teacher. "Then you
+wish to die but half a man. Without trial you cannot guess at your own
+strength. Men do not learn to swim on a table. They must go into deep
+water and buffet the waves. Hardship is the native soil of manhood and
+self-reliance. Trials are rough teachers, but rugged schoolmasters make
+rugged pupils. A man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his
+grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. Difficulties are God's
+errands. And when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof of
+God's confidence. We should reach after the highest good."
+
+Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a
+standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite
+direction. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car
+tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging of the
+teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain--until the
+motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy
+wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "Friction is a very good
+thing," remarked a passenger.
+
+There is a beautiful tale of Scandinavian mythology. A hero, under the
+promise of becoming a demi-god, is bidden in the celestial halls to
+perform three test-acts of prowess. He is to drain the drinking-horn of
+Thor. Then he must run a race with a courser so fleet that he fairly
+spurns the ground under his flying footsteps. Then he must wrestle with
+a toothless old woman, whose sinewy hands, as wiry as eagle claws in the
+grapple, make his very flesh to quiver. He is victorious in them all.
+But as the crown of success is placed upon his temples, he discovers for
+the first time that he has had for his antagonist the three greatest
+forces of nature. He raced with thought, he wrestled with old age, he
+drank the sea. Nature, like the God of nature, wrestles with us as a
+friend, not an enemy, wanting us to gain the victory, and wrestles with
+us that we may understand and enjoy her best blessings. Every greatest
+and highest earthly good has come to us unfolded and enriched by this
+terrible wrestling with nature.
+
+A curious society still exists in Paris composed of dramatic authors who
+meet once a month and dine together. Their number has no fixed limit,
+only every member to be eligible must have been hissed. An eminent
+dramatist is selected for chairman and holds the post for three months.
+His election generally follows close upon a splendid failure. Some of
+the world-famous ones have enjoyed this honor. Dumas, Jr., Zola and
+Offenbach have all filled the chair and presided at the monthly dinner.
+These dinners are given on the last Friday of the month, and are said to
+be extraordinarily hilarious.
+
+"I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man," said George
+Macdonald of Milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to write
+it."
+
+"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads a
+man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant
+purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turn
+disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearls the sand
+which annoys it.
+
+"Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of
+the storm wind is to the eagle,--a force against him that lifts him
+higher."
+
+"I do not see," says Emerson, "how any man can afford, for the sake of
+his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It
+is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation,
+want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges
+every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power."
+
+"Adversity is a severe instructor," says Edmund Burke, "set over us by
+one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as He loves us better too.
+He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill.
+Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us
+acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its
+relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial."
+
+Strong characters, like the palm tree, seem to thrive best when most
+abused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years
+are often unable to bear prosperity. Their good fortune takes the spring
+out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a
+vigorous climate. Some people never come to themselves until baffled,
+rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around
+them. Trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their
+victory.
+
+"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if
+the truth were known," said Albion Tourgée. "Grant's failure as a
+subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to
+accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to."
+
+"What is defeat?" asked Wendell Phillips. "Nothing but education." And a
+life's disaster may become the landmark from which there has begun a new
+era, a broader life for man.
+
+"To make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must
+live like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a
+young lawyer so much good as to be half starved."
+
+We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the very
+power by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we could never
+have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced
+and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. Our trials, our
+sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way.
+
+"Obstacles," says Mitchell, "are great incentives. I lived for whole
+years upon Virgil and found myself well off." Poverty, Horace tells us,
+drove him to poetry.
+
+Nothing more unmans a man than to take away from him the spur of
+necessity, which urges him onward and upward to the goal of his
+ambition. Man is naturally lazy, and wealth induces indolence. The great
+object of life is development, the unfolding and drawing out of our
+powers, and whatever tempts us to a life of indolence or inaction, or to
+seek pleasure merely, whatever furnishes us a crutch when we can develop
+our muscles better by walking, all helps, guides, props, whatever tempts
+to a life of inaction, in whatever guise it may come, is a curse. I
+always pity the boy or girl with inherited wealth, for the temptation to
+hide their talents in a napkin, undeveloped, is very, very great. It is
+not natural for them to walk when they can ride, to go alone when they
+can be helped.
+
+Quentin Matsys was a blacksmith at Antwerp. When in his twentieth year
+he wished to marry the daughter of a painter. The father refused his
+consent. "Wert thou a painter," said he, "she should be thine; but a
+blacksmith--never!" "_I will be_ a painter," said the young man. He
+applied to his new art with so much perseverance that in a short time he
+produced pictures which gave a promise of the highest excellence. He
+gained for his reward the fair hand for which he sighed, and rose ere
+long to a high rank in his profession.
+
+Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant
+one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch
+them grow. The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. Its roots
+reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into
+the earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as if
+in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. Sometimes its
+upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has been
+expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a
+firmer anchorage. Then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defy
+the hurricane. The gales which sport so rudely with its wide branches
+find more than their match, and only serve still further to toughen
+every minutest fibre from pith to bark.
+
+The acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling.
+Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far
+and wide for support.
+
+Take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. Place one in the country
+away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only
+the district school, the Sunday school, and a few books. Remove wealth
+and props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material in
+him, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends him strength for the
+next conflict. If he falls, he rises with more determination than
+before. Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher
+he rebounds. Obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasium
+in which the fibres of his manhood are developed. He compels respect and
+recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put the other boy
+in a Vanderbilt family. Give him French and German nurses; gratify every
+wish. Place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him to
+Harvard. Give him thousands a year for spending money, and let him
+travel extensively.
+
+The two meet. The city lad is ashamed of his country brother. The plain,
+threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of the
+country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of the
+other. The poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no chance
+in life," and envies the city youth. He thinks that it is a cruel
+Providence that places such a wide gulf between them. They meet again as
+men, but how changed! It is as easy to distinguish the sturdy, self-made
+man from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth,
+position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell the
+difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one from
+the sapling of the forest. If you think there is no difference, place
+each plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in a hurricane at sea.
+
+The athlete does not carry the gymnasium away with him, but he carries
+the skill and muscle which give him his reputation.
+
+The lessons you learn at school will give you strength and skill in
+after life, and power, just in proportion to the accuracy, the clearness
+of perception with which you learn your lessons. The school was your
+gymnasium. You do not carry away the Greek and Latin text-books, the
+geometry and algebra into your occupations any more than the athlete
+carries the apparatus of the gymnasium, but you carry away the skill and
+the power if you have been painstaking, accurate and faithful.
+
+"It is in me, and it _shall_ come out!" And it did. For Richard
+Brinsley Sheridan became the most brilliant, eloquent and amazing
+statesman of his day. Yet if his first efforts had been but moderately
+successful, he might have been content with mere mediocrity. It was his
+defeats that nerved him to strive for eminence and win it. But it took
+hard, persistent work in his case to secure it, just as it did in that
+of so many others.
+
+Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing
+criticism of his first book, "Hours of Idleness," published when he was
+but nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, "There is scarce an instance
+in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byron
+reached." In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott,
+Southey and Campbell. Many an orator like "stuttering Jack Curran," or
+"Orator Mum," as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by
+ridicule and abuse.
+
+Where the sky is gray and the climate unkindly, where the soil yields
+nothing save to the diligent hand, and life itself cannot be supported
+without incessant toil, man has reached his highest range of physical
+and intellectual development.
+
+The most beautiful and the strongest animals, as a rule, have come from
+the same narrow belt of latitude which has produced the heroes of the
+world.
+
+The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed
+in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and
+where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on
+a stubborn soil. It is no chance that returns to the Hindoo ryot a penny
+and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes
+Mexico with her mineral wealth poor, and New England with its granite
+and ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, it
+is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and
+calls the race out of barbarism. Labor found the world a wilderness and
+has made it a garden.
+
+The law of adaptation by which conditions affect an organism is simple
+and well known. It is that which callouses the palm of the oarsman,
+strengthens the waist of the wrestler, fits the back to its burden. It
+inexorably compels the organism to adapt itself to its conditions, to
+like them, and so to survive them.
+
+As soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear
+the down and feathers from their nest. The rude and rough experience of
+the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert
+in pursuing his prey.
+
+Benjamin Franklin ran away and George Law was turned out of doors.
+Thrown upon their own resources, they early acquired the energy and
+skill to overcome difficulties.
+
+Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out,"
+while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "come
+out."
+
+From an aimless, idle and useless brain, emergencies often call out
+powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see a
+young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a
+parent or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has
+knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused the
+slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was written in
+prison. The "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared in Bedford Jail. The "Life and
+Times" of Baxter, Eliot's "Monarchia of Man," and Penn's "No Cross, No
+Crown," were written by prisoners. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote "The History
+of the World" during his imprisonment of thirteen years. Luther
+translated the Bible while confined in the Castle of Wartburg. For
+twenty years Dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death.
+His works were burned in public after his death; but genius will not
+burn.
+
+Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of
+the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying
+their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither
+do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and
+happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the
+faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of
+the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to
+outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism
+worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous
+sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry
+and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements
+of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest
+families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter the
+diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been
+unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for
+acquaintances.
+
+This is the crutch age. "Helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. We
+have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries,
+newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are all
+worked out in "explanations" and "keys." Our boys are too often tutored
+through college with very little study. "Short roads" and "abridged
+methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are used
+everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. Newspapers
+give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and
+self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious of
+delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces,
+and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from Eden's
+curse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+DEAD IN EARNEST.
+
+     It is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead. What
+     made Demosthenes the greatest of all orators was that he
+     appeared the most entirely possessed by the feelings he wished
+     to inspire. The effect produced by Charles Fox, who by the
+     exaggerations of party spirit, was often compared to
+     Demosthenes, seems to have arisen wholly from this earnestness,
+     which made up for the want of almost every grace, both of
+     manner and style.
+     --ANON.
+
+     Twelve poor men taken out of boats and creeks, without any help
+     of learning, should conquer the world to the cross.
+     --STEPHEN CARNOCK.
+
+     For his heart was in his work, and the heart
+     Giveth grace unto every art.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+     He did it with all his heart and prospered.
+     --II. CHRONICLES.
+
+     The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he
+     gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else
+     are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a
+     gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the
+     truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.
+     --LOWELL.
+
+
+"The emotions," says Whipple, "may all be included in the single word
+'enthusiasm,' or that impulsive force which liberates the mental power
+from the ice of timidity as spring loosens the streams from the grasp
+of winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. The mind of youth,
+when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, is
+keen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating facts
+into faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with that
+joyous fullness of creative life which radiates thoughts as
+inspirations, and magnetizes as well as informs."
+
+"Columbus, my hero," exclaims Carlyle, "royalist sea-king of all! It is
+no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste, deep waters; around
+thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before
+thee the unpenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wild
+water-mountains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am
+told), are not there on thy behalf! Meseems _they_ have other work than
+floating thee forward:--and the huge winds, that sweep from Ursa Major
+to the tropics and equator, dancing their giant-waltz through the
+kingdoms of chaos and immensity, they care little about filling rightly
+or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle
+skiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, my
+brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling
+wide as the world here. Secret, far-off, invisible to all hearts but
+thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that.
+Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad southwester spend itself, saving
+thyself by dexterous science of defence the while: valiantly, with swift
+decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favoring east wind, the
+possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness,
+despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage: thou wilt swallow down
+complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;--how
+much wilt thou swallow down? There shall be a depth of silence in thee,
+deeper than this sea, which is but ten miles deep: a silence
+unsoundable; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great man. Yes, my
+world-soldier, thou of the world marine-service,--thou wilt have to be
+greater than this tumultuous unmeasured world here round thee is: thou,
+in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shall embrace it, harness
+it down; and make it bear thee on,--to new Americas, or whither God
+wills!"
+
+With what concentration of purpose did Washington put the whole weight
+of his character into the scales of our cause in the Revolution! With
+what earnest singleness of aim did Lincoln in the cabinet, Grant in the
+field, throw his whole soul into the contest of our civil war?
+
+The power of Phillips Brooks, at which men wondered, lay in his
+tremendous earnestness.
+
+"No matter what your work is," says Emerson, "let it be yours; no matter
+if you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what you
+are doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and you open the door by
+which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you." Again,
+he says: "God will not have His works made manifest by cowards. A man is
+relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his
+best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.
+It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt, his genius
+deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope."
+
+"I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important
+question," said Henry Clay; "but on such occasions I seem to be
+unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject
+before me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of
+surrounding objects."
+
+"I have been so busy for twenty years trying to save the souls of other
+people," said Livingstone, "that I had forgotten that I have one of my
+own until a savage auditor asked me if I felt the influence of the
+religion I was advocating."
+
+"Well, I've worked hard enough for it," said Malibran when a critic
+expressed his admiration of her D in alt, reached by running up three
+octaves from low D; "I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued it
+everywhere,--when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair; and at last
+I found it on the toe of a shoe that I was putting on."
+
+"People smile at the enthusiasm of youth," said Charles Kingsley; "that
+enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh,
+perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever
+lost it."
+
+"Should I die this minute," said Nelson at an important crisis, "want of
+frigates would be found written on my heart."
+
+Said Dr. Arnold, the celebrated instructor: "I feel more and more the
+need of intercourse with men who take life in earnest. It is painful to
+me to be always on the surface of things. Not that I wish for much of
+what is called religious conversation. That is often apt to be on the
+surface. But I want a sign which one catches by a sort of masonry, that
+a man knows what he is about in life. When I find this it opens my heart
+with as fresh a sympathy as when I was twenty years younger."
+
+Archimedes, the greatest geometer of antiquity, was consulted by the
+king in regard to a gold crown suspected of being fraudulently alloyed
+with silver. While considering the best method of detecting any fraud,
+he plunged into a full bathing tub; and, with the thought that the water
+that overflowed must be equal in weight to his body, he discovered the
+method of obtaining the bulk of the crown compared with an equally
+heavy mass of pure gold. Excited by the discovery, he ran through the
+streets undressed, crying, "I have found it."
+
+Equally celebrated is his remark, "Give me where to stand and I will
+move the world."
+
+His only remark to the Roman soldier who entered his room while engaged
+in geometrical study, was, "Don't step on my circle."
+
+Refusing to follow the soldier to Marcellus, who had captured the city,
+he was killed on the spot. He is said to have remarked, "My head, but
+not my circle."
+
+"Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world," says
+Emerson, "is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs
+after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning,
+established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an example. They did
+they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an
+overmatch for a troop of cavalry. The women fought like men and
+conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed.
+They were temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh needed
+to feed them. They conquered Asia and Africa and Spain on barley. The
+Caliph Omar's walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it
+than another man's sword."
+
+Horace Vernet's enthusiasm and devotion to the one idea of his life knew
+no bounds. He had himself lashed to the mast in a terrible gale on the
+Mediterranean when all others on board were seized with terror, and with
+great delight sketched the towering waves which threatened every minute
+to swallow the vessel. Several writers tell the story that a great
+artist, Giotto, about to paint the crucifixion, induced a poor man to
+let him bind him upon a cross in order that he might get a better idea
+of the terrible scene that he was about to put upon the canvas. He
+promised faithfully that he would release his model in an hour, but to
+the latter's horror the painter seized a dagger and plunged it into his
+heart; and, while the blood was streaming from the ghastly wound,
+painted his death agony.
+
+Beecher was a very dull boy and was the last member of the family of
+whom anything was expected. He had a weak memory, and disliked study. He
+shunned society and wanted to go to sea. Even when he went to college
+many of his classmates stood ahead of him, who have fallen into
+oblivion. But when he was converted his whole life changed: he was full
+of enthusiasm, hopefulness and zeal. Nothing was too menial for him to
+undertake to carry his purpose. He chopped wood, built the fire in his
+little church in Lawrenceburg, Ind., of only eighteen members, cleaned
+the lamps, swept the floor and washed the windows. He built the fire,
+baked, washed, when his wife was ill. The pent-up enthusiasm of his
+ambitious life burst the barriers of his inhospitable surroundings until
+he blossomed out into America's greatest pulpit orator.
+
+When Handel was a little boy he bought a clavichord, hid it in the
+attic, and went there at night to play upon it, muffling the strings
+with small pieces of fine woolen cloth so that the sounds should not
+wake the family. Michael Angelo neglected school to copy drawings which
+he dared not carry home. Murillo filled the margin of his school-book
+with drawings. Dryden read Polybius before he was ten years old. Le
+Brum, when a boy, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the
+house. Pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen. Blaise Pascal, the
+French mathematician, composed at sixteen a tract on the conic sections.
+
+Professor Agassiz was so enthusiastic in his work and so loved the
+fishes, the fowl and the cattle that it is said these creatures would
+die for him to give him their skeletons. His father wanted him to fit
+for commercial life, but the fish haunted him day and night.
+
+Confucius said that "he was so eager in the pursuit of knowledge that he
+forgot his food;" and that, "in the joy of its attainment, he forgot his
+sorrows;" and that "he did not even perceive that old age was coming
+on."
+
+"That boy tries to make himself useful," said an employer of the errand
+boy, George W. Childs. It is this trying to be useful and helpful that
+promotes us in life.
+
+Once, when Mr. Harvey, an accomplished mathematician, was in a
+bookseller's shop, he saw a poor lad of mean appearance enter and write
+something on a slip of paper and give it to the proprietor. On inquiry
+he found this was a poor deaf boy, Kitto, who afterward became one of
+the most noted Biblical scholars in the world, and who wrote his first
+book in the poor-house. He had come to borrow a book. When a lad he had
+fallen backward from a ladder thirty-five feet upon the pavement with a
+load of slates that he was carrying to the roof. The poor lad was so
+thirsty for books that he would borrow from booksellers who would loan
+them to him out of pity, read them and return them.
+
+The _Youth's Companion_ says that Mr. Edison in his new biography--his
+"Life and Inventions"--describes the accidental method by which he
+discovered the principle of the phonograph. There is a kind of accident
+that happens only to a certain kind of man.
+
+"I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," Mr. Edison says, "when
+the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger.
+That set me to thinking. If I could record the actions of the point,
+and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why
+the thing would not talk.
+
+"I tried the experiment first on a slip of telegraph paper and found
+that the point made an alphabet. I shouted the words 'Halloo! Halloo!'
+into the mouthpiece, ran the paper back over the steel point, and heard
+a faint 'Halloo! Halloo!' in return.
+
+"I determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my
+assistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. They
+laughed at me. That's the whole story. The phonograph is the result of
+the pricking of a finger."
+
+It is one thing to hit upon an idea, however, and another thing to carry
+it out to perfection. The machine would talk, but, like many young
+children, it had difficulty with certain sounds--in the present case
+with aspirants and sibilants. Mr. Edison's biographers say, but the
+statement is somewhat exaggerated:
+
+"He has frequently spent from fifteen to twenty hours daily, for six or
+seven months on a stretch, dinning the word 'Spezia,' for example, into
+the stubborn surface of the wax. 'Spezia,' roared the inventor, 'Pezia'
+lisped the phonograph in tones of ladylike reserve, and so on through
+thousands of graded repetitions till the desired results were obtained.
+
+"The primary education of the phonograph was comical in the extreme. To
+hear those grave and reverend signors, rich in scientific honors,
+patiently reiterating:
+
+     Mary had a little lamb,
+     A little lamb, _lamb_, LAMB,
+
+and elaborating that point with anxious gravity, was to receive a
+practical demonstration of the eternal unfitness of things."
+
+Milton, when blind, old and poor, showed a royal cheerfulness and never
+"bated one jot of heart or hope, but steered right onward."
+
+Dickens' characters seemed to possess him, and haunt him day and night
+until properly portrayed in his stories.
+
+At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the
+common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious
+subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap
+literature. He believed that a paper could be instructive and not be
+dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the _Penny Magazine_, which
+acquired a circulation of 200,000 the first year. Knight projected the
+_Penny Cyclopedia_, the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge_, _Half-Hours
+With the Best Authors_, and other useful books at a low price. His whole
+adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by
+cheap, yet wholesome, publications. He died in poverty, but grateful
+people have erected a noble monument over his ashes.
+
+Demosthenes roused the torpid spirits of his countrymen to a vigorous
+effort to preserve their independence against the designs of an
+ambitious and artful prince, and Philip had just reason to say he was
+more afraid of that man than of all the fleets and armies of the
+Athenians.
+
+Horace Greeley was a hampered genius who never had a chance to show
+himself until he started the _Tribune_, into which he poured his whole
+individuality, life and soul.
+
+Emerson lost the first years of his life trying to be somebody else. He
+finally came to himself and said: "If a single man plant himself
+indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the whole world will come
+round to him in the end." "Though we travel the world over to find the
+beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not." "The man that
+stands by himself the universe stands by him also." "Take Michael
+Angelo's course, 'to confide in one's self and be something of worth and
+value.'" "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or
+commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him
+alone."
+
+Many unknown writers would make fame and fortune if, like Bunyan and
+Milton and Dickens and George Eliot and Scott and Emerson, they would
+write their own lives in their MSS., if they would write about things
+they have seen, that they have felt, that they have known. It is life
+thoughts that stir and convince, that move and persuade, that carry
+their very iron particles into the blood. The real heaven has never been
+outdone by the ideal.
+
+Neither poverty nor misfortune could keep Linnæus from his botany.
+
+The English and Austrian armies called Napoleon the
+one-hundred-thousand-man. His presence was considered equal to that
+force in battle.
+
+The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches--that there is
+always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's
+life an answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+TO BE GREAT, CONCENTRATE.
+
+     Let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and
+     then stick to it.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     "He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither."
+
+     None sends his arrow to the mark in view,
+     Whose hand is feeble, or his aim untrue.
+     --COWPER.
+
+     He who wishes to fulfill his mission must be a man of one idea,
+     that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing all
+     his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life.
+     --BATE.
+
+     The shortest way to do anything is to do only one thing at a
+     time.
+     --CECIL.
+
+     The power of concentration is one of the most valuable of
+     intellectual attainments.
+     --HORACE MANN.
+
+     The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one
+     direction.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius
+     and art.
+     --CICERO.
+
+
+"It puffed like a locomotive," said a boy of the donkey engine; "it
+whistled like the steam-cars, but it didn't go anywhere."
+
+The world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puff
+and pull, but they don't go anywhere, they have no definite aim, no
+controlling purpose.
+
+The great secret of Napoleon's power lay in his marvelous ability to
+concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place
+in the enemy's ranks he would mass his men and hurl them upon the enemy
+like an avalanche until he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of
+concentration there is in that man's life! He was such a master of
+himself that he could concentrate his powers upon the smallest detail as
+well as upon an empire.
+
+When Napoleon had anything to say he always went straight to his mark.
+He had a purpose in everything he did; there was no dilly-dallying nor
+shilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. It was the
+same with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. He always hit the
+bull's eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness
+of aim. He knew what he wanted to do, and did it. He was like a great
+burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he
+burned a hole wherever he went.
+
+The sun's rays scattered do no execution, but concentrated in a burning
+glass, they melt solid granite; yes, a diamond, even. There are plenty
+of men who have ability enough, the rays of their faculties taken
+separately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, to
+concentrate them upon a single object. They lack the burning glass of a
+purpose, to focalize upon one spot the separate rays of their ability.
+Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have
+no power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them upon
+one point, until they burn a hole in whatever they undertake.
+
+This power to bring all of one's scattered forces into one focal point
+makes all the difference between success and failure. The sun might
+blaze out upon the earth forever without burning a hole in it or setting
+anything on fire; whereas a very few of these rays concentrated in a
+burning glass would, as stated, transform a diamond into vapor.
+
+Sir James Mackintosh was a man of marvelous ability. He excited in
+everybody who knew him great expectations, but there was no purpose in
+his life to act as a burning glass to collect the brilliant rays of his
+intellect, by which he might have dazzled the world. Most men have
+ability enough, if they could only focalize it into one grand, central,
+all-absorbing purpose, to accomplish great things.
+
+"To encourage me in my efforts to cultivate the power of attention,"
+said a friend of John C. Calhoun, "he stated that to this end he had
+early subjected his mind to such a rigid course of discipline, and had
+persisted without faltering until he had acquired a perfect control over
+it; that he could now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased,
+without wandering even for a moment; that it was his uniform habit,
+when he set out alone to walk or ride, to select a subject for
+reflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander from it
+until he was satisfied with its examination."
+
+"My friend laughs at me because I have but one idea," said a learned
+American chemist; "but I have learned that if I wish ever to make a
+breach in a wall, I must play my guns continually upon one point."
+
+"It is his will that has made him what he is," said an intimate friend
+of Philip D. Armour, the Chicago millionaire. "He fixes his eye on
+something ahead, and no matter what rises upon the right or the left he
+never sees it. He goes straight in pursuit of the object ahead, and
+overtakes it at last. He never gives up what he undertakes."
+
+While Horace Greeley would devote a column of the New York _Tribune_ to
+an article, Thurlow Weed would treat the same subject in a few words in
+the Albany _Evening Journal_, and put the argument into such shape as to
+carry far more conviction.
+
+"If you would be pungent," says Southey, "be brief; for it is with words
+as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."
+
+"The only valuable kind of study," said Sydney Smith, "is to read so
+heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to
+sit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved the
+Capitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers
+gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannæ,
+and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at the
+actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it will
+take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own
+study or on the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beaten
+face and admiring the splendor of his single eye."
+
+"Never study on speculation," says Waters; "all such study is vain. Form
+a plan; have an object; then work for it; learn all you can about it,
+and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculation
+is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day;
+which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brass
+door-plate with the name of Thompson on it, thinking it might be useful
+some day!"
+
+"I resolved, when I began to read law," said Edward Sugden, afterward
+Lord St. Leonard, "to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and
+never go on to a second reading till I had entirely accomplished the
+first. Many of the competitors read as much in a day as I did in a week;
+but at the end of twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the day
+it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection."
+
+"Very often," says Sidney Smith, "the modern precept of education is,
+'Be ignorant of nothing.' But my advice is, have the courage to be
+ignorant of a great number of things, that you may avoid the calamity of
+being ignorant of all things."
+
+"Lord, help me to take fewer things into my hands, and to do them well,"
+is a prayer recommended by Paxton Hood to an overworked man.
+
+"Many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life," said Edward
+Bulwer Lytton, "and as much about the world as if I had never been a
+student, have said to me, 'When do you get time to write all your books?
+How on earth do you contrive to do so much work?' I shall surprise you
+by the answer I made. The answer is this--I contrive to do so much work
+by never doing too much at a time. A man to get through work well must
+not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction of
+fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow.
+Now, since I began really and earnestly to study, which was not till I
+had left college, and was actually in the world, I may perhaps say that
+I have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men of
+my time. I have traveled much and I have seen much; I have mixed much
+in politics, and in the various business of life; and in addition to all
+this, I have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects
+requiring much special research. And what time do you think, as a
+general rule, I have devoted to study, to reading, and writing? Not more
+than three hours a day; and, when Parliament is sitting, not always
+that. But then, during these three hours, I have given my whole
+attention to what I was about."
+
+"The things that are crowded out of a life are the test of that life.
+Not what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our
+might we attain."
+
+"One great cause of failure of young men in business," says Carnegie,
+"is lack of concentration. They are prone to seek outside investments.
+The cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. Every dollar of
+capital and credit, every business-thought, should be concentrated upon
+the one business upon which a man has embarked. He should never scatter
+his shot. It is a poor business which will not yield better returns for
+increased capital than any outside investment. No man or set of men or
+corporation can manage a business-man's capital as well as he can manage
+it himself. The rule, 'Do not put all your eggs in one basket,' does not
+apply to a man's life-work. Put all your eggs in one basket and then
+watch that basket, is the true doctrine--the most valuable rule of all."
+
+"A man must not only desire to be right," said Beecher, "he must _be_
+right. You may say, 'I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion
+crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and
+I hope Providence will direct the ball.' Providence won't. You must do
+it; and if you do not, you are a dead man."
+
+The ruling idea of Milton's life and the key to his mental history is
+his resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in itself
+is singular, for it is probably shared in by every poet in his turn. As
+every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to become
+Lord-Chancellor, and every private in the French army carries in his
+haversack the baton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of the
+dream of Parnassus that it should embody itself in a form of surpassing
+brilliance. What distinguishes Milton from the crowd of youthful
+literary aspirants, _audax juventa_, is his constancy of resolve. He not
+only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under the
+importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life into
+the pursuit of place, profit, honor--the thorns which spring up and
+smother the wheat--but carried out his dream in its integrity in old
+age. He formed himself for this achievement and no other. Study at home,
+travel abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service,
+the practice of the domestic virtues, were so many parts of the
+schooling which was to make a poet.
+
+Bismarck adopted it as the aim of his public life "to snatch Germany
+from Austrian oppression," and to gather round Prussia, in a North
+German Confederation, all the states whose tone of thought, religion,
+manners and interest "were in harmony with those of Prussia." "To attain
+this end," he once said in conversation, "I would brave all
+dangers--exile, the scaffold itself. What matter if they hang me,
+provided the rope with which I am hung binds this new Germany firmly to
+the Prussian throne?"
+
+It is related of Greeley that, when he was writing his "American
+Conflict," he found it necessary to conceal himself somewhere, to
+prevent constant interruptions. He accordingly took a room in the Bible
+house, where he worked from ten in the morning till five in the
+afternoon, and then appeared in the sanctum, seemingly as fresh as ever.
+
+Cooper Institute is the evening school which Peter Cooper, as long ago
+as 1810, resolved to found some day, when he was looking about as an
+apprentice for a place where he could go to school evenings. Through all
+his career in various branches of business he never lost sight of this
+object; and, as his wealth increased, he was pleased that it brought
+nearer the realization of his dream.
+
+"See a great lawyer like Rufus Choate," says Dr. Storrs, "in a case
+where his convictions are strong and his feelings are enlisted. He saw
+long ago, as he glanced over the box, that five of those in it were
+sympathetic with him; as he went on he became equally certain of seven;
+the number now has risen to ten; but two are still left whom he feels
+that he has not persuaded or mastered. Upon them he now concentrates his
+power, summing up the facts, setting forth anew and more forcibly the
+principles, urging upon them his view of the case with a more and more
+intense action of his mind upon theirs, until one only is left. Like the
+blow of a hammer, continually repeated until the iron bar crumbles
+beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that one
+mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the
+pleader's purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, 'He surpassed himself.'
+It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and
+overpowering energy to the mind."
+
+"The foreman of the jury, however," said Whipple, "was a hard-hearted,
+practical man, a model of business intellect and integrity, but with an
+incapacity of understanding any intellect or conscience radically
+differing from his own. Mr. Choate's argument, as far as the facts and
+the law were concerned, was through in an hour. Still he went on
+speaking. Hour after hour passed, and yet he continued to speak with
+constantly increasing eloquence, repeating and recapitulating, without
+any seeming reason, facts which he had already stated and arguments
+which he had already urged. The truth was, as I gradually learned, that
+he was engaged in a hand-to-hand--or rather in a brain-to-brain and a
+heart-to-heart--contest with the foreman, whose resistance he was
+determined to break down, but who confronted him for three hours with
+defiance observable in every rigid line of his honest countenance. 'You
+fool!' was the burden of the advocate's ingenious argument. 'You
+rascal!' was the phrase legibly printed on the foreman's incredulous
+face. But at last the features of the foreman began to relax, and at the
+end the stern lines melted into acquiescence with the opinion of the
+advocate, who had been storming at the defences of his mind, his heart,
+and his conscience for five hours, and had now entered as victor. The
+verdict was 'Not guilty.'"
+
+"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself
+to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle
+spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity."
+
+It is generally thought that when a man is said to be dissipated in his
+habits he must be a drinking man, or a gambler, or licentious, or all
+three; but dissipation is of two kinds, coarse and refined. A man can
+dissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power by
+indulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits of
+a viler nature. Property and its cares make some men dissipated; too
+many friends make others. The exactions of "society," the balls,
+parties, receptions, and various entertainments constantly being given
+and attended by the _beau monde_, constitute a most wasting species of
+dissipation. Others, again, fritter away all their time and strength in
+political agitations, or in controversies and gossip; others in idling
+with music or some other one of the fine arts; others in feasting or
+fasting, as their dispositions and feelings incline. But the man of
+concentration of purpose is never a dissipated man in any sense, good or
+bad. He has no time to devote to useless trifling of any kind, but puts
+in as many strokes of faithful work as possible toward the attainment of
+some definite good.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+AT ONCE.
+
+     Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit
+     of 500,000,000 miles back to the solstice at the appointed
+     moment without the loss of one second--no, not the millionth
+     part of a second--for ages and ages of which it traveled that
+     imperial road.
+     --EDWARD EVERETT.
+
+     Despatch is the soul of business.
+     --CHESTERFIELD.
+
+     Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of
+     clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as
+     his time.
+     --HORACE MANN.
+
+     By the street of by-and-by one arrives at the house of never.
+     --CERVANTES.
+
+     The greatest thief this world has ever produced is
+     procrastination, and he is still at large.
+     --H. W. SHAW.
+
+
+"Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says H. C. Bowen.
+"How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself
+intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has acquired a
+reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the
+capital that in after years makes his success a certainty!"
+
+"Nothing commends a young man so much to his employers," says John
+Stuart Blackie, "as accuracy and punctuality in the conduct of his
+business. And no wonder. On each man's exactitude depends the
+comfortable and easy going of his machine. If the clock goes fitfully
+nobody knows the time of day; and, if your task is a link in the chain
+of another man's work, you are his clock, and he ought to be able to
+rely on you."
+
+"The whole period of youth," said Ruskin, "is one essentially of
+formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is
+trembling with destinies--not a moment of which, once passed, the
+appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on
+the cold iron."
+
+"To-morrow, didst thou say?" asked Cotton. "Go to--I will not hear of
+it. To-morrow! 't is a sharper who stakes his penury against thy
+plenty--who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes
+and promises, the currency of idiots. _To-morrow!_ it is a period
+nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance
+in the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society
+with those that own it. 'Tis fancy's child, and folly is its father;
+wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic
+visions of the evening." Oh, how many a wreck on the road to success
+could say: "I have spent all my life in the pursuit of to-morrow, being
+assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me."
+
+"I give it as my deliberate and solemn conviction," said Dr. Fitch,
+"that the individual who is tardy in meeting an appointment will never
+be respected or successful in life."
+
+"If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace Greeley,
+"why should he have for their money? What is the difference between
+taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are many men to
+whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars."
+
+A man who keeps his time will keep his word; in truth, he cannot keep
+his word unless he _does_ keep his time.
+
+When the Duchess of Sutherland came late, keeping the court waiting, the
+queen, who was always vexed by tardiness, presented her with her own
+watch, saying, "I am afraid your's does not keep good time."
+
+"Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary," replied
+Washington, when his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by
+saying that his watch was too slow.
+
+"I have generally found that a man who is good at an excuse is good for
+nothing else," said Franklin to a servant who was always late, but
+always ready with an excuse.
+
+One of the best things about school and college life is that the bell
+which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures,
+teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch which
+is a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad habits,
+and is an expensive investment at any price. Wear threadbare clothes if
+you must, but never carry an inaccurate watch.
+
+"Five minutes behind time" has ruined many a man and many a firm.
+
+"He who rises late," says Fuller, "must trot all day, and shall scarcely
+overtake his business at night."
+
+Some people are too late for everything but ruin; when a nobleman
+apologized to George III. for being late, and said, "better late than
+never," the king replied, "No, I say, _better never than late_."
+
+"Better late than never" is not half so good a maxim as "Better never
+late."
+
+If Samuel Budgett was even a minute late at an appointment he would
+apologize; he was as punctual as a chronometer. Punctuality is
+contagious. Napoleon infused promptness into his officers every minute.
+What power there is in promptness to take the drudgery out of a
+disagreeable task.
+
+"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said
+Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God gave
+them work to do, and He also gave them a competency of time; so much
+that if they began at the right moment and wrought with sufficient
+vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good many
+years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allotted
+time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it
+has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines laid
+alongside the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their
+time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the
+time. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters are
+posted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at the
+wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the
+terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not break
+any engagement nor neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it
+too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval."
+
+Of Tours, the wealthy New Orleans ship-owner, it is said that he was as
+methodical and regular as a clock, and that his neighbors were in the
+habit of judging of the time of the day by his movements.
+
+"How," asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much and
+in so short a time?" "When I have anything do, I go and do it," was the
+reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional
+mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator will fail--even if he have
+the better judgment.
+
+When asked how he got through so much work, Lord Chesterfield replied:
+"Because I never put off till morrow what I can do to-day."
+
+Dewitt, pensionary of Holland, answered the same question: "Nothing is
+more easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off until
+to-morrow what can be done to-day."
+
+Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his
+enormous achievements. He made it a rule to answer all letters the day
+they were received. He rose at five. By breakfast time he had broken the
+neck of the day's work, as he used to say. Writing to a youth who had
+obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel:
+"Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not
+having your time fully employed--I mean what the women call dawdling. Do
+instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after
+business, never before it."
+
+Frederick the Great had a maxim: "Time is the only treasure of which it
+is proper to be avaricious."
+
+Leibnitz declared that "the loss of an hour is the loss of a part of
+life."
+
+Napoleon, who knew the value of time, remarked that it was the quarter
+hours that won battles. The value of minutes has been often recognized,
+and any person watching a railway clerk handing out tickets and change
+during the last few minutes available must have been struck with how
+much could be done in these short periods of time.
+
+At the appointed hour the train starts and by and by is carrying
+passengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour. In a second you are
+carried twenty-nine yards. In one twenty-ninth of a second you pass over
+one yard. Now, one yard is quite an appreciable distance, but one
+twenty-ninth of a second is a period which cannot be appreciated.
+
+The father of the Webster brothers, before going away to be gone for a
+week, gave his boys a stint to cut a field of corn, telling them that
+after it was done, if they had any time left, they might do what they
+pleased. The boys looked the field over on Monday morning and concluded
+they could do all the work in three days, so they decided to play the
+first three days. Thursday morning they went to the field, but it looked
+so much larger than it did on Monday morning, that they decided they
+could not possibly do it in three days, and rather than not do it all,
+they would not touch it. When the angry father returned, he called
+Ezekiel to him and asked him why they had not harvested the corn. "What
+have you been doing?" said the stern father. "Nothing, father." "And
+what have you been doing, Daniel?" "Helping Zeke, sir."
+
+How many boys, and men, too, waste hours and days "helping Zeke!"
+
+"Remember the world was created in six days," said Napoleon to one of
+his officers. "Ask for whatever you please except time."
+
+Railroads and steamboats have been wonderful educators in promptness. No
+matter who is late they leave right on the minute.
+
+It is interesting to watch people at a great railroad station, running,
+hurrying, trying to make up time, for they well know when the time
+arrives the train will leave.
+
+Factories, shops, stores, banks, everything opens and closes on the
+minute. The higher the state of civilization the prompter is everything
+done. In countries without railroads, as in Eastern countries,
+everything is behind time. Everybody is indolent and lazy.
+
+The world knows that the prompt man's bills and notes will be paid on
+the day they are due, and will trust him. People will give him credit,
+for they know they can depend upon him. But lack of promptness will
+shake confidence almost as quickly as downright dishonesty. The man who
+has a habit of dawdling or listlessness will show it in everything he
+does. He is late at meals, late at work, dawdles on the street, loses
+his train, misses his appointments, and dawdles at his store until the
+banks are closed. Everybody he meets suffers more or less from his
+malady, for dawdling becomes practically a disease.
+
+"You will never find time for anything," said Charles Buxton; "if you
+want time you must make it."
+
+The best work we ever do is that which we do now, and can never repeat.
+"Too late," is the curse of the unsuccessful, who forget that "one
+to-day is worth two to-morrows."
+
+Time accepts no sacrifice; it admits of neither redemption nor
+atonement. _It is the true avenger._ Your enemy may become your
+friend,--your injurer may do you justice,--but Time is inexorable, and
+has no mercy.
+
+     Then stay the present instant, dear Horatio:
+     Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings.
+     'Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious
+     Than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain.
+     O! let it not elude thy grasp; but, like
+     The good old patriarch upon record,
+     Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.
+     --NATHANIEL COTTON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THOROUGHNESS.
+
+     Doing well depends upon doing completely.
+     --PERSIAN PROVERB.
+
+     He who does well will always have patrons enough.
+     --PLAUTUS.
+
+     If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or
+     make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his
+     house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his
+     door.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if
+     it be wrong, leave it undone.
+     --GILPIN.
+
+     No two things differ more than Hurry and Dispatch. Hurry is the
+     mark of a weak mind, Dispatch of a strong one. * * * Like a
+     turnstile, he (the weak man) is in everybody's way, but stops
+     nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into
+     everything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the
+     fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are
+     he only burns his fingers.
+     --COLTON.
+
+
+"Make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the
+blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built;
+"six of us have come to work on the new church, and I've left mine at
+home." "As good a one as I know how?" asked David Maydole, doubtfully,
+"but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as I know how to
+make." "Yes, I do," said the carpenter, "I want a good hammer."
+
+It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that
+had ever been made. By means of a longer hole than usual, David had
+wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a
+wonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his
+prize to his companions. They all came to the shop next day, and each
+ordered just such a hammer. When the contractor saw the tools, he
+ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than
+those for his men. "I can't make any better ones," said Maydole; "when I
+make a thing, I make it as well as I can, no matter whom it is for."
+
+The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his
+previous business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the village
+to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a
+standing order for all the blacksmith could make. David might have grown
+very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but
+throughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study still
+further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. They were usually
+sold without any warrant of excellence, the word "Maydole" stamped on
+the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the
+world could produce. Character is power, and is the best advertisement
+in the world.
+
+"Yes," said he one day to the late James Parton, who told this story, "I
+have made hammers in this little village for twenty-eight years."
+"Well," replied the great historian, "by this time you ought to make a
+pretty good hammer."
+
+"No, I can't," was the reply, "I can't make a pretty good hammer. I make
+the best hammer that's made. My only care is to make a perfect hammer.
+If folks don't want to pay me what they're worth, they're welcome to buy
+cheaper ones somewhere else. My wants are few, and I'm ready any time to
+go back to my blacksmith's shop, where I worked forty years ago, before
+I thought of making hammers. Then I had a boy to blow by bellows, now I
+have one hundred and fifteen men. Do you see them over there watching
+the heads cook over the charcoal furnace, as your cook, if she knows
+what she is about, watches the chops broiling? Each of them is hammered
+out of a piece of iron, and is tempered under the inspection of an
+experienced man. Every handle is seasoned three years, or until there is
+no shrink left in it. Once I thought I could use machinery in
+manufacturing them; now I know that a perfect tool can't be made by
+machinery, and every bit of the work is done by hand."
+
+"In telling this little story," said Parton, "I have told thousands of
+stories. Take the word 'hammer' out of it, and put 'glue' in its place,
+and you have the history of Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, you
+can make the true history of every great business in the world which has
+lasted thirty years."
+
+"We have no secret," said Manager Daniel J. Morrill, of the Cambria Iron
+Works, employing seven thousand men, at Johnstown, Pa. "We always try to
+beat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we've got, and we
+don't care who knows it."
+
+"I don't try to see how cheap a machine I can produce, but how good a
+machine," said the late John C. Whitin, of Northbridge, Mass., to a
+customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery.
+Business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion
+to advertise any machinery for sale, New England cotton manufacturers
+were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add,
+as an all-sufficient guaranty of Northbridge products, "Whitin make."
+Put thoroughness into your work: it pays.
+
+"The accurate boy is always the favored one," said President Tuttle. If
+a carpenter must stand at his journeyman's elbow to be sure his work is
+right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he might
+as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way.
+
+"Mr. Girard, can you not assist me by giving me a little work?" asked
+one John Smith, who had formerly worked for the great banker and
+attracted attention by his activity.
+
+"Assistance--work--ah? You want work?" "Yes sir; it's a long time since
+I've had anything to do."
+
+"Very well, I shall give you some. You see dem stone yondare?" "Yes,
+sir." "Very well; you shall fetch and put them in this place; you see?"
+"Yes sir." "And when you done, come to me at my bank."
+
+Smith finished his task, reported to Mr. Girard, and asked for more
+work. "Ah, ha, oui. You want more work? Very well; you shall go place
+dem stone where you got him. Understandez? You take him back." "Yes,
+sir."
+
+Again Smith performed the work and waited on Mr. Girard for payment.
+"Ah, ha, you all finish?" "Yes, sir." "Very well; how much money shall I
+give you?" "One dollar, sir." "Dat is honest. You take no advantage.
+Dare is your dollar." "Can I do anything else for you?" "Oui, come here
+when you get up to-morrow. You shall have more work."
+
+Smith was punctual, but for the third time, and yet again for the
+fourth, he was ordered to "take dem stone back again." When he called
+for his pay in the evening Stephen Girard spoke very cordially. "Ah,
+Monsieur Smit, you shall be my man; you mind your own business and do
+it, ask no questions, you do not interfere. You got one vife?" "Yes,
+sir." "Ah, dat is bad. Von vife is bad. Any little chicks?" "Yes, sir,
+five living."
+
+"Five? Dat is good; I like five. I like you, Monsieur Smit; you like to
+work; you mind your business. Now I do something for your five little
+chicks. There: take these five pieces of paper for your five little
+chicks; you shall work for them; you shall mind your own business, and
+your little chicks shall never want five more." In a few years Mr. Smith
+became one of the wealthiest and most respected merchants of
+Philadelphia.
+
+It is difficult to estimate the great influence upon a life of the early
+formed habit of doing everything to a finish, not leaving it half done,
+or pretty nearly done, but completely done. Nature finishes every little
+leaf, even to every little rib, its edges and stem, as exactly and
+perfectly as though it were the only leaf to be made that year. Even the
+flower that blooms in the mountain dell, where no human eye will ever
+behold it, is finished with the same perfection and exactness of form
+and outline, with the same delicate shade of color, with the same
+completeness of beauty, as though it was made for royalty in the queen's
+garden. "Perfection to the finish" is a motto which every youth should
+adopt.
+
+"How did you attain such excellence in your profession?" was asked of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds. "By observing one simple rule, namely, to make each
+picture the best," he replied.
+
+The discipline of being exact is uplifting. Progress is never more rapid
+than it is when we are studying to be accurate. The effort educates all
+the powers. Arthur Helps says: "I do not know that there is anything
+except it be humility, which is so valuable, as an incident of
+education, as accuracy: and accuracy can be taught. Direct lies told to
+the world are as dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoods
+of inaccuracy."
+
+Too many youths enter upon their business in a languid, half-hearted
+way, and do their work in a slipshod manner. The consequence is that
+they inspire neither admiration nor confidence on the part of their
+superiors, and cut off almost every chance of success. There is a loose,
+perfunctory method of doing one's work that never merits advance, and
+very rarely wins it. Instead of buckling to their task with all the
+force they possess, they merely touch it with the tips of their fingers,
+their rule apparently being, the maximum of ease with the minimum of
+work. The principle of Strafford, the great minister of Charles I., is
+indicated by his motto, the one word "Thorough." It was said of King
+Hezekiah, "In every work that he began, he did it with all his heart and
+prospered."
+
+The stone-cutter goes to work on a stone and most patiently shapes it.
+He carves that bit of fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. And
+by-and-by the master says, "Well done," and takes it away and gives him
+another block and tells him to work on that. And so he works on that
+from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only
+knows that he is earning his bread. And he continues to put all his
+skill and taste into his work. He has no idea what use will be made of
+these few stones which he has been carving, until afterward, when, one
+day, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the Art
+Gallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. He did not know
+what they were for, but the architect did. And as he stands looking at
+his work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street, he
+says: "I am glad I did it well." And every day as he passes that way, he
+says to himself exultingly, "I did it well." He did not draw the design,
+nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made of
+his work: but he took pains in cutting those stems; and when he saw
+they were a part of that magnificent structure, his soul rejoiced.
+
+Work that is not finished, is not work at all; it is merely a botch. We
+often see this defect of incompleteness in a child, which increases in
+youth. All about the house, everywhere, there are half-finished things.
+It is true that children often become tired of things which they begin
+with enthusiasm; but there is a great difference in children about
+finishing what they undertake. A boy, for instance, will start out in
+the morning with great enthusiasm to dig his garden over; but, after a
+few minutes, his enthusiasm has evaporated, and he wants to go fishing.
+He soon becomes tired of this, and thinks he will make a boat. No sooner
+does he get a saw and knife and a few pieces of board about him than he
+makes up his mind that really what he wanted to do, after all, was to
+play ball, and this, in turn, must give way to something else.
+
+One watch, set right, will do to set many by; but, on the other hand,
+one that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole neighborhood.
+The same may be said of the example we individually set to those around
+us.
+
+"Whatever I have tried to do in life," said Dickens, "I have tried with
+all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted
+myself to completely."
+
+It is no disgrace to be a shoemaker, but it is a disgrace for a
+shoemaker to make bad shoes.
+
+A traveler, recently returned from Jerusalem, found, in conversation
+with Humboldt, that the latter was as conversant with the streets and
+houses of Jerusalem as he was himself. On being asked how long it was
+since he had visited it, the aged philosopher replied: "I have never
+been there; but I expected to go sixty years since, and I prepared
+myself."
+
+So noted for excellency was everything bearing the brand of George
+Washington, that a barrel of flour marked "George Washington, Mount
+Vernon," was exempted from the customary inspection in the West India
+ports.
+
+Pascal, the most wonderful mathematical genius of his time, whose work
+on conic sections, at sixteen, Descartes refused to believe could be
+produced at that age, is considered to have fixed the French language,
+as Luther did the German, by his writings. None of his provincial
+letters, with the exception of the last three, was more than eight
+quarto pages in length, yet he devoted twenty days to the writing of a
+single letter, and one of them was written no less than thirteen times.
+
+The night the Tasmania was wrecked, the captain had given the course
+north by west, sixty-seven degrees. He had taken account of eddies and
+currents. The second officer, overlooking these, ordered the helmsman
+to make it north by west, fifty-seven degrees, but to bring the ship
+around so gently that the captain wouldn't know it. Hence her
+destruction.
+
+Rev. Mr. Maley, of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church, had the
+habit of greatly exaggerating anything he talked about. His brethren at
+conference told him that this habit was growing on him, and rendering
+him unpopular in the ministry. Mr. Maley heard them patiently, and then
+said: "Brethren, I am aware of the truth of all you have said, and have
+shed barrels of tears over it."
+
+There is a great difference between going just right and a little
+wrong.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+TRIFLES.
+
+     In the elder days of Art
+       Builders wrought with greatest care
+     Each minute and unseen part,
+       For the gods see everywhere.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+     Think naught a trifle, though it small appear,
+     Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
+     And trifles, life.
+     --YOUNG.
+
+     The smallest hair throws its shadow.
+     --GOETHE.
+
+     He that despiseth small things shall fall little by little.
+     --ECCLESIASTES.
+
+     It is the little rift within the lute,
+     That by and by will make the music mute,
+     And ever widening slowly silence all.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     "A pebble in the streamlet scant
+       Has turned the course of many a river:
+     A dewdrop on the baby plant
+       Has warped the giant oak forever."
+
+     It is the close observation of little things which is the
+     secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every
+     pursuit of life.
+     --SMILES.
+
+     "Only!--But then the onlys
+     Make up the mighty all."
+
+
+"My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is
+worth doing well," said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. When
+asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous
+artists he replied, "Because I have neglected nothing."
+
+"Do little things now," says a Persian proverb; "so shall big things
+come to thee by and by asking to be done." God will take care of the
+great things if we do not neglect the little ones.
+
+A gentleman advertised for a boy to assist him in his office, and nearly
+fifty applicants presented themselves to him. Out of the whole number he
+in a short time selected one and dismissed the rest. "I should like to
+know," said a friend, "on what ground you selected that boy, who had not
+a single recommendation?" "You are mistaken," said the gentleman, "he
+had a great many. He wiped his feet when he came in, and closed the door
+after him, showing that he was careful. He gave up his seat instantly to
+that lame old man, showing that he was kind and thoughtful. He took off
+his cap when he came in, and answered my questions promptly and
+respectfully, showing that he was polite and gentlemanly. He picked up
+the book which I had purposely laid upon the floor, and replaced it on
+the table, while all the rest stepped over it, or shoved it aside; and
+he waited quietly for his turn, instead of pushing and crowding, showing
+that he was honest and orderly. When I talked to him, I noticed that
+his clothes were carefully brushed, his hair in nice order, and his
+teeth as white as milk; and when he wrote his name, I noticed that his
+finger-nails were clean, instead of being tipped with jet, like that
+handsome little fellow's, in the blue jacket. Don't you call those
+letters of recommendation? I do; and I would give more for what I can
+tell about a boy by using my eyes ten minutes, than for all the fine
+letters he can bring me."
+
+"Least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the
+great laws of nature. All life comes from microscopic beginnings. In
+nature there is nothing small. The microscope reveals as great a world
+below as the telescope above. All of nature's laws govern the smallest
+atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean.
+
+"I cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit," said
+a gentleman to Michael Angelo. "But," said the sculptor, "I have
+retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out
+that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that
+limb, etc." "But they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "It may be
+so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and
+perfection is no trifle." That infinite patience which made Michael
+Angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue with more
+vital fidelity to truth, or Gerhard Dow a day in giving the right effect
+to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between success
+and failure.
+
+"Of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told of
+his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "What is the
+use of a child?" replied Franklin; "it may become a man."
+
+In the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick to
+the bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery.
+Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the
+father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full
+pay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peel
+one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "Ay,
+that they be," replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?"
+"Why, you see, Meester Peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret!
+If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am." "That's so," said Mr. Peel,
+smiling; "but I'd give you something to know. Could you make all the
+looms work as smoothly as yours?" "Ivery one of 'em, meester," replied
+Dick. "Well, what shall I give you for your secret?" asked Mr. Peel, and
+Dick replied, "Gi' me a quart of ale every day as I'm in the mills, and
+I'll tell thee all about it." "Agreed," said Mr. Peel, and Dick
+whispered very cautiously in his ear, "Chalk your bobbins!" That was the
+whole secret, and Mr. Peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, for
+he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. Dick was handsomely
+rewarded with money instead of beer. His little idea has saved the world
+millions of dollars.
+
+The totality of a life at any moment is the product mainly of little
+things. Trifling choices, insignificant exercises of the will,
+unimportant acts often repeated,--things seemingly of small
+account,--these are the thousand tiny sculptors that are carving away
+constantly at the rude block of our life, giving it shape and feature.
+Indeed the formation of character is much like the work of an artist in
+stone. The sculptor takes a rough, unshapen mass of marble, and with
+strong, rapid strokes of mallet and chisel quickly brings into view the
+rude outline of his design; but after the outline appears then come
+hours, days, perhaps even years, of patient, minute labor. A novice
+might see no change in the statue from one day to another; for though
+the chisel touches the stone a thousand times, it touches as lightly as
+the fall of a rain-drop, but each touch leaves a mark.
+
+The smallest thing becomes respectable when regarded as the commencement
+of what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. The crude
+settlement of Romulus would have remained an insignificant circumstance
+and might have justly sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length
+commanded the world.
+
+Beecher says that men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations
+and lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in Panama, a
+million madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them,
+would begin to bore the piles down under the water. There would be
+neither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touch
+the post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through.
+
+Men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift
+themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should
+never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their
+souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable
+ruin.
+
+Lichens, of themselves of little value, prepare the way for important
+vegetation. They deposit, in dying, an acid which wears away the rock
+and prepares the mould necessary for the nourishment of superior plants.
+
+It was but a tiny rivulet trickling down the embankment that started the
+terrible Johnstown flood and swept thousands into eternity. One noble
+heroic act has elevated a nation. Franklin's whole career was changed
+by a torn copy of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good. Taking up a stone
+to throw at a turtle was the turning point in Theodore Parker's life. As
+he raised the stone something within him said, "Don't do it," and he
+didn't. He went home and asked his mother what it was in him that said
+"don't." She told him it was conscience. Small things become great when
+a great soul sees them. A child, when asked why a certain tree grew
+crooked, answered, "Somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow."
+
+By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boy
+in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a
+dike. He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water
+was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark
+and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. His
+name is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland.
+
+We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the
+ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved
+forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man
+never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food.
+
+The tears of Virgilia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians when
+nothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus.
+
+Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the
+tip of her nose; and if Cleopatra's had been an inch shorter Mark Antony
+would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the
+blemish would have changed the history of the world. Anne Boleyn's
+fascinating smile split the great Church of Rome in twain, and gave a
+nation an altered destiny. Napoleon, who feared not to attack the
+proudest monarchs in their capitals, shrank from the political influence
+of one independent woman in private life, Madame de Staël.
+
+It was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty,
+but it laid Chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand
+people.
+
+The discovery of glass was due to a mere accident--the building of a
+fire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at Bayonne, in France,
+owes its existence to the fact that a Basque regiment, being hard
+pressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as their
+ammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into the
+barrels of their muskets, which was done, and the first bayonet-charge
+was made.
+
+A jest led to a war between two great nations. The presence of a comma
+in a deed, lost to the owner of an estate five thousand dollars a month
+for eight months. The battle of Corunna was fought and Sir John Moore's
+life sacrificed, in 1809, through a dragoon stopping to drink while
+bearing despatches.
+
+"You do no work," said the scissors to the rivet. "Where would your work
+be," said the rivet to the scissors, "if I didn't keep you together?"
+
+Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. Those
+that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend
+it, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of? Little
+courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly
+letter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million--once in a
+lifetime--may do a heroic action.
+
+We call the large majority of human lives _obscure_. Presumptuous that
+we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust
+of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+COURAGE.
+
+     Quit yourselves like men.
+     --1 SAMUEL iv. 9.
+
+     Cowards have no luck.
+     --ELIZABETH KULMAN.
+
+     He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day
+     surmount a fear.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     To dare is better than to doubt,
+       For doubt is always grieving;
+     'Tis faith that finds the riddles out;
+       The prize is for believing.
+     --HENRY BURTON.
+
+                                       --Walk
+     Boldly and wisely in that light thou hast;
+     There is a hand above will help thee on.
+     --BAILEY'S FESTUS.
+
+     "Have hope! Though clouds environ now,
+       And gladness hides her face in scorn,
+     Put thou the shadow from thy brow--
+       No night but hath its morn."
+
+
+"Our enemies are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylæ. "And
+we are before them," was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver your
+arms," came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them," was the
+answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: "You will not be able
+to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "Then we will fight in
+the shade," replied a Lacedemonian. What wonder that a handful of such
+men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth.
+
+"The hero," says Emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred."
+
+Darius the Great sent ambassadors to the Athenians, to demand earth and
+water, which denoted submission. The Athenians threw them into a ditch
+and told them, there was earth and water enough.
+
+"Bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma,
+when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were
+retreating. "No," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors."
+"To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's
+noble defiance to the enemies of France.
+
+Shakespeare says: "He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the
+hives because the bees have stings."
+
+"It is a bad omen," said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell
+on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness
+for a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare
+venture now upon the sea." So he returned to his house; but his young
+son Leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed
+southward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni had
+been driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two or
+three years before. The first land that they saw was probably Labrador,
+a barren, rugged plain. Leif called this country Heluland, or the land
+of flat stones. Sailing onward many days, he came to a low, level coast
+thickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the country
+Markland, probably the modern Nova Scotia. Sailing onward, they came to
+an island which they named Vinland, on account of the abundance of
+delicious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the year 1000. Here
+where the city of Newport, R. I., stands, they spent many months, and
+then returned to Greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and
+strange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and no doubt Eric was
+sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen.
+
+"Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the Gold of
+Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails to
+the wind!"
+
+Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime
+of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have
+enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne at
+twenty, had conquered the whole known world before dying at
+thirty-three. Julius Cæsar captured eight hundred cities, conquered
+three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great
+orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young
+man. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at
+twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his first
+battle as a colonel at twenty-two. Lafayette was made general of the
+whole French army at twenty. Charlemagne was master of France and
+Germany at thirty. Condé was only twenty-two when he conquered at
+Rocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the
+pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was in
+Parliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was
+twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was a Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth
+Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quincey
+at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order.
+Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems at
+fifteen. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college.
+Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. Luther was
+but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the
+bishop and defied the pope. Nelson was a lieutenant in the British navy
+before he was twenty. He was but forty-seven when he received his death
+wound at Trafalgar. Charles the Twelfth was only nineteen when he gained
+the battle of Narva; at thirty-six Cortes was the conqueror of Mexico;
+at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India.
+Hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at
+Cannæ, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the Republic of Rome; and
+Napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of Italy, he
+out-generaled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of
+Austria.
+
+Equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the
+allotted limit of life. Victor Hugo and Wellington were both in their
+prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. George
+Bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five.
+Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a
+marvel of literary and scholarly ability.
+
+"Your Grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed," said
+a phrenologist, who was examining Wellington's head. "You are right,"
+replied the Iron Duke, "and but for my sense of duty I should have
+retreated in my first fight." That first fight, on an Indian field, was
+one of the most terrible on record.
+
+Grant never knew when he was beaten. When told that he was surrounded by
+the enemy at Belmont, he quietly replied: "Well, then, we must cut our
+way out."
+
+When General Jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small
+settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the
+court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge
+ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare approach him. "Call
+a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." But they also shrank with
+fear from the ruffian. "Call me, then," said Jackson; "this court is
+adjourned for five minutes." He left the bench, walked straight up to
+the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped
+his weapons, afterward saying: "There was something in his eye I could
+not resist."
+
+Lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed
+it to be right. At the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread
+and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had
+refused, Lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate
+whenever an opportunity presented. "Go to Lincoln," people would say,
+when these bounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraid
+of any cause, if it's right."
+
+Abraham Lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with
+little education and no influential friends. When at last he had begun
+the practice of law it required no little daring to cast his fortune
+with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation
+he had gained. Only the most sublime moral courage could have sustained
+him as President to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long
+train of disaster; to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; to support
+Grant and Stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press;
+and through it all to do the right as God gave him to see the right.
+
+"Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." To determine to do anything is
+half the battle. "To think a thing is impossible is to make it so."
+"Courage is victory, timidity is defeat."
+
+Don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in
+crossing bridges you have not reached. Don't fool with a nettle! Grasp
+with firmness if you would rob it of its sting. To half will and to hang
+forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life.
+
+Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till their
+effects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what is your
+competitor but a man? _Conquer your place in the world_, for all things
+serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune
+bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously.
+The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic
+of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure
+men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has
+prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have
+been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths
+in the career of usefulness and fame. "No great deed is done," says
+George Eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty."
+
+A mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in such
+constant distress by its fear of a cat that the magician, taking pity on
+it, turned it into a cat itself. Immediately it began to suffer from its
+fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to
+suffer from fear of a tiger, and the magician turned it into a tiger.
+Then it began to suffer from its fear of huntsmen, and the magician, in
+disgust, said, "Be a mouse again. As you have only the heart of a mouse
+it is impossible to help you by giving you the body of a nobler animal."
+And the poor creature again became a mouse.
+
+Young Commodore Oliver H. Perry, not twenty-eight years old, was
+intrusted with the plan to gain control of Lake Erie. With great energy
+Perry directed the construction of nine ships, carrying fifty-four guns,
+and conquered Commodore Barclay, a veteran of European navies, with six
+vessels, carrying sixty-three guns. Perry had no experience in naval
+battles before this.
+
+To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. Feasible
+projects often miscarry through despondency, and are strangled at birth
+by a cowardly imagination. A ship on a lee shore stands out to sea to
+escape shipwreck. Shrink and you will be despised.
+
+One of Napoleon's drummer boys won the battle of Arcola. Napoleon's
+little army of fourteen thousand men had fought fifty thousand Austrians
+for seventy-two hours; the Austrians' position enabled them to sweep the
+bridge of Arcola, which the French had gained and which they must hold
+to win the battle. The drummer boy, on the shoulders of his sergeant
+(who swam across the river with him), beat the drum all the way across
+the river, and when on the opposite end of the bridge he beat his drum
+so vigorously that the Austrians, remembering the terrible French
+onslaught of the day before, fled in terror, thinking the French army
+was advancing upon them. Napoleon dated his great confidence in himself
+from this drum. This boy's heroic act was represented in stone on the
+front of the Pantheon of Paris.
+
+Two days before the battle of Jena Napoleon said: "My lads, you must not
+fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy's
+ranks."
+
+Arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled and
+discouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies in
+mathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-book
+caught his attention and interested him. He found it to be a short
+letter from D'Alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, and
+read: "Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolve
+themselves as you advance. Proceed and light will dawn and shine with
+increasing clearness on your path." "That maxim," he said, "was my
+greatest master in mathematics."
+
+Overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, the
+captain of a French brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite of
+all the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, and
+alter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompanied
+by a horrible crash. The boats were lowered, but only to be swept away
+by the waves. As a last resort the captain proposed that some sailors
+should swim ashore with a rope, but not a man would volunteer.
+
+"Captain," said the little twelve-year-old cabin boy, Jacques, timidly,
+"You don't wish to expose the lives of good sailors like these; it does
+not matter what becomes of a little cabin boy. Give me a ball of strong
+string, which will unroll as I go on; fasten one end around my body, and
+I promise you that within an hour the rope shall be well fastened to the
+shore or I will perish in the attempt."
+
+Before anyone could stop him he leaped overboard. His head was soon seen
+like a black point rising above the waves and then it disappeared in
+the distance and mist, and but for the occasional pull upon the ball of
+cord all would have thought him dead. At length it fell as if slackened
+and the sailors looked at one another in silence, when a quick, violent
+pull, followed by a second and a third, told that Jacques had reached
+the shore. A strong rope was fastened to the cord and pulled to the
+shore, and by its aid many of the sailors were rescued.
+
+In 1833 Miss Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress of Canterbury,
+Conn., opened her school to negro children as well as to whites. The
+whole place was thrown into uproar; town meetings were called to
+denounce her; the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
+isolate the school from the support of the townspeople; stores and
+churches were closed against teacher and pupils; public conveyances were
+denied them; physicians would not attend them; Miss Crandall's own
+friends dared not visit her; the house was assailed with rotten eggs and
+stones and finally set on fire. Yet the cause was righteous and the
+opposition proved vain and fruitless. Public opinion is often radically
+wrong.
+
+Staunch old Admiral Farragut--he of the true heart and the iron
+will--said to another officer of the navy, "Dupont, do you know why you
+didn't get into Charleston with your ironclads?" "Oh, it was because
+the channel was so crooked." "No, Dupont, it was not that." "Well, the
+rebel fire was perfectly horrible." "Yes, but it wasn't that." "What was
+it, then?" "_It was because you didn't believe you could go in._"
+
+"I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me
+_how_ he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always
+went straight forward and _did it_." So answered Sir Edward Hawke, when
+his appointment of Howe for some peculiarly responsible duty was
+criticized on the ground that Howe was the junior admiral in the fleet.
+
+There is a tradition among the Indians that Manitou was traveling in the
+invisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beasts
+glare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before an
+impassable river. As he determined to proceed, the thorns turned out
+phantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow.
+When we march on obstacles disappear. Many distinguished foreign and
+American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine
+was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of the
+United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "Colfax does not
+drink," sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. "You are
+right," said the Vice-President, "I dare not."
+
+A Western party recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate
+officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during
+the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at
+Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied,
+Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he
+could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song.
+He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I must
+drink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers.'" The men were so affected and
+ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying
+courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon.
+
+When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousing
+reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of
+Grant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other
+Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their
+good-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner,
+the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be
+procured for the table at night. When the time came to serve the wine,
+the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietly
+turned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a great
+surprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the occasion. Without a
+single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables
+turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that
+night.
+
+Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the
+liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity,
+nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly
+courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are
+those of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and trying
+to conceal it or make up for it by style." It takes courage for a young
+man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise
+and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your
+comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest
+poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say "No"
+squarely when those around you say "Yes." It takes courage to do your
+duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous
+although neglecting sacred obligations. It takes courage to unmask your
+true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for
+what you really are.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+WILL-POWER.
+
+     In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring
+     a thorough will to do it.
+     --W. HUMBOLDT.
+
+     It is firmness that makes the gods on our side.
+     --VOLTAIRE.
+
+     Stand firm, don't flutter.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     People do not lack strength they lack will.
+     --VICTOR HUGO.
+
+     Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of
+     countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way.
+     --JEREMY COLLIER.
+
+     When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to
+     see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and
+     freedom.
+     --JOHN FOSTER.
+
+
+"Do you know," asked Balzac's father, "that in literature a man must be
+either a king or a beggar?" "Very well," replied his son, "_I will be a
+king._" After ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he won
+success as an author.
+
+"Why do you repair that magistrate's bench with such great care?" asked
+a bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. "Because I wish
+to make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself,"
+replied the other. He did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few years
+later.
+
+"_I will be marshal of France and a great general_," exclaimed a young
+French officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. He
+became a successful general and a marshal of France.
+
+"There is so much power in faith," says Bulwer, "even when faith is
+applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly
+persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems
+impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies."
+
+There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real
+success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a
+Paradise Lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of
+Webster's Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor.
+Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their
+shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry,
+irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt
+and detail.
+
+"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten?" asked John Hunter. "He will
+do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of a man never
+fails."
+
+"Circumstances," says Milton, "have rarely favored famous men. They have
+fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles."
+
+"We have a half belief," said Emerson, "that the person is possible who
+can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man
+_who is a match for events_,--one who never found his match,--against
+whom other men being dashed are broken,--one who can give you any odds
+and beat you."
+
+The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually
+striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time
+very far toward his chosen goal.
+
+At nineteen Bayard Taylor walked to Philadelphia, thirty miles, to find
+a publisher for fifteen of his poems. He wanted to see them printed in a
+book; but no publisher would undertake it. He returned to his home
+whistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had not
+abated.
+
+In Europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks on
+account of his poverty. He returned to London with only thirty cents
+left. He tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had in
+his knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. Of that time he wrote: "My
+situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive." But his
+will defied circumstances and he rose above them. For two years he lived
+on two hundred and fifty dollars a year in London, earning every dollar
+of it with his pen.
+
+His untimely death in 1879, at fifty-four, when Minister to Berlin, was
+lamented by the learned and great of all countries.
+
+We are told of a young New York inventor who about twenty years ago
+spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful,
+would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune,
+and, what he valued more, his usefulness. The next morning the daily
+papers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemed
+vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little
+woman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like a
+fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. He went
+into his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands.
+
+At length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect.
+"It _shall_ succeed!" he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was crying
+over the papers when he went back. "They are very cruel," she said.
+"They don't understand." "I'll make them understand," he replied
+cheerfully. "It was a fight for six years," he said afterward. "Poverty,
+sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the _dogged
+determination_ that it should succeed." It did succeed. The invention
+was a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happy
+man.
+
+Napoleon was a terrible example of what the power of will can
+accomplish. He always threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon
+his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before
+him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his
+armies,--"There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the
+Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost
+inaccessible. "Impossible," said he, "is a word only to be found in the
+dictionary of fools." He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes
+employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one,
+not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life
+into them. "I made my generals out of mud," he said.
+
+To think we are able is almost to be so--to determine upon attainment,
+is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has often
+seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. The strength of
+Suwarrow's character lay in his power of willing, and, like most
+resolute persons, he preached it up as a system.
+
+Before Pizarro, D'Almagro and De Luque obtained any associates or arms
+or soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or the
+powers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn mass in one of
+the great churches, dedicating themselves to the conquest of Peru. The
+people expressed their contempt at such a monstrous project, and were
+shocked at such sacrilege. But these decided men continued the service
+and afterward retired for their great preparation with an entire
+insensibility to the expressions of contempt. Their firmness was
+absolutely invincible. The world has deplored the results of this
+expedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness of
+decision of its leaders. Such firmness would keep to its course and
+retain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world.
+
+At the battle of Marengo the French army was supposed to be defeated;
+but, while Bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move,
+Dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, as
+it was only about the middle of the afternoon. Napoleon rallied his men,
+renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the Austrians, though
+the unfortunate Dessaix lost his own life on that field.
+
+What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it
+invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships,
+established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any
+chance in Cæsar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with
+Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every
+battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ,
+Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our
+failures to destiny.
+
+A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to
+the wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolves
+to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that
+reaches the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded
+wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith
+and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but
+less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men
+go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they
+lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have
+resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements
+and successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, that in order
+to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand
+shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump
+in and scramble through as well as we can.
+
+Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may
+not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that
+merely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it he
+originates a good in the universe, which the universe could not
+annihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all created
+energies of intelligence or matter were combined against it?
+
+A man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but the
+superior of circumstances. He is free; nay, more, he is a king; and
+though this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles,
+once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has a
+royalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him.
+
+What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who
+never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will
+fight on the stumps? Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He
+thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined
+endeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall place
+bounds to his achievements! Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries in
+science, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. Deprive
+Euler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems,
+thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. Lock up
+the poor Bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegory
+in the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of
+his cell. Burn the body of Wycliffe and throw the ashes into the Severn;
+but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeated
+with his principles, to all lands. _The world always listens to a man
+with a will in him._ You might as well snub the sun as such men as
+Bismarck and Grant.
+
+Hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage when
+despondency would give up the battle of life. He is the best doctor
+who can implant _hope_ and courage in the human soul. So he is the
+greatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements.
+
+     "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
+     Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
+     Gives us free scope; and only backward pulls
+     Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."
+
+     "How much I could do if I only tried."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT.
+
+     He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that
+     ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
+     --BIBLE.
+
+     The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer
+     himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most
+     shameful and vile.
+     --PLATO.
+
+     The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than
+     the best which teaches everything else and not that.
+     --JOHN STERLING.
+
+     Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
+     --SENECA.
+
+     The energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge,
+     must originate in self and be self-directed.
+     --THOMAS J. MORGAN.
+
+     The foes with which they waged their strife
+       Were passion, self and sin;
+     The victories that laureled life,
+       Were fought and won within.
+     --EDWARD H. DEWART.
+
+
+"I'll sign it after awhile," a drunkard would reply, when repeatedly
+urged by his wife to sign the pledge; "but I don't like to break off at
+once, the best way is to get used to a thing." "Very well, old man,"
+said his wife, "see if you don't fall into a hole one of these days,
+with no one to help you out."
+
+Not long after, when intoxicated, he did fall into a shallow well, but
+his shouts for help were fortunately heard by his wife. "Didn't I tell
+you so?" she asked. "It's lucky I was in hearing or you might have
+drowned." He took hold of the bucket and she tugged at the windlass; but
+when he was near the top her grasp slipped and down he went into the
+water again. This was repeated until he screamed: "Look here, you're
+doing that on purpose, I know you are." "Well, now, I am," admitted the
+wife. "Don't you remember telling me it's best to get used to a thing by
+degrees? I'm afraid if I bring you up sudden, you would not find it
+wholesome." Finding that his case was becoming desperate, he promised to
+sign the pledge at once. His wife raised him out immediately, but warned
+him that if ever he became intoxicated and fell into the well again, she
+would leave him there.
+
+A man captured a young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. It grew
+up like a kitten, fond and gentle. There was no evidence of its savage,
+bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. But one day while
+the master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his hand
+started the blood from a scratch. The moment the beast tasted blood, his
+ferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon his master to tear
+him to pieces. Sometimes the appetite for drink, which was thought to
+be buried years ago, is roused by the taste or the smell of "the devil
+in solution," and the wretched victim finds himself a helpless slave to
+the passion which he thought dead.
+
+When a young man, Hugh Miller once drank the two glasses of whiskey
+which fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons with
+whom he worked. On reaching home he tried to read Bacon's Essays, his
+favorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehend
+the meaning. "The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt,
+one of degradation," said he. "I had sunk, by my own act, for the time,
+to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege
+to be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable one
+for forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never
+again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking
+usage; and with God's help I was enabled to hold by the determination."
+
+In a certain manufacturing town an employer one Saturday paid to his
+workmen $700 in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. On Monday
+$450 of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by the
+saloon-keepers. When the fact was made known, the workmen were so
+startled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. The
+times would not be so "hard" for the workmen if the saloons did not
+take in so much of their wages. If they would organize a strike against
+the saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase of
+wages, and to include an increase of savings.
+
+How often we might read the following sign over the threshold of a
+youthful life: "For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "golden
+chances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little
+sensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife,
+lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent
+possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a
+thousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, a
+brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a
+skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all
+exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a
+shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty
+degeneration of the heart, for Bright's disease, for a drunkard's
+liver."
+
+With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed
+the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a
+mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful
+battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the
+sunlight; but he had conquered the demon which had almost killed him.
+Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off
+using tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the end of
+it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew camomile,
+gentian, tooth-picks, but it was of no use. He bought another plug of
+tobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully, but he
+looked at it and said, "You are a _weed_, and I am a _man_. I'll master
+you if I die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily.
+
+There was an abbot that desired a piece of ground that lay conveniently
+for him. The owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he was
+contented to let it. The abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm it
+for one crop. He had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns--a crop that
+lasted three hundred years. So Satan asks to get possession of our souls
+by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong that
+seems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted the
+seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground.
+
+"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter
+Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever
+issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."
+
+Thomas A. Edison was once asked why he was a total abstainer. He said,
+"I thought I had a better use for my head."
+
+Byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his natural
+propensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and control
+his animal appetites was a very different thing. At all events, it
+seemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest.
+Let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life's voyage cultivate
+this one great virtue, "self-control." There is nothing so important to
+a youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivated
+will; everything depends upon it. If he has it, he will succeed; if he
+does not have it, he will fail.
+
+"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer
+himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful
+and vile."
+
+"Silence," says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the
+contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy."
+
+"He is a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man
+who will not."
+
+Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we
+should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I
+mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what
+virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our
+vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the
+shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control
+your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.
+
+It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation or
+apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A man
+feels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm of
+passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool.
+And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too.
+
+The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and
+furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon
+Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door.
+His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more;
+and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel
+upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder
+must needs produce a shower." Alcibiades, his friend, talking with him
+about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an
+everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have so
+accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the
+noise of carriages in the street."
+
+It is said of Socrates, that whether he was teaching the rules of an
+exact morality, whether he was answering his corrupt judges, or was
+receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, he was still the
+same man; that is to say, calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid--in a word,
+wise to the last.
+
+"It is not enough to have great qualities," says La Rochefoucauld; "we
+should also have the management of them." No man can call himself
+educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will.
+
+"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said
+Eardley Wilmot; "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it
+would be Godlike to forgive it."
+
+"He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive,
+with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet
+restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, the spiritual
+heroes."
+
+To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are
+exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why
+put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is
+remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a
+poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a
+servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you
+feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too
+much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak
+in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the "sweet by and by,"
+when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled.
+
+But self-respect must be accompanied by self-conquest, or our strong
+feelings may prove but runaway horses. He who would command others must
+first learn to obey, and he who would command his own powers must learn
+to be submissive to the still small voice within. Discipline the
+passions, curb pride and impatience, restrain all hasty impulses. Deny
+yourself the gratification of any desire not sanctioned by reason. Shame
+and its consequent degradation follow the loss of our own good opinion
+rather than the esteem of others. Too many yield in the perpetual
+conflict between temptation to gratify the coarser appetites and
+aspiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful. Voices unheard by
+those around us whisper "Don't," but too often self-respect is lost, the
+will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. Such battles must be
+fought by all; be ours the victory born of self-control, aided by that
+Heaven which always helps him who prays while putting his own shoulder
+to the wheel.
+
+No man had a better heart or more thoroughly hated oppression than
+Edmund Burke. He possessed neither experience in affairs, nor a tranquil
+judgment, nor the rule over his own spirit, so that his genius, under
+the impulse of his bewildering passions, wrought much evil to his
+country and to Europe, even while he rendered noble service to the cause
+of commercial freedom, to Ireland, and to America.
+
+Burns could not resist the temptation to utter his clever sarcasms at
+another's expense, and one of his biographers has said that he made a
+hundred enemies for every ten jokes he made. But Burns could no more
+control his appetite than his tongue.
+
+     "Thus thoughtless follies laid him low
+     And stained his name."
+
+Xanthus, the philosopher, told his servant that on the morrow he was
+going to have some friends to dine, and asked him to get the best thing
+he could find in the market. The philosopher and his guests sat down
+the next day at the table. They had nothing but tongue--four or five
+courses of tongue--tongue cooked in this way, and tongue cooked in that
+way, and the philosopher lost his patience, and said to his servant,
+"Didn't I tell you to get the best thing in the market?" He said, "I did
+get the best thing in the market. Isn't the tongue the organ of
+sociality, the organ of eloquence, the organ of kindness, the organ of
+worship?" Then Xanthus said, "To-morrow I want you to get the worst
+thing in the market." And on the morrow the philosopher sat at the
+table, and there was nothing there but tongue--four or five courses of
+tongue--tongue in this shape, and tongue in that shape--and the
+philosopher again lost his patience, and said, "Didn't I tell you to get
+the worst thing in the market?" The servant replied, "I did; for isn't
+the tongue the organ of blasphemy, the organ of defamation, the organ of
+lying?"
+
+"I can reform my people," said Peter the Great, "but I cannot reform
+myself." He forbade all Russians to wear beards, and to quell the
+insurrection which resulted, he had 8000 revolters beheaded. With a
+hatchet he began the ghastly work. He had his own son beheaded.
+
+He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. He is wanting in the
+highest attributes of humanity. The honor and nobleness of the old
+"knight-errantry" consisted in defending the innocence of men and
+protecting the chastity of women against the assaults of others. But the
+truer and nobler knighthood protects the property and the character, the
+innocence and the chastity of others against one's self. We should all
+be posted upon our weak points, for after all there are many emergencies
+in life when these weak points, not our strong ones, will measure our
+manhood and our strength. Many a woman whom a mouse would frighten out
+of her wits would not shrink from assisting in terrible surgical
+operations in our city or war hospitals, and many an officer and
+soldier who would walk up to the cannon's mouth without a tremor in
+battle, would not dare to say his soul was his own in a society parlor.
+Many a great statesman has quailed before the ringer of scorn of a
+fellow-Congressman, and has been completely cowed by a hiss from the
+gallery or a ridiculing paragraph in a newspaper. We all have tender
+spots, weak spots, and a man can never know his strength who does not
+study his weaknesses.
+
+"Violent passions and ardent feelings are seldom found united with
+complete self-command; but when they are they form the strongest
+possible character, for there is all the power of clear thought and cool
+judgment impelled by the resistless energy of feeling. This combination
+Washington possessed; for in his impetuosity there was no foolish
+rashness, and in his passion no injustice. Besides, whatever violence
+there might be within, the explosion seldom came to the surface, and
+when it did it was arrested at once by the stern mandate of his will. He
+never lost the mastery of himself in any emergency, and in 'ruling his
+spirit' showed himself greater than in 'taking a city.'
+
+"It is one of the astonishing things in his life that, amid the perfect
+chaos of feeling into which he was thrown,--amid the distracted counsels
+and still more distracted affairs that surrounded him,--he never once
+lost the perfect equilibrium of his own mind. The contagion of fear and
+doubt and despair could not touch him. He did not seem susceptible to
+the common influences which affect men. His soul poised on its own
+centre, reposed calmly there through all the storms that beat for seven
+years on his noble breast. The ingratitude and folly of those who should
+have been his allies, the insults of his foes, and the frowns of fortune
+never provoked him into a rash act, or deluded him into a single error."
+
+Horace Mann says that there must be a time when the vista of the future,
+with all its possibilities of glory and of shame, first opens to the
+vision of youth. Then is he summoned to make his choice between truth
+and treachery; between honor and dishonor; between purity and
+profligacy; between moral life and moral death. And as he doubts or
+balances between the heavenward or hellward course; as he struggles to
+rise or consents to fall; is there in all the universe of God a
+spectacle of higher exultation or of deeper pathos? Within him are the
+appetites of a brute and the attributes of an angel; and when these meet
+in council to make up the roll of his destiny and seal his fate, shall
+the beast hound out the seraph? Shall the young man, now conscious of
+the largeness of his sphere and of the sovereignty of his choice, wed
+the low ambitions of the world, and seek, with their emptiness, to fill
+his immortal desires? Because he has a few animal wants that must be
+supplied, shall he become all animal,--an epicure and an inebriate,--and
+blasphemously make it the first doctrine of his catechism,--"the Chief
+End of Man?"--to glorify his stomach and enjoy it? Because it is the law
+of self-preservation that he shall provide for himself, and the law of
+religion that he shall provide for his family, when he has one, must he,
+therefore, cut away all the bonds of humanity that bind him to his race,
+forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if he
+can have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of a
+sybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when he
+walks the streets where hunger moans and nakedness shivers?
+
+The strong man is the one who ever keeps himself under strict
+discipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of the
+higher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows them
+to be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by his
+inclinations. He drills and disciplines his desires and keeps the roots
+of his life under ground, and never allows them to interfere with his
+character. He is never the slave of his inclinations, nor the sport of
+impulse. He is the commander of himself and heads his ship due north
+even in the wildest tempests of passion. He is never the slave of his
+strongest desire.
+
+A noted teacher has said that the propensities and habits are as
+teachable as Latin and Greek, while they are infinitely more essential
+to happiness. We are very largely the creatures of our wills. By
+constantly looking on the bright side of things, by viewing everything
+hopefully, by setting the face as a flint every hour of every day toward
+all that is harmonious and beautiful in life, and refusing to listen to
+the discord or to look at the ugly side of life, by constantly directing
+the thought toward what is noble, grand and true, we can soon form
+habits which will develop into a beautiful character, a harmonious and
+well-rounded life. We are creatures of habit, and by knowing the laws of
+its formation we can, in a little while, build up a network of habit
+about us, which will protect us from most of the ugly, selfish and
+degrading things of life. In fact, the only real happiness and unalloyed
+satisfaction we get out of life, is the product of self-control. It is
+the great guardian of all the virtues, without which none of them is
+safe. It is the sentinel, which stands on guard at the door of life, to
+admit friends and exclude enemies.
+
+"I call that mind free," says Channing, "which jealously guards its
+intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does
+not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens
+itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an
+angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more
+of the oracle within; itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to
+supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call that mind
+free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is
+not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of
+accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and
+acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has
+deliberately espoused. I call that mind free which protects itself
+against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human
+opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's,
+which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much
+to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind free
+which through confidence in God and in the power of virtue has cast off
+all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall,
+which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all
+else be lost. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit,
+which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does
+not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise
+rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher
+monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and
+higher exertions. I call that mind free which is jealous of its own
+freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards
+its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+STICK.
+
+     Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue,
+     _par excellence_, of Man against Destiny, of the One against
+     the World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this is
+     the courage of the Gospel; and its importance, in a social
+     view--its importance to races and institutions--cannot be too
+     earnestly inculcated.
+     --BULWER.
+
+     Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of
+     countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.
+     --JEREMY COLLIER.
+
+     To bear is to conquer fate.
+     --CAMPBELL.
+
+     The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the
+     thought that never wanders,--these are the masters of victory.
+     --BURKE.
+
+     Let us, then, be up and doing,
+     With a heart for any fate;
+     Still achieving, still pursuing,
+     Learn to labor and to wait.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+"How long did it take you to learn to play?" asked a young man of
+Geradini. "Twelve hours a day for twenty years," replied the great
+violinist. Layman Beecher's father, when asked how long it took him to
+write his celebrated sermon on the "Government of God," replied, "About
+forty years."
+
+"If you will study a year I will teach you to sing well," said an
+Italian music teacher to a pupil who wished to know what can be hoped
+for with study; "if two years, you may excel. If you will practice the
+scale constantly for three years, I will make you the best tenor in
+Italy; if for four years, you may have the world at your feet."
+
+Perceiving that Caffarelli had a fine tenor voice and unusual talent, a
+teacher offered to give him a thorough musical education free of charge,
+provided the pupil would promise never to complain of the course of
+instruction given. The first year the master gave nothing but the
+scales, compelling the youth to practice them over and over again. The
+second year it was the same, the third, and the fourth, the conditions
+of the bargain being the only reply to any question in relation to a
+change from such monotonous drill. The fifth year the teacher introduced
+chromatics and thorough bass, and, at its close, when Caffarelli looked
+for something more brilliant and interesting, the master said: "Go, my
+son, I can teach you nothing more. You are the first singer of Italy and
+of the world." The _mastery_ of scales and diatonics gave him power to
+sing anything.
+
+"Keep at the helm," said President Porter; "steer your own ship, and
+remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the
+work. Strike out. Assume your own position. Put potatoes in a cart,
+over a rough road, and the small ones go to the bottom."
+
+"Never depend upon your genius," said John Ruskin, in the words of
+Joshua Reynolds; "if you have talent, industry will improve it; if you
+have none, industry will supply the deficiency."
+
+"The only merit to which I lay claim," said Hugh Miller, "is that of
+patient research--a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass
+me; and this humble faculty of patience when rightly developed may lead
+to more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself."
+
+Titian, the greatest master of color the world has seen, used to say:
+"White, red and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs,
+but he must know how to use them." It took fifty years of constant, hard
+practice to bring him to his full mastery.
+
+"How much grows everywhere if we do but wait!" exclaims Carlyle. "Not a
+difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a
+deformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow
+dear to us."
+
+Persistency is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything
+great. They may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses, or
+eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent in a
+successful man. No matter what opposition he meets or what
+discouragements overtake him, he is always persistent. Drudgery cannot
+disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him. He
+will persist, no matter what comes or what goes; it is a part of his
+nature. He could almost as easily stop breathing.
+
+It is not so much brilliancy of intellect or fertility of resource as
+persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man.
+Persistency always gives confidence. Everybody believes in the man who
+persists. He may meet misfortunes, sorrows and reverses, but everybody
+believes that he will ultimately triumph because they know there is no
+keeping him down. "Does he keep at it, is he persistent?" is the
+question which the world asks of a man.
+
+Even the man with small ability will often succeed if he has the quality
+of persistence, where a genius without persistence would fail.
+
+"How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement
+appertaining to it," said Dickens. "I will only add to what I have
+already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
+patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me,
+and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any
+strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my
+success."
+
+"I am sorry to say that I don't think this is in your line," said
+Woodfall the reporter, after Sheridan had made his first speech in
+Parliament. "You had better have stuck to your former pursuits." With
+head on his hand Sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, "It
+is in me, and it shall come out of me." From the same man came that
+harangue against Warren Hastings which the orator Fox called the best
+speech ever made in the House of Commons.
+
+"The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do
+first," said William Wirt, "will do neither." The man who resolves, but
+suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of
+a friend--who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and
+veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every
+breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or
+useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best
+stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all.
+
+Great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their
+works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have
+been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace
+of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty years
+incessantly on his "Analogy," and even then was so dissatisfied that he
+wanted to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his
+style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures.
+Virgil worked eleven years on the Æneid. The note-books of great men
+like Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of the
+years put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was
+twenty-five years writing his "Esprit de Louis," yet you can read it in
+sixty minutes. Adam Smith spent ten years on his "Wealth of Nations." A
+rival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending three days on
+three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "But your five
+hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my three
+lines will live forever," replied Euripides.
+
+Sir Fowell Buxton thought he could do as well as others, if he devoted
+twice as much time and labor as they did. Ordinary means and
+extraordinary application have done most of the great things in the
+world.
+
+Defoe offered the manuscript of Robinson Crusoe to many booksellers and
+all but one refused it. Addison's first play, Rosamond, was hissed off
+the stage, but the editor of the Spectator and Tattler was made of stern
+stuff and was determined that the world should listen to him, and it
+did.
+
+David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book through the
+press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. The process
+has increased my respect for authors a thousand-fold. I think I would
+rather cross the African continent again than undertake to write another
+book."
+
+"For the statistics of the negro population of South America alone,"
+says Robert Dale Owen, "I examined more than a hundred and fifty
+volumes."
+
+Another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of his
+book as many as fifty times.
+
+It is said of one of Longfellow's poems that it was written in four
+weeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down.
+Bulwer declared that he had rewritten some of his briefer productions as
+many as eight or nine times before their publication. One of Tennyson's
+pieces was rewritten fifty times. John Owen was twenty years on his
+"Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews;" Gibbon on his "Decline and
+Fall," twenty years; and Adam Clark, on his "Commentary," twenty-six
+years. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great."
+
+A great deal of time is consumed in reading before some books are
+prepared. George Eliot read 1000 books before she wrote "Daniel
+Deronda." Allison read 2000 before he completed his history. It is said
+of another that he read 20,000 and wrote only two books.
+
+Virgil spent several years on the Georgics, which could be printed in
+two columns of an ordinary newspaper.
+
+"Generally speaking," said Sydney Smith, "the life of all truly great
+men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonly
+passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent
+humility,--overlooked, mistaken, condemned by weaker men,--thinking
+while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something
+within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the
+dregs of the world. And then, when their time has come, and some little
+accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into
+the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and
+mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind."
+
+Malibran said: "If I neglect my practice a day, I see the difference in
+my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all
+the world knows my failure." Constant, persistent struggle she found to
+be the price of her marvelous power.
+
+"If I am building a mountain," said Confucius, "and stop before the last
+basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed."
+
+"Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can
+stand day's work."
+
+America will never produce any great art until our resources are
+developed and we get more time. As a people we have not yet learned the
+art of patience. We do not know how to wait. Think of an American artist
+spending seven, eight, ten, and even twelve years on a single painting
+as did Titian, Michael Angelo and many of the other old masters. Think
+of an American sculptor spending years and years upon a single
+masterpiece, as did the Greeks and Romans. We have not yet learned the
+secret of working and waiting.
+
+"The single element in all the progressive movements of my pencil," said
+the great David Wilkie, "was persevering industry."
+
+The kind of ability which most men rank highest is that which enables
+its possessor to do what he undertakes, and attain the object of his
+ambition or desire.
+
+"The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an
+ordinary advertisement," says a French writer. "The second insertion he
+sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth
+insertion he looks at the price; the fifth insertion he speaks of it to
+his wife; the sixth insertion he is ready to purchase, and the seventh
+insertion he purchases."
+
+The large fees which make us envy the great lawyer or doctor are not
+remuneration for the few minutes' labor of giving advice, but for the
+mental stores gathered during the precious spare moments of many a year
+while others were sleeping or enjoying holidays. A client will
+frequently object to paying fifty dollars for an opinion written in five
+minutes, but such an opinion could be written only by one who has read a
+hundred law books. If the lawyer had not previously read those books,
+but should keep a client waiting until he could read them with care,
+there would be fewer complaints that fees of this kind are not earned.
+
+We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains,
+erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the
+Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway
+through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of
+the new world, and reared in its stead a community of States and
+nations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite
+creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature,
+and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow.
+Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many
+flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted
+cars, and sent them flying from town to town and nation to nation;
+tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the
+lightning's speed. Perseverance has whitened the waters of the world
+with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored
+every land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as
+many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements,
+measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and
+computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities.
+
+"Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other
+art," said Reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that one
+object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed."
+
+"If you work hard two weeks without selling a book," wrote a publisher
+to an agent, "you will make a success of it."
+
+"Know thy work and do it," said Carlyle; "and work at it like a
+Hercules. One monster there is in the world--an idle man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+SAVE.
+
+     If you want to test a young man and ascertain whether nature
+     made him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollars
+     and see what he will do with it. If he is born to conquer and
+     command, he will put it quietly away till he is ready to use it
+     as opportunity offers. If he is born to serve, he will
+     immediately begin to spend it in gratifying his ruling
+     propensity.
+     --PARTON.
+
+     The man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay,
+     Provides a home from which to run away.
+     --YOUNG.
+
+     Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou
+     shalt sell thy necessaries.
+
+     For age and want save while you may:
+     No morning sun lasts a whole day.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never
+     speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need
+     as a provision against the workhouse.
+     --BULWER.
+
+
+"What do you do with all these books?" "Oh, that library is my 'one
+cigar a day,'" was the response. "What do you mean?" "Mean! Just this:
+when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, I'd
+just been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money that
+others would have spent in smoke, and I thought I'd try and do the
+same. You remember, I said I should allow myself one cigar a day."
+"Yes." "Well, I never smoked. I just put by the price of a five-cent
+cigar every day, and as the money accumulated I bought books--the books
+you see there." "Do you mean to say that those books cost no more than
+that? Why there are dollars' worth of them." "Yes, I know there are. I
+had six years more of my apprenticeship to serve when you persuaded me
+to 'be a man.' I put by the money I have told you of, which of course at
+five cents a day amounted to $18.25 a year or $109.50 in six years. I
+keep those books by themselves, as a result of my apprenticeship
+cigar-money; and if you'd done as I did, you would by this time have
+saved many, many more dollars than that, and been in business besides."
+
+If a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents
+every working day, investing at 7 per cent. compound interest, he will
+have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. Twenty
+cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty
+years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. Even a saving
+of one dollar a week from the date of one's majority would give him one
+thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life.
+"What maintains one vice would bring up two children."
+
+Who does not feel honored by his relationship to Dr. Franklin, whether
+as a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race?
+Who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality of
+his youth which laid the foundation for so much competence and
+generosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of his
+outlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy over
+the pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of the
+great art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into every
+cottage in Christendom, and made his name immortal? And yet, how few
+there are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn a
+young man who should follow Franklin's example.
+
+Washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when
+President of the United States. He understood that without economy none
+can be rich, and with it none need be poor.
+
+Napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges and
+errors.
+
+Unfortunately Congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice of
+living beyond one's means.
+
+"We are ruined," says Colton, "not by what we really want, but by what
+we think we do. Therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if
+they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that
+buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy."
+
+"I hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed Horace Walpole,
+"for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." A woman once
+bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought it
+might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don't need
+because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined by
+buying good pennyworths."
+
+Barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife would
+have a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousand
+dollars. When the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to get
+chairs "to match," then sideboards, carpets, and tables, "to correspond"
+with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at last
+it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned
+for the furniture, and a new one was built "to correspond" with the sofa
+and _et ceteras_: "thus," added my friend, "running up an outlay of
+$30,000 caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape of
+servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up a
+fine 'establishment' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a
+habit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity."
+
+Cicero said: "Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue."
+Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "Here's something
+wonderfully cheap; let's buy it." "Have you any use for it?" "No, not at
+present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time."
+
+"Annual income," says Macawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure,
+nineteen six, result--happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual
+expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result--misery."
+
+"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach,
+are disagreeable," says Horace Greeley; "but debt is infinitely worse
+than them all."
+
+"If I had but fifty cents a week to live on," said Greeley, "I'd buy a
+peck of corn and parch it before I'd owe any man a dollar."
+
+To find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life
+is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that
+which will contribute most to their enrichment.
+
+Economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all; it must be
+done by management.
+
+Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a
+sacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simple
+tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. Much of
+the economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept out
+of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl for my
+dinner on Sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with one
+apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene
+and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the
+lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for gods and
+heroes.
+
+Like many other boys P. T. Barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for his
+father, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings in
+knick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thus
+increasing his pennies to dollars.
+
+The eccentric John Randolph once sprang from his seat in the House of
+Representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "Mr. Speaker, I
+have found it." And then, in the stillness which followed this strange
+outburst, he added, "I have found the Philosopher's stone: it is _Pay as
+you go_."
+
+In France, all classes, the men as well as the women, study the economy
+of cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, the
+people live at one-third the expense of Englishmen or Americans. There
+they know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others would
+throw away. There they cook no more for each day than is required for
+that day. With them the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cook
+is as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. The
+consequence is, as ex-Secretary McCullough thinks, a French village of
+1000 inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one of
+our large American hotels, and he believes that the entire population of
+France could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in the
+United States. Professor Blot, who resided for some years in the United
+States, remarks, pathetically, that here, "where the markets rival the
+best markets of Europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live.
+There are thousands of families in moderately good circumstances who
+have never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cooked
+steak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal."
+
+There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese parings
+and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill, and
+doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness.
+The misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economy
+apply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully
+economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence,
+that they think they can afford to squander in other directions.
+_Punch_, in speaking of this "one idea" class of people, says, "They are
+like a man who bought a penny herring for his family's dinner, and then
+hired a coach and four to take it home." I never knew a man to succeed
+by practicing this kind of economy. True economy consists in always
+making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little
+longer, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live on
+plainer food if need be. So that under all circumstances, unless some
+unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the
+income. A penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go on
+accumulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained.
+
+"I wish I could write all across the sky in letters of gold," says Rev.
+William Marsh, "the one word, savings bank."
+
+Boston savings banks have $130,000,000 on deposit, mostly saved in
+driblets. Josiah Quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of
+the palaces on Beacon street.
+
+"Nature uses a grinding economy," says Emerson, "working up all that is
+wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; not a superfluous grain of sand
+for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. She flung
+us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail
+but instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to her
+general stock. Last summer's flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only
+to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. Nature will
+not even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. The
+moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces,
+that the parts may be used again for other creations."
+
+"So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says Bulwer.
+"With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man's help; I may at least
+have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' But with £5000 a year I may dread
+a ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whose
+wages I cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first
+long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that
+lies nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales and
+whetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no
+man is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage, that with £5000 a
+year I purchase the worst evils of poverty--terror and shame; I may so
+well manage my money, that with £100 a year I purchase the best
+blessings of wealth: safety and respect."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+LIVE UPWARD.
+
+     "Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,
+     And this thy last deed ere the judgment day."
+
+     If you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest.
+     --PUBLIUS SYRUS.
+
+
+                              What is a man,
+     If his chief good, and market of his time,
+     Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more.
+     Sure He, that made us with such large discourse,
+     Looking before, and after, gave us not
+     That capability and godlike Reason
+     To rust in us unused.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+     Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. It
+     is heaven's own incentive to make purpose great and achievement
+     greater.
+     --ANONYMOUS.
+
+     "Not failure, but low aim, is crime."
+
+     "Endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever it
+     may be; neither let anyone go before thee in well
+     doing."
+
+     O may I join the choir invisible
+     Of those immortal dead who live again
+     In minds made better by their presence; live
+     In pulses stirred to generosity,
+     In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
+     For miserable aims that end with self,
+     In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
+     And with their mild persistence urge man's search
+     To vaster issues.
+     --GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+
+"Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires," said
+Napoleon to Montholon at St. Helena; "but upon what did we rest the
+creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his
+empire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for Him. I
+die before my time and my body will be given back to worms. Such is the
+fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss
+between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is
+proclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the whole
+earth. Call you this dying? Is it not rather living? The death of Christ
+is the death of a God."
+
+"No true man can live a half life," says Phillips Brooks, "when he has
+genuinely learned that it is a half life. The other half, the higher
+half, must haunt him."
+
+"Ideality," says Horace Mann, "is only the _avant courier_ of the mind;
+and where that in a healthy and normal state goes I hold it to be a
+prophecy that realization can follow."
+
+"If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through his
+blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon," writes Bulwer, "what
+stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved
+mankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?--who has
+not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?--who has braved the
+present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon
+glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something
+more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his
+hopes?"
+
+"If I live," wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, "all
+blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know
+and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business."
+
+I have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which man
+turns his eye upward, though I am not anatomist enough to be sure of the
+fact.
+
+"Show me a contented slave," says Burke, "and I will show you a degraded
+man."
+
+"They truly are faithful," says one writer, "who devote their entire
+lives to amendment."
+
+General Grant said of the Chinese Wall: "I believe that the labor
+expended on this wall could have built every railroad in the United
+States, every canal and highway, and most, if not all, our cities."
+
+"The real benefactors of mankind," says Emerson, "are the men and women
+who can raise their fellow beings out of the world of corn and money,
+who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in their
+higher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectual
+realm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness by
+dollars and cents; who can make men forget their stomachs and feast on
+being's banquet."
+
+"Men are not so much mistaken in desiring to advance themselves," said
+Beecher, "as in judging what will be an advance, and what the right
+method of obtaining it. An ambition which has conscience in it will
+always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road and
+bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most
+faithful and minute performances of duty. The liberty to go higher than
+we are is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty of our
+present sphere. Thus men are to rise upon their performances and not
+upon their discontent. And this is the secret and golden meaning of the
+command to be _content_ in whatever sphere we are placed. It is not to
+be the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity,
+but the content of industrious fidelity. When men are building the
+foundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below the
+surface, and in disagreeable conditions. But every course of stone which
+they lay raises them higher; and at length, when they reach the surface,
+they have laid such solid work under them that they need not fear now to
+carry up their walls, through towering stories, till they overlook the
+whole neighborhood. A man proves himself fit to go higher who shows that
+he is faithful where he is. A man that will not do well in his present
+place, because he longs to be higher, is fit neither to be where he is
+nor yet above it; he is already too high and should be put lower."
+
+Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much, or dare
+too much. What a man does, that he has. In himself is his might. Don't
+waste life on doubts and fears. Spend yourself on the work before you,
+well assured that the performance of this hour's duties will be the best
+preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.
+
+Tradition says that when Solomon received the gift of an emerald vase
+from the Queen of Sheba he filled it with an elixir which he only knew
+how to prepare, one drop of which would prolong life indefinitely. A
+dying criminal begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but Solomon
+refused to prolong a wicked life. When good men asked for it they were
+refused, or failed to obtain it when promised, as the king would forget
+or prefer not to open the vase to get but a single drop. When at last
+the king became ill, and bade his servants bring the vase, he found that
+the contents had all evaporated. So it is often with our hope, our
+faith, our ambition, our aspiration.
+
+A man cannot aspire if he looks down. God has not created us with
+aspirations and longings for heights to which we cannot climb. Live
+upward. The unattained still beckons us toward the summit of life's
+mountains, into the atmosphere where great souls live and breathe and
+have their being. Even hope is but a promise of the possibility of its
+own fulfillment. Life should be lived in earnest. It is no idle game, no
+farce to amuse and be forgotten. It is a stern reality, fuller of duties
+than the sky of stars. You cannot have too much of that yearning which
+we call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, the
+efforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails of
+attaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-worm
+of disappointed ambition. To all will come a time when the love of glory
+will be seen to be but a splendid delusion, riches empty, rank vain,
+power dependent, and all outward advantages without inward peace a mere
+mockery of wretchedness. The wisest men have taken care to uproot
+selfish ambition from their breasts. Shakespeare considered it so near a
+vice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue.
+
+Who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless,
+lazy man? He becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic. Love brings
+out the poetry in him. It is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet what
+magic it has wrought. Nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he is
+entirely transformed.
+
+Not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a woman
+thirsting for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint.
+He despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes even
+kingdoms to gratify his master passion. Mere ambition has impelled many
+a man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation,
+aspiration, has led him beyond the stars. If the aim be right the life
+in its details cannot be far wrong. Your heart must inspire what your
+hands execute, or the work will be poorly done. The hand cannot reach
+higher than does the heart.
+
+But do not strive to reach impossible goals. It is wholly in your
+power to develop yourself, but not necessarily so to make yourself a
+king. How many Presidents of the United States or Prime Ministers of
+England are chosen within the working lifetime of a man? What if a
+thousand young men resolve to become President or Prime Minister? While
+such prizes are within your reach, remember that your will must be
+tremendous and your qualifications of the highest order, or you cannot
+hope to secure them. Too many are deluded by ambition beyond their power
+of attainment, or tortured by aspirations totally disproportionate to
+their capacity for execution. You may, indeed, confidently hope to
+become eminent in usefulness and power, but only as you build upon a
+broad foundation of self-culture; while, as a rule, specialists in
+ambition as in science are apt to become narrow and one-sided. Darwin
+was very fond of poetry and music when young, but after devoting his
+life to science, he was surprised to find Shakespeare tedious. He said
+that, if he were to live his life again, he would read poetry and hear
+music every day, so as not to lose the power of appreciating such
+things.
+
+God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You
+_must_ take it. The only choice is _how_.
+
+"When I found I was black," said Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I were
+white, and so force men to look below my skin."
+
+In the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society is a
+prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves
+of which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior," which he was evidently
+evolving as he trudged from house to house.
+
+"Disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth,"
+said Plato, "I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can;
+and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men to the utmost of
+my power; and you, too, I invite to this contest, which, I affirm,
+surpasses all contests here."
+
+"Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and
+singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it?" asked Thoreau.
+"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try
+heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no
+advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor?"
+
+"O if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is
+to be a part forever," exclaimed Phillips Brooks, "what patience must
+fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for
+it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills."
+
+Man never reaches heights above his habitual thought. It is not enough
+now and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite. We must
+habitually dwell there. The great man is he who abides easily on heights
+to which others rise occasionally and with difficulty. Don't let the
+maxims of a low prudence daily dinned into your ears lower the tone of
+your high ambition or check your aspirations. Hope lifts us step by step
+up the mysterious ladder, the top of which no eye hath ever seen. Though
+we do not find what hope promised, yet we are stronger for the climbing,
+and we get a broader outlook upon life which repays the effort. Indeed,
+if we do not follow where hope beckons, we gradually slide down the
+ladder in despair. Strive ever to be at the top of your condition. A
+high standard is absolutely necessary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+"SAND."
+
+     I shall show the cinders of my spirits
+     Through the ashes of my chance.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+                            Perseverance is a virtue
+     That wins each god-like act, and plucks success
+     E'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.
+     --WILLIAM HARVARD.
+
+     Never say "Fail" again.
+     --RICHELIEU.
+
+     It is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows the
+     blood; the one pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness
+     of the fellow," as Oxford men say; it is the one march more
+     that wins the campaign; the five minutes' more persistent
+     courage that wins the fight. Though your force be less than
+     another's, you equal and out-master your opponent if you
+     continue it longer and concentrate it more.
+     --SMILES.
+
+     "I know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign
+     mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes of
+     companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no
+     jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at
+     its port."
+
+
+"Well done, Tommy Brooks!" exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprise
+when the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a single
+word. The other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a bad
+failure. But when the rest of the class had tried, the teacher said
+Tommy had done the best of all, and gave him the prize.
+
+"And now tell me," said she, "how you learned the poem so well."
+
+"Please, ma'am, it was the snail on the wall that taught me how to do
+it," said Tommy. At this the other pupils laughed aloud, but the teacher
+said: "You need not laugh, boys, for we may learn much from such things
+as snails. How did the snail teach you, Tommy?"
+
+"I saw it crawl up the wall little by little," replied the boy. "It did
+not stop nor turn back, but went on, and on; and I thought I would do
+the same with the poem. So I learned it little by little, and did not
+give up. By the time the snail reached the top of the wall, I had
+learned the whole poem."
+
+"I may here impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck," said
+Addison. "There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable
+spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of old age the misfortunes of
+their lives. Luck forever runs against them, and for others. One with a
+good profession lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time
+a-fishing. Another with a good trade perpetually burnt up his luck by
+his hot temper, which provoked all his employes to leave him. Another
+with a lucrative business lost his luck by amazing diligence at
+everything but his own business. Another who steadily followed his
+trade, as steadily followed the bottle. Another who was honest and
+constant to his work, erred by his perpetual misjudgment,--he lacked
+discretion. Hundreds lose their luck by indulging sanguine expectations,
+by trusting fraudulent men, and by dishonest gains. A man never has good
+luck who has a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working,
+prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained
+of his bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are
+impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of.
+But when I see a tatterdemalion creeping out of a grocery late in the
+forenoon with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat
+turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know he has had bad luck,--for
+the worst of all luck is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler."
+
+"You have a difficult subject," said Anthony Trollope at Niagara Falls,
+to an artist who had attempted to draw the spray of the waters. "All
+subjects are difficult," was the reply, "to a man who desires to do
+well." "But yours, I fear, is impossible," said Trollope. "You have no
+right to say so till I have finished my picture," protested the artist.
+
+"Tell Louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a
+writer." When her father delivered the rejected manuscript of a story
+sent to James T. Fields, editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, with the
+above message, Miss Alcott said, "Tell him I _will_ succeed as a writer,
+and some day I shall write for the _Atlantic_." Not long after she sent
+an article to the _Atlantic_ and received a check for $50. With the
+money she said she bought "a second hand carpet for the parlor, a bonnet
+for her sister, shoes and stockings for herself." Her father was calling
+upon Longfellow some time after this, when Longfellow took the
+_Atlantic_, and said, "I want to read to you Emerson's fine poem upon
+Thoreau's flute." Mr. Alcott interrupted him with delight and said, "My
+daughter Louisa wrote that."
+
+"Men talk as if victory were something fortunate," says Emerson. "_Work
+is victory._ Wherever work is done victory is obtained. _There is no
+chance and no blanks._ You want but one verdict; if you have your own,
+you are secure of the rest. But if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are
+near."
+
+"Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can
+stand day's work."
+
+Alexander the Great exclaimed to his soldiers, disaffected after a long
+campaign, "Go home and tell them that you left Alexander to conquer the
+world alone."
+
+"We discount only our own bills, and not those of private persons," said
+the cashier of the Bank of England, when a large bill was offered drawn
+by Anselm Rothschild of Frankfort, on Nathan Rothschild of London.
+"Private persons!" exclaimed Nathan, when told of the cashier's remark;
+"I will make these gentlemen see what sort of private persons we are."
+Three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at the
+opening of the office. The teller counted out five sovereigns, looking
+surprised that Baron Rothschild should have troubled himself about such
+a trifle. The baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in the
+balance, as he said "the law gave him the right to do," put them into a
+little canvas bag, and offered a second, then a third, fourth, fiftieth,
+thousandth note. When a bag was full he handed it to a clerk in waiting,
+and proceeded to fill another. In seven hours he had changed £21,000,
+and, with nine employes of his house similarly engaged, had occupied the
+tellers so busily in changing $1,050,000 worth of notes that no one else
+could receive attention. The bankers laughed, but the next morning
+Rothschild appeared with his nine clerks and several drays to carry away
+the gold, remarking, "These gentlemen refuse to pay my bills; I have
+sworn not to keep theirs. They can pay at their leisure, only I notify
+them that I have enough to employ them for two months." The smiles faded
+from the features of the bank officials, as they thought of a draft of
+$55,000,000 in gold which they did not hold. Next morning notice was
+given in the newspapers that the Bank of England would pay Rothschild's
+bills as well as its own.
+
+"Well," said Barnum to a friend in 1841, "I am going to buy the American
+Museum." "Buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the
+showman had not a dollar; "what do you intend buying it with?" "Brass,"
+was the prompt reply, "for silver and gold have I none."
+
+Every one interested in public entertainments in New York knew Barnum,
+and knew the condition of his pocket; but Francis Olmstead, who owned
+the Museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of "a
+good showman, who would do as he agreed," and accepted a proposition to
+give security for the purchaser. Mr. Olmstead was to appoint a
+money-taker at the door, and credit Barnum toward the purchase with all
+above expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to support
+his wife and three children. Mrs. Barnum gladly assented to the
+arrangement, and offered, if need be, to cut down the household expenses
+to a little more than a dollar a day. Some six months later Mr. Olmstead
+happened to enter the ticket office at noon, and found Barnum eating for
+dinner a few slices of bread and some corned beef. "Is this the way you
+eat your dinner?" he asked.
+
+"I have not eaten a warm dinner since I bought the Museum, except on the
+Sabbath; and I intend never to eat another until I get out of debt."
+"Ah! you are safe, and will pay for the Museum before the year is out,"
+said Mr. Olmstead, slapping the young man approvingly on the shoulder.
+He was right, for in less than a year Barnum had paid every cent out of
+the profits of the establishment.
+
+A noted philosopher said: "The favors of fortune are like steep rocks;
+only eagles and creeping things mount to the summit." Lord Campbell, who
+became Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England and amassed a large
+fortune, began life as a drudge in a printing office. A little
+observation shows us that, as a rule, the men who accomplish the most in
+the world are the most useful, and sensible members of society, the men
+who are depended upon most in emergencies, the men of backbone and
+stamina, the bone and sinew of their communities; the men who can always
+be relied upon, who are healthiest and happiest, are, as a rule, of
+ordinary mental calibre and medium capacity. But with persistent and
+untiring industry, these are they, after all, who carry the burdens and
+reap the prizes of life. It is the men and women who keep everlastingly
+at it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if they
+ever accomplish anything great, they must do it by common drudgery and
+persistent industry and with an unwavering aim in one pursuit. Those who
+believe themselves geniuses are apt to scatter their efforts and thus
+fritter away their great energies without accomplishing anything in
+proportion to their high promise. Often the men who promise the most pay
+the least.
+
+Mrs. Frank Leslie often refers to the time she lived in her carpetless
+attic while striving to pay her husband's obligations. She has fought
+her way successfully through nine lawsuits, and has paid the entire
+debt. She manages her ten publications entirely herself, signs all
+checks and money-orders, makes all contracts, looks over all proofs, and
+approves the make-up of everything before it goes to press. She has
+developed great business ability, which no one dreamed she possessed.
+
+A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "Oh, by getting up every
+time I fell down," he replied.
+
+The boy Thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poorhouse, and whose
+education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many times
+before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacity
+and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither his
+discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could repress.
+
+"It is all very well," said Charles J. Fox, "to tell me that a young
+man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on,
+or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man
+who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I will
+back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded
+at the first trial."
+
+It was the last three days of the first voyage of Columbus that told.
+All his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he had
+yielded to the mutiny. It was all in those three days. But what days!
+
+"Often defeated in battle," said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "he
+was always successful in war." He might have said the same of
+Washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphs
+of any kind.
+
+One of the greatest preachers of modern times, Lacordaire, failed again
+and again. Everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was
+determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures he
+was preaching in Notre Dame to immense congregations.
+
+Orange Judd was a remarkable example of success through grit. He earned
+corn by working for farmers, carried it on his back to mill, brought
+back the meal to his room, cooked it himself, milked cows for his pint
+of milk per day, and lived on mush and milk for months together. He
+worked his way through Wesleyan University, and took a three years'
+post-graduate course at Yale.
+
+Oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! This it
+was that enabled Franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-office
+with a book in his hand. It helped Locke to live on bread and water in a
+Dutch garret. It enabled Gideon Lee to go barefoot in the snow, half
+starved and thinly clad. It sustained Lincoln and Garfield on their hard
+journeys from the log cabin to the White House.
+
+The very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable is
+of priceless value. It often cowes enemies and dispels at the start
+opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable.
+
+"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till
+it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer," said Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and time
+that the tide'll turn."
+
+"Never despair," says Burke, "but if you do, work on in despair."
+
+Once when Marshal Ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees
+which were smiting together, he said, "You may well shake; you would
+shake worse yet if you knew where I am going to take you."
+
+"Go it, William!" an old boxer was overheard saying to himself in the
+midst of a fight; "at him again!--never say 'die'!"
+
+A striking incident is related of the early experience of George Law,
+who, in his day, was one of the most conspicuous financiers and
+capitalists of New York City. When he was a young man he went to New
+York, poor and friendless. One day he was walking along the streets,
+hungry, not knowing where his next meal would come from, and passed a
+new building in course of erection. Through some accident one of the hod
+carriers fell from the structure and dropped dead at his feet. Young
+Law, in his desperation, applied for the job to take the dead man's
+place, and the place was given him. He went to work, and this was how
+one of the wealthiest and shrewdest New York business men got his start.
+
+See young Disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without
+opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through
+the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of
+political and social power. Scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from
+the House of Commons, he simply says, "The time will come when you will
+hear me." The time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed the
+sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.
+
+If impossibilities ever exist, popularly speaking, they ought to have
+been found somewhere between the birth and the death of Kitto, that deaf
+pauper and master of Oriental learning. But Kitto did not find them
+there. In the presence of his decision and imperial energy they melted
+away. Kitto begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even if
+he had to subsist like the Hottentots. He told him that he would sell
+his books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raise
+about twelve shillings. He said he could live upon blackberries, nuts
+and field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. Here was real
+grit. What were impossibilities to such a resolute will? Patrick Henry
+voiced that decision which characterized the great men of the Revolution
+when he said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at
+the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not
+what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me
+death!"
+
+Look at Garrison reading this advertisement in a Southern paper: "Five
+thousand dollars will be paid for the head of W. L. Garrison by the
+Governor of Georgia." Behold him again; a broadcloth mob is leading him
+through the streets of Boston by a rope. He is hurried to jail. See him
+return calmly and unflinchingly to his work, beginning at the point at
+which he was interrupted. Note this heading in the _Liberator_, the
+type of which he set himself in an attic on State Street, in Boston: "I
+am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not
+retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." Was Garrison heard? Ask a
+race set free largely by his efforts. Even the gallows erected in front
+of his own door did not daunt him. He held the ear of an unwilling world
+with that burning word "freedom," which was destined never to cease its
+vibrations until it had breathed its sweet secret to the last slave.
+
+At a time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of
+brawny Cape Cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all
+the speakers announced, except Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone, had fled
+from an open-air platform. "You had better run, Stephen," said she;
+"they are coming." "But who will take care of you?" asked Foster. "This
+gentleman will take care of me," she replied, calmly laying her hand
+within the arm of a burly rioter with a club, who had just sprung upon
+the platform. "Wh--what did you say?" stammered the astonished rowdy, as
+he looked at the little woman; "yes, I'll take care of you, and no one
+shall touch a hair of your head." With this he forced a way for her
+through the crowd, and, at her earnest request, placed her upon a stump
+and stood guard with his club while she delivered an address so
+effective that the audience offered no further violence, and even took
+up a collection of twenty dollars to repay Mr. Foster for the damage his
+clothes had received when the riot was at its height.
+
+"Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up," says Cobden; "labor,
+with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in
+bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; labor
+turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the
+foundation of a competence. Luck whines; labor whistles. Luck relies on
+chance; labor, on character."
+
+There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not
+striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are called
+accidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who are
+looking for something. A man incurs about as much risk of being struck
+by lightning as by accidental luck. There is, perhaps, an element of
+luck in the amount of success which crowns the efforts of different men;
+but even here it will usually be found that the sagacity with which the
+efforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecuted
+measure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved.
+Apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to single
+undertakings, while in the long run the rule will hold good. Two
+pearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal energy.
+One brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. But let
+both persevere and at the end of five, ten or twenty years it will be
+found that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill and
+industry.
+
+Lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after three
+or four years if the rebellion was not subdued, replied: "Oh, there is
+no alternative but to keep pegging away."
+
+"It is in me and it shall come out," said Sheridan, when told that he
+would never make an orator, as he had failed in his first speech in
+Parliament. He became known as one of the foremost orators of his day.
+
+It takes great courage to fight a lost cause when there is no hope even
+of victory. To contest every inch of ground with as much persistency and
+enthusiasm as if we were assured of victory; this is true courage.
+
+The world admires the man who never flinches from unexpected
+difficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with his
+fate; who dies, if need be, at his post.
+
+President Chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and worked
+thirty-five years after his funeral had been planned.
+
+Henry Fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatest
+Postmaster-General England ever had.
+
+Prescott also put grit in place of eyesight, and became one of
+America's greatest historians. Francis Parkman put grit in place of
+health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of America in his
+line. Thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears,
+hands, legs, and yet have achieved marvelous success. Indeed, most of
+the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck.
+You cannot keep a man down who has these qualities. He will make
+stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself to
+success.
+
+Grit and pluck are not always exhibited only by poor boys who have no
+chance, for there are many notable examples of pluck, persistence and
+real grit among youth in good circumstances, who never have to fight
+their way to their own loaf. Mr. Mifflin, who has recently become the
+head of the celebrated publishing firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., is a
+notable example of persistency, push and grit. After graduating at
+Harvard and traveling abroad, he was determined, although not obliged to
+work for a living, to get a position at the Riverside Press in
+Cambridge. He called upon the late Mr. Houghton and asked him for a
+situation. Mr. Houghton told him that he had no opening, and that, even
+if he had, he did not believe that a graduate from Harvard who had money
+and who had traveled abroad would ever be willing to begin at the bottom
+and do the necessary drudgery, for boy's pay. Mr. Mifflin protested
+that he was not afraid of hard work, and that he was willing to do
+anything and take any sort of a position, if he could only learn the
+business. But Mr. Houghton would not give him any encouragement. Again
+and again Mr. Mifflin came to the Riverside Press, and pressed his suit,
+but to no purpose. Mr. Mifflin persuaded his father to intercede for
+him, but Mr. Houghton succeeded in convincing him that it would be very
+unwise for his son to attempt it. But young Mifflin was determined not
+to give up. Finally, Mr. Houghton, out of admiration for his persistence
+and pluck, made a place for him, which had been occupied by a boy, for
+$5 a week.
+
+Young Mifflin took hold of the work with such earnestness, and showed so
+much pluck and determination, that Mr. Houghton soon called him into the
+office and raised his pay to $9 a week from the time he began. Although
+the young man lived in Boston, he was always at the Riverside Press in
+Cambridge early in the morning, and would frequently remain after all
+the others had gone. Mr. Houghton happened to go in late one night,
+after everybody had gone, as he supposed, and was surprised to find Mr.
+Mifflin there, taking one of the presses apart. Of course such a young
+man would be advanced. These are the boys who become the heads of
+firms.
+
+It is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with
+the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the
+farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with
+the traveler, that secures what all so much desire--SUCCESS.
+
+Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for the
+place you fill, and that no one else can fill it as well. Put forth your
+whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. Only
+once learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness and
+proportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better of
+yourself; others will think better of you. The world in its very heart
+admires the stern, determined doer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ABOVE RUBIES.
+
+     The best way to settle the quarrel between capital and labor is
+     by allopathic doses of Peter-Cooperism.
+     --TALMAGE.
+
+     In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never
+     surmounted, love is never outgrown.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     "One ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs."
+
+     Virtue alone out-builds the pyramids:
+     Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall.
+     --YOUNG.
+
+     He believed that he was born, not for himself, but for the
+     whole world.
+     --LUCAN.
+
+     Wherever man goes to dwell, his character goes with him.
+     --AFRICAN PROVERB.
+
+     The spirit of a single mind
+     Makes that of multitudes take one direction,
+     As roll the waters to the breathing wind.
+     --BYRON.
+
+
+"No, say what you have to say in her presence, too," said King Cleomenes
+of Sparta, when his visitor Anistagoras asked him to send away his
+little daughter Gorgo, ten years old, knowing how much harder it is to
+persuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side. So Gorgo sat
+at her father's feet, and listened while the stranger offered more and
+more money if Cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboring
+country. She did not understand the matter, but when she saw her father
+look troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, "Papa,
+come away--come, or this strange man will make you do wrong." The king
+went away with the child, and saved himself and his country from
+dishonor. Character is power, even in a child. When grown to womanhood,
+Gorgo was married to the hero Leonidas. One day a messenger brought a
+tablet sent by a friend who was a prisoner in Persia. But the closest
+scrutiny failed to reveal a single word or line on the white waxen
+surface, and the king and all his noblemen concluded that it was sent as
+a jest. "Let me take it," said Queen Gorgo; and, after looking it all
+over, she exclaimed, "There must be some writing underneath the wax!"
+They scraped away the wax and found a warning to Leonidas from the
+Grecian prisoner, saying that Xerxes was coming with his immense host to
+conquer all Greece. Acting on this warning, Leonidas and the other kings
+assembled their armies and checked the mighty host of Xerxes, which is
+said to have shaken the earth as it marched.
+
+"I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men," said
+Mary, Queen of Scotland.
+
+"The man behind the sermon," said William M. Evarts, "is the secret of
+John Hall's power." In fact if there is not a man with a character
+behind it nothing about it is of the slightest consequence.
+
+Thackeray says, "Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's
+faces which is honored wherever presented. You can not help trusting
+such men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a 'promise to
+pay' in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to
+another man's indorsement." _Character is credit._
+
+In the great monetary panic of 1857, a meeting was called of the various
+bank presidents of New York City. When asked what percentage of specie
+had been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent., some even
+as high as seventy-five per cent., but Moses Taylor of the City Bank
+said: "We had in the bank this morning, $400,000; this evening,
+$470,000." While other banks were badly "run," the confidence in the
+City Bank under Mr. Taylor's management was such that people had
+deposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks.
+Character gives confidence.
+
+"There is no such thing as a small country," said Victor Hugo. "The
+greatness of a people is no more affected by the number of its
+inhabitants than the greatness of an individual is measured by his
+height."
+
+"It is the nature of party in England," said John Russell, "to ask the
+assistance of men of genius, but to follow the guidance of men of
+character."
+
+"A handful of good life," says George Herbert, "is worth a bushel of
+learning."
+
+"I have read," Emerson says, "that they who listened to Lord Chatham
+felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he
+said." It has been complained of Carlyle that when he has told all his
+facts about Mirabeau they do not justify his estimate of the latter's
+genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes do
+not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney and
+Sir Walter Raleigh are men of great figure and of few deeds. We cannot
+find the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington in the
+narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is too
+great for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works or
+the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is
+longer than the thunder-clap; but something resided in these men which
+begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part
+of their power was latent. This is that which we call character,--a
+reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. What
+others effect by talent or eloquence, the man of character accomplishes
+by some magnetism. "Half his strength he puts not forth." His victories
+are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing bayonets. He
+conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. "O Iole! how
+didst thou know that Hercules was a god?" "Because," answered Iole, "I
+was content the moment my eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I
+desired that I might see him offer battle, or at least drive his horses
+in the chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he
+conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever else he did."
+
+"Show me," said Omar the Caliph to Amru the warrior, "the sword with
+which you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels." "Ah,"
+replied Amru, "the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper nor
+heavier than the sword of Farezdak the poet." So one hundred and fifty
+pounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value.
+
+"No man throws away his vote," says Francis Willard, "when he places it
+in the ballot-box with his conviction behind it. The party which elected
+Lincoln in 1860 polled only seven thousand votes in 1840. Revolutions
+never go backward, and the fanaticisms of to-day are the victories of
+to-morrow."
+
+"O sir, we are beaten," exclaimed the general in command of Sheridan's
+army, retreating before the victorious Early. "No, sir," replied the
+indignant Sheridan; "you are beaten, but this army is not beaten."
+Drawing his sword, he waved it above his head, and pointed it at the
+pursuing host, while his clarion voice rose above the horrid din in a
+command to charge once more. The lines paused, turned,--
+
+    "And with the ocean's mighty swing,
+     When heaving to the tempest's wing,
+     They hurled them on the foe;"
+
+and the Confederate army was wildly routed.
+
+When war with France seemed imminent, in 1798, President Adams wrote to
+George Washington, then a private citizen in retirement at Mount Vernon:
+"We must have your name, if you will permit us to use it; there will be
+more efficacy in it than in many an army." Character is power.
+
+When Pope Paul IV. heard of the death of Calvin he exclaimed with a
+sigh, "Ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in--riches? No!
+Honors? No! But nothing could move him from his course. Holy Virgin!
+With two such servants, our Church would soon be mistress of both
+worlds."
+
+Eighteen hundred years ago, when night closed over the city of Pompeii,
+a lady sat in her house nursing her son of ten years of age. The child
+had been ill for some days; his form was wasted, his little limbs were
+shrunk; and we may imagine with what infinite anxiety she watched every
+motion of the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. What did take
+place we know with an exactness very remarkable. That distant mountain
+which reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, Vesuvius, was
+troubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air such
+clouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of Pompeii became
+filled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until they
+reached the level of the windows. There was no chance of escape then by
+the doors; and those who attempted to get away stepped out of their
+first floor windows and rushed over the sulphurous stones--a short
+distance only, for they were quickly overpowered by the poisonous vapors
+and fell dead. After the stones there fell ashes, and after ashes hot
+water fell in showers, which changed the ashes into clay. Those who ran
+out of their houses during the fall of stones were utterly consumed,
+while those who waited until the ashes began to fall perished likewise,
+but their bodies were preserved by the ashes and water which fell upon
+them. The Pompeiian mother we have mentioned opened the window of her
+house when she thought the fall of stones was over, and with the child
+in her arms took a few hurried steps forward, when, overpowered by the
+sulphur, she fell forward, at which moment the shower of ashes began to
+fall, and quickly buried mother and child. The hot water afterward
+changed into a mould; the ashes and the sun baked the fatal clay to such
+a degree of hardness that it has endured to the present day. A short
+time ago the spot where mother and child lay was found, liquid
+plaster-of-Paris was poured into the mould formed by the bodies, and
+then the mould was broken up, leaving the plaster-cast whole. Thus one
+touching incident in the terrible tragedy of eighteen centuries ago has
+been preserved for the admiration and respect of posterity. _The arms
+and legs of the child showed a contraction and emaciation which could
+only result from illness._ Of the mother only the right arm was
+preserved; she fell upon the ashes, and the remaining portion of her
+body was consumed. _But the right hand still clasped the legs of the
+child_; on her arm were two gold bracelets, and on her fingers were two
+gold rings--one set with an emerald, the other with a cut amethyst. This
+touching illustration of _a mother's love_ now rests in the museum of
+the celebrated city.
+
+"I was sitting with Grant once," says General Fisk, "when a
+major-general entered, dressed in the uniform of his rank, who said:
+'Boys, I have a good story to tell you. I believe there are no ladies
+present.' Grant said, 'No, but there are gentlemen present.'"
+
+Mr. George W. Childs, in referring to this trait, said:
+
+"Another great trait of his character was his purity in every way. I
+never heard him express or make an indelicate allusion in any way or
+shape. There is nothing I ever heard that man say that could not be
+repeated in the presence of women."
+
+The writer has heard of several incidents illustrating his answer to
+impure stories. On one occasion, when Grant formed one of a dinner-party
+of American gentlemen in a foreign city, conversation drifted into
+references to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said,
+"Gentlemen, please excuse me; I will retire."
+
+When Attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde
+before the gates of Rome in 452, Pope Leo alone of all the people dared
+go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. A single magistrate followed
+him. The Huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man,
+and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that he
+agreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him.
+
+Wellington said that Napoleon's presence in the French army was
+equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers, and Richter said of
+the invincible Luther, "His words were half battles."
+
+"I know no great men," says Voltaire, "except those who have rendered
+great services to the human race." Men are measured by what they do;
+not by what they seem or possess.
+
+Francis Horner, of England, was a man of whom Sydney Smith said, that
+"the ten commandments were stamped upon his forehead." The valuable and
+peculiar light in which Horner's history is calculated to inspire every
+right-minded youth is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight,
+possessed of greater influence than any other private man, and admired,
+beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless and the base.
+No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member.
+How was this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant.
+By wealth? Neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous
+sixpence. By office? He held but one; and that for only a few years, of
+no influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were not
+splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition was
+to be right. By eloquence? He spoke in calm, good taste, without any of
+the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination of
+manner? His was only correct and agreeable. By what was it, then? Merely
+by sense, industry, good principles and a good heart, qualities which no
+well constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force
+of his character that raised him; and this character was not impressed
+on him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by
+himself. There were many in the House of Commons of far greater ability
+and eloquence. But no one surpassed him in the combination of an
+adequate portion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to show what
+moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and
+goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the
+competition and jealousies of public life.
+
+A hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were rich
+or poor, a peer or a peasant? But what difference may it not make
+whether you did what was right or what was wrong?
+
+At a large dinner-party given by Lord Stratford after the Crimean War,
+it was proposed that every one should write on a slip of paper the name
+which appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. When the
+papers were opened everyone of them contained the name of Florence
+Nightingale.
+
+Professor Blackie, of the University of Edinburgh, said to a class of
+young men: "Money is not needful; power is not needful; liberty is not
+needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone
+is that which can truly save us, and if we are not saved in this sense,
+we certainly must be damned." It has been said that "when poverty is
+your inheritance, virtue must be your capital."
+
+"Hence it was," said Franklin, speaking of the influence of his known
+integrity of character, "that I had so much weight with my
+fellow-citizens. I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to
+much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and
+yet I generally carried my point."
+
+When a man's character is gone, all is gone. All peace of mind, all
+complacency in himself is fled forever. He despises himself. He is
+despised by his fellow-men. Within is shame and remorse; without neglect
+and reproach. He is of necessity a miserable and useless man; he is so
+even though he be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously
+every day. It is better to be poor; it is better to be reduced to
+beggary; it is better to be cast into prison, or condemned to perpetual
+slavery, than to be destitute of a good name or endure the pains and the
+evils of a conscious worthlessness of character.
+
+The time is soon coming when, by the common consent of mankind, it will
+be esteemed more honorable to have been John Pounds, putting new and
+beautiful souls into the ragged children of the neighborhood while he
+mended his father's shoes, than to have sat upon the British throne. The
+time now is when, if Queen Victoria, in one of her magnificent
+progresses through her realms, were to meet that more than American
+queen, Miss Dix, in her "circumnavigation of charity" among the insane,
+the former should kneel and kiss the hand of the latter; and the ruler
+over more than a hundred millions of people should pay homage to the
+angel whom God has sent to the maniac.
+
+"At your age," said to a youth an old man who had honorably held many
+positions of trust and responsibility, "both position and wealth appear
+enduring things; but at mine a man sees that nothing lasts but
+character."
+
+Several eminent clergymen were discussing the qualities of self-made
+men. They each admitted that they belonged to that class, except a
+certain bishop, who remained silent, and was intensely absorbed in the
+repast. The host was determined to draw him out, and so, addressing him,
+said: "All at this table are self-made men, unless the bishop is an
+exception." The bishop promptly replied, "I am not made yet," and the
+reply contained a profound truth. So long as life lasts, with its
+discipline of joy or sorrow, its opportunities for good or evil, so long
+our characters are being shaped and fixed.
+
+Milton said: "He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life
+an heroic poem." We are responsible for our thoughts, and unless we
+could command them, mental and moral excellence would be impossible.
+
+Charles Kingsley has well said: "Let any one set his heart to do what is
+right and nothing else, and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped
+with all that goes to make up the heroic expression, with noble
+indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows, perhaps
+even with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns."
+
+Said James Martineau: "God insists on having a concurrence between our
+practice and our thoughts. If we proceed to make a contradiction between
+them, He forthwith begins to abolish it, and if the will will not rise
+to the reason, the reason must be degraded to the will."
+
+"When I say, in conducting your understanding," says Sidney Smith, "love
+knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval
+with life--what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of
+conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the
+blind fortune which has made you so, and make them call it justice; love
+that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and
+make the proudest feel that it is unjust to laugh at the meanness of
+your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never
+quit you--which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the
+boundless regions of conception as an asylum against the cruelty, the
+injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world--that which
+will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in
+an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and
+of fraud?"
+
+The Arabs express this by a parable that incarnates, as is their wont,
+the Word in the recital. King Nimrod, say they, one day summoned his
+three sons into his presence. He ordered to be set before them three
+urns under seal. One of the urns was of gold, another of amber, and the
+third of clay. The king bade the eldest of his sons choose among the
+urns that which appeared to him to contain the treasure of greatest
+price. The eldest chose the vase of gold, on which was written the word
+"Empire." He opened it and found it full of blood. The second chose the
+amber vase whereon was written the word "Glory." He opened it and found
+it contained the ashes of the great men who had made a sensation in the
+world. The third son took the only remaining vase, the one of clay; he
+found it quite empty, but on the bottom the potter had written the word
+"God." "Which of these vases weighs the most?" asked the king of the
+courtiers. The men of ambition replied it was the vase of gold; the
+poets and conquerors, the amber one; the sages that it was the empty
+vase, because a single letter of the name God weighs more than the
+entire globe. We are of the opinion of the sages. We believe the
+greatest things are great but in the proportion of divinity they
+contain.
+
+"Although genius always commands admiration," says Smiles, "character
+most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, the
+latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in
+life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect,
+as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired,
+the latter are followed.
+
+"Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the
+highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about
+it; but the common lot of men is not heroic. And though the abiding
+sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally
+sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day
+existence. The most influential of all the virtues are those which are
+the most in request for daily use. They wear the best and last the
+longest. We can always better understand and appreciate a man's real
+character by the manner in which he conducts himself toward those who
+are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the
+seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public
+exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman.
+Intellectual culture has no necessary relation to purity or excellence
+of character.
+
+"On the contrary, a condition of comparative poverty is compatible with
+character in its highest form. A man may possess only his industry, his
+frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true
+manhood.
+
+"Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions. It is an
+estate in the general good-will and respect of men; and they who invest
+in it--though they may not become rich in this world's goods--will find
+their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won. Without
+principles, a man is like a ship without rudder or compass, left to
+drift hither and thither with every wind that blows."
+
+What a contrast is afforded by the lives of Bacon and More. Bacon sought
+office with as much desire as More avoided it; Bacon used as much
+solicitation to obtain it as More endured to accept it, and each, when
+in it, was equally true to his character. More was simple, as Bacon was
+ostentatious. More was as incorruptible as Bacon was venal. More spent
+his private fortune in office, and Bacon spent the wages of corruption
+there. Both left office poor in worldly goods; but while More was rich
+in honor and good deeds, Bacon was poor in everything; poor in the
+mammon for which he bartered his integrity; poor in the gawd for which
+he sacrificed his peace; poor in the presence of the worthless; covered
+with shame in the midst of the people; trusting his fame to posterity,
+of which posterity is only able to say, that the wisest of men was
+adviser to the silliest of kings, yet that such a king had a sort of
+majesty when morally compared with the official director of his
+conscience. Both More and Bacon served each a great purpose for the
+world. More illustrated the beauty of holiness; Bacon expounded the
+infinitude of science. Bacon became the prophet of intellect; More, the
+martyr of conscience. The one pours over our understandings the light of
+knowledge; but the other inflames our hearts with the love of virtue.
+
+All have read of the proud Egyptian king who ordered a colossal
+staircase built in his new palace, and was chagrined to find that he
+required a ladder to climb from one step to the next. A king's legs are
+as short as those of a beggar. So, too, a prince's ability to enjoy the
+pleasures of life is no greater than that of a pauper.
+
+"All that is valuable in this world is to be had for nothing. Genius,
+beauty, health, piety, love, are not bought and sold. The richest man on
+earth would vainly offer a fortune to be qualified to write a verse like
+Milton, or to compose a melody like Mozart. You may summon all the
+physicians, but they cannot procure for you the sweet, healthful sleep
+which the tired laborer gets without price. Let no man, then, call
+himself a proprietor. He owns but the breath as it traverses his lips
+and the idea as it flits across his mind; and of that breath he may be
+deprived by the sting of a bee, and that idea, perhaps, truly belongs to
+another."
+
+     "We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths:
+     In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
+     We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
+     Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best;
+     And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+MORAL SUNSHINE.
+
+     I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise
+     very well.
+     --SIDNEY SMITH.
+
+     The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.
+     --WHIPPLE.
+
+     This one sits shivering in fortune's smile,
+     Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath;
+     This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while
+     Laughs in the teeth of death.
+     --T. B. ALDRICH.
+
+     There is no real life but cheerful life.
+     --ADDISON.
+
+     Next to the virtue, the fun in this world is what we can least
+     spare.
+     --AGNES STRICKLAND.
+
+     Joy in one's work is the consummate tool.
+     --PHILLIPS BROOKS.
+
+     Joy is the mainspring in the whole
+       Of endless Natures calm rotation.
+     Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll
+       In the great timepiece of Creation.
+     --SCHILLER.
+
+
+"He is as stiff as a poker," said a friend of a man who could never be
+coaxed or tempted to smile. "Stiff as a poker," exclaimed another, "why
+he would set an example to a poker."
+
+Even Christians are not celebrated for entering into the _joy_ of their
+Lord.
+
+We are told that "Pascal would not permit himself to be conscious of
+the relish of his food; he prohibited all seasonings and spices, however
+much he might wish for and need them; and he actually died because he
+forced his diseased stomach to receive at each meal a certain amount of
+aliment, neither more nor less, whatever might be his appetite at the
+time, or his utter want of appetite. He wore a girdle armed with iron
+spikes, which he was accustomed to drive in upon his body (his fleshless
+ribs) as often as he thought himself in need of such admonition. He was
+annoyed and offended if any in his hearing might chance to say that they
+had just seen a beautiful woman. He rebuked a mother who permitted her
+own children to give her their kisses. Toward a loving sister, who
+devoted herself to his comfort, he assumed an artificial harshness of
+manner for the _express purpose_, as he acknowledged, of revolting her
+sisterly affection."
+
+And all this sprung from the simple principle that earthly enjoyment was
+inconsistent with religion.
+
+We should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind,
+as we would against a temptation to crime. A depressed mind prevents the
+free action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. It stops
+the secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the blood
+in the brain, and deranges the entire functions of the body. Scrofula
+and consumption often follow protracted depressions of mind. That "fatal
+murmur" which is heard in the upper lobes of the lungs in the first
+stages of consumption, often follows depressed spirits after some great
+misfortune or sorrow. Victims of suicide are almost always in a
+depressed state from exhausted vitality, loss of nervous energy,
+dyspepsia, worry, anxiety, trouble, or grief.
+
+"Mirth is God's medicine," says a wise writer; "everybody ought to bathe
+in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety--all the rust of life, ought to be
+scoured off by the oil of mirth." It is better than emery. Every man
+ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon
+without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every
+pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with
+springs, in which one can ride over the roughest roads and scarcely feel
+anything but a pleasant rocking motion.
+
+"I have told you," said Southey, "of the Spaniard who always put on
+spectacles when about to eat cherries, in order that the fruit might
+look larger and more tempting. In like manner I make the most of my
+enjoyments; and though I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles, I
+pack them in as small a compass as I can for myself, and never let them
+annoy others." We all know the power of good cheer to magnify
+everything.
+
+Travelers are told by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold and
+desolation of almost perpetual winter, that "Iceland is the best land
+the sun shines upon."
+
+"You are on the shady side of seventy, I expect?" was asked of an old
+man. "No," was the reply, "I am on the sunny side; for I am on the side
+nearest to glory."
+
+A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his
+mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much
+misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in
+every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly
+joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full
+of careering and rejoicing insects; that everywhere the good outbalances
+the bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm.
+
+"Bishop Fénelon is a delicious man," said Lord Peterborough; "I had to
+run away from him to prevent his making me a Christian."
+
+Hume, the historian, never said anything truer than--"To be happy, the
+person must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity
+to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty."
+
+Dr. Johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom of
+looking on the bright side of every event was better than having a
+thousand pounds a year income. But Hume rated the value in dollars and
+cents of cheerfulness still higher. He said he would rather have a
+cheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side of
+things than to be master of an estate with 10,000 pounds a year.
+
+"We have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that of
+being pleasant."
+
+"If a word or two will render a man happy," said a Frenchman, "he must
+be a wretch indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting another
+man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what
+the other gains."
+
+The sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one who
+will be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, one
+who will of all things meet life's experiences with a sweet temper. It
+is impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother or
+sister, as its presiding genius. And it is a rule, with exceptions, that
+good appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. If, with these
+advantages, a girl or woman, boy or man, is still snappish or surly, why
+it must be due to her or his total depravity.
+
+Some things she should not do; she shouldn't dose herself, or study up
+her case, or plunge suddenly into vigorous exercise. Moderation is a
+safe rule to begin with, and, indeed, to keep on with--moderation in
+study, in work, in exercise, in everything except fresh air, good,
+simple food, and sleep. Few people have too much of these. The average
+girl at home can find no more sanitary gymnastics than in doing part of
+the lighter housework. This sort of exercise has object, and interest,
+and use, which raises it above mere drill. Add to this a merry romp with
+younger brothers and sisters, a brisk daily walk, the use for a few
+moments twice a day of dumb bells in a cool, airy room, and it is safe
+to predict a steady advance toward that ideal state of being in which we
+forget our bodies and just enjoy ourselves.
+
+"It is not work that kills men," says Beecher; "it is worry. Work is
+healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is
+rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but
+friction."
+
+Helen Hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by
+everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations
+of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, as
+speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do
+not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, and
+we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets--that is, makes
+more or less complaint of something or other, which probably every one
+in the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which most
+probably nobody can help. Why say anything about it? It is cold, it is
+hot, it is wet, it is dry, somebody has broken an appointment,
+ill-cooked a meal; stupidity or bad faith somewhere has resulted in
+discomfort. There are plenty of things to fret about. It is simply
+astonishing, how much annoyance and discomfort may be found in the
+course of every-day living, even of the simplest, if one only keeps a
+sharp eye out on that side of things. Some people seem to be always
+hunting for deformities, discords and shadows, instead of beauty,
+harmony and light. We are born to trouble, as sparks fly upward. But
+even to the sparks flying upward, in the blackest of smoke, there is a
+blue sky above, and the less time they waste on the road, the sooner
+they will reach it. Fretting is all time wasted on the road.
+
+About two things we should never fret, that which we cannot help, and
+that which we can help. Better find one of your own faults than ten of
+your neighbor's.
+
+It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week
+and next year, that whiten our heads and wrinkle our faces.
+
+"Every man we meet looks as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with
+plenty of it on hand," said a French lady driving in New York.
+
+The pendulum of a certain clock began to calculate how often it would
+have to swing backward and forward in the week and in the month to come;
+then looking further into the future, it made a calculation for a year,
+etc. The pendulum got frightened and stopped. Do one day's work at a
+time. Do not worry about the trouble of to-morrow. Most of the trouble
+in life is borrowed trouble, which never actually comes.
+
+"As all healthy action, physical, intellectual and moral, depends
+primarily on cheerfulness," says E. P. Whipple, "and as every duty,
+whether it be to follow a plow or to die at the stake, should be done in
+a cheerful spirit, the exploration of the sources and conditions of this
+most vigorous, exhilarating and creative of the virtues may be as useful
+as the exposition of any topic of science or system of prudential art."
+
+Christ, the great teacher, did not shut Himself up with monks, away from
+temptation of the great world outside. He taught no long-faced, gloomy
+theology. He taught the gospel of gladness and good cheer. His doctrines
+are touched with the sunlight, and flavored with the flowers of the
+fields. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and happy,
+romping children are in them. True piety is cheerful as the day.
+
+Cranmer cheers his brother martyrs, and Latimer walks with a face
+shining with cheerfulness to the stake, upholds his fellow's spirits,
+and seasons all his sermons with pleasant anecdotes.
+
+"Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches," said Emerson,
+"and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of
+wisdom."
+
+In answer to the question, "How shall we overcome temptation," a noted
+writer said, "Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the
+second, and cheerfulness is the third." A habit of cheerfulness,
+enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a
+fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of
+active life. He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happy
+side of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in the
+flowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a great
+advantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. His
+habitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner
+with grace.
+
+We often forget that the priceless charm which will secure to us all
+these desirable gifts is within our reach. It is the charm of a sunny
+temper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold,
+more to be desired than fine rubies. It is an aroma, whose fragrance
+fills the air with the odors of Paradise.
+
+"It is from these enthusiastic fellows," says an admirer, "that you
+hear--what they fully believe, bless them!--that all countries are
+beautiful, all dinners grand, all pictures superb, all mountains high,
+all women beautiful. When such a one has come back from his country
+trip, after a hard year's work, he has always found the cosiest of
+nooks, the cheapest houses, the best of landladies, the finest views,
+and the best dinners. But with the other the case is indeed altered. He
+has always been robbed; he has positively seen nothing; his landlady was
+a harpy, his bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was so tough that he
+could not get his teeth through it."
+
+"He goes on to talk of the sun in his glory," says Izaak Walton, "the
+fields, the meadows, the streams which they have seen, the birds which
+they have heard; he asks what would the blind and deaf give to see and
+hear what they have seen."
+
+Of Lord Holland's sunshiny face, Rogers said: "He always comes to
+breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen."
+
+But oh, for the glorious spectacles worn by the good-natured man!--oh,
+for those wondrous glasses, finer than the Claude Lorraine glass, which
+throw a sunlit view over everything, and make the heart glad with little
+things, and thankful for small mercies! Such glasses had honest Izaak
+Walton, who, coming in from a fishing expedition on the river Lea, burst
+out into such grateful little talks as this: "Let us, as we walk home
+under the cool shade of this honeysuckle hedge, mention some of the
+thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met. And that
+our present happiness may appear the greater, and we more thankful for
+it, I beg you to consider with me, how many do at this very time lie
+under the torment of the gout or the toothache, and this we have been
+free from; and let me tell you, that every misery I miss is a new
+blessing."
+
+The hypochondriac who nurses his spleen never looks forward cheerfully,
+but lounges in his invalid chair, and croaks like a raven, foreboding
+woe. "Ah," says he, "you will never succeed; these things always fail."
+
+The Thug of India, whose prayer is a homicide, and whose offering is the
+body of a victim, is melancholy.
+
+The Fijiian, waiting to smash the skull of a victim, and to prepare a
+bakola for his gods, is gloomy as fear and death.
+
+The melancholy of the Eastern Jews after their black fast, and the
+ill-temper of monks and nuns after their Fridays and Wednesdays, is very
+observable; it is the recompense which a proud nature takes out of the
+world for its selfish sacrifice. Melancholia is the black bile which the
+Greeks presumed overran and pervaded the bodies of such persons; and
+fasting does undoubtedly produce this.
+
+"I once talked with a Rosicrucian about the Great Secret," said Addison.
+"He talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and converted
+everything that was near it to the highest perfection. 'It gives lustre
+to the sun,' said he, 'and water to the diamond. It irradiates every
+metal, and enriches lead with the property of gold. It brightens smoke
+into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. A single ray
+dissipates pain and care from the person on whom it falls.' Then I found
+his great secret was Content."
+
+     My crown is in my heart, not on my head:
+     Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
+     Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:
+     A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+     Yet, with a heart that's ever kind,
+       A gentle spirit gay,
+     You've spring perennial in your mind,
+       And round you make a May.
+     --THACKERAY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+HOLD UP YOUR HEAD.
+
+     Thoroughly to believe in one's own self, so one's self were
+     thorough, were to do great things.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     If there be a faith that can remove mountains, it is faith in
+     one's own power.
+     --MARIE EBNER-ESCHENBACH.
+
+     Let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest,
+     the greatest quality of true manliness.
+     --KOSSUTH.
+
+     It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. * * * Trust
+     thyself; every breast vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
+     place that divine Providence has found for you, the society of
+     your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have
+     always done so. * * * Nothing is at last sacred but the
+     integrity of our own mind.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     This above all,--to thine own self be true;
+     And it must follow, as the night the day,
+     Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+"Yes," said a half-drunken man in a cellar to a parish visitor, a young
+girl, "I am a tough and a drunkard, and am just out of jail, and my wife
+is starving; but that doesn't give you the right to come into my house
+without knocking to ask questions."
+
+Another zealous girl declared in a reform club in New York City that she
+always went to visit the poor in her carriage, with the crest on the
+door and liveried servants. "It gives me authority," she said. "They
+listen to my words with more respect."
+
+The Fräulein Barbara, who founded the home for degraded and drunken
+sailors in London, used other means to gain influence over them. "I
+too," she would say, taking the poor applicant by the hand when he came
+to her door, "I, too, as well as you, am one of those for whom Christ
+died. We are brother and sister, and will help each other."
+
+An English artist, engaged in painting a scene in the London slums,
+applied to the Board of Guardians of the poor in Chelsea for leave to
+sketch into it, as types of want and wretchedness, certain picturesque
+paupers then in the almshouse. The board refused permission on the
+ground that "a man does not cease to have self-respect and rights
+because he is a pauper, and that his misfortunes should not be paraded
+before the world."
+
+The incident helps to throw light on the vexed problem of the
+intercourse of the rich with the poor. Kind but thoughtless people, who
+take up the work of "slumming," intent upon elevating and reforming the
+needy classes, are apt to forget that these unfortunates have
+self-respect and rights and sensitive feelings.
+
+"But I am not derided," said Diogenes, when some one told him he was
+derided. "Only those are ridiculed who feel the ridicule and are
+discomposed by it."
+
+Dr. Franklin used to say that if a man makes a sheep of himself the
+wolves will eat him. Not less true is it that if a man is supposed to be
+a sheep, wolves will very likely try to eat him.
+
+"O God, assist our side," prayed the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, a general
+in the Prussian service, before going into battle. "At least, avoid
+assisting the enemy, and leave the result to me."
+
+"If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is," said Schelling,
+"he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoretical
+respect for himself, and a practical will soon follow." A person under
+the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.
+"Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men," said
+Kossuth; "but let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the
+rest, the greatest quality of true manliness." Froude wrote: "A tree
+must be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. A man
+must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be
+independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any
+superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be
+built."
+
+"I think he is a most extraordinary man," said John J. Ingalls,
+speaking of Grover Cleveland. "While the Senate was in session to induct
+Hendricks into office, I had an opportunity to study Cleveland, as he
+sat there like a sphinx. He occupied a seat immediately in front of the
+vice-president's stand, and from where I sat, I had an unobstructed view
+of him.
+
+"I wanted to fathom, if possible, what manner of a man it was who had
+defeated us and taken the patronage of the government over to the
+democracy. We had a new master, so to speak, and a democrat at that, and
+I looked him over with a good deal of curiosity.
+
+"There sat a man, the president of the United States, beginning his rule
+over the destinies of sixty millions of people, who less than three
+years before was an obscure lawyer, scarcely known outside of Erie
+County, shut up in a dingy office over a livery stable. He had been
+mayor of the city of Buffalo at a time when a crisis in its affairs
+demanded a courageous head and a firm hand and he supplied them. The
+little prestige thus gained made him the democratic nominee for
+governor, and at a time (his luck still following him) when the
+Republican party of the State was rent with dissensions. He was elected,
+and (still more luck) by the unprecedented and unheard of majority of
+nearly 200,000 votes. Two years later his party nominated him for
+president and he was elected.
+
+"There sat this man before me, wholly undisturbed by the pageantry of
+the occasion, calmly waiting to perform his part in the drama, just as
+an actor awaits his cue to appear on a stage. It was his first visit to
+Washington. He had never before seen the Capitol and knew absolutely
+nothing of the machinery of government. All was a mystery to him, but a
+stranger not understanding the circumstances would have imagined that
+the proceedings going on before him were a part of his daily life.
+
+"The man positively did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle
+during the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betray
+the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thought
+of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he
+struck me as a remarkable illustration of the possibilities of American
+citizenship.
+
+"But the most marvelous exhibition of the man's nerve and of the
+absolute confidence he has in himself was yet to come. After the
+proceedings in the Senate chamber Cleveland was conducted to the east
+end of the Capitol to take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural
+address. He wore a close buttoned Prince Albert coat, and between the
+buttons he thrust his right hand, while his left he carried behind him.
+In this position he stood until the applause which greeted him had
+subsided, when he began his address.
+
+"I looked for him to produce a manuscript, but he did not, and as he
+progressed in clear and distinct tones, without hesitation, I was
+amazed. With sixty millions of people, yes, with the entire civilized
+world looking on, this man had the courage to deliver an inaugural
+address making him President of the United States as coolly and as
+unconcernedly as if he were addressing a ward meeting. It was the most
+remarkable spectacle this or any other country has ever beheld."
+
+Believe in yourself; you may succeed when others do not believe in you,
+but never when you do not believe in yourself.
+
+"Ah! John Hunter, still hard at work!" exclaimed a physician on finding
+the old anatomist at the dissecting table. "Yes, doctor, and you'll find
+it difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am gone."
+
+"Heaven takes a hundred years to form a great genius for the
+regeneration of an empire and afterward rests a hundred years," said
+Kaunitz, who had administered the affairs of his country with great
+success for half a century. "This makes me tremble for the Austrian
+monarchy after my death."
+
+"Isn't it beautiful that I can sing so?" asked Jenny Lind, naïvely, of a
+friend.
+
+"My Lord," said William Pitt in 1757 to the Duke of Devonshire, "I am
+sure that I can save this country and that nobody else can." He did
+save it.
+
+What seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strong
+expression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men have
+usually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of his
+place in history and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his own
+fame. Kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read his
+books or not. "I may well wait a century for a reader since God has
+waited six thousand years for an observer like myself." "Fear not," said
+Julius Cæsar to his pilot frightened in a storm, "thou bearest Cæsar and
+his good fortunes."
+
+When the Directory at Paris found that Napoleon had become in one month
+the most famous man in Europe they determined to check his career, and
+appointed Kellerman his associate in command. Napoleon promptly, but
+respectfully, tendered his resignation, saying, "One bad general is
+better than two good ones; war, like government, is mainly decided by
+tact." This decision immediately brought the Directory to terms.
+
+Emperor Francis was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descent
+of his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the account
+published, remarking, "I had rather be the descendant of an honest man
+than of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence with
+myself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolph
+of Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates from the battle of
+Montenotte."
+
+When Napoleon was informed that the British Government had decreed that
+he should be recognized only as general, he said, "They cannot prevent
+me from being myself."
+
+An Englishman asked Napoleon at Elba who was the greatest general of the
+age, adding, "I think Wellington." To which the Emperor replied, "He has
+not yet measured himself against me."
+
+"Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market,"
+said Washington Irving; "but it must not cower at home and expect to be
+sought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of
+forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over
+with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that
+valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a
+mere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more useful than a
+sleeping lion."
+
+"Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears."
+
+"You may deceive all the people some of the time," said Lincoln, "some
+of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time." We
+cannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our
+own respect is to deserve it. What would you think of a man who would
+neglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect?
+
+"Self-reliance is a grand element of character," says Michael Reynolds.
+"It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with
+men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's
+memory."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+BOOKS AND SUCCESS.
+
+     Ignorance is the curse of God,
+     Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+     Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the
+     other perpetual.
+     --SOCRATES.
+
+     If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it
+     away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best
+     interest.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange
+     for the treasures of India.
+     --GIBBON.
+
+     If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down
+     at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I
+     would spurn them all.
+     --FÉNELON.
+
+                            Who of us can tell
+     What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
+     The art that fixes into form the thought,--
+     Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
+     Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
+     --BULWER.
+
+     When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes
+     into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the
+     unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that
+     true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
+     --WASHINGTON IRVING.
+
+
+"Do you want to know," asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to you
+in this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a
+boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were my
+delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at
+last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to
+me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I
+seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I took
+to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was
+doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature.
+There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I had
+to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * From the days when we
+used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a
+devouring hunger to read books. It made small matter what they were, so
+they were books. Half a volume of an old encyclopædia came along--the
+first I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot even
+guess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Society
+with the greatest delight.
+
+"There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it is
+in reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin
+to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are
+of a wholesome nature. And I remember this because it touches this
+beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of
+1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; and
+sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: 'I notice thou's
+fond of reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was Irving's
+'Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'as
+them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old days of
+Crusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into
+my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him,
+thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I
+was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with the
+wind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger to
+read never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the
+fire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one
+place to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The world
+centred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to come
+out of it; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being a
+minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that I
+should be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a passion
+like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming,
+mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world,
+and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. There were two
+or three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave the
+roughs a wide berth. The books did their work, too, about that drink,
+and fought the devil with a finer fire."
+
+"In education," says Herbert Spencer, "the process of self-development
+should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to
+make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They
+should be _told_ as little as possible, and induced to _discover_ as
+much as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction;
+and that to achieve the best results each mind must progress somewhat
+after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success of
+self-made men."
+
+"My books," said Thomas Hood, "kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the
+tavern, and the saloon. The associate of Pope and Addison, the mind
+accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of Shakespeare and
+Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company or slaves."
+
+"When I get a little money," said Erasmus, "I buy books, and if any is
+left, I buy food and clothes."
+
+"Hundreds of books read once," says Robertson, "have passed as
+completely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the discipline
+of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book which
+is worth the trouble fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides,
+enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit."
+
+"This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you," says Trollope, "is
+your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures
+that God has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be more
+ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in
+which there is no alloy."
+
+The Bible was begun in the desert in Arabia ages before Homer sang and
+flourished in Asia Minor. Millions of books have since gone into
+oblivion. Empires have risen and fallen. Revolutions have swept over and
+changed the earth. It has always been subject to criticism and obloquy.
+Mighty men have sought its overthrow. Works of Greek poets who catered
+to men's depraved tastes have, in spite of everything, perished. The
+Bible is a book of religion; and can be tried by no other standard.
+
+"Read Plutarch," said Emerson, "and the world is a proud place peopled
+with men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-gods standing around
+us who will not let us sleep."
+
+"There is no business, no avocation whatever," says Wyttenbach, "which
+will not permit a man, who has an inclination, to give a little time,
+every day, to the studies of his youth."
+
+"All the sport in the park," said Lady Jane Grey, "is but a shadow of
+that pleasure I find in Plato."
+
+"In the lap of Eternity," said Heinsius, "among so many divine souls, I
+take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity
+all the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness."
+
+"Death itself divides not the wise," says Bulwer. "Thou meetest Plato
+when thine eyes moisten over the Phædo. May Homer live with all men
+forever!"
+
+"When a man reads," says President Porter, "he should put himself into
+the most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energies
+of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused
+by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition or
+review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or
+neglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief or full notes,
+in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from
+the drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book."
+
+"Reading is to the mind," says Addison, "what exercise is to the body.
+As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the
+other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished
+and confirmed."
+
+"There is a world of science necessary in choosing books," said Bulwer.
+"I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last
+light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose draught for the
+plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am
+told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was
+new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about."
+
+"When I served when a young man in India," said a distinguished English
+soldier and diplomatist; "when it was the turning point in my life; when
+it was a mere chance whether I should become a mere card-playing,
+hooka-smoking lounger, I was fortunately quartered for two years in the
+neighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me."
+
+"Books," says E. P. Whipple, "are lighthouses erected in the great sea
+of time."
+
+"As a rule," said Benjamin Disraeli, "the most successful man in life is
+the man who has the best information."
+
+"You get into society, in the widest sense," says Geikie, "in a great
+library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not
+dreading repulses. From that great crowd you can choose what companions
+you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride,
+but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility.
+You may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority;
+for books are perfectly well-bred, and hurt no one's feelings by any
+discriminations." Sir William Waller observed, "In my study, I am sure
+to converse with none but wise men, but abroad it is impossible for me
+to avoid the society of fools." "It is the glorious prerogative of the
+empire of knowledge," says Webster, "that what it gains it never loses.
+On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its
+ends become means, all its attainments help to new conquests."
+
+"At this hour, five hundred years since their creation," says De
+Quincey, "the tales of Chaucer, never equaled on this earth for their
+tenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many
+in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the
+modernization of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, one
+thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the pagan tales of
+Ovid, never equaled on this earth for the gayety of their movement and
+the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom."
+
+"There is no Past so long as Books shall live," says Lytton.
+
+"No wonder Cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so he
+might live and die among his books," says Geikie. "No wonder Petrarch
+was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. It
+seems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitz
+should have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at his
+desk. Buckle's last words, 'My poor book!' tell a passion that forgot
+death; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tear stole down
+the manly cheeks of Scott as they wheeled him into his library, when he
+had come back to Abbotsford to die. Southey, white-haired, a living
+shadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer open
+or read, is altogether pathetic."
+
+"No entertainment is so cheap as reading," says Mary Wortley Montagu;
+"nor any pleasure so lasting." Good books elevate the character, purify
+the taste, _take the attractiveness out of low pleasures_, and lift us
+upon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be mean
+directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of a
+man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his
+reading; but it will not be about his reading.
+
+Perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of his
+poverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearer
+forget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, the
+downtrodden his degradation, as books. They are friends to the lonely,
+companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless,
+good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. They bring
+light into darkness, and sunshine into shadow.
+
+"Twenty-five years ago, when I was a boy," said Rev. J. A. James, "a
+school-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for only
+fifteen minutes. At the end of that time it was returned to him, but
+that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have asked God on
+my knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but I believe that I
+shall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage I received
+during those fifteen minutes."
+
+Did Homer and Plato and Socrates and Virgil ever dream that their words
+would echo through the ages, and aid in shaping men's lives in the
+nineteenth century? They were mere infants when on earth in comparison
+with the mighty influence and power they now yield. Every life on the
+American continent has in some degree been influenced by them. Christ,
+when on earth, never exerted one millionth part of the influence He
+wields to-day. While He reigns supreme in few human hearts, He touches
+all more or less, the atheist as well as the saint. On the other hand
+who shall say how many crimes were committed the past year by wicked men
+buried long ago? Their books, their pictures, their terrible examples,
+live in all they reach, and incite to evil deeds. How important, then,
+is the selection of books which are to become a part of your being.
+
+Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may
+be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away
+our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but
+he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds.
+
+"Good books and the wild woods are two things with which man can never
+become too familiar," says George W. Cable. "The friendship of trees is
+a sort of self-love and is very wholesome. All inanimate nature is but a
+mirror, and it is greater far to have the sense of beauty than it is to
+be only its insensible depository.
+
+"The books that inspire imagination, whether in truth or fiction; that
+elevate the thoughts, are the right kind to read. Our emotions are
+simply the vibrations of our soul.
+
+"The moment fiction becomes mendacious it is bad, for it induces us to
+believe a lie. Fiction purely as fiction must be innocent and beautiful,
+and its beauty must be more than skin deep. Every field of art is a
+playground and we are extra pleased when the artist makes that field a
+gymnasium also."
+
+Cotton Mather's "Essay to do Good" read by the boy Franklin influenced
+the latter's whole life. He advised everybody to read with a pen in hand
+and to make notes of all they read.
+
+James T. Fields visited Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail.
+Pomeroy told him he had been a great reader of "blood and thunder"
+stories; that he had read sixty dime novels about scalping and other
+bloody performances; and he thought there was no doubt that these books
+had put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderous
+acts.
+
+Many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life under the
+influence of Marryat's novels. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon," read at the
+age of seven years, sent one boy whom I knew to the army before he was
+fourteen. Many a man has committed crime from the leavening, multiplying
+influence of a bad book read when a boy. The chaplain of Newgate prison
+in London, in one of his annual reports to the Lord Mayor, referring to
+many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, said
+that he discovered that "all these boys, without exception, had been in
+the habit of reading those cheap periodicals" which were published for
+the alleged amusement of youth of both sexes. There is not a police
+court or a prison in this country where similar cases could not be
+found. One can hardly measure the moral ruin that has been caused in
+this generation by the influence of bad books.
+
+In the parlor window of the old mossy vicarage where Coleridge spent his
+dreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of Oriental
+fancy, the "Arabian Nights," and he has told us with what mingled desire
+and apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until the
+morning sunshine had touched and illuminated it, when, seizing it
+hastily, he would carry it off in triumph to some leafy nook in the
+vicarage garden, and plunge delightedly into its maze of marvels and
+enchantments.
+
+Beecher said that Ruskin's works taught him the secret of seeing, and
+that no man could ever again be quite the same man or look at the world
+in the same way after reading him. Samuel Drew said, "Locke's 'Essay on
+the Understanding' awakened me from stupor, and induced me to form a
+resolution to abandon the groveling views I had been accustomed to
+maintain." An English tanner, whose leather gained a great reputation,
+said he should not have made it so good if he had not read Carlyle. The
+lives of Washington and Henry Clay, which Lincoln borrowed from
+neighbors in the wilderness, and devoured by the light of the cabin
+fire, inspired his life. In his early manhood he read Paine's "Age of
+Reason," and Volney's "Ruins," which so influenced his mind that he
+wrote an essay to prove the unreliability of the Bible. These two books
+nearly unbalanced his moral character. But, fortunately, the books which
+fell into his hands in after years corrected this evil influence. The
+trend of many a life for good or ill, for success or failure, has been
+determined by a single book. The books which we read early in life are
+those which influence us most. When Garfield was working for a neighbor
+he read "Sinbad the Sailor" and the "Pirate's Own Book." These books
+revealed a new world to him, and his mother with difficulty kept him
+from going to sea. He was fascinated with the sea life which these books
+pictured to his young imagination. The "Voyages of Captain Cook" led
+William Carey to go on a mission to the heathen. "The Imitation of
+Christ" and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying" determined the character of
+John Wesley. "Shakespeare and the Bible," said John Sharp, "made me
+Archbishop of York." The "Vicar of Wakefield" awakened the poetical
+genius in Goethe.
+
+"I have been the bosom friend of Leander and Romeo," said Lowell. "I
+seem to go behind Shakespeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand.
+Sometimes, in my sorrow, a line from Spenser steals in upon my memory as
+if by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast from
+the distant trump of a knight pricking toward the court of Faerie, and I
+am straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshine
+of a previous and long-agone experience."
+
+"Who gets more enjoyment out of eating," asks Amos R. Wells, "the
+pampered millionaire, whose tongue is the wearied host of myriads of
+sugary, creamy, spicy guests, or the little daughter of the laborer,
+trotting about all the morning with helpful steps, who has come a long
+two miles with her father's dinner to eat it with him from a tin pail?
+And who gets the more pleasure out of reading, the satiated
+fiction-glutton, her brain crammed with disordered fragments of
+countless scenes of adventure, love and tragedy, impatient of the same
+old situations, the familiar characters, the stale plots--she or the
+girl who is fired with a love for history, say, who wants to know all
+about the grand old, queer old Socrates, and then about his friends, and
+then about the times in which he lived, and then about the way in which
+they all lived, then about the Socratic legacy to the ages? Why, will
+that girl ever be done with the feast? Can you not see, looking down on
+her joy with a blessing, the very Lord of the banquet, who has ordered
+all history and ordained that the truth He fashions shall be stranger
+always than the fiction man contrives? Take the word of a man who has
+made full trial of both. Solid reading is as much more interesting and
+attractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more recreative
+than frivolous living."
+
+"I solemnly declare," said Sidney Smith, "that but for the love of
+knowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher
+as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; for
+the fire of our minds is like the fires which the Persians burn in the
+mountains, it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be
+quenched! Upon something it must act and feed--upon the pure spirit of
+knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. Therefore, when
+I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great
+love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life--what do I say
+but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that
+which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which
+has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you
+are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest
+feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that
+which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you--which will open
+to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of
+conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the
+pain that may be your lot in the world--that which will make your
+motives habitually great and honorable, _and light up in an instant a
+thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud_?"
+
+Do I feel like hearing an eloquent sermon? Spurgeon and Beecher,
+Whitefield, Hall, Collyer, Phillips Brooks, Canon Farrar, Dr. Parker,
+Talmage, are all standing on my bookcase, waiting to give me their
+greatest efforts at a moment's notice. Do I feel indisposed, and need a
+little recreation? This afternoon I will take a trip across the
+Atlantic, flying against the wind and over breakers without fear of
+seasickness on the ocean greyhounds. I will inspect the world renowned
+Liverpool docks; take a run up to Hawarden, call on Mr. Gladstone; fly
+over to London, take a run through the British Museum and see the
+wonderful collection from all nations; go through the National Art
+Gallery, through the Houses of Parliament, visit Windsor Castle and
+Buckingham Palace, call upon Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales; take a
+run through the lake region and call upon the great writers, visit
+Oxford and Cambridge; cross the English Channel, stop at Rouen, where
+Joan of Arc was burned to death by the English, take a flying trip to
+Paris, visit the tomb of Napoleon, the Louvre Gallery; take a peep at
+one of the greatest pieces of sculpture in existence, the Venus de Milo
+(which a rich and ignorant person offered to buy if they would give him
+a fresh one), take a glance at some of the greatest paintings in
+existence along the miles of galleries; take a peep into the Grand Opera
+House, the grandest in the world (to make room for which 427 buildings
+were demolished), promenade through the Champs de Elysée, pass under the
+triumphal arch of Napoleon, take a run out to Versailles and inspect the
+famous palace of Louis XIV., upon which he spent perhaps $100,000,000.
+
+Do I desire to hear eloquent speeches? Through my books I can enter the
+Parliament and listen to the thrilling oratory of Disraeli, of
+Gladstone, of Bright, of O'Connor; they will admit me to the floor of
+the Senate, where I can hear the matchless oratory of a Webster, of a
+Clay, of a Calhoun, of a Sumner, of Everett, of Wilson. They will pass
+me into the Roman Forum, where I can hear Cicero, or to the rostrums of
+Greece, where I may listen spell-bound to the magic oratory of a
+Demosthenes.
+
+"No matter how poor I am," says Channing; "no matter though the
+prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the
+sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if
+Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, and
+Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
+the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical
+wisdom,--I shall not pine for the want of intellectual companionship,
+and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called
+the best society in the place where I live."
+
+"With the dead there is no rivalry," says Macaulay. "In the dead there
+is no change. Plato is never sullen; Cervantes is never petulant;
+Demosthenes never comes unseasonably; Dante never stays too long; no
+difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero; no heresy can
+excite the horror of Bossuet."
+
+"Heed not the idle assertion that literary pursuits will disqualify you
+for the active business of life," says Alexander H. Everett. "Reject it
+as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by
+experience."
+
+The habit of reading may become morbid. There is a novel-reading
+disease. There are people who are almost as much tied to their novels as
+an intemperate man is tied to his bottle. The more of these novels they
+read, the weaker their minds become. They remember nothing; they read
+for the stimulus; their reasoning powers become weaker and weaker, their
+memory more treacherous. The mind is ruined for healthy intellectual
+food. They have no taste for history or biography, or anything but
+cheap, trashy, sensational novels.
+
+The passive reception of other men's thoughts is not education. Beware
+of intellectual dram drinking and intellectual dissipation. It is
+emasculating. Beware of the book which does not make you determined to
+go and do something and be something in the world.
+
+The great difference between the American graduate and the graduates
+from the English universities is that the latter have not read many
+books superficially, but a few books well. The American graduate has a
+smattering of many books, but has not become master of any. The same is
+largely true of readers in general; they want to know a little of
+everything. They want to read all the latest publications, good, bad and
+indifferent, if it is only new. As a rule our people want light reading,
+"something to read" that will take up the attention, kill time on the
+railroad or at home. As a rule English people read more substantial
+books, older books, books which have established their right to exist.
+They are not so eager for "recent publications."
+
+Joseph Cook advises youth to always make notes of their reading. Mr.
+Cook uses the margins of his books for his notes, and marks all of his
+own books very freely, so that every volume in his library becomes a
+notebook. He advises all young men and young women to keep commonplace
+books. We cannot too heartily recommend this habit of taking notes. It
+is a great aid to memory, and it helps wonderfully to locate or to find
+for future use what we have read. It helps to assimilate and make our
+own whatever we read. The habit of taking notes of lectures and sermons
+is an excellent one. One of the greatest aids to education is the habit
+of writing out an analysis or a skeleton of a book or article after we
+have read it; also of a sermon or a lecture. This habit has made many a
+strong, vigorous thinker and writer. In this connection we cannot too
+strongly recommend the habit of saving clippings from our readings
+wherever possible of everything which would be likely to assist us in
+the future. These scrap-books, indexed, often become of untold
+advantage, especially if in the line of our work. Much of what we call
+genius in great men comes from these note-books and scrap-books.
+
+How many poor boys and girls who thought they had "no chance" in life
+have been started upon noble careers by the grand books of Smiles, Todd,
+Mathews, Munger, Whipple, Geikie, Thayer, and others.
+
+You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of
+any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get
+from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true that
+the facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from the
+stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the
+axe. Bacon says: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
+and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be
+read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few
+to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a
+full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and,
+therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he
+confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he
+had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories
+make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy
+deep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+RICHES WITHOUT WINGS.
+
+     Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.
+     --EPH. iv. I.
+
+     Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an
+     uncovetous spirit.
+     --SELDEN.
+
+     Less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is to
+     possess it.
+     --REYNOLDS.
+
+     Rich, from the very want of wealth,
+     In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.
+     --GRAY.
+
+     Money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its
+     nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he
+     wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     There are treasures laid up in the heart, treasures of charity,
+     piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes
+     with him beyond death, when he leaves this world.
+     --BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES.
+
+     "It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better
+     than rubies, and all things that may be desired are not to be
+     compared to it."
+
+     "Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful,
+     unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless,
+     selfish life."
+
+     I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to
+     feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel
+     that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be
+     bought--neither by comfort, neither by pride,--and although I
+     be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is
+     the poor man beside me.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+
+"I don't want such things," said Epictetus to the rich Roman orator who
+was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; "and besides," said
+the stoic, "you are poorer than I am, after all. You have silver
+vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. My mind to me a
+kingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation in
+lieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you;
+mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied."
+
+"Lord, how many things are in the world of which Diogenes hath no need!"
+exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at
+a country fair.
+
+"One would think," said Boswell, "that the proprietor of all this
+(Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsfield) must be happy." "Nay, sir,"
+said Johnson, "all this excludes but one evil, poverty."
+
+"What property has he left behind him?" people ask when a man dies; but
+the angel who receives him asks, "What good deeds hast thou sent before
+thee?"
+
+"What is the best thing to possess?" asked an ancient philosopher of his
+pupils. One answered, "Nothing is better than a good eye,"--a figurative
+expression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another said, "A
+good companion is the best thing in the world;" a third chose a good
+neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazar said: "A good heart
+is better than them all." "True," said the master; "thou hast
+comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath
+a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and
+will easily see what is fit to be done by him."
+
+"My kingdom for a horse," said Richard III. of England amid the press of
+Bosworth Field. "My kingdom for a moment," said Queen Elizabeth on her
+death-bed. And millions of others, when they have felt earth, its riches
+and power slipping from their grasp, have shown plainly that deep down
+in their hearts they value such things at naught when really compared
+with the blessed light of life, the stars and flowers, the companionship
+of friends, and far above all else, the opportunity of growth and
+development here and of preparation for future life.
+
+Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark wrote on the window of her prison,
+with her diamond ring: "Oh, keep me innocent; make others great."
+
+"These are my jewels," said Cornelia to the Campanian lady who asked to
+see her gems; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning from
+school. The reply was worthy the daughter of Scipio Africanus and wife
+of Tiberius Gracchus. The most valuable production of any country is its
+crop of men.
+
+"I will take away thy treasures," said a tyrant to a philosopher. "Nay,
+that thou canst not," was the retort; "for, in the first place, I have
+none that thou knowest of. My treasure is in heaven, and my heart is
+there."
+
+Some people are born happy. No matter what their circumstances are they
+are joyous, content and satisfied with everything. They carry a
+perpetual holiday in their eye and see joy and beauty everywhere. When
+we meet them they impress us as just having met with some good luck, or
+that they have some good news to tell you. Like the bees that extract
+honey from every flower, they have a happy alchemy which transmutes even
+gloom into sunshine. In the sick room they are better than the physician
+and more potent than drugs. All doors open to these people. They are
+welcome everywhere.
+
+We make our own worlds and people them, while memory, the scribe,
+faithfully registers the account of each as we pass the milestones
+dotting the way. Are we not, then, responsible for the inhabitants of
+our little worlds? We should fill them with the true, the beautiful and
+the good, since we are endowed with the faculty of creating.
+
+"Genius," says Whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty of
+acquiring poverty." It is the men of talent who make money out of the
+work of the men of genius. Somebody has truly said, that the greatest
+works have brought the least benefit to their authors. They were beyond
+the reach of appreciation before appreciation came.
+
+There is an Eastern legend of a powerful genius, who promised a
+beautiful maiden a gift of rare value if she would pass through a field
+of corn and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither and
+thither, select the largest and ripest ear,--the value of the gift to be
+in proportion to the size and perfection of the ear she should choose.
+She passed through the field, seeing a great many well worth gathering,
+but always hoping to find a larger and more perfect one, she passed them
+all by, when, coming to a part of the field where the stalks grew more
+stunted, she disdained to take one from these, and so came through to
+the other side without having selected any.
+
+A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not the
+highest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not truly
+successful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul into
+dollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart.
+He strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobler
+aspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe
+of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one
+of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest
+souls that ever went out of it.
+
+Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his
+fellow lawyers called him "perversely honest." Nothing could induce him
+to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after
+learning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable time
+to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred
+dollars, he returned the money, saying: "Madam, you have not a peg to
+hang your case on." "But you have earned that money," said the lady.
+"No, no," replied Lincoln, "that would not be right. I can't take pay
+for doing my duty."
+
+Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he
+had no time to make money. Charles Sumner, when a senator, declined to
+lecture at any price, saying that his time belonged to Massachusetts and
+the nation. Spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in America at one
+thousand dollars a night, because he said he could do better: he could
+stay in London and try to save fifty souls. All honor to the comparative
+few in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendencies
+of our age, still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope of
+rewards other than gold or popular favor. These are our truly great men
+and women. They labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zeal
+because they give time and thought to higher things.
+
+King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched might
+be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy.
+His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the
+flowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, were
+all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might be
+taken from him. He had learned that many other things are intrinsically
+far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth.
+
+The "beggarly Homer, who strolled, God knows when, in the infancy and
+barbarism of the world," was richer far than Croesus and added more
+wealth to the world than the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts and Goulds.
+
+An Arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in the
+desert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bag
+full of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope. "I shall never
+forget," said he, "the relish and delight that I felt on supposing it to
+be dried wheat, nor the bitterness and despair I suffered on discovering
+that the bag contained pearls."
+
+It is an interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author,
+or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has
+more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in
+the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign
+influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely
+intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world
+means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success
+in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society.
+Character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible mark
+determines the only true value of all people and all their work. Dr.
+Hunter said: "No man was ever a great man who wanted to be one." Artists
+cannot help putting themselves and their own characters into their
+works. The vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. The gross, the
+bizarre, the sensitive, the delicate, all come out on the canvas and
+tell the story of his life.
+
+Who would not choose to be a millionaire of deeds with a Lincoln, a
+Grant, a Florence Nightingale, a Childs; a millionaire of ideas with
+Emerson, with Lowell, with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth; a millionaire
+of statesmanship with a Gladstone, a Bright, a Sumner, a Washington?
+
+Some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial
+temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a
+shipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, and
+friends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some
+so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. Some
+are rich in integrity and character.
+
+"Who is the richest of men?" asked Socrates. "He who is content with the
+least, for contentment is nature's riches."
+
+"Do you know, sir," said a devotee of Mammon to John Bright, "that I am
+worth a million sterling?" "Yes," said the irritated but calm-spirited
+respondent, "I do; and I know that it is all you are worth."
+
+A bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his noble wife,
+"My dear, I am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of the
+sheriff." After a few moments of silence the wife looked into his face
+and asked, "Will the sheriff sell you?" "Oh, no." "Will the sheriff sell
+me?" "Oh, no." "Then do not say we have lost everything. All that is
+most valuable remains to us--manhood, womanhood, childhood. We have lost
+but the results of our skill and industry. We can make another fortune
+if our hearts and hands are left us."
+
+"We say a man is 'made'," said Beecher. "What do we mean? That he has
+got the control of his lower instincts, so that they are only fuel to
+his higher feelings, giving force to his nature? That his affections
+are like vines, sending out on all sides blossoms and clustering fruits?
+That his tastes are so cultivated that all beautiful things speak to
+him, and bring him their delights? That his understanding is opened, so
+that he walks through every hall of knowledge, and gathers its
+treasures? That his moral feelings are so developed and quickened that
+he holds sweet commerce with Heaven? O, no--none of these things. He is
+cold and dead in heart, and mind, and soul. Only his passions are alive;
+but--he is worth five hundred thousand dollars!
+
+"And we say a man is 'ruined.' Are his wife and children dead? O, no.
+Have they had a quarrel, and are they separated from him? O, no. Has he
+lost his reputation through crime? No. Is his reason gone? O, no; it is
+as sound as ever. Is he struck through with disease? No. He has lost his
+property, and he is ruined. The _man_ ruined! When shall we learn that
+'a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
+possesseth?'"
+
+"How is it possible," asks an ancient philosopher, "that a man who has
+nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a
+slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has
+sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me who am
+without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave;
+I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no prætorium, but
+only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am I
+not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any
+of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or even falling into
+that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse
+any man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance?"
+
+"You are a plebeian," said a patrician to Cicero. "I am a plebeian,"
+replied the great Roman orator; "the nobility of my family begins with
+me, that of yours will end with you." No man deserves to be crowned with
+honor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drink
+and accumulate money is surely not successful. The world is no better
+for his living in it. He never wiped a tear from a sad face, never
+kindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. There is no flesh in his heart; he
+worships no god but gold.
+
+Why should I scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portion
+of this earth? This is my world now; why should I envy others its mere
+legal possession? It belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. I need not
+envy the so-called owners of estates in Boston and New York. They are
+merely taking care of my property and keeping it in excellent condition
+for me. For a few pennies for railroad fare whenever I wish I can see
+and possess the best of it all. It has cost me no effort, it gives me no
+care; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns,
+the finer sculptures and paintings within, are always ready for me
+whenever I feel a desire to look upon them. I do not wish to carry them
+home with me, for I could not give them half the care they now receive;
+besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and I should be
+worrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. I have much of the
+wealth of the world now. It is all prepared for me without any pains on
+my part. All around me are working hard to get things that will please
+me, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. The little I
+pay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less than
+it would cost to care for the least of all I use. Life and landscape are
+mine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. What
+more do I want? All the ages have been working for me; all mankind are
+my servants. I am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy task
+in this land of opportunity.
+
+There is scarcely an idea more infectious or potent than the love of
+money. It is a yellow fever, decimating its votaries and ruining more
+families in the land, than all the plagues or diseases put together.
+Instances of its malevolent power occur to every reader. Almost every
+square foot of land of our continent during the early buccaneer period
+(some call it the march of civilization), has been ensanguined through
+the madness for treasure. Read the pages of our historian Prescott, and
+you will see that the whole anti-Puritan history of America resolves
+itself into an awful slaughter for gold. Discoveries were only side
+issues.
+
+Speak, history, who are life's victors? Unroll thy long scroll and say,
+have they won who first reached the goal, heedless of a brother's
+rights? And has he lost in life's great race who stopped "to raise a
+fallen child, and place him on his feet again," or to give a fainting
+comrade care; or to guide or assist a feeble woman? Has he lost who
+halts before the throne when duty calls, or sorrow, or distress? Is
+there no one to sing the pæan of the conquered who fell in the battle of
+life? of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife? of
+the low and humble, the weary and broken-hearted, who strove and who
+failed, in the eyes of men, but who did their duty as God gave them to
+see it?
+
+"We have yet no man who has leaned _entirely_ on his character, and
+eaten angel's food," said Emerson; "who, trusting to his sentiments,
+found life made of miracles; who, working for _universal aims_, found
+himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew
+not how, and yet it was done by his own hands."
+
+At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the
+common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious
+subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap
+literature. He believed that a paper might be instructive and not be
+dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the "Penny Magazine," which
+acquired a circulation of two hundred thousand the first year. Knight
+projected the "Penny Cyclopedia," the "Library of Entertaining
+Knowledge," "Half-Hours with the Best Authors," and other useful works
+at a low price. His whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating
+the common people by cheap, yet wholesome publications. He died in
+poverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over his
+ashes.
+
+How many rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of
+luxury, that are only glittering caverns of selfishness and discontent!
+"Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred
+therewith."
+
+"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger,"
+says Beecher. "It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or
+poor according to what he _is_, not according to what he _has_."
+
+If our thoughts are great and noble, no mean surroundings can make us
+miserable. It is the mind that makes the body rich.
+
+     Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
+     'Tis only noble to be good.
+     Kind hearts are more than coronets,
+     And simple faith than Norman blood.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
+     In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
+     Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
+     --LOWELL.
+
+
+
+
+PUSHING TO THE FRONT
+
+     OR, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES, by ORISON SWETT MARDEN. A book
+     of inspiration and help to the youth of America who long to be
+     somebody and to do something in the world, many of whom, hedged
+     in as it were by iron walls of circumstances feel that they
+     have "no chance in life." ==> Passed through _a dozen editions
+     its first year_. It is used _in Boston and other public
+     schools_, and has been republished and heartily received in
+     foreign countries.
+
+=With 24 fine full-page portraits. Crown 8vo., $1.50.=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A modern wonder. It should be in the hands of every American
+     youth.
+     --_Bishop Newman_.
+
+     It is the most stimulating and suggestive book for young men I
+     ever read.
+     --_Mrs. Mary A. Livermore_.
+
+     Best book of the kind ever written.
+     --_Golden Rule_.
+
+     There is an uplift on every page, and wisdom in every
+     paragraph.
+     --_Epworth Herald_.
+
+     I have read with unusual interest your book "Pushing to the
+     Front." It cannot but be an inspiration to every boy or girl
+     who reads it.
+     --_Wm. McKinley_.
+
+     A most interesting and valuable book to the youth of America.
+     --_Senator Henry Cabot Lodge_.
+
+     An admirable book, a timely contribution of advice and
+     inspiration to youth.
+     --_Chauncey M. Depew_.
+
+     The author has done a most valuable service to the young life
+     of the country.
+     --_Bishop J. H. Vincent_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sold by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by
+
+     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.,
+     NEW YORK and BOSTON.
+
+
+
+
+A New, Handsomely Illustrated Magazine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SUCCESS
+
+EDITED BY
+
+ORISON SWETT MARDEN.
+
+_Author of "Pushing to the Front, or Success Under Difficulties;"
+"Architects of Fate," etc._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The key note of the magazine will be to inspire, encourage and stimulate
+to higher purposes all who are anxious to add to their knowledge and
+culture, and to make the most of themselves and their opportunities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FEATURES.
+
+The following departments and subjects will be given especial attention:
+The Progress of the World, Self-Culture, Civics, "What Career?" Health,
+Science and Invention, Literature, Correspondence, Editorial Talks,
+Stories of Great Lives, Healthful Sports, Poetry, Short Historical
+Stories, Opportunities for Girls, The Young Man in Business, Problems,
+Incidents and Anecdotes, Miscellaneous Reading.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PARTIAL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.
+
+     Charles Dudley Warner.
+     Edna Dean Proctor.
+     George W. Cable.
+     Thos. Wentworth Higginson.
+     Oliver Optic.
+     Hezekiah Butterworth.
+     Bishop John P. Newman.
+     Frank H. Vincent.
+     Dr. Booker T. Washington.
+     Abby Morton Diaz.
+     John Ritchie, Jr.
+     Marie A. Molineux.
+     Rev. Dr. David Gregg.
+     Rev. Dr. J. L. Withrow.
+     Dr. A. H. Campbell.
+     Henry Wood.
+     Mary A. Livermore.
+     Bishop J. H. Vincent.
+     Rev. Edward Everett Hale.
+     John Wanamaker.
+     William M. Thayer.
+     Harriet Prescott Spofford.
+     Justice John M. Harlan.
+     Rev. Dr. R. S. McArthur.
+     Mrs. Sarah White Lee.
+     A. E. Winship.
+     Helen M. Winslow.
+     Frank H. Vizetelly.
+     Rev. Dr. Alexander McKenzie.
+     Dr. Ellen A. Wallace.
+     A.D. Mayo.
+     Cyrus C. Adams.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+=Subscription, $1.00 per year.=
+
+==> =_Send in your name for descriptive prospectus, illustrated premium
+list, and free sample copy._=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SUCCESS PUBLISHING CO.,
+
+BOSTON, MASS.
+
+
+
+
+ARCHITECTS OF FATE
+
+     OR, STEPS TO SUCCESS AND POWER, by ORISON SWETT MARDEN. A book
+     of inspiration to character-building, self-culture, to a full
+     and rich manhood and womanhood, by most invigorating examples
+     of noble achievement. It is characterized by the same
+     remarkable qualities as its companion volume "Pushing to the
+     Front."
+
+=With 32 fine full-page portraits. Crown 8vo., 486 pages, $1.50.=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Architects of Fate," like "Pushing to the Front," is a
+     remarkable book, and of immense value in the training of youth.
+     There is inspiration, encouragement and helpfulness on every
+     page.
+     --_Edward Everett Hale._
+
+     There are enough brilliant sayings and lively anecdotes in this
+     book to supply an after-dinner speaker or conversationalist for
+     a lifetime. It is wise, witty, inspiring.
+     --_Woman's Journal._
+
+     It will be a missionary of the highest type wherever it goes.
+     --_New York Times._
+
+     Artistic, logical, stimulating mentally and morally.
+     --_Rev. Dr. Lorimer._
+
+     It teaches the lofty aim, the high resolve, the fixed purpose,
+     the pure ideal.
+     --_Phila. Public Ledger._
+
+     An ideal book for youth.
+     --_N. Y. Herald._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sold by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by
+
+     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.,
+     NEW YORK and BOSTON.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's List of Corrections
+
+     Location
+              Original
+                       Correction
+
+     CHAPTER VII.
+              Diction-tionary [_at line break_]
+                       Dictionary
+
+     CHAPTER XI.
+              more of less
+                       more or less
+
+     CHAPTER XV.
+              battle of life,
+                       battle of life.
+
+     CHAPTER XVI.
+              philsopher
+                       philosopher
+
+     CHAPTER XIX.
+              impossbile
+                       impossible
+
+     CHAPTER XX.
+              notoble
+                       notable
+
+     CHAPTER XXI.
+              conquerers
+                       conquerors
+
+     SUCCESS [_advertisement_]
+              Dr. Brooker T. Washington.
+                       Dr. Booker T. Washington.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed, by Orison Swett Marden
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed, by Orison Swett Marden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: How to Succeed
+       or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune
+
+Author: Orison Swett Marden
+
+Release Date: February 3, 2007 [EBook #20513]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO SUCCEED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Karina Aleksandrova
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div class="notes">
+<p>Transcriber Notes:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li>Several misprints corrected. Hover over underlined
+  <ins class="correction" title="like this">word</ins> in
+  the text to see the corrections made. A full list of
+  corrections can be found at <a href="#corrections">the end</a> of the text.</li>
+<li>Symbol of a hand pointing right has been replaced with a right
+arrow: &rarr;.</li>
+</ol>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+
+<h1 class="smcap"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a>How To Succeed;</h1>
+
+<h4>OR,</h4>
+
+<h3>Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune.</h3>
+
+<div class="center">
+<img src="images/image1-th.png" width="400" height="301" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h2 class="smcap">Orison Swett Marden, A.M., M.D.</h2>
+
+<h5>Author of<br />
+
+"Pushing to the Front; or, Success Under Difficulties," and
+"Architects of Fate; or, Steps to Success and Power."</h5>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p class="center">PUBLISHED BY<br />
+THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,<br />
+<span class="smcap">Louis Klopsch</span>, Proprietor,<br />
+BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a>Copyright, 1896,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By Louis Klopsch</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;3">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<ol class="toc">
+<li>First, Be a Man,                <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></span></li>
+<li>Seize Your Opportunity,        <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></span></li>
+<li>How Did He Begin?              <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></span></li>
+<li>Out of Place,                  <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></span></li>
+<li>What Shall I Do?               <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></span></li>
+<li>Will You Pay the Price?        <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></span></li>
+<li>Foundation Stones,             <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></span></li>
+<li>The Conquest of Obstacles,     <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></span></li>
+<li>Dead in Earnest,              <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></span></li>
+<li>To Be Great, Concentrate,     <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></span></li>
+<li>At Once,                      <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></span></li>
+<li>Thoroughness,                 <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></span></li>
+<li>Trifles,                      <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></li>
+<li>Courage,                      <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></span></li>
+<li>Will Power,                   <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></span></li>
+<li>Guard Your Weak Point,        <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></span></li>
+<li>Stick,                        <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></span></li>
+<li>Save,                         <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></span></li>
+<li>Live Upward,                  <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></li>
+<li>Sand,                         <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></span></li>
+<li>Above Rubies,                 <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></span></li>
+<li>Moral Sunshine,               <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></span></li>
+<li>Hold Up Your Head,            <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></span></li>
+<li>Books and Success,            <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></span></li>
+<li>Riches Without Wings,         <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></span></li>
+</ol>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h1><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;5">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>HOW TO SUCCEED.</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>FIRST, BE A MAN.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The great need at this hour is manly men. We want no
+goody-goody piety; we have too much of it. We want men who will
+do right, though the heavens fall, who believe in God, and who
+will confess Him.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Rev. W.&nbsp;J. Dawson.</span></p>
+
+<p>All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want
+a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand.
+This man&mdash;it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!... How to
+constitute one's self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not
+how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Alexander Dumas.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"I thank God I am a Baptist," said a little, short Doctor of Divinity,
+as he mounted a step at a convention. "Louder! louder!" shouted a man in
+the audience; "we can't hear." "Get up higher," said another. "I can't,"
+replied the doctor, "to be a Baptist is as high as one can get."</p>
+
+<p>But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a
+<em>man</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Rousseau says: "According to the order of nature, men being equal, their
+common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well
+educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;6">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>
+fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters little
+to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar.
+To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him,
+it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. <em>Let
+him first be a man</em>; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another, as
+she pleases, he will be always found in his place."</p>
+
+<p>"First of all," replied the boy James A. Garfield, when asked what he
+meant to be, "I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I
+can succeed in nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear me, O men," cried Diogenes, in the market place at Athens; and,
+when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully, "I called for
+men, not pigmies."</p>
+
+<p>One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good
+animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the
+coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must
+have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. It
+is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and
+beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal
+existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse
+throughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when
+scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;7">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>Dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping out
+of debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by being
+industrious.</p>
+
+<p>"Nephew," said Sir Godfrey Kneller, the artist, to a Guinea slave
+trader, who entered the room where his uncle was talking with Alexander
+Pope, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world."
+"I don't know how great men you may be," said the Guinea man, as he
+looked contemptuously upon their diminutive physical proportions, "but I
+don't like your looks; I have often bought a much better man than either
+of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."</p>
+
+<p>A man is never so happy as when he suffices to himself, and can walk
+without crutches or a guide. Said Jean Paul Richter: "I have made as
+much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should
+require more."</p>
+
+<p>"The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage," wrote Voltaire to
+Helvetius; "these are what we require to be happy."</p>
+
+<p>Although millions are out of employment in the United States, how
+difficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent,
+industrious man or woman, young or old, for any position, whether as a
+domestic servant, an office boy, a teacher, a brakeman, a conductor, an
+engineer, a clerk, a bookkeeper, or whatever we may want. It<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;8">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a> is almost
+impossible to find a really <em>competent</em> person in any department, and
+oftentimes we have to make many trials before we can get a position
+fairly well filled.</p>
+
+<p>It is a superficial age; very few prepare for their work. Of thousands
+of young women trying to get a living at typewriting, many are so
+ignorant, so deficient in the common rudiments even, that they spell
+badly, use bad grammar, and know scarcely anything of punctuation. In
+fact, they murder the English language. They can copy, "parrot like,"
+and that is about all.</p>
+
+<p>The same superficiality is found in nearly all kinds of business. It is
+next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his
+trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling
+good material and wasting valuable time.</p>
+
+<p>In the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness,
+but usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moral
+breadth.</p>
+
+<p>The merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a sense
+an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removed
+alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence of
+human converse. In society, the most accomplished man of mere
+professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality in
+his dexterity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;9">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>"The aim of every man," said Humboldt, "should be to secure the highest
+and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and
+consistent whole."</p>
+
+<p>Some men impress us as immense possibilities. They seem to have a sweep
+of intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal; they
+seem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seen
+everything. Nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. But
+somehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. They raise
+great hopes only to dash them. They are men of great promise, but they
+never pay. There is some indefinable want in their make-up.</p>
+
+<p>What the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit, who
+does not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and who would
+give the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into three
+classes: men, women and ministers. Wanted, a clergyman who does not look
+upon his congregation from the standpoint of old theological books, and
+dusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the merchant as in his store, the
+clerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading before the jury, the
+physician standing over the sick bed; in other words, who looks upon the
+great throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing, scheming, ambitious,
+impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of their number, who can
+live with<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;10">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a> them, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and
+experience their sensations.</p>
+
+<p>The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every
+profession, every occupation, every calling: "Wanted&mdash;A Man."</p>
+
+<p>Wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a mere
+walking bundle of precedents.</p>
+
+<p>Wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. A
+man should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and symmetrical
+in his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that no one
+would suspect how he gets his living.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more apparent in this age of specialties than the dwarfing,
+crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions.
+Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the
+professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the
+age tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business
+man to a mere money-making career.</p>
+
+<p>Think of a man, the grandest of God's creations, spending his life-time
+standing beside a machine for making screws. There is nothing to call
+out his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, judging,
+deciding.</p>
+
+<p>He stands there year after year, until he<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;11">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a> seems but a piece of
+mechanism. His powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, to
+inferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the machine he
+tends.</p>
+
+<p>Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who
+has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"
+though all the world say "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not
+permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his
+manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt
+or paralyze his other faculties.</p>
+
+<p>Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low
+estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a
+living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture,
+discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.</p>
+
+<p>As Nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewarding
+their observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes their
+violation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induce
+us to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implanted
+within us. She nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all great
+blessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding up
+before us glittering prizes, which we<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;12">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a> may almost touch, but never quite
+possess. She covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of character
+building through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over the
+future; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and she
+fail in her great purpose. How else could Nature call the youth away
+from all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting to
+his imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunt
+his dreams until he resolves to make them real. As a mother teaches her
+babe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child may
+reach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength,
+compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so Nature goes before us
+through life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with one
+object in view&mdash;the development of the man.</p>
+
+<p>In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which
+stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure on
+the canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its real
+significance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds its
+true expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object of
+creation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to the
+central figure of the created universe&mdash;Man. Nature writes this thought
+upon every leaf;<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;13">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a> she thunders it in every creation; it exhales from
+every flower; it twinkles in every star.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide,<br /></span>
+<span>And let in manhood&mdash;let in happiness;<br /></span>
+<span>Admit the boundless theatre of thought<br /></span>
+<span>From nothing up to God ... which makes a man!<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Young.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;14">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>SEIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"The blowing winds are but our servants<br /></span>
+<span>When we hoist a sail."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>You must come to know that each admirable genius is but a
+successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your
+own.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Who waits until the wind shall silent keep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Who never finds the ready hour to sow,<br /></span>
+<span>Who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Helen Hunt Jackson.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The secret of success in life is for a man <em>to be ready for his
+opportunity</em> when it comes.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Disraeli.</span></p>
+
+<p>Do the best you can where you are; and, when that is
+accomplished, God will open a door for you, and a voice will
+call, "Come up hither into a higher sphere."
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Beecher.</span></p>
+
+<p>Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a
+distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Carlyle.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"When I was a boy," said General Grant, "my mother one morning found
+herself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some from a
+neighbor. Going into the house without knocking, I overheard a letter
+read from the son of a neighbor, who was then at West Point, stating
+that he had failed in examination and was coming home. I got the butter,
+took it home, and, without waiting for breakfast ran to the office of
+the congressman<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;15">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a> for our district. 'Mr. Hamer,' I said, 'will you
+appoint me to West Point?' 'No, &mdash;&mdash; is there, and has three years to
+serve.' 'But suppose he should fail, will you send me?' Mr. Hamer
+laughed. 'If he don't go through, no use for you to try, Uly.' 'Promise
+me you will give me the chance, Mr. Hamer, anyhow.' Mr. Hamer promised.
+The next day the defeated lad came home, and the congressman, laughing
+at my sharpness, gave me the appointment. Now," said Grant, "it was my
+mother's being without butter that made me general and president." But
+he was mistaken. It was his own shrewdness to see the chance, and the
+promptness to seize it, that urged him upward.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nobody," says a Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visit
+once in his life; but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she
+goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy.
+The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or
+clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly,
+and catch it when on the wing.</p>
+
+<p>The utmost which can be said about the matter is, that circumstances
+will, and do combine to help men at some periods of their lives, and
+combine to thwart them at others. Thus much we freely admit; but there
+is no fatality in these combinations, neither any<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;16">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a> such thing as "luck"
+or "chance," as commonly understood. They come and go like all other
+opportunities and occasions in life, and if they are seized upon and
+made the most of, the man whom they benefit is fortunate; but if they
+are neglected and allowed to pass by unimproved, he is unfortunate.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley," says Moses H. Grinnell to a clerk born in New York City,
+"take my overcoat tip to my house on Fifth Avenue." Mr. Charley takes
+the coat, mutters something about "I'm not an errand boy. I came here to
+learn business," and moves reluctantly. Mr. Grinnell sees it, and at the
+same time one of his New England clerks says, "I'll take it up." "That
+is right, do so," says Mr. G., and to himself he says, "that boy is
+smart, he will work," and he gives him plenty to do. He gets promoted,
+gets the confidence of business men as well as of his employers, and is
+soon known as a successful man.</p>
+
+<p>The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes
+and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own
+advancement, who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him
+on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every
+opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him
+to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds
+it up<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;17">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a> into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart open
+that he may catch every noble impulse and everything which may inspire
+him, will be sure to live a successful life; there are no ifs or ands
+about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from success.</p>
+
+<p><i>Zion's Herald</i> says that Isaac Rich, who gave one million and three
+quarters to found Boston University of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
+began business thus: at eighteen he went from Cape Cod to Boston with
+three or four dollars in his possession, and looked about for something
+to do, rising early, walking far, observing closely, reflecting much.
+Soon he had an idea: he bought three bushels of oysters, hired a
+wheelbarrow, found a piece of board, bought six small plates, six iron
+forks, a three-cent pepper-box, and one or two other things. He was at
+the oyster-boat buying his oysters at three o'clock in the morning,
+wheeled them three miles, set up his board near a market, and began
+business. He sold out his oysters as fast as he could get them, at a
+good profit. In that same market he continued to deal in oysters and
+fish for forty years, became king of the business, and ended by founding
+a college. His success was won by industry and honesty.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a chance," says Haliburton's Stupid, "and I will show you." But
+most<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;18">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a> likely he has had his chance already and neglected it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, boys," said Mr. A., a New York merchant, to his four clerks one
+winter morning in 1815, "this is good news. Peace has been declared. Now
+<em>we</em> must be up and doing. We shall have our hands full, but we can do
+as much as anybody."</p>
+
+<p>He was owner and part owner of several ships lying dismantled during the
+war, three miles up the river, which was covered with ice an inch thick.
+He knew that it would be a month before the ice yielded for the season,
+and that thus the merchants in other towns where the harbors were open,
+would have time to be in the foreign markets before him. His decision
+therefore was instantly taken.</p>
+
+<p>"Reuben," he continued, addressing one of his clerks, "go and collect as
+many laborers as possible to go up the river. Charles, do you find
+Mr.&mdash;&mdash;, the rigger, and Mr.&mdash;&mdash;, the sailmaker, and tell them I want
+them immediately. John, engage half-a-dozen truckmen for to-day and
+to-morrow. Stephen, do you hunt up as many gravers and caulkers as you
+can, and hire them to work for me." And Mr. A. himself sallied forth to
+provide the necessary implements for icebreaking. Before twelve o'clock
+that day, upward of an hundred men were three miles up the river,
+clearing the ships and cutting away ice, which they<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;19">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a> sawed out in large
+squares, and then thrust under the main mass to open up the channel. The
+roofing over the ships was torn off, and the clatter of the caulkers'
+mallets was like to the rattling of a hail-storm, loads of rigging were
+passed up on the ice, riggers went to and fro with belt and knife,
+sailmakers busily plied their needles, and the whole presented an
+unusual scene of stir and activity and well-directed labor. Before night
+the ships were afloat, and moved some distance down the channel; and by
+the time they had reached the wharf, namely, in some eight or ten days,
+their rigging and spars were aloft, their upper timbers caulked, and
+everything ready for them to go to sea.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Mr. A. competed on equal terms with the merchants of open seaports.
+Large and quick gains rewarded his enterprise, and then his neighbors
+spoke depreciatingly of his "good luck." But, as the writer from whom we
+get the story says, Mr. A. was equal to his opportunity, and this was
+the secret of his good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and
+supposed it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward,
+she walked the streets near the Peabody Institute to get money to
+purchase food. She cut up an old, worn out, ragged cloak to make a hood
+of, when lo! in the lining of the cloak, she discovered the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;20">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a> diamond
+bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth thirty-five hundred
+dollars, but did not know it.</p>
+
+<p>Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities if we could
+only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more
+than diamond bracelets, in power to do good.</p>
+
+<p>In our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four
+out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand,
+and in meeting common everyday wants. It is a sorry day for a young man
+who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do
+better somewhere else. Several Brazilian shepherds organized a party to
+go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of clear pebbles
+to play checkers with on the voyage. They discovered after arriving at
+Sacramento, after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, that they
+were all diamonds. They returned to Brazil only to find that the mines
+had been taken up by others and sold to the government.</p>
+
+<p>The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold for forty-two
+dollars by the owner, to get money to pay his passage to other mines
+where he thought he could get rich.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Agassiz told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm
+of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;21">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a> rocks, and concluded to
+sell out and try some more remunerative business.</p>
+
+<p>He studied coal measures and coal oil deposits, and experimented for a
+long time. He sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into the
+oil business two hundred miles away. Only a short time afterward the man
+who bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which the
+farmer had ignorantly tried to drain off.</p>
+
+<p>A man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Boston talking with
+a friend as to what he could do to help mankind. "I should think it
+would be a good thing," said the friend, "to begin by getting up an
+easier and cheaper chair."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do it," he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair. He
+found a great deal of rattan thrown away by the East India merchant
+ships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it. He began the manufacture of
+rattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by what
+he has done with what was before thrown away. While this man was
+dreaming about some far off success, he at that very time had fortune
+awaiting only his ingenuity and industry.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will
+find millions of others have the same wants, the same demands. The
+safest business is always connected with men's prime necessities. They
+must have clothing, dwellings; they<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;22">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a> must eat. They want comforts,
+facilities of all kinds, for use and pleasure, luxury, education,
+culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any
+methods which men use, supply any demand or contribute in any way to
+their well-being, can make a fortune.</p>
+
+<p>But it is detrimental to the highest success to undertake anything
+merely because it is profitable. If the vocation does not supply a human
+want, if it is not healthful, if it is degrading, if it is narrowing,
+don't touch it.</p>
+
+<p>A selfish vocation never pays. If it belittles the manhood, blights the
+affections, dwarfs the mental life, chills the charities and shrivels
+the soul, don't touch it. Choose that occupation, if possible, which
+will be the most helpful to the largest number.</p>
+
+<p>It is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionaire
+manufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles on which
+they made their fortune.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest hindrances to advancement and promotion in life is
+the lack of observation and the disinclination to take pains. A keen,
+cultivated observation will see a fortune where others see only poverty.
+An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could
+ill afford to get another pair, said to himself, "I will make a metallic
+lacing hook, which can be<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;23">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a> riveted into the leather." He succeeded in
+doing so and now he is a very rich man.</p>
+
+<p>An observing barber in Newark, N.&nbsp;J., thought he could make an
+improvement on shears for cutting hair, and invented "clippers" and
+became very rich. A Maine man was called from the hayfield to wash out
+the clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to
+wash before. He invented the washing-machine and made a fortune. A man
+who was suffering terribly with toothache, said to himself, "There must
+be some way of filling teeth to prevent them aching;" he invented gold
+filling for teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means.
+Want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the
+mother of all great inventions. Ericsson began the construction of a
+screw-propeller in a bath-room. John Harrison, the great inventor of the
+marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts
+of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of
+an old church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his
+famous reaper in an old grist-mill. The first model dry-dock was made in
+an attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass.,
+began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse-shed.</p>
+
+<p>Opportunities? They crowd around us.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;24">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a> Forces of nature plead to be used
+in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his
+attention to electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to
+develop the God-given powers within him.</p>
+
+<p>There is power lying latent everywhere, waiting for the observant eye to
+discover it.</p>
+
+<p>First find out what the people need and then supply that want. An
+invention to make the smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a
+very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent
+office at Washington is full of wonderful devices, ingenious mechanism;
+not one in hundreds is of earthly use to the inventor or to the world,
+and yet how many families have been impoverished and have struggled for
+years mid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless
+inventions. These men did not study the wants of humanity. A.&nbsp;T.
+Stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was one
+dollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which people would not
+purchase. After that he made it a rule never to buy anything which
+people did not want.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing a youth, entering the city to make his home there, needs
+to do is to make himself a necessity to the person who employs him,
+according to the Boston <i>Herald</i>. Whatever he may have been at home, it
+counts for nothing until he has<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;25">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a> done something that makes known the
+quality of the stuff that is in him. If he shirks work, however humble
+it may be, the work will soon be inclined to shirk him. But the youth
+who comes into a city to make his way in the world, and is not afraid of
+doing his best whether he is paid for it or not, is not long in finding
+remunerative employment. The people who seem so indifferent to employing
+young people from the country are eagerly watching for the newcomers,
+but they look for qualities of character and service in actual work
+before they manifest confidence or give recognition. It is the youth who
+is deserving that wins his way to the front, and when once he has been
+tested his promotion is only a question of time. It is the same with
+young women. There are seemingly no places for them where they can earn
+a decent living, but the moment they fill their places worthily there is
+room enough for them, and progress is rapid. What the city people desire
+most is to find those who have ability to take important places, and the
+question of gaining a position in the city resolves itself at once into
+the question of what the young persons have brought with them from home.
+It is the staying qualities that have been in-wrought from childhood
+which are now in requisition, and the success of the boy or girl is
+determined by the amount of energetic character that has been developed
+in<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;26">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a> the early years at home. Take up the experience of every man or
+woman who has made a mark in the city for the last hundred years, and it
+has been the sterling qualities of the home training that have
+constituted the success of later years.</p>
+
+<p>Don't think you have no chance in life because you have no capital to
+begin with. Most of the rich men of to-day began poor. The chances are
+you would be ruined if you had capital. You can only use to advantage
+what has become a part of yourself by your earning it. It is estimated
+that not one rich man's son in ten thousand dies rich. God has given
+every man a capital to start with; we are born rich. He is rich who has
+good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head,
+a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands,
+with five chances on each. Equipped? Every man is equipped as only God
+could equip him. What a fortune he possesses in the marvelous mechanism
+of his body and mind. It is individual effort that has accomplished
+everything worth accomplishing in this world. Money to start with is
+only a crutch, which, if any misfortune knocks it from under you, would
+only make your fall all the more certain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;27">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW DID HE BEGIN?</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day,
+using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began life
+as poor boys.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Seth Low.</span></p>
+
+<p>Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul
+within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into
+Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them
+to lotus dreams.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Ouida.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>'Tis a common proof,<br /></span>
+<span>That lowliness is young ambition's ladder<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Shakespeare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"Fifty years ago," said Hezekiah Conant, the millionaire manufacturer
+and philanthropist of Pawtucket, R.&nbsp;I., "I persuaded my father to let me
+leave my home in Dudley, Mass., and strike out for myself. So one
+morning in May, 1845, the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and,
+dressed in our Sunday clothes, father and I started for Worcester. Our
+object was to get me the situation offered by an advertisement in the
+Worcester County <i>Gazette</i> as follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">BOY WANTED.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Wanted Immediately</span>.&mdash;At the <i>Gazette</i> Office, a well disposed
+boy, able to do heavy rolling. Worcester, May 7.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;28">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>"The financial inducements were thirty dollars the first year,
+thirty-five the next, and forty dollars the third year and board in the
+employer's family. These conditions were accepted, and I began work the
+next day. The <i>Gazette</i> was an ordinary four-page sheet. I soon learned
+what 'heavy rolling' meant for the paper was printed on a 'Washington'
+hand-press, the edition of about 2000 copies requiring two laborious
+intervals of about ten hours each, every week. The printing of the
+outside was generally done Friday and kept me very busy all day. The
+inside went to press about three or four o'clock Tuesday afternoon, and
+it was after three o'clock on Wednesday morning before I could go to
+bed, tired and lame from the heavy rolling. In addition, I also had the
+laborious task of carrying a quantity of water from the pump behind the
+block around to the entrance in front, and then up two flights of
+stairs, usually a daily job. I was at first everybody's servant. I was
+abused, called all sorts of nicknames, had to sweep out the office,
+build fires in winter, run errands, post bills, carry papers, wait on
+the editor, in fact I led the life of a genuine printer's devil; but
+when I showed them at length that I had learned to set type and run the
+press, I got promoted, and another boy was hired to succeed to my task,
+with all its decorations. That was my first success,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;29">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a> and from that day
+to this I have never asked anybody to get me a job or situation, and
+never used a letter of recommendation; but when an important job was in
+prospect the proposed employers were given all facilities to learn of my
+abilities and character. If some young men are easily discouraged, I
+hope they may gain encouragement and strength from my story. It is a
+long, rough road at first, but, like the ship on the ocean, you must lay
+your course for the place where you hope to land, and take advantage of
+all favoring circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give
+you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." Horace Greeley
+looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed how seedy
+they were, and replied: "You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new
+place, and I want to help him all I can." He had spent but six dollars
+for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive one hundred
+and thirty-five from Judge J.&nbsp;M. Sterrett of the Erie <i>Gazette</i> for
+substitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to
+his father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania,
+and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from
+wolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, with
+tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;30">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a> voice, he resolved to seek
+his fortune in New York City. Slinging his bundle of clothes on a stick
+over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to Buffalo,
+rode on a canal boat to Albany, descended the Hudson in a barge, and
+reached New York, just as the sun was rising, August 18, 1831.</p>
+
+<p>For days Horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores of
+buildings and asking if they wanted "a hand;" but "no" was the
+invariable reply. His quaint appearance led many to think he was an
+escaped apprentice. One Sunday at his boarding-place he heard that
+printers were wanted at "West's Printing-office." He was at the door at
+five o'clock Monday morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven.
+The latter had no idea that the country greenhorn could set type for the
+Polyglot Testament on which help was needed, but said: "Fix up a case
+for him and we'll see if he <em>can</em> do anything." When the proprietor came
+in, he objected to the newcomer and told the foreman to let him go when
+his first day's work was done. That night Horace showed a proof of the
+largest and most correct day's work that had then been done. In ten
+years Horace was a partner in a small printing-office. He founded the
+<i>New Yorker</i>, the best weekly paper in the United States, but it was not
+profitable. When Harrison was nominated<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;31">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a> for President in 1840, Greeley
+started <i>The Log Cabin</i>, which reached the then fabulous circulation of
+ninety thousand. But on this paper at a penny a copy, he made no money.
+His next venture was the New York <i>Tribune</i>, price one cent. To start it
+he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five thousand copies of the
+first number. It was difficult to give them all away. He began with six
+hundred subscribers, and increased the list to eleven thousand in six
+weeks. The demand for the <i>Tribune</i> grew faster than new machinery could
+be obtained to print it. It was a paper whose editor always tried to be
+<em>right</em>.</p>
+
+<p>At the World's Fair in New York in 1853 President Pierce might have been
+seen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. He was attracted
+by the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed that
+he would become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed like
+small business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but he did it
+well and with enthusiasm. In fact he was bound to do it as well as it
+could be done. Young Gould supported himself by odd jobs at surveying,
+paying his way by erecting sundials for farmers at a dollar apiece,
+frequently taking his pay in board. Thus he laid the foundation for the
+business career in which he became so rich.</p>
+
+<p>Fred. Douglass started in life with less<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;32">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a> than nothing, for he did not
+own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his
+master's debts. To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he
+had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he
+would become President of the United States. He saw his mother but two
+or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve miles
+to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn.
+He had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of the
+plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. But somehow,
+unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of
+paper and patent medicine almanacs, and no limits could then be placed
+to his career. He put to shame thousands of white boys. He fled from
+slavery at twenty-one, went North and worked as a stevedore in New York
+and New Bedford. At Nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak in an
+anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he was
+made agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Massachusetts. While traveling
+from place to place to lecture, he would study with all his might. He
+was sent to Europe to lecture, and won the friendship of several
+Englishmen, who gave him $750, with which he purchased his freedom. He
+edited a paper in Rochester, N.&nbsp;Y., and afterward con<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;33">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>ducted the <i>New
+Era</i> in Washington. For several years he was Marshal of the District of
+Columbia. He became the first colored man in the United States, the peer
+of any man in the country, and died honored by all in 1895.</p>
+
+<p>"What has been done can be done again," said the boy with no chance who
+became Lord Beaconsfield, England's great prime minister. "I am not a
+slave, I am not a captive, and by energy I can overcome greater
+obstacles." Jewish blood flowed in his veins, and everything seemed
+against him, but he remembered the example of Joseph, who became prime
+minister of Egypt four thousand years before, and that of Daniel, who
+was prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuries
+before the birth of Christ. He pushed his way up through the lower
+classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes,
+until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of political
+and social power. Rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down in the House
+of Commons, he simply said, "The time will come when you shall hear me."
+The time did come, and the boy with no chance but a determined will,
+swayed the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.</p>
+
+<p>"I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a
+day," said William Cobbett. "The edge of my<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;34">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a> berth, or that of the
+guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit
+of board lying on my lap was my writing table, and the task did not
+demand anything like a year of my life. I had no money to purchase
+candles or oil; in winter it was rarely that I could get any evening
+light but that of the fire, and only my turn, even of that. To buy a pen
+or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of my food,
+though in a state of half starvation. I had no moment of time that I
+could call my own, and I had to read and write amidst the talking,
+laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of
+the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their
+freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the <em>farthing</em> I had to
+give, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a
+great sum to me. I was as tall as I am now, and I had great health and
+great exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was
+<em>twopence a week</em> for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon
+one occasion I had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, on a
+Friday, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which I had destined
+for the purchase of a red herring in the morning, but when I pulled off
+my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life,
+I found that I had lost my half-penny. I<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;35">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a> buried my head under the
+miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child.</p>
+
+<p>"If I, under such circumstances, could encounter and overcome this
+task," he added, "is there, can there be in the world, a youth to find
+any excuse for its non-performance?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have talked with great men," Lincoln told his fellow-clerk and
+friend, Greene, according to <i>McClure's Magazine</i>, "and I do not see how
+they differ from others."</p>
+
+<p>He made up his mind to put himself before the public, and talked of his
+plans to his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walked
+seven or eight miles to debating clubs. "Practicing polemics," was what
+he called the exercise.</p>
+
+<p>He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. Grammar
+was what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, and asked
+his advice.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are going before the public," Mr. Graham told him, "you ought to
+do it."</p>
+
+<p>But where could he get a grammar? There was but one in the neighborhood,
+Mr. Graham said, and that was six miles away.</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for more information the young man rose from the
+breakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, borrowed this rare
+copy of Kirkham's Grammar, and before night was deep in its mysteries.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;36">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>
+From that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his leisure to
+mastering the contents of the book. Frequently he asked his friend
+Greene to "hold the book" while he recited, and when puzzled by a point
+he would consult Mr. Graham.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln's eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood became
+interested. The Greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept him in
+mind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper let him
+come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright to
+read by at night. It was not long before the grammar was mastered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, Greene, "if that's what they
+call science, I think I'll go at another."</p>
+
+<p>He had made another discovery&mdash;that he could conquer subjects.</p>
+
+<p>The poor and friendless lad, George Peabody, weary, footsore and hungry,
+called at a tavern in Concord, N.&nbsp;H., and asked to be allowed to saw
+wood for lodging and breakfast. Half a century later he called there
+again, but then George Peabody was one of the greatest millionaire
+bankers of the world. Bishop Fowler says: "It is one of the greatest
+encouragements of our age, that ordinary men with extraordinary industry
+reach the highest stations."</p>
+
+<p>Greeley's father, because the boy tried to yoke the off ox on the near
+side, said: "Ah!<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;37">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a> that boy will never get along in the world. He'll
+never know enough to come in when it rains."</p>
+
+<p>He was too poor to wear stockings. But Horace persevered, and became one
+of the greatest editors of his century.</p>
+
+<p>Handel's father hated music, and would not allow a musical instrument in
+the house; but the boy with an aim secured a little spinet, hid it in
+the attic, where he practiced every minute he could steal without
+detection, until he surprised the great players and composers of Europe
+by his wonderful knowledge of music. He was very practical in his work,
+and studied the taste and sensitiveness of audiences until he knew
+exactly what they wanted; then he would compose something to supply the
+demand. He analyzed the effect of sounds and combinations of sounds upon
+the senses, and wrote directly to human needs. His greatest work, "The
+Messiah," was composed in Dublin for the benefit of poor debtors who
+were imprisoned there. The influence of this masterpiece was tremendous.
+It was said it out-preached the preacher, out-prayed prayers, reformed
+the wayward, softened stony hearts, as it told the wonderful story of
+redemption, in sound.</p>
+
+<p>A. T. Stewart began life as a teacher in New York at $300 a year. He
+soon resigned and began that career as a merchant in which he achieved a
+success almost with<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;38">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>out precedent. Honesty, one price, cash on delivery,
+and business on business principles were his invariable rules. Absolute
+regularity and system reigned in every department. In fifty years he
+made a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars. He was nominated
+as Secretary of the Treasury in 1869, but it was found that the law
+forbids a merchant to occupy that position. He offered to resign, or to
+give the entire profits of his business to the poor of New York as long
+as he should remain in office. President Grant declined to accept such
+an offer.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by
+astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of
+astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting
+precious time over horoscopes. "I supplicate you," he writes to
+Moestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at T&uuml;bingen, do what you can
+to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and
+other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on
+beans." He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served
+anyone who would pay him.</p>
+
+<p>Who could have predicted that the modest, gentle boy, Raphael, without
+either riches or noted family, would have worked his way to such renown,
+or that one of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inches
+square (the Mother of Jesus), would be sold to the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;39">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a> Empress of Russia,
+for $66,000? His Ansedei Madonna, was bought by the National Gallery for
+$350,000. Think of Michael Angelo working for six florins a month, and
+eighteen years on St. Peter's for nothing!</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson was so afflicted with king's-evil that he lost the use of
+one eye. The youth could not even engage in the pastimes of his mates,
+as he could not see the gutter without bending his head down near the
+street. He read and studied terribly. Finally a friend offered to send
+him to Oxford, but he failed to keep his promise, and the boy had to
+leave. He returned home, and soon afterward his father died insolvent.
+He conquered adverse fortune and bodily infirmities with the fortitude
+of a true hero.</p>
+
+<p>Ichabod Washburn, a poor boy born near Plymouth Rock, was apprenticed to
+a blacksmith in Worcester, Mass., and was so bashful that he scarcely
+dared to eat in the presence of others; but he determined that he would
+make the best wire in the world, and would contrive ways and means to
+manufacture it in enormous quantities. At that time there was no good
+wire made in the United States. One house in England had the monopoly of
+making steel wire for pianos for more than a century. Young Washburn,
+however, had grit, and was bound to succeed. His wire became the
+standard everywhere. At one time he made 250,000 yards of iron wire
+daily, consuming twelve<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;40">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a> tons of metal, and requiring the services of
+seven hundred men. He amassed an immense fortune, of which he gave away
+a large part during his life, and bequeathed the balance to charitable
+institutions.</p>
+
+<p>John Jacob Astor left home at seventeen to acquire a fortune. His
+capital consisted of two dollars, and three resolutions,&mdash;to be honest,
+to be industrious and not to gamble. Two years later he reached New
+York, and began work in a fur store at two dollars a week and his board.
+Soon learning the details of the business, he began operations on his
+own account. By giving personal attention to every purchase and sale,
+roaming the woods to trade with the Indians, or crossing the Atlantic to
+sell his furs at a great profit in England, he soon became the leading
+fur dealer in the United States. His idea of what constitutes a fortune
+expanded faster than his acquisitions. At fifty he owned millions; at
+sixty his millions owned him. He invested in land, becoming in time the
+richest owner of real estate in America. Generous to his family, he
+seldom gave much for charity. He once subscribed fifty dollars for some
+benevolent purpose, when one of the committee of solicitation said, "We
+did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars." "Ah!"
+chuckled the rich furrier, "William has a rich father. Mine was poor."</p>
+
+<p>Elihu Burritt wrote in a diary kept at<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;41">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a> Worcester, whither he went to
+enjoy its library privileges, such entries as these: "Monday, June 18,
+headache, 40 pages Cuvier's 'Theory of the Earth,' 64 pages of French,
+11 hours' forging. Tuesday, June 19, 60 lines Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10
+lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of stars, 10 hours' forging.
+Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines Syriac, 11 hours' forging."
+He mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. He became
+eminent as the "Learned Blacksmith," and for his noble work in the
+service of humanity. Edward Everett said of the manner in which this boy
+with no chance acquired great learning: "It is enough to make one who
+has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame."</p>
+
+<p>"I was born in poverty," said Vice-President Henry Wilson. "Want sat by
+my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has none
+to give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served an
+apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each year,
+and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and six
+sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum of
+one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was born
+till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel weary
+miles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * In<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;42">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a> the
+first month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the woods,
+drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before daylight
+and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of six
+dollars for the month's work! Each of these dollars looked as large to
+me as the moon looks to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Many a farmer's son," says Thurlow Weed, "has found the best
+opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while
+tending 'sap-bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At night
+you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having
+been gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we would
+always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazing
+bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned
+to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passed
+many a delightful night in reading. I remember in this way to have read
+a history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained from it a
+better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the
+actors in that great national tragedy, than I have received from all
+subsequent reading. I remember also how happy I was in being able to
+borrow the books of a Mr. Keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow,
+shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;43">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>"That fellow will beat us all some day," said a merchant, speaking of
+John Wanamaker and his close attention to his work. What a prediction to
+make of a young man who started business with a little clothing in a
+hand cart in the streets of Philadelphia. But this youth had <em>the
+indomitable spirit of a conqueror in him</em>, and you could not keep him
+down. General Grant said to George W. Childs, "Mr. Wanamaker could
+command an army." His great energy, method, industry, economy, and high
+moral principle, attracted President Harrison, who appointed him
+Postmaster-General.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Aristide Boucicault began his business life as an employ&eacute; in a
+dry goods house in a small provincial town in France. After a few years
+he went to Paris, where he prospered so rapidly that in 1853 he became a
+partner and later the sole proprietor of the Bon March&eacute;, then only a
+small shop, which became under his direction the most unique
+establishment in the world. His idea was to establish a combined
+philanthropic and commercial house on a large scale. Every one who
+worked for him was advanced progressively, according to his length of
+employment and the value of the services he rendered. He furnished free
+tuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employ&eacute;s; a
+provident fund affording a small capital for males and a marriage
+portion for females at the expiration<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;44">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a> of ten or fifteen years of
+service; a free reading room for the public; and a free art gallery for
+artists to exhibit their paintings or sculptures. After his sudden death
+in 1877, his only son carried forward his father's projects until he,
+too, died in 1879, when his widow, Marguerite Guerin, continued and
+extended his business and beneficent plans until her death in 1887. So
+well did this family lay the foundations of a building covering 108,000
+square feet, with many accessory buildings of smaller size, and of a
+business employing 3600 persons with sales amounting to nearly
+$20,000,000 annually, that every department is still conducted with all
+its former success in accordance with the instructions of the founders.
+They are here no longer in their bodily presence, but their spirit,
+their ideas, still pervade the vast establishment. Everything is still
+sold at a small profit and at a price plainly marked, and any article
+which may have ceased to please the purchaser can, without the slightest
+difficulty, be exchanged or its value refunded.</p>
+
+<p>When James Gordon Bennett was forty years old, he collected all his
+property, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two
+barrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher,
+newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer's devil, he started the
+New York <i>Herald</i>. In all his literary work up to this<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;45">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a> time he had
+tried to imitate Franklin's style; and, as is the fate of all imitators,
+he utterly failed.</p>
+
+<p>He lost twenty years of his life trying to be somebody else. He first
+showed the material he was made of in the "Salutatory," of the <i>Herald</i>,
+viz., "Our only guide shall be good, sound and practical common-sense
+applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life.
+We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and
+care nothing for any election or any candidate from President down to
+constable. We shall endeavor to record facts upon every public and
+proper subject stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when
+suitable, just, independent, fearless and good-tempered."</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Hunter was a carpenter, Robert Burns a ploughman, Keats a
+druggist, Thomas Carlyle a mason, Hugh Miller a stone mason. Rubens, the
+artist, was a page, Swedenborg, a mining engineer. Dante and Descartes
+were soldiers. Ben Johnson was a brick layer and worked at building
+Lincoln Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket.
+Jeremy Taylor was a barber. Andrew Johnson was a tailor. Cardinal Wolsey
+was a butcher's son. So were Defoe and Kirke White. Michael Faraday was
+the son of a blacksmith. He even excelled his teacher, Sir Humphry Davy,
+who was an apprentice to an apothecary.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;46">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>Virgil was the son of a porter, Homer of a farmer, Pope of a merchant,
+Horace of a shopkeeper, Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a money
+scrivener, Shakespeare of a wool stapler, and Oliver Cromwell of a
+brewer.</p>
+
+<p>John Wanamaker's first salary was $1.25 per week. A.&nbsp;T. Stewart began
+his business life as a school teacher. James Keene drove a milk wagon in
+a California town. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York <i>World</i>,
+once acted as stoker on a Mississippi steamboat. When a young man, Cyrus
+Field was a clerk in a New England store. George W. Childs was an errand
+boy for a bookseller at $4 a month. Andrew Carnegie began work in a
+Pittsburg telegraph office at $3 a week. C.&nbsp;P. Huntington sold butter
+and eggs for what he could get a pound or dozen. Whitelaw Reid was once
+a correspondent of a newspaper in Cincinnati at $5 per week. Adam
+Forepaugh was once a butcher in Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah Bernhardt was a dressmaker's apprentice. Adelaide Neilson began
+life as a child's nurse. Miss Braddon, the novelist, was a utility
+actress in the provinces. Charlotte Cushman was the daughter of poor
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. W.&nbsp;O. Stoddard, in his "Men of Business," tells a characteristic
+story of the late Leland Stanford. When eighteen years of age his father
+purchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;47">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a> he
+wished. He told Leland that he could have all he could make from the
+timber if he would leave the land clear of trees. A new market had just
+then been created for cord wood, and Leland took some money that he had
+saved, hired other choppers to help him, and sold over two thousand
+cords of wood to the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad at a net profit of
+$2600. He used this sum to start him in his law studies, and thus, as
+Mr. Stoddard says, chopped his way to the bar.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that the career of Benjamin Franklin is full of inspiration
+for any young man. When he left school for good he was only twelve years
+of age. At first he did little but read. He soon found, however, that
+reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to
+act upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable to
+understand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle,
+and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But
+the printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely
+inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the <em>third time</em>
+the "<i>Cocker's Arithmetic</i>," <em>which had baffled him at school</em>, and
+<em>ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure</em>. He then mastered a
+work upon navigation, which included the rudiments of geometry, and thus
+tasted "the inexhaustible charm of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;48">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a> mathematics." He pursued a similar
+course, we are told, in acquiring the art of composition, in which, at
+length, he excelled most of the men of his time. When he was but a boy
+of sixteen, he wrote so well that the pieces which he slyly sent to his
+brother's paper were thought to have been written by some of the most
+learned men in the colony.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Clay, the "mill-boy of the slashes," was one of seven children of
+a widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, where
+he was drilled only in the "three R's." But he used every spare moment
+to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among
+self-made men.</p>
+
+<p>The most successful man is he who has triumphed over obstacles,
+disadvantages and discouragements.</p>
+
+<p>It is Goodyear in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure until
+the pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is Edison biding his time in
+baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power
+glows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler's bench
+nourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of love
+to benighted India;&mdash;these are the cases and examples of true success.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;49">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>OUT OF PLACE.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be
+born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment
+and happiness.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p>
+
+<p>The art of putting the right man in the right place is perhaps
+the first in the science of government, but the art of finding
+a satisfactory position for the discontented is the most
+difficult.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Talleyrand.</span></p>
+
+<p>It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the
+misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order
+to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who
+now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share
+they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to
+them by such a division.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Addison.</span></p>
+
+<p>I was born to other things.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Tennyson.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>How many a rustic Milton has passed by,<br /></span>
+<span>Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,<br /></span>
+<span>In unremitting drudgery and care!<br /></span>
+<span>How many a vulgar Cato has compelled<br /></span>
+<span>His energies, no longer tameless then,<br /></span>
+<span>To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Shelley.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"But I'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was
+about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a
+salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful,"<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;50">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a> said the
+youth. "How? Tell me how." "I don't know, sir, I don't know." "Nor do
+I," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "Only
+don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. Try me at something besides
+selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell." "I know that, too," said
+the principal; "that is what is wrong." "But I can make myself useful
+somehow," persisted the young man; "I know I can." He was placed in the
+counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and
+in a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, but
+an eminent accountant.</p>
+
+<p>"Out of an art," says Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake
+him for an imbecile&mdash;at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and
+how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of
+which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden
+key, admits you to follow, an humble reverent visitor."</p>
+
+<p>A man out of place is like a fish out of water. Its fins mean nothing,
+they are only a hindrance. The fish can do nothing but flounder out of
+its element. But as soon as the fins feel the water, they mean
+something. Fifty-two per cent of our college graduates studied law, not
+because, in many cases, they have the slightest natural aptitude for it,
+but because it is put down as the proper road to promotion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;51">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>A man never grows in personal power and moral stamina when out of his
+place. If he grows at all, it is a narrow, one-sided, stunted growth,
+not a manly growth. Nature abhors the slightest perversion of natural
+aptitude or deviation from the sealed orders which accompany every soul
+into this world.</p>
+
+<p>A man out of place is not half a man. He feels unmanned, unsexed. He
+cannot respect himself, hence he cannot be respected.</p>
+
+<p>You can enter all kinds of horses for a race, but only those which have
+natural adaptation for speed will make records; the others will only
+make themselves ridiculous by their lumbering, unnatural exertions to
+win. How many truck and family-horse lawyers make themselves ridiculous
+by trying to speed on the law track, where courts and juries only laugh
+at them. The effort to redeem themselves from scorn may enable them by
+unnatural exertions to become fairly passable, but the same efforts
+along the line of their strength or adaptation would make them kings in
+their line.</p>
+
+<p>"Jonathan," said Mr. Chace, when his son told of having nearly fitted
+himself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on Monday
+morning." It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop to
+work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a United
+States Senator from Rhode Island.</p>
+
+<p>Galileo was sent to the university at Pisa<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;52">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a> at seventeen, with the
+strict injunction not to neglect medical subjects for the alluring study
+of philosophy or literature. But when he was eighteen he discovered the
+great principle of the pendulum by a lamp left swinging in the
+cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>John Adams' father was a shoemaker; and, trying to teach his son the
+art, gave him some "uppers" to cut out by a pattern which had a
+three-cornered hole in it to hang it up by. The future statesman
+followed the pattern, hole and all.</p>
+
+<p>There is a tradition that Tennyson's first poems were published at the
+instigation of his father's coachman. His grandfather gave the lad ten
+shillings for writing an elegy on his grandmother. As he handed it to
+him, he said; "There, that's the first money you ever earned by your
+poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last."</p>
+
+<p>Murillo's mother had marked her boy for a priest, but nature had already
+laid her hand upon him and marked him for her own. His mother was
+shocked on returning from church one day to find that the child had
+taken down the sacred family picture, "Jesus and the Lamb," and had
+painted his own hat on the Saviour's head, and had changed the lamb into
+a dog.</p>
+
+<p>The poor boy's home was broken up, and he started out on foot and alone
+to seek his fortune. All he had was courage and determination to make
+something of himself.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;53">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a> He not only became a famous artist, but a man of
+great character.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned," says
+Thackeray, "have a great tenderness and pity for the folks who are not
+endowed with the prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a
+regard for dunces,&mdash;those of my own school days were among the
+pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest
+in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by
+the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble
+prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before
+his beard grew."</p>
+
+<p>"In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon the town of
+Sidmouth, the tide rose to a terrible height. In the midst of this
+sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach,
+was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her
+mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the
+Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was
+up: but I need not tell you the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean
+beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she
+should not have meddled with a tempest."</p>
+
+<p>How many Dame Partingtons there are of both sexes, and in every walk of
+life!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;54">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>The young swan is restless and uneasy until she finds the element she
+has never before seen. Then,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">"With arch&eacute;d neck<br /></span>
+<span>Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows<br /></span>
+<span>Her state with oary feet."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What a wretched failure was that of Haydon the painter. He thought he
+failed through the world's ingratitude or injustice, but his failure was
+due wholly to his being out of place. His bitter disappointments at his
+half successes were really pitiable because to him they were more than
+failures. He had not the slightest sense of color, yet went through life
+under the delusion that he was an artist.</p>
+
+<p>"If it is God's will to take any of my children by death, I hope it may
+be Isaac," said the father of Dr. Isaac Barrow. "Why do you tell that
+blockhead the same thing twenty times over?" asked John Wesley's father.
+"Because," replied his mother, "if I had told him but nineteen times,
+all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand and
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>A man out of place may manage to get a living, but he has lost the
+buoyancy, energy and enthusiasm which are as natural to a man in his
+place as his breath. He is industrious, but he works mechanically and
+without heart. It is to support himself and family, <em>not because he
+cannot help it</em>. Dinner<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;55">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a> time does not come two hours before he realizes
+it; a man out of place is constantly looking at his watch and thinking
+of his salary.</p>
+
+<p>If a man is in his place he is happy, joyous, cheerful, energetic,
+fertile in resources. The days are all too short for him. All his
+faculties give their consent to his work; say "yes" to his occupation.
+He is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are
+at play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of his
+faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of
+forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling of
+exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded
+cattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman's study,
+composing sermons to put the congregation to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>To be out of place is demoralizing to all the powers of manhood. We
+can't cheat nature out of her aim; if she has set all the currents of
+your life toward medicine or law, you will only be a botch at anything
+else. Will-power and application cannot make a farmer of a born painter
+any more than a lumbering draught horse can be changed into a race
+horse. When the powers are not used along the line of their strength
+they become demoralized, weakened, deteriorated. Self-respect,
+enthusiasm<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;56">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a> and courage ooze out; we become half-hearted and success is
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Scott was called the great blockhead while in Edinburgh College. Grant's
+mother called the future General and President, "Useless Grant," because
+he was so unhandy and dull.</p>
+
+<p>Erskine had at length found his place as a lawyer; he carried everything
+before him at the bar. Had he remained in the navy he would probably
+never have been heard from. When elected to Parliament, his lofty spirit
+was chilled by the cold sarcasm and contemptuous indifference of Pitt,
+whom he was expected by his friends to annihilate. But he was again out
+of his place; he was shorn of his magic power and his eloquent tongue
+faltered from a consciousness of being out of his place.</p>
+
+<p>Gould failed as a storekeeper, tanner and surveyor and civil engineer,
+before he got into a railroad office where he "struck his gait."</p>
+
+<p>When extracts from James Russell Lowell's poem at Harvard were shown his
+father at Rome, instead of being pleased the latter said, "James
+promised me when I left home, that he would give up poetry and stick to
+books. I had hoped that he had become less flighty." The world is full
+of people at war with their positions.</p>
+
+<p>Man only grows when he is developing along the lines of his own
+individuality,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;57">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a> and not when he is trying to be somebody else. All
+attempts to imitate another man, when there is no one like you in all
+creation, as the pattern was broken when you were born, is not only to
+ruin your own pattern, but to make only an echo of the one imitated.
+There is no strength off the lines of our own individuality.</p>
+
+<p>Anywhere else we are dwarfs, weaklings, echoes, and the echo even of a
+great man is a sorry contrast to even the smallest human being who is
+himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;58">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>WHAT SHALL I DO?</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>No man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents,
+nor a good one who mistook them.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Swift.</span></p>
+
+<p>Blessed is he who has found his work,&mdash;let him ask no other
+blessing.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Carlyle.</span></p>
+
+<p>Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line
+of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will
+succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times
+worse than nothing.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Sydney Smith.</span></p>
+
+<p>He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom,
+and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Beecher.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>I am glad to think<br /></span>
+<span>I am not bound to make the world go round;<br /></span>
+<span>But only to discover and to do,<br /></span>
+<span>With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Jean Ingelow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"Do that which is assigned you," says Emerson, "and you cannot hope too
+much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance
+brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of
+the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all
+these."</p>
+
+<p>"I felt that I was in the world to do something, and thought I must,"
+said Whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. It is the man
+who must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;59">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a> other of
+the overstocked professions, who will succeed. His certain call&mdash;that
+is, his love for it, and his fidelity to it&mdash;are the imperious factors
+of his career. If a man enters a profession simply because his
+grandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants him to, with no
+love or adaptability for it, it were far better for him to be a day
+laborer. In the humbler work, his intelligence may make him a leader; in
+the other career he might do as much harm as a boulder rolled from its
+place upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express.</p>
+
+<p>Lowell said: "It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not,
+that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in
+the rough."</p>
+
+<p>"The age has no aversion to preaching as such," said Phillips Brooks,
+"it may not listen to your preaching." But though it may not listen to
+your preaching, it will wear your boots, or buy your flour, or see stars
+through your telescope. It has a use for every person, and it is his
+business to find out what that use is.</p>
+
+<p>The following advertisement appeared several times in a paper without
+bringing a letter:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Wanted.</span>&mdash;Situation by a Practical Printer, who is competent to
+take charge of any department in a printing and publishing
+house. Would accept a professorship in any of the academies.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;60">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>
+Has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship,
+geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. Has had some
+experience as a lay preacher. Would have no objection to form a
+small class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in
+the higher branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he would be
+invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass or
+tenor singer in a choir."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>At length there appeared this addition to the notice:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"P.S. Will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than
+the usual rates."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>Don't wait for a higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge the
+position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. Fill it
+as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more
+thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow-workmen. Study
+your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your
+employer points. The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in
+simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in
+surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a
+larger salary.</p>
+
+<p>"He that hath a trade," says Franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hath
+a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs is
+higher than a gentleman on his knees."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;61">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a><em>Follow your bent.</em> You cannot long fight successfully against your
+aspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the
+longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks;
+but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine
+it and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or
+in some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to
+practice in perfection." Nature hates all botched and half-finished
+work, and will pronounce her curse upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Your talent is your <em>call</em>. Your legitimate destiny speaks in your
+character.</p>
+
+<p>If you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of every
+faculty of your being.</p>
+
+<p>If possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount of
+your experience and tastes. You will then not only have a congenial
+vocation, but will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge,
+which is your true capital.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his own
+peculiar part in life. A very few&mdash;the geniuses, we call them&mdash;have this
+marked in an unusual degree, and very early in life.</p>
+
+<p>A man's business does more to make him than anything else. It hardens
+his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his
+mind, corrects his judgment,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;62">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a> wakes up his inventive genius, puts his
+wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition,
+makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's
+work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. No
+man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. A man without
+employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a
+man. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. A
+good cranium full of brains is not a man. The bone and muscle and brain
+must know how to do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a
+man's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before they
+constitute a man.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. Most people look
+upon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a living.
+What a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the great
+school of life, the great man-developer, the character-builder; that
+which should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into symmetry,
+harmony and beauty, all the God-given faculties within us! How we shrink
+from the task and evade the lessons which were intended for the
+unfolding of life's great possibilities into usefulness and power, as
+the sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the flower.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, you cheapen yourselves by lack<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;63">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a> of purpose in life," says Rena
+L. Miner. "You show commendable zeal in pursuing your studies; your
+alertness in comprehending and ability in surmounting difficult problems
+have become proverbial; nine times out of ten you outrank your brothers
+thus far; but when the end is attained, the goal reached, whether it be
+the graduating certificate from a graded school, or a college diploma,
+for nine out of every ten it might as well be added thereto, 'dead to
+further activity,' or, 'sleeping until marriage shall resurrect her.'</p>
+
+<p>"Crocheting, placquing, dressing, visiting, music, and flirtations, make
+up the sum total for the expense and labor expended for your existence.
+If forced to earn your support, you are content to stand behind a
+counter, or teach school term after term in the same grade, while the
+young men who graduated with you walk up the grades, as up a ladder, to
+professorship and good salary, from which they swing off into law,
+physics, or perhaps the legislative firmament, leaving difficulties and
+obstacles like nebul&aelig; in their wake.&mdash;You girls, satisfied with
+mediocrity, have an eye mainly for the 'main chance'&mdash;marriage. If you
+marry wealthy,&mdash;which is marrying well according to the modern popular
+idea,&mdash;you dress more elegantly, cultivate more fashionable society,
+leave your thinking for your husband and your minister to do for you,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;64">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>
+and become in the economy of life but a sentient nonentity. If you are
+true to the grand passion, and accept with it poverty, you bake, brew,
+scrub, spank the children, and talk with your neighbor over the back
+fence for recreation, spending the years literally like the horse in a
+treadmill, all for the lack of a purpose,&mdash;a purpose sufficiently potent
+to convert the latent talent into a gem of living beauty, a creative
+force which makes all adjuncts secondary, like planets to their central
+sun. Choose some one course or calling, and master it in all its
+details, sleep by it, swear by it, work for it, and, if marriage crowns
+you, it can but add new glory to your labor."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Hall says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's
+right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and
+smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;
+girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and
+the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to
+dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense,&mdash;girls who have
+a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are
+independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a
+trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of
+defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theatre, or lacerate
+their feet with high heels and endanger their health with<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;65">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a> corsets;
+girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers
+at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want
+good girls,&mdash;girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to
+the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sin
+and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirl
+of ten has all too often. And we want careful girls and prudent girls,
+who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in
+comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may
+have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between
+the essentials and non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to
+spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in
+the home rather than an expense and a useless burden. We want girls with
+hearts,&mdash;girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that
+flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own
+beautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls,
+and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and
+impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with
+little desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls
+scattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather
+does under the spell of summer showers."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;66">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>WILL YOU PAY THE PRICE?</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p>
+
+<p>All desire knowledge, but no one is willing to pay the price.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Juvenal.</span></p>
+
+<p>There is no royal path which leads to geometry.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Euclid.</span></p>
+
+<p>There is no road to success but through a clear, strong
+purpose. A purpose underlies character, culture, position,
+attainment of whatever sort.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;T. T. Munger.</span></p>
+
+<p>Remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is not
+action; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whose
+law of improvement is not energy.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;E. B. Hall.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"We have but what we make, and every good<br /></span>
+<span>Is locked by nature in a granite hand,<br /></span>
+<span>Sheer labor must unclench."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"Oh, if I could thus put a dream on canvas!" exclaimed an enthusiastic
+young artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. "Dream on canvas!"
+growled the master, "it is the ten thousand touches with the brush you
+must learn to put on canvas that make your dream."</p>
+
+<p>"There is but one method of attaining excellence," said Sydney Smith,
+"and that is hard labor."</p>
+
+<p>"If only Milton's imagination could have<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;67">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a> conceived his visions," says
+Waters, "his consummate industry alone could have carved the immortal
+lines which enshrine them. If only Newton's mind could reach out to the
+secrets of nature, even his genius could only do it by the homeliest
+toil. The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night's dreams, but, like
+coral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed
+their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions of
+persevering labor. The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished
+like a night's phantasy, had not his industry given them permanence."</p>
+
+<p>Salvini contributes the following to the <i>Century</i> as to his habits of
+study before he had established himself as a past master of tragedy: "I
+imposed upon myself a new method of study. While I was busying myself
+with the part of Saul, I read and reread the Bible, so as to become
+impregnated with the appropriate sentiments, manners and local color.
+When I took up Othello, I pored over the history of the Venetian
+Republic and that of the Moorish invasion of Spain. I studied the
+passions of the Moors, their art of war, their religious beliefs, nor
+did I overlook the romance of Giraldi Cinthio, in order the better to
+master that sublime character. I did not concern myself about a
+superficial study of the words, or of some point of scenic effect, or of
+greater or less accentuation of certain<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;68">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a> phrases with a view to win
+passing applause; a vaster horizon opened out before me&mdash;an infinite sea
+on which my bark could navigate in security, without fear of falling in
+with reefs."</p>
+
+<p>His method was not new, but he considered it so, and gives his opinion
+in quotation-marks. He speaks of characters with which, his name is not
+always associated by writers on the stage, but is correct, I think, in
+the main.</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago a little boy entered Harrow school and was put in a class
+beyond his years, wherein all the other boys had the advantage of
+previous instruction. His master used to reprove his dullness, but all
+his efforts could not raise him from the lowest place in the class. The
+boy finally procured the elementary books which the other boys had
+studied. He devoted the hours of play and many of the hours of sleep to
+mastering the elementary principles of these books. This boy was soon at
+the head of his class and the pride of Harrow. The statue of that boy,
+Sir William Jones, stands to-day in St. Paul's Cathedral; for he lived
+to be the greatest Oriental scholar of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the secret of success in business?" asked a friend of Cornelius
+Vanderbilt. "Secret! there is no secret about it," replied the
+commodore; "all you have to do is to attend to your business and go<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;69">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>
+ahead." If you would adopt Vanderbilt's method, know your business,
+attend to it, and keep down expenses until your fortune is safe from
+business perils.</p>
+
+<p>"Work or starve," is nature's motto,&mdash;and it is written on the stars and
+the sod alike,&mdash;starve mentally, starve morally, starve physically. It
+is an inexorable law of nature that whatever is not used, dies. "Nothing
+for nothing," is her maxim. If we are idle and shiftless by choice, we
+shall be nerveless and powerless by necessity.</p>
+
+<p>The mottoes of great men often give us glimpses of the secret of their
+characters and success. "Work! work! work!" was the motto of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, David Wilkie, and scores of other men who have left their mark
+upon the world. Voltaire's motto was "Toujours au travail" (always at
+work). Scott's maxim was "Never be doing nothing." Michael Angelo was a
+wonderful worker. He even slept in his clothes ready to spring to his
+work as soon as he awoke. He kept a block of marble in his bedroom that
+he might get up in the night and work when he could not sleep. His
+favorite device was an old man in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it,
+bearing this inscription: "Ancora imparo" (still I'm learning). Even
+after he was blind he would ask to be wheeled into the Belvidere, to
+examine the statues with his hands. Cobden used to say, "I'm working
+like a<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;70">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a> horse without a moment to spare." It was said that Handel, the
+musician, did the work of a dozen men. Nothing ever daunted him. He
+feared neither ridicule nor defeat. Lord Palmerston worked like a slave,
+even in his old age. Being asked when he considered a man in his prime,
+he replied, "Seventy-nine," that being his own age. Humboldt was one of
+the world's great workers. In summer he arose at four in the morning for
+thirty years. He used to say work was as much of a necessity as eating
+or sleeping. Sir Walter Scott was a phenomenal worker. He wrote the
+"Waverley Novels" at the rate of twelve volumes a year. He averaged a
+volume every two months during his whole working life. What an example
+is this to the young men of to-day, of the possibilities of an earnest
+life! Edmund Burke was one of the most prodigious workers that ever
+lived.</p>
+
+<p>George Stephenson used to work at meal time, getting out loads of coal
+while the miners were at dinner in order that he might earn a few extra
+shillings to buy a spelling-book and an arithmetic. His associates
+thought he was very foolish, and asked him what good it would do to
+learn to read and cipher. He told them he was determined to improve his
+mind; so he studied whenever he could snatch a minute before the
+engine's fire, and in every possible situation until he had a good,
+practical, common-sense education.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;71">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>Garibaldi's father decided that Guiseppe should be a minister, because
+the boy was so sorry for a cricket which lost its leg. Samuel Morse's
+father concluded that his son would preach well because he could not
+keep his head above water in a dangerous attempt to catch bait in the
+Mystic River. President Dwight told young Morse he would never make a
+painter, and hinted that he never would amount to much any way if he did
+not study more. Although under the teaching of West and Allston in
+London, he became a tolerable portrait painter, he did not find his
+sphere until returning from England on a sailing vessel, he heard
+Professor Jackson explain an electrical experiment in Paris, when the
+thought of the telegraph flashed into his mind and he found no rest,
+until he flashed over the wire the first message, "What hath God
+wrought!" on the experimental line between Baltimore and Washington:
+this was May 24, 1844.</p>
+
+<p>William H. Vanderbilt was by far the wealthiest man in the world.
+Chauncey M. Depew estimated his fortune at two hundred millions. He left
+his eight children ten millions each, except Cornelius and William K.,
+who had sixty-five millions each. Commodore Vanderbilt, his father,
+amassed a fortune of eighty millions of dollars in his own lifetime, and
+that too at a time when it was more difficult to make money than it is
+now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;72">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>Mr. C.&nbsp;P. Huntington is a good example of a self-made man. His father
+was a Connecticut farmer. The farm was left to him, but he traded it off
+for a lot of clocks which he peddled in mining districts for gold dust
+and nuggets. He and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened a
+hardware store in California. They united with Leland Stanford in the
+construction of a railroad, and they all got rich rapidly. Mr.
+Huntington is one of the greatest railroad operators of the country. He
+always acted upon the principle that he would control the stock of any
+road in which he was interested. He is one of the most methodical men of
+all the millionaires of this country. He is very plain in his manner,
+strictly temperate, and very abstemious in his living. He said he never
+knew what it was to be tired.</p>
+
+<p>Russell Sage used to keep a grocery store in Troy, N.&nbsp;Y. He finally
+associated himself with Jay Gould, who used to be a constant borrower of
+money of him. Mr. Sage probably keeps more ready money on hand than any
+other millionaire. He can nearly always control ten millions or more at
+call. He has never speculated in stocks to any extent. Mr. Sage's word
+is as good as any bond. He has no taste for ordinary diversions, except
+driving.</p>
+
+<p>Philip D. Armour, who has the appearance of a prosperous farmer, was
+born on a farm<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;73">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a> near Watertown, N.&nbsp;J. He became fired with a desire to
+see the "Boundless West." His mind seemed to run to hogs, and with a
+financial instinct he made up his mind that there was a fortune in
+transporting the hogs from where they were so plenty to where there were
+so few of them and so many to eat them. He could now purchase every hog
+in the world and then have money left to buy a railroad or two.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hetty Green is probably the richest woman in the world. Her fortune
+has grown from the little industry of her father in New Bedford, Mass.
+She has raised the nine millions left her by her father and nine
+millions left her by her aunt to thirty millions. She is a woman of
+great ability and courage. She once took with her five millions of
+dollars of securities in a satchel on a street car to deposit with her
+banker on Wall street.</p>
+
+<p>The probabilities are that billionaires will be as plentiful in the
+twentieth century as millionaires are to-day, through hard work,
+self-denial, rigid economy, method, accuracy, and strict temperance, for
+not one of the self-made millionaires are intemperate. John D.
+Rockefeller never tastes intoxicating liquor. He seems as unvarying in
+his method and system as the laws of the universe. Jay Gould did not use
+wine or intoxicating liquor of any kind. Mr. Huntington does not even
+drink coffee, while<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;74">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a> William Waldorf Astor merely takes a sip of wine
+for courtesy's sake. Not one of the leading millionaires uses tobacco,
+and not one of them is profane. Very rich men are almost always honest
+in their dealings, so far as their word is concerned. William Waldorf
+Astor, until recently, has been considered the richest man in the world,
+but John D. Rockefeller surpasses him now, it is said. The whole wealth
+of Cr&oelig;sus was little more than the income of this modern Cr&oelig;sus
+for one year. Mr. Rockefeller controls about eighty or ninety millions
+of capital stock in the Standard Oil Trust. The Standard Oil Company is
+one of the best managed corporations in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Two centuries and a quarter ago, a little, tempest-tossed,
+weather-beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wild Atlantic,
+landed upon the bleakest shore of New England. From her deck disembarked
+a hundred and one careworn exiles.</p>
+
+<p>To the casual observer no event could seem more insignificant. The
+contemptuous eye of the world scarcely deigned to notice it. Yet the
+famous vessel that bore C&aelig;sar and his fortunes, carried but an ignoble
+freight compared with that of the Mayflower. Though landed by a
+treacherous pilot upon a barren and inhospitable coast, they sought
+neither richer fields nor a more congenial climate, but liberty and
+opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>A lady once asked Turner the secret of his great success.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;75">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>"I have no secret, madam, but hard work."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because
+they fail to learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from
+ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing."</p>
+
+<p>See Balzac, in his lonely garret, toiling, toiling, waiting, waiting,
+amid poverty and hunger, but neither hunger, debt, poverty nor
+discouragement could induce him to swerve a hair's breadth from his
+purpose. He could wait, even while a world scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mankind is more indebted to industry than to ingenuity," says Addison;
+"the gods set up their favors at a price and industry is the purchaser."</p>
+
+<p>Rome was a mighty nation while industry led her people, but when her
+great conquests of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above work,
+that moment her glory began to fade, and vice and corruption, induced by
+idleness, doomed the proud city to an ignominious history. Even Cicero,
+Rome's great orator, said, "All artisans are engaged in a disgraceful
+occupation;" and Aristotle said, "The best regulated states will not
+permit a mechanic to be a citizen, for it is impossible for one who
+lives the life of a mechanic, or hired servant, to practice a life of
+virtue. Some were born to be slaves." But, fortunately there came a
+mightier than Rome, Cicero or Aristotle, whose magnificent life and
+example forever lifted the false ban from<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;76">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a> labor and redeemed it from
+disgrace. He gave dignity to the most menial service, and significance
+to labor.</p>
+
+<p>Christ did not say, "Come unto me all ye pleasure hunters, ye indolent
+and ye lazy;" but "Come all ye that <em>labor</em> and are <em>heavy laden</em>."</p>
+
+<p>Columbus was a persistent and practical, as well as an intellectual
+hero. He went from one state to another, urging kings and emperors to
+undertake the first visiting of a world which his instructed spirit
+already discerned in the far-off seas. He first tried his own countrymen
+at Genoa, but found none ready to help him. He then went to Portugal,
+and submitted his project to John II., who laid it before his council.
+It was scouted as extravagant and chimerical. Nevertheless, the king
+endeavored to steal Columbus's idea. A fleet was sent forth in the
+direction indicated by the navigator, but, being frustrated by storms
+and winds, it returned to Lisbon after four days' voyaging.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus returned to Genoa, and again renewed his propositions to the
+Republic, but without success. Nothing discouraged him. The finding of
+the New World was the irrevocable object of his life. He went to Spain,
+and landed at the town of Palos, in Andalusia. He went by chance to a
+convent of Franciscans, knocked at the door and asked for a little bread
+and water. The prior gratefully received the stranger, enter<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;77">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>tained him,
+and learned from him the story of his life. He encouraged him in his
+hopes, and furnished him with an admission to the Court of Spain, then
+at Cordova. King Ferdinand received him graciously, but before coming to
+a decision he desired to lay the project before a council of his wisest
+men at Salamanca. Columbus had to reply, not only to the scientific
+arguments laid before him, but to citations from the Bible. The Spanish
+clergy declared that the theory of the antipodes was hostile to the
+faith. The earth, they said, was an immense flat disk; and if there was
+a new earth beyond the ocean, then all men could not be descended from
+Adam. <em>Columbus was considered a fool.</em></p>
+
+<p>Still bent on his idea, he wrote to the King of England, then to the
+King of France, without effect. At last, in 1492, Columbus was
+introduced by Louis de Saint Angel to Queen Isabella of Spain. The
+friends who accompanied him pleaded his cause with so much force and
+conviction that he at length persuaded the queen to aid him.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Ellenborough was a great worker. He had a very hard time in getting
+a start at the bar, but was determined never to relax his industry until
+success came to him. When he was worked down to absolute exhaustion, he
+had this card which he kept constantly before his eyes, lest he might be
+tempted to relax his efforts: "Read or Starve."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;78">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>Show me a man who has made fifty thousand dollars, and I will show you
+in that man an equivalent of energy, attention to detail,
+trustworthiness, punctuality, professional knowledge, good address,
+common sense, and other marketable qualities. The farmer respects his
+savings bank book not unnaturally, for it declares with all the
+solemnity of a sealed and stamped document that for a certain length of
+time he rose at six o'clock each morning to oversee his labors, that he
+patiently waited upon seasonable weather, that he understood buying and
+selling. To the medical man, his fee serves as a medal to indicate that
+he was brave enough to face small pox and other infectious diseases, and
+his self-respect is fostered thereby.</p>
+
+<p>The barrister's brief is marked with the price of his legal knowledge,
+of his eloquence, or of his brave endurance during a period of
+hope-deferred brieflessness.</p>
+
+<p>A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing for his album.
+Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you only
+five minutes," objected the rich man. "Yes, but it took me thirty years
+to learn how to do it in five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"I prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an
+hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "In that,"
+said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they also
+thought nothing of it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;79">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>Virgil seems to have accomplished about four lines a week; but then they
+have lasted eighteen hundred years and will last eighteen hundred more.</p>
+
+<p>Seven years Virgil is said to have expended in the composition of the
+Georgics, and they could all be printed in about seven columns of an
+ordinary newspaper. Tradition reports that he was in the habit of
+composing a few lines in the morning and spending the rest of the day in
+polishing them. Campbell used to say that if a poet made one good line a
+week, he did very well indeed; but Moore thought that if a poet did his
+duty, he could get a line done every day.</p>
+
+<p>What an army of young men enters the success-contest every year as raw
+recruits! Many of them are country youths flocking to the cities to buy
+success. Their young ambitions have been excited by some book, or fired
+by the story of some signal success, and they dream of becoming Astors
+or Girards, Stewarts or Wanamakers, Vanderbilts or Goulds, Lincolns or
+Garfields, until their innate energy impels them to try their own
+fortune in the magic metropolis. But what are you willing to pay for
+"success," as you call it, young man? Do you realize what that word
+means in a great city in the nineteenth century, where men grow gray at
+thirty and die of old age at forty,&mdash;where the race of life has become
+so intense that<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;80">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a> the runners are treading on the heels of those before
+them; and "woe to him who stops to tie his shoestring?" Do you know that
+only two or three out of every hundred will ever win permanent success,
+and only because they have kept everlastingly at it; and that the rest
+will sooner or later fail and many die in poverty because they have
+given up the struggle.</p>
+
+<p>There are multitudes of men who never rely wholly upon themselves and
+achieve independence. They are like summer vines, which never grow even
+ligneous, but stretch out a thousand little hands to grasp the stronger
+shrubs; and if they cannot reach them, they lie dishevelled in the
+grass, hoof-trodden, and beaten of every storm. It will be found that
+the first real movement upward will not take place until, in a spirit of
+resolute self-denial, indolence, so natural to almost every one, is
+mastered. Necessity is, usually, the spur that sets the sluggish
+energies in motion. Poverty, therefore, is often of inestimable value as
+an incentive to the best endeavors of which we are capable.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;81">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FOUNDATION STONES.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should
+be made.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Cicero.</span></p>
+
+<p>How great soever a genius may be, ... certain it is that he
+will never shine in his full lustre, nor shed the full
+influence he is capable of, unless to his own experience he
+adds that of other men and other ages.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Bolingbroke.</span></p>
+
+<p>It is for want of the little that human means must add to the
+wonderful capacity for improvement, born in man, that by far
+the greatest part of the intellect, innate in our race,
+perishes undeveloped and unknown.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Edward Everett.</span></p>
+
+<p>If any man fancies that there is some easier way of gaining a
+dollar than by squarely earning it, he has lost his clue to his
+way through this mortal labyrinth and must henceforth wander as
+chance may dictate.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Horace Greeley.</span></p>
+
+<p>What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on
+what we already are; and what we are will be the result of
+previous years of self-discipline.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;H. P. Liddon.</span></p>
+
+<p>Learn to labor and to wait.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Longfellow.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"What avails all this sturdiness?" asked an oak tree which had grown
+solitary for two hundred years, bitterly handled by frosts and wrestled
+by winds. "Why am I to stand here useless? My roots are anchored in
+rifts of rocks; no herds can lie down under my shadow; I am far above<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;82">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>
+singing birds, that seldom come to rest among my leaves; I am set as a
+mark for storms, that bend and tear me; my fruit is serviceable for no
+appetite; it had been better for me to have been a mushroom, gathered in
+the morning for some poor man's table, than to be a hundred-year oak,
+good for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>While it yet spoke, the axe was hewing at its base. It died in sadness,
+saying as it fell, "Weary ages for nothing have I lived."</p>
+
+<p>The axe completed its work. By and by the trunk and root form the knees
+of a stately ship, bearing the country's flag around the world. Other
+parts form keel and ribs of merchantmen, and having defied the mountain
+storms, they now equally resist the thunder of the waves and the murky
+threat of scowling hurricanes. Other parts are laid into floors, or
+wrought into wainscoting, or carved for frames of noble pictures, or
+fashioned into chairs that embosom the weakness of old age. Thus the
+tree, in dying, came not to its end, but to its beginning of life. It
+voyaged the world. It grew to parts of temples and dwellings. It held
+upon its surface the soft tread of children and the tottering steps of
+patriarchs. It rocked in the cradle. It swayed the limbs of age by the
+chimney corner, and heard, secure within, the roar of those old,
+unwearied tempests that once surged<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;83">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a> about its mountain life. All its
+early struggles and hardships had enabled it to grow tough and hard and
+beautiful of grain, alike useful and ornamental.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, you have been to college, I presume?" asked an illiterate but
+boastful exhorter of a clergyman. "Yes, sir," was the reply. "I am
+thankful," said the former, "that the Lord opened my mouth without any
+learning." "A similar event," retorted the clergyman, "happened in
+Balaam's time."</p>
+
+<p>Why not allow the schoolboy to erase from his list of studies all
+subjects that appear to him useless? Would he not erase every thing
+which taxed his pleasure and freedom? Would he not obey the call of his
+blood, rather than the advice of his teacher? Ignorant men who have made
+money tell him that the study of geography is useless; his tea will come
+over the sea to him whether he knows where China is or not; what
+difference does it make whether verbs agree with their subjects or not?
+Why waste time learning geometry or algebra? Who keeps accounts by
+these? Learning spoils a man for business, they tell him; they begrudge
+the time and money spent in education. They want cheap and rapid transit
+through college for their children. Veneer will answer every practical
+purpose for them, instead of solid mahogany, or even paint and pine will
+do.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;84">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>It is said that the editors of the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had &quot;Diction-tionary&quot; at line break">Dictionary</ins> of American Biography
+who diligently searched the records of living and dead Americans, found
+15,142 names worthy of a place in their six volumes of annals of
+successful men, and 5326, or more than one-third of them, were
+college-educated men. One in forty of the college educated attained a
+success worthy of mention, and but one in 10,000 of those not so
+educated; so that the college-bred man had two hundred and fifty times
+the chances for success that others had. Medical records, it is said,
+show that but five per cent. of the practicing physicians of the United
+States are college graduates; and yet forty-six per cent. of the
+physicians who became locally famous enough to be mentioned by those
+editors came from that small five per cent. of college educated persons.
+Less than four per cent. of the lawyers were college-bred, yet they
+furnished more than one-half of all who became successful. Not one per
+cent. of the business men of the country were college educated, yet that
+small fraction of college-bred men had seventeen times the chances of
+success that their fellow men of business had. In brief, the
+college-educated lawyer has fifty per cent. more chances for success
+than those not so favored; the college-educated physician, forty-six per
+cent. more; the author, thirty-seven per cent. more; the statesman,
+thirty-three per cent.; the clergy<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;85">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>man, fifty-eight per cent.; the
+educator, sixty-one per cent.; the scientist, sixty-three per cent. You
+should therefore get the best and most complete education that it is
+possible for you to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>Knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hidden
+mysteries of a successful life.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not remember," said Beecher, "a book in all the depths of
+learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of
+art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not
+known to have been long and patiently elaborated."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a fool to stick so close to your work all the time," said one
+of Vanderbilt's young friends; "we are having our fun while we are
+young, for when will we if not now?" But Cornelius was either earning
+more money by working overtime, or saving what he had earned, or at home
+asleep, recruiting for the next day's labor and preparing for a large
+harvest later. Like all successful men, he made finance a study. When he
+entered the railroad business, it was estimated that his fortune was
+thirty-five or forty million dollars.</p>
+
+<p>"The spruce young spark," says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his
+mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily
+during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast
+horse,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;86">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a> ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the
+business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting
+his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not
+earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a
+situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to
+despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits
+and acquiring fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"When a man has done his work," says Ruskin, "and nothing can any way be
+materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with
+his fate if he will; but what excuse can you find for willfulness of
+thought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on your
+decisions? A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home
+forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! A youth
+thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity
+of a moment! A youth thoughtless, when his every action is a
+foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation
+of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than
+now&mdash;though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly
+thoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be done
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"On to Berlin," was the shout of the French army in July, 1870; but, to
+the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;87">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a> astonishment of the world, the French forces were cut in two and
+rolled as by a tidal wave into Metz and around Sedan. Soon two French
+armies and the Emperor surrendered, and German troopers paraded the
+streets of captured Paris.</p>
+
+<p>But as men thought it out, as Professor Wells tells us, they came to see
+that it was not France that was beaten, but only Louis Napoleon and a
+lot of nobles, influential only because they bore titles or were
+favorites. Louis Napoleon, the feeble bearer of a great name, was
+emperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happy
+accidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta and
+Solferino. But the unmasking time came in the Franco-Prussian War, as it
+always comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men.
+And such were the German leaders,&mdash;William, strong, upright, warlike,
+"every inch a king;" Von Roon, Minister of War, a master of
+administrative detail; Bismarck, the master mind of European politics;
+and, above all, Von Moltke, chief of staff, who hurled armies by
+telegraph, as he sat at his cabinet, as easily as a master moves
+chessmen against a stupid opponent.</p>
+
+<p>Said Captain Bingham: "You can have no idea of the wonderful machine
+that the German army is and how well it is prepared for war. A chart is
+made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;88">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a> with
+the different nations. And every officer's place in the scheme is laid
+out beforehand. There is a schedule of trains which will supersede all
+other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that
+the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take
+such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice. When the
+Franco-Prussian War was declared, Von Moltke was awakened at midnight
+and told of the fact. He said coolly to the official who aroused him,
+'Go to pigeonhole No. &mdash;&mdash; in my safe and take a paper from it and
+telegraph as there directed to the different troops of the empire.' He
+then turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual hour in the
+morning. Every one else in Berlin was excited about the war, but Von
+Moltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who met him said,
+'General, you seem to be taking it very easy. Aren't you afraid of the
+situation? I should think you would be busy.' 'Ah,' replied Von Moltke,
+'all of my work for this time has been done long beforehand, and
+everything that can be done now has been done.'"</p>
+
+<p>"A rare man this Von Moltke!" exclaims Professor Wells; "one who made
+himself ready for his opportunities beyond all men known to the modern
+world. Of an impoverished family, he rose very slowly and by his own
+merit. He yielded to no<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;89">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a> temptation, vice, or dishonesty, of course, nor
+to the greater and ever present temptation to idleness, for he
+constantly worked to the limit of human endurance. He was ready for
+every emergency, not by accident, but because he made himself ready by
+painstaking labor, before the opportunity came. His favorite motto was,
+'<em>Help yourself and others will help you</em>.' Hundreds of his age in the
+Prussian army were of nobler birth, thousands of greater fortune, but he
+made himself superior to them all by extraordinary fidelity and
+diligence.</p>
+
+<p>"The greatest master of strategy the world has ever seen was sixty-six
+years at school to himself before he was ready for his task. Though born
+with the century, and an army officer at nineteen, he was an old man
+when, in 1866, as Prussian chief of staff, he crushed Austria at Sadowa
+and drove her out of Germany. Four years later the silent, modest
+soldier of seventy, ready for the still greater opportunity, smote
+France, and changed the map of Europe. Glory and the field-marshal's
+baton, after fifty-one years of hard work! No wonder Louis Napoleon was
+beaten by such men as he. All Louis Napoleons have been, and always will
+be. Opportunity always finds out frauds. It does not make men, but shows
+the world what they have made of themselves."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Henry Havelock joined the army of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;90">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a> India in his twenty-eighth year,
+and waited till he was sixty-two for the opportunity to show himself
+fitted to command and skillful to plan. During those four and thirty
+years of waiting, he was busy preparing himself for that march to
+Lucknow which was to make him famous as a soldier.</p>
+
+<p>Farragut,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"The viking of our western clime<br /></span>
+<span>Who made his mast a throne,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">began his naval career as a mere boy, and was sixty-four years old
+before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself; but when the great
+test of his life came, the reserve of half a century's preparation made
+him master of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander Hamilton said, "Men give me credit for genius. All the genius
+I have lies just in this: when I have a subject in hand I study it
+profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its
+bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make
+the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of
+labor and thought." The law of labor is equally binding on genius and
+mediocrity.</p>
+
+<p>"Fill up the cask! fill up the cask!" said old Dr. Bellamy when asked by
+a young clergyman for advice about the composition of sermons. "Fill up
+the cask! and then if you tap it anywhere you will get a good stream.
+But if you put in but little,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;91">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a> it will dribble, dribble, dribble, and
+you must tap, tap, tap, and then you get but a small stream, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"The merchant is in a dangerous position," says Dr. W.&nbsp;W. Patton, "whose
+means are in goods trusted out all over the country on long credits, and
+who in an emergency has no money in the bank upon which to draw. A heavy
+deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of strength. And
+he only is intellectually strong, who has made heavy deposits in the
+bank of memory, and can draw upon his faculties at any time, according
+to the necessities of the case."</p>
+
+<p>They say that more life, if not more labor, was spent on the piles
+beneath the St. Petersburg church of St. Isaac's, to get a foundation,
+than on all the magnificent marbles and malachite which have since been
+lodged in it.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty feet of Bunker Hill Monument is under ground, unseen, and
+unappreciated by the thousands who tread about that historic shaft. The
+rivers of India run under ground, unseen, unheard, by the millions who
+tramp above, but are they therefore lost? Ask the golden harvest waving
+above them if it feels the water flowing beneath? The superstructure of
+a lifetime cannot stand upon the foundation of a day.</p>
+
+<p>C. H. Parkhurst says that in manhood, as<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;92">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a> much as in house-building, the
+foundation keeps asserting itself all the way from the first floor to
+the roof. The stones laid in the underpinning may be coarse and
+inelegant, but, even so, each such stone perpetuates itself in silent
+echo clear up through to the finial. The body is in that respect like an
+old Stradivarius violin, the ineffable sweetness of whose music is
+outcome and quotation from the coarse fibre of the case upon which its
+strings are strung. It is a very pleasant delusion that what we call the
+higher qualities and energies of a person maintain that self-centered
+kind of existence that enables them to discard and contemn all
+dependence upon what is lower and less refined than themselves, but it
+is a delusion that always wilts in an atmosphere of fact. Climb high as
+we like our ladder will still require to rest on the ground; and it is
+probable that the keenest intellectual intuition, and the most delicate
+throb of passion would, if analysis could be carried so far, be
+discovered to have its connections with the rather material affair that
+we know as the body.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln took the postmastership for the sake of reading all the papers
+that came to town. He read everything he could lay his hands on; the
+Bible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washington and Life of
+Franklin, Life of Henry Clay, &AElig;sop's Fables; he read them over and over
+again<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;93">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a> until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read a
+novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his
+contact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out an
+analysis of it. What a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoods
+student, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows,
+after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but could
+not afford to buy!</p>
+
+<p>"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this
+busy city of New York for over thirty years," said Dr. Cuyler, "and I
+find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures
+lies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success is
+oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. The
+easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time
+dropping to the rear&mdash;to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher
+of charity. They who understand and practice Abraham Lincoln's homely
+maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success."</p>
+
+<p>It is better to deserve success than to merely have it; few deserve it
+who do not attain it. There is no failure in this country for those
+whose personal habits are good, and who follow some honest calling
+industriously, unselfishly, and purely. If one<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;94">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a> desires to succeed, he
+must pay the price, work.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger.
+No matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, or
+how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by
+patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty,
+grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception,
+strength and precision of thought, and moderation of desire.</p>
+
+<p>It would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious association of
+genius and idleness, to show that the greatest poets, orators,
+statesmen, and historians&mdash;men of the most imposing and brilliant
+talents&mdash;have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries and
+arrangers of indexes; and the most obvious reason why they have been
+superior to other men, is, that they have taken more pains.</p>
+
+<p>Even the great genius, Lord Bacon, left large quantities of material
+entitled "Sudden thoughts set down for use." John Foster was an
+indefatigable worker. "He used to hack, split, twist, and pull up by the
+roots, or practice any other severity on whatever did not please him."
+Chalmers was asked in London what Foster was doing. "Hard at it" he
+said, "at the rate of a line a week."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;95">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>When a young lawyer, Daniel Webster once looked in vain through all the
+libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of $50 the necessary
+books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his
+client was a poor blacksmith. He won his case, but, on account of the
+poverty of his client, only charged $15, thus losing heavily on the
+books bought, to say nothing of his time. Years after, as he was passing
+through New York city, he was consulted by Aaron Burr on an important
+but puzzling case then pending before the Supreme Court. Webster saw in
+a moment that it was just like the blacksmith's case, an intricate
+question of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him
+simple as the multiplication table. Going back to the time of Charles
+II., he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and
+accuracy of sequence that Burr asked, in great surprise: "Mr. Webster,
+have you been consulted before in this case?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most certainly not. I never heard of your case till this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Burr, "proceed." And when he had finished, Webster
+received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he
+had spent for his early client.</p>
+
+<p>What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and
+wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can
+spend twenty-six years on<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;96">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a> the "History of the United States;" a Noah
+Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who
+can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;"
+a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance
+to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von
+Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for
+their first great opportunities; a Garfield, burning his lamp fifteen
+minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a Grant, fighting on
+in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and
+politicians everywhere; a Field's untiring perseverance, spending years
+and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; a
+Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel
+with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all
+remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice;
+a Titian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;" a Stephenson,
+working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a
+condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long
+years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a Thurlow Weed, walking
+two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to
+borrow the history of the French<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;97">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a> Revolution, and eagerly devouring it
+before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in a
+world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a
+Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair" was refused
+by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret,
+whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate;
+not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men
+who can work and wait.</p>
+
+<p>That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He
+that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is
+impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own
+slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and
+be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college
+course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. The
+facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate
+who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and
+reflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all
+fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and
+moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means
+of it will he become what he ought to become,&mdash;man, in the highest
+sense<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;98">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a> of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge,
+it is the misdirection of the mind. "One step in knowledge," says
+Bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to
+Heaven."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;99">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p>
+
+<p>Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer
+them.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Wendell Phillips.</span></p>
+
+<p>Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous
+difficulties.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Spurgeon.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>The rugged metal of the mine<br /></span>
+<span>Must burn before its surface shine.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Byron.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens
+which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no
+telescope could do.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Beecher.</span></p>
+
+<p>No man ever worked his way in a dead calm.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;John Neal.</span></p>
+
+<p>"Kites rise against, not with, the wind."</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Then welcome each rebuff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">That turns earth's smoothness rough,<br /></span>
+<span>Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Browning.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" said
+one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. "Tut, you
+blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if
+there were no gibbets, every one would be a<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;100">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a> highwayman." Just so with
+every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep
+out unworthy competitors.</p>
+
+<p>"Life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate
+from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks,
+that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them
+or no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to
+sleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while
+there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the
+stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and
+do its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes are not
+wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who
+labor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our temple building,
+whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life
+with cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our daily business, the
+fierce animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when
+we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of
+defeat&mdash;these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life
+ever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them? We are here, my
+brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God's quarry and on
+God's anvil for a nobler life to come." Only the muscle that is used is
+developed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;101">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>"Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better
+things," said Beecher. "Far up the mountain side lies a block of
+granite, and says to itself, 'How happy am I in my serenity&mdash;above the
+winds, above the trees, almost above the flight of birds! Here I rest,
+age after age, and nothing disturbs me.'</p>
+
+<p>"Yet what is it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the
+cliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death.</p>
+
+<p>"By and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes he
+drills a hole in its top, and the rock says, 'What does this mean?' Then
+the black powder is poured in, and with a blast that makes the mountain
+echo, the block is blown asunder, and goes crashing down into the
+valley. 'Ah!' it exclaims as it falls, 'why this rending?' Then come
+saws to cut and fashion it; and humbled now, and willing to be nothing,
+it is borne away from the mountain and conveyed to the city. Now it is
+chiseled and polished, till, at length, finished in beauty, by block and
+tackle it is raised, with mighty hoistings, high in air, to be the
+top-stone on some monument of the country's glory."</p>
+
+<p>"It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this
+constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and
+the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. Let
+every<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;102">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a> man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy would
+follow."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish to live without a trial?" asks a modern teacher. "Then you
+wish to die but half a man. Without trial you cannot guess at your own
+strength. Men do not learn to swim on a table. They must go into deep
+water and buffet the waves. Hardship is the native soil of manhood and
+self-reliance. Trials are rough teachers, but rugged schoolmasters make
+rugged pupils. A man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his
+grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. Difficulties are God's
+errands. And when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof of
+God's confidence. We should reach after the highest good."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a
+standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite
+direction. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car
+tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging of the
+teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain&mdash;until the
+motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy
+wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "Friction is a very good
+thing," remarked a passenger.</p>
+
+<p>There is a beautiful tale of Scandinavian mythology. A hero, under the
+promise of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;103">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a> becoming a demi-god, is bidden in the celestial halls to
+perform three test-acts of prowess. He is to drain the drinking-horn of
+Thor. Then he must run a race with a courser so fleet that he fairly
+spurns the ground under his flying footsteps. Then he must wrestle with
+a toothless old woman, whose sinewy hands, as wiry as eagle claws in the
+grapple, make his very flesh to quiver. He is victorious in them all.
+But as the crown of success is placed upon his temples, he discovers for
+the first time that he has had for his antagonist the three greatest
+forces of nature. He raced with thought, he wrestled with old age, he
+drank the sea. Nature, like the God of nature, wrestles with us as a
+friend, not an enemy, wanting us to gain the victory, and wrestles with
+us that we may understand and enjoy her best blessings. Every greatest
+and highest earthly good has come to us unfolded and enriched by this
+terrible wrestling with nature.</p>
+
+<p>A curious society still exists in Paris composed of dramatic authors who
+meet once a month and dine together. Their number has no fixed limit,
+only every member to be eligible must have been hissed. An eminent
+dramatist is selected for chairman and holds the post for three months.
+His election generally follows close upon a splendid failure. Some of
+the world-famous ones have enjoyed this honor. Dumas, Jr., Zola and
+Offenbach have all filled the chair and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;104">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a> presided at the monthly dinner.
+These dinners are given on the last Friday of the month, and are said to
+be extraordinarily hilarious.</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man," said George
+Macdonald of Milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to write
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads a
+man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant
+purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turn
+disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearls the sand
+which annoys it.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of
+the storm wind is to the eagle,&mdash;a force against him that lifts him
+higher."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see," says Emerson, "how any man can afford, for the sake of
+his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It
+is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation,
+want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges
+every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power."</p>
+
+<p>"Adversity is a severe instructor," says Edmund Burke, "set over us by
+one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as He loves us better too.
+He that wrestles<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;105">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a> with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill.
+Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us
+acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its
+relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial."</p>
+
+<p>Strong characters, like the palm tree, seem to thrive best when most
+abused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years
+are often unable to bear prosperity. Their good fortune takes the spring
+out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a
+vigorous climate. Some people never come to themselves until baffled,
+rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around
+them. Trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if
+the truth were known," said Albion Tourg&eacute;e. "Grant's failure as a
+subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to
+accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to."</p>
+
+<p>"What is defeat?" asked Wendell Phillips. "Nothing but education." And a
+life's disaster may become the landmark from which there has begun a new
+era, a broader life for man.</p>
+
+<p>"To make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must
+live<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;106">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a> like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a
+young lawyer so much good as to be half starved."</p>
+
+<p>We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the very
+power by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we could never
+have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced
+and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. Our trials, our
+sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way.</p>
+
+<p>"Obstacles," says Mitchell, "are great incentives. I lived for whole
+years upon Virgil and found myself well off." Poverty, Horace tells us,
+drove him to poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more unmans a man than to take away from him the spur of
+necessity, which urges him onward and upward to the goal of his
+ambition. Man is naturally lazy, and wealth induces indolence. The great
+object of life is development, the unfolding and drawing out of our
+powers, and whatever tempts us to a life of indolence or inaction, or to
+seek pleasure merely, whatever furnishes us a crutch when we can develop
+our muscles better by walking, all helps, guides, props, whatever tempts
+to a life of inaction, in whatever guise it may come, is a curse. I
+always pity the boy or girl with inherited wealth, for the temptation to
+hide their talents in a napkin, undeveloped, is very, very great. It is
+not<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;107">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a> natural for them to walk when they can ride, to go alone when they
+can be helped.</p>
+
+<p>Quentin Matsys was a blacksmith at Antwerp. When in his twentieth year
+he wished to marry the daughter of a painter. The father refused his
+consent. "Wert thou a painter," said he, "she should be thine; but a
+blacksmith&mdash;never!" "<em>I will be</em> a painter," said the young man. He
+applied to his new art with so much perseverance that in a short time he
+produced pictures which gave a promise of the highest excellence. He
+gained for his reward the fair hand for which he sighed, and rose ere
+long to a high rank in his profession.</p>
+
+<p>Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant
+one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch
+them grow. The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. Its roots
+reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into
+the earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as if
+in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. Sometimes its
+upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has been
+expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a
+firmer anchorage. Then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defy
+the hurricane. The gales which sport so rudely with its wide branches
+find more than their match, and only serve still further to<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;108">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a> toughen
+every minutest fibre from pith to bark.</p>
+
+<p>The acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling.
+Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far
+and wide for support.</p>
+
+<p>Take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. Place one in the country
+away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only
+the district school, the Sunday school, and a few books. Remove wealth
+and props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material in
+him, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends him strength for the
+next conflict. If he falls, he rises with more determination than
+before. Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher
+he rebounds. Obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasium
+in which the fibres of his manhood are developed. He compels respect and
+recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put the other boy
+in a Vanderbilt family. Give him French and German nurses; gratify every
+wish. Place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him to
+Harvard. Give him thousands a year for spending money, and let him
+travel extensively.</p>
+
+<p>The two meet. The city lad is ashamed of his country brother. The plain,
+threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of the
+country boy make<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;109">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a> sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of the
+other. The poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no chance
+in life," and envies the city youth. He thinks that it is a cruel
+Providence that places such a wide gulf between them. They meet again as
+men, but how changed! It is as easy to distinguish the sturdy, self-made
+man from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth,
+position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell the
+difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one from
+the sapling of the forest. If you think there is no difference, place
+each plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in a hurricane at sea.</p>
+
+<p>The athlete does not carry the gymnasium away with him, but he carries
+the skill and muscle which give him his reputation.</p>
+
+<p>The lessons you learn at school will give you strength and skill in
+after life, and power, just in proportion to the accuracy, the clearness
+of perception with which you learn your lessons. The school was your
+gymnasium. You do not carry away the Greek and Latin text-books, the
+geometry and algebra into your occupations any more than the athlete
+carries the apparatus of the gymnasium, but you carry away the skill and
+the power if you have been painstaking, accurate and faithful.</p>
+
+<p>"It is in me, and it <em>shall</em> come out!"<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;110">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a> And it did. For Richard
+Brinsley Sheridan became the most brilliant, eloquent and amazing
+statesman of his day. Yet if his first efforts had been but moderately
+successful, he might have been content with mere mediocrity. It was his
+defeats that nerved him to strive for eminence and win it. But it took
+hard, persistent work in his case to secure it, just as it did in that
+of so many others.</p>
+
+<p>Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing
+criticism of his first book, "Hours of Idleness," published when he was
+but nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, "There is scarce an instance
+in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byron
+reached." In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott,
+Southey and Campbell. Many an orator like "stuttering Jack Curran," or
+"Orator Mum," as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by
+ridicule and abuse.</p>
+
+<p>Where the sky is gray and the climate unkindly, where the soil yields
+nothing save to the diligent hand, and life itself cannot be supported
+without incessant toil, man has reached his highest range of physical
+and intellectual development.</p>
+
+<p>The most beautiful and the strongest animals, as a rule, have come from
+the same narrow belt of latitude which has produced the heroes of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;111">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed
+in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and
+where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on
+a stubborn soil. It is no chance that returns to the Hindoo ryot a penny
+and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes
+Mexico with her mineral wealth poor, and New England with its granite
+and ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, it
+is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and
+calls the race out of barbarism. Labor found the world a wilderness and
+has made it a garden.</p>
+
+<p>The law of adaptation by which conditions affect an organism is simple
+and well known. It is that which callouses the palm of the oarsman,
+strengthens the waist of the wrestler, fits the back to its burden. It
+inexorably compels the organism to adapt itself to its conditions, to
+like them, and so to survive them.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear
+the down and feathers from their nest. The rude and rough experience of
+the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert
+in pursuing his prey.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin Franklin ran away and George Law was turned out of doors.
+Thrown upon their own resources, they early<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;112">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a> acquired the energy and
+skill to overcome difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out,"
+while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "come
+out."</p>
+
+<p>From an aimless, idle and useless brain, emergencies often call out
+powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see a
+young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a
+parent or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has
+knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused the
+slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was written in
+prison. The "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared in Bedford Jail. The "Life and
+Times" of Baxter, Eliot's "Monarchia of Man," and Penn's "No Cross, No
+Crown," were written by prisoners. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote "The History
+of the World" during his imprisonment of thirteen years. Luther
+translated the Bible while confined in the Castle of Wartburg. For
+twenty years Dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death.
+His works were burned in public after his death; but genius will not
+burn.</p>
+
+<p>Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of
+the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying
+their skill, awes the opulent, and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;113">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a> makes the idle industrious. Neither
+do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and
+happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the
+faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of
+the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to
+outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism
+worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous
+sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry
+and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements
+of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest
+families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter the
+diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been
+unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for
+acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>This is the crutch age. "Helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. We
+have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries,
+newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are all
+worked out in "explanations" and "keys." Our boys are too often tutored
+through college with very little study. "Short roads" and "abridged
+methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are used
+everywhere to get the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;114">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a> drudgery out of the college course. Newspapers
+give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and
+self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious of
+delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces,
+and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from Eden's
+curse.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;115">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>DEAD IN EARNEST.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>It is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead. What
+made Demosthenes the greatest of all orators was that he
+appeared the most entirely possessed by the feelings he wished
+to inspire. The effect produced by Charles Fox, who by the
+exaggerations of party spirit, was often compared to
+Demosthenes, seems to have arisen wholly from this earnestness,
+which made up for the want of almost every grace, both of
+manner and style.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Anon.</span></p>
+
+<p>Twelve poor men taken out of boats and creeks, without any help
+of learning, should conquer the world to the cross.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Stephen Carnock.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>For his heart was in his work, and the heart<br /></span>
+<span>Giveth grace unto every art.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Longfellow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He did it with all his heart and prospered.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;II. Chronicles.</span></p>
+
+<p>The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he
+gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else
+are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a
+gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the
+truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Lowell.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"The emotions," says Whipple, "may all be included in the single word
+'enthusiasm,' or that impulsive force which liberates the mental power
+from the ice of timidity<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;116">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a> as spring loosens the streams from the grasp
+of winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. The mind of youth,
+when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, is
+keen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating facts
+into faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with that
+joyous fullness of creative life which radiates thoughts as
+inspirations, and magnetizes as well as informs."</p>
+
+<p>"Columbus, my hero," exclaims Carlyle, "royalist sea-king of all! It is
+no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste, deep waters; around
+thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before
+thee the unpenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wild
+water-mountains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am
+told), are not there on thy behalf! Meseems <em>they</em> have other work than
+floating thee forward:&mdash;and the huge winds, that sweep from Ursa Major
+to the tropics and equator, dancing their giant-waltz through the
+kingdoms of chaos and immensity, they care little about filling rightly
+or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle
+skiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, my
+brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling
+wide as the world here. Secret, far-off, invisible to all hearts but
+thine, there lies a<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;117">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a> help in them: see how thou wilt get at that.
+Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad southwester spend itself, saving
+thyself by dexterous science of defence the while: valiantly, with swift
+decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favoring east wind, the
+possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness,
+despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage: thou wilt swallow down
+complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;&mdash;how
+much wilt thou swallow down? There shall be a depth of silence in thee,
+deeper than this sea, which is but ten miles deep: a silence
+unsoundable; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great man. Yes, my
+world-soldier, thou of the world marine-service,&mdash;thou wilt have to be
+greater than this tumultuous unmeasured world here round thee is: thou,
+in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shall embrace it, harness
+it down; and make it bear thee on,&mdash;to new Americas, or whither God
+wills!"</p>
+
+<p>With what concentration of purpose did Washington put the whole weight
+of his character into the scales of our cause in the Revolution! With
+what earnest singleness of aim did Lincoln in the cabinet, Grant in the
+field, throw his whole soul into the contest of our civil war?</p>
+
+<p>The power of Phillips Brooks, at which men wondered, lay in his
+tremendous earnestness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;118">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>"No matter what your work is," says Emerson, "let it be yours; no matter
+if you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what you
+are doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and you open the door by
+which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you." Again,
+he says: "God will not have His works made manifest by cowards. A man is
+relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his
+best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.
+It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt, his genius
+deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important
+question," said Henry Clay; "but on such occasions I seem to be
+unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject
+before me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of
+surrounding objects."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been so busy for twenty years trying to save the souls of other
+people," said Livingstone, "that I had forgotten that I have one of my
+own until a savage auditor asked me if I felt the influence of the
+religion I was advocating."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've worked hard enough for it," said Malibran when a critic
+expressed his admiration of her D in alt, reached by running up three
+octaves from low D; "I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued it<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;119">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>
+everywhere,&mdash;when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair; and at last
+I found it on the toe of a shoe that I was putting on."</p>
+
+<p>"People smile at the enthusiasm of youth," said Charles Kingsley; "that
+enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh,
+perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever
+lost it."</p>
+
+<p>"Should I die this minute," said Nelson at an important crisis, "want of
+frigates would be found written on my heart."</p>
+
+<p>Said Dr. Arnold, the celebrated instructor: "I feel more and more the
+need of intercourse with men who take life in earnest. It is painful to
+me to be always on the surface of things. Not that I wish for much of
+what is called religious conversation. That is often apt to be on the
+surface. But I want a sign which one catches by a sort of masonry, that
+a man knows what he is about in life. When I find this it opens my heart
+with as fresh a sympathy as when I was twenty years younger."</p>
+
+<p>Archimedes, the greatest geometer of antiquity, was consulted by the
+king in regard to a gold crown suspected of being fraudulently alloyed
+with silver. While considering the best method of detecting any fraud,
+he plunged into a full bathing tub; and, with the thought that the water
+that overflowed must be equal in weight to his body, he discovered the
+method of obtaining the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;120">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a> bulk of the crown compared with an equally
+heavy mass of pure gold. Excited by the discovery, he ran through the
+streets undressed, crying, "I have found it."</p>
+
+<p>Equally celebrated is his remark, "Give me where to stand and I will
+move the world."</p>
+
+<p>His only remark to the Roman soldier who entered his room while engaged
+in geometrical study, was, "Don't step on my circle."</p>
+
+<p>Refusing to follow the soldier to Marcellus, who had captured the city,
+he was killed on the spot. He is said to have remarked, "My head, but
+not my circle."</p>
+
+<p>"Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world," says
+Emerson, "is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs
+after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning,
+established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an example. They did
+they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an
+overmatch for a troop of cavalry. The women fought like men and
+conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed.
+They were temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh needed
+to feed them. They conquered Asia and Africa and Spain on barley. The
+Caliph Omar's walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it
+than another man's sword."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;121">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>Horace Vernet's enthusiasm and devotion to the one idea of his life knew
+no bounds. He had himself lashed to the mast in a terrible gale on the
+Mediterranean when all others on board were seized with terror, and with
+great delight sketched the towering waves which threatened every minute
+to swallow the vessel. Several writers tell the story that a great
+artist, Giotto, about to paint the crucifixion, induced a poor man to
+let him bind him upon a cross in order that he might get a better idea
+of the terrible scene that he was about to put upon the canvas. He
+promised faithfully that he would release his model in an hour, but to
+the latter's horror the painter seized a dagger and plunged it into his
+heart; and, while the blood was streaming from the ghastly wound,
+painted his death agony.</p>
+
+<p>Beecher was a very dull boy and was the last member of the family of
+whom anything was expected. He had a weak memory, and disliked study. He
+shunned society and wanted to go to sea. Even when he went to college
+many of his classmates stood ahead of him, who have fallen into
+oblivion. But when he was converted his whole life changed: he was full
+of enthusiasm, hopefulness and zeal. Nothing was too menial for him to
+undertake to carry his purpose. He chopped wood, built the fire in his
+little church in Lawrenceburg, Ind., of only eighteen members, cleaned
+the lamps, swept<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;122">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a> the floor and washed the windows. He built the fire,
+baked, washed, when his wife was ill. The pent-up enthusiasm of his
+ambitious life burst the barriers of his inhospitable surroundings until
+he blossomed out into America's greatest pulpit orator.</p>
+
+<p>When Handel was a little boy he bought a clavichord, hid it in the
+attic, and went there at night to play upon it, muffling the strings
+with small pieces of fine woolen cloth so that the sounds should not
+wake the family. Michael Angelo neglected school to copy drawings which
+he dared not carry home. Murillo filled the margin of his school-book
+with drawings. Dryden read Polybius before he was ten years old. Le
+Brum, when a boy, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the
+house. Pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen. Blaise Pascal, the
+French mathematician, composed at sixteen a tract on the conic sections.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Agassiz was so enthusiastic in his work and so loved the
+fishes, the fowl and the cattle that it is said these creatures would
+die for him to give him their skeletons. His father wanted him to fit
+for commercial life, but the fish haunted him day and night.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius said that "he was so eager in the pursuit of knowledge that he
+forgot his food;" and that, "in the joy of its attainment, he forgot his
+sorrows;" and that "he did not even perceive that old age was coming
+on."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;123">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>"That boy tries to make himself useful," said an employer of the errand
+boy, George W. Childs. It is this trying to be useful and helpful that
+promotes us in life.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when Mr. Harvey, an accomplished mathematician, was in a
+bookseller's shop, he saw a poor lad of mean appearance enter and write
+something on a slip of paper and give it to the proprietor. On inquiry
+he found this was a poor deaf boy, Kitto, who afterward became one of
+the most noted Biblical scholars in the world, and who wrote his first
+book in the poor-house. He had come to borrow a book. When a lad he had
+fallen backward from a ladder thirty-five feet upon the pavement with a
+load of slates that he was carrying to the roof. The poor lad was so
+thirsty for books that he would borrow from booksellers who would loan
+them to him out of pity, read them and return them.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Youth's Companion</i> says that Mr. Edison in his new biography&mdash;his
+"Life and Inventions"&mdash;describes the accidental method by which he
+discovered the principle of the phonograph. There is a kind of accident
+that happens only to a certain kind of man.</p>
+
+<p>"I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," Mr. Edison says, "when
+the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger.
+That set me to thinking. If I could record the actions of the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;124">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a> point,
+and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why
+the thing would not talk.</p>
+
+<p>"I tried the experiment first on a slip of telegraph paper and found
+that the point made an alphabet. I shouted the words 'Halloo! Halloo!'
+into the mouthpiece, ran the paper back over the steel point, and heard
+a faint 'Halloo! Halloo!' in return.</p>
+
+<p>"I determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my
+assistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. They
+laughed at me. That's the whole story. The phonograph is the result of
+the pricking of a finger."</p>
+
+<p>It is one thing to hit upon an idea, however, and another thing to carry
+it out to perfection. The machine would talk, but, like many young
+children, it had difficulty with certain sounds&mdash;in the present case
+with aspirants and sibilants. Mr. Edison's biographers say, but the
+statement is somewhat exaggerated:</p>
+
+<p>"He has frequently spent from fifteen to twenty hours daily, for six or
+seven months on a stretch, dinning the word 'Spezia,' for example, into
+the stubborn surface of the wax. 'Spezia,' roared the inventor, 'Pezia'
+lisped the phonograph in tones of ladylike reserve, and so on through
+thousands of graded repetitions till the desired results were obtained.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;125">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>"The primary education of the phonograph was comical in the extreme. To
+hear those grave and reverend signors, rich in scientific honors,
+patiently reiterating:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Mary had a little lamb,<br /></span>
+<span>A little lamb, <em>lamb</em>, <strong class="smcap">lamb</strong>,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">and elaborating that point with anxious gravity, was to receive a
+practical demonstration of the eternal unfitness of things."</p>
+
+<p>Milton, when blind, old and poor, showed a royal cheerfulness and never
+"bated one jot of heart or hope, but steered right onward."</p>
+
+<p>Dickens' characters seemed to possess him, and haunt him day and night
+until properly portrayed in his stories.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the
+common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious
+subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap
+literature. He believed that a paper could be instructive and not be
+dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the <i>Penny Magazine</i>, which
+acquired a circulation of 200,000 the first year. Knight projected the
+<i>Penny Cyclopedia</i>, the <i>Library of Entertaining Knowledge</i>, <i>Half-Hours
+With the Best Authors</i>, and other useful books at a low price. His whole
+adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by
+cheap, yet wholesome, publications. He died in poverty, but grateful<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;126">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>
+people have erected a noble monument over his ashes.</p>
+
+<p>Demosthenes roused the torpid spirits of his countrymen to a vigorous
+effort to preserve their independence against the designs of an
+ambitious and artful prince, and Philip had just reason to say he was
+more afraid of that man than of all the fleets and armies of the
+Athenians.</p>
+
+<p>Horace Greeley was a hampered genius who never had a chance to show
+himself until he started the <i>Tribune</i>, into which he poured his whole
+individuality, life and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson lost the first years of his life trying to be somebody else. He
+finally came to himself and said: "If a single man plant himself
+indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the whole world will come
+round to him in the end." "Though we travel the world over to find the
+beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not." "The man that
+stands by himself the universe stands by him also." "Take Michael
+Angelo's course, 'to confide in one's self and be something of worth and
+value.'" "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or
+commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>Many unknown writers would make fame and fortune if, like Bunyan and
+Milton and Dickens and George Eliot and Scott and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;127">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a> Emerson, they would
+write their own lives in their MSS., if they would write about things
+they have seen, that they have felt, that they have known. It is life
+thoughts that stir and convince, that move and persuade, that carry
+their very iron particles into the blood. The real heaven has never been
+outdone by the ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Neither poverty nor misfortune could keep Linn&aelig;us from his botany.</p>
+
+<p>The English and Austrian armies called Napoleon the
+one-hundred-thousand-man. His presence was considered equal to that
+force in battle.</p>
+
+<p>The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches&mdash;that there is
+always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's
+life an answer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;128">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>TO BE GREAT, CONCENTRATE.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and
+then stick to it.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Franklin.</span></p>
+
+<p>"He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither."</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>None sends his arrow to the mark in view,<br /></span>
+<span>Whose hand is feeble, or his aim untrue.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Cowper.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He who wishes to fulfill his mission must be a man of one idea,
+that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing all
+his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Bate.</span></p>
+
+<p>The shortest way to do anything is to do only one thing at a
+time.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Cecil.</span></p>
+
+<p>The power of concentration is one of the most valuable of
+intellectual attainments.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Horace Mann.</span></p>
+
+<p>The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one
+direction.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p>
+
+<p>Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius
+and art.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Cicero.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"It puffed like a locomotive," said a boy of the donkey engine; "it
+whistled like the steam-cars, but it didn't go anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>The world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puff
+and pull, but they don't go anywhere, they have no definite aim, no
+controlling purpose.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;129">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>The great secret of Napoleon's power lay in his marvelous ability to
+concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place
+in the enemy's ranks he would mass his men and hurl them upon the enemy
+like an avalanche until he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of
+concentration there is in that man's life! He was such a master of
+himself that he could concentrate his powers upon the smallest detail as
+well as upon an empire.</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon had anything to say he always went straight to his mark.
+He had a purpose in everything he did; there was no dilly-dallying nor
+shilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. It was the
+same with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. He always hit the
+bull's eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness
+of aim. He knew what he wanted to do, and did it. He was like a great
+burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he
+burned a hole wherever he went.</p>
+
+<p>The sun's rays scattered do no execution, but concentrated in a burning
+glass, they melt solid granite; yes, a diamond, even. There are plenty
+of men who have ability enough, the rays of their faculties taken
+separately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, to
+concentrate them upon a single object. They lack the burning glass of a
+purpose, to focalize upon one<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;130">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a> spot the separate rays of their ability.
+Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have
+no power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them upon
+one point, until they burn a hole in whatever they undertake.</p>
+
+<p>This power to bring all of one's scattered forces into one focal point
+makes all the difference between success and failure. The sun might
+blaze out upon the earth forever without burning a hole in it or setting
+anything on fire; whereas a very few of these rays concentrated in a
+burning glass would, as stated, transform a diamond into vapor.</p>
+
+<p>Sir James Mackintosh was a man of marvelous ability. He excited in
+everybody who knew him great expectations, but there was no purpose in
+his life to act as a burning glass to collect the brilliant rays of his
+intellect, by which he might have dazzled the world. Most men have
+ability enough, if they could only focalize it into one grand, central,
+all-absorbing purpose, to accomplish great things.</p>
+
+<p>"To encourage me in my efforts to cultivate the power of attention,"
+said a friend of John C. Calhoun, "he stated that to this end he had
+early subjected his mind to such a rigid course of discipline, and had
+persisted without faltering until he had acquired a perfect control over
+it; that he could now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased,
+without wandering even for a<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;131">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a> moment; that it was his uniform habit,
+when he set out alone to walk or ride, to select a subject for
+reflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander from it
+until he was satisfied with its examination."</p>
+
+<p>"My friend laughs at me because I have but one idea," said a learned
+American chemist; "but I have learned that if I wish ever to make a
+breach in a wall, I must play my guns continually upon one point."</p>
+
+<p>"It is his will that has made him what he is," said an intimate friend
+of Philip D. Armour, the Chicago millionaire. "He fixes his eye on
+something ahead, and no matter what rises upon the right or the left he
+never sees it. He goes straight in pursuit of the object ahead, and
+overtakes it at last. He never gives up what he undertakes."</p>
+
+<p>While Horace Greeley would devote a column of the New York <i>Tribune</i> to
+an article, Thurlow Weed would treat the same subject in a few words in
+the Albany <i>Evening Journal</i>, and put the argument into such shape as to
+carry far more conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"If you would be pungent," says Southey, "be brief; for it is with words
+as with sunbeams&mdash;the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."</p>
+
+<p>"The only valuable kind of study," said Sydney Smith, "is to read so
+heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;132">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a> expected it; to
+sit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved the
+Capitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers
+gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cann&aelig;,
+and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at the
+actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it will
+take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own
+study or on the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beaten
+face and admiring the splendor of his single eye."</p>
+
+<p>"Never study on speculation," says Waters; "all such study is vain. Form
+a plan; have an object; then work for it; learn all you can about it,
+and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculation
+is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day;
+which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brass
+door-plate with the name of Thompson on it, thinking it might be useful
+some day!"</p>
+
+<p>"I resolved, when I began to read law," said Edward Sugden, afterward
+Lord St. Leonard, "to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and
+never go on to a second reading till I had entirely accomplished the
+first. Many of the competitors read as much in a day as I did in a week;
+but at the end of twelve months my knowl<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;133">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>edge was as fresh as on the day
+it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection."</p>
+
+<p>"Very often," says Sidney Smith, "the modern precept of education is,
+'Be ignorant of nothing.' But my advice is, have the courage to be
+ignorant of a great number of things, that you may avoid the calamity of
+being ignorant of all things."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, help me to take fewer things into my hands, and to do them well,"
+is a prayer recommended by Paxton Hood to an overworked man.</p>
+
+<p>"Many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life," said Edward
+Bulwer Lytton, "and as much about the world as if I had never been a
+student, have said to me, 'When do you get time to write all your books?
+How on earth do you contrive to do so much work?' I shall surprise you
+by the answer I made. The answer is this&mdash;I contrive to do so much work
+by never doing too much at a time. A man to get through work well must
+not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction of
+fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow.
+Now, since I began really and earnestly to study, which was not till I
+had left college, and was actually in the world, I may perhaps say that
+I have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men of
+my time. I have traveled much and I have<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;134">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a> seen much; I have mixed much
+in politics, and in the various business of life; and in addition to all
+this, I have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects
+requiring much special research. And what time do you think, as a
+general rule, I have devoted to study, to reading, and writing? Not more
+than three hours a day; and, when Parliament is sitting, not always
+that. But then, during these three hours, I have given my whole
+attention to what I was about."</p>
+
+<p>"The things that are crowded out of a life are the test of that life.
+Not what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our
+might we attain."</p>
+
+<p>"One great cause of failure of young men in business," says Carnegie,
+"is lack of concentration. They are prone to seek outside investments.
+The cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. Every dollar of
+capital and credit, every business-thought, should be concentrated upon
+the one business upon which a man has embarked. He should never scatter
+his shot. It is a poor business which will not yield better returns for
+increased capital than any outside investment. No man or set of men or
+corporation can manage a business-man's capital as well as he can manage
+it himself. The rule, 'Do not put all your eggs in one basket,' does not
+apply to a man's life-work. Put all your eggs in one basket and then<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;135">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>
+watch that basket, is the true doctrine&mdash;the most valuable rule of all."</p>
+
+<p>"A man must not only desire to be right," said Beecher, "he must <em>be</em>
+right. You may say, 'I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion
+crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and
+I hope Providence will direct the ball.' Providence won't. You must do
+it; and if you do not, you are a dead man."</p>
+
+<p>The ruling idea of Milton's life and the key to his mental history is
+his resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in itself
+is singular, for it is probably shared in by every poet in his turn. As
+every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to become
+Lord-Chancellor, and every private in the French army carries in his
+haversack the baton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of the
+dream of Parnassus that it should embody itself in a form of surpassing
+brilliance. What distinguishes Milton from the crowd of youthful
+literary aspirants, <i>audax juventa</i>, is his constancy of resolve. He not
+only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under the
+importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life into
+the pursuit of place, profit, honor&mdash;the thorns which spring up and
+smother the wheat&mdash;but carried out his dream in its integrity in old
+age. He formed himself for this achievement and no other. Study at home,
+travel<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;136">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a> abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service,
+the practice of the domestic virtues, were so many parts of the
+schooling which was to make a poet.</p>
+
+<p>Bismarck adopted it as the aim of his public life "to snatch Germany
+from Austrian oppression," and to gather round Prussia, in a North
+German Confederation, all the states whose tone of thought, religion,
+manners and interest "were in harmony with those of Prussia." "To attain
+this end," he once said in conversation, "I would brave all
+dangers&mdash;exile, the scaffold itself. What matter if they hang me,
+provided the rope with which I am hung binds this new Germany firmly to
+the Prussian throne?"</p>
+
+<p>It is related of Greeley that, when he was writing his "American
+Conflict," he found it necessary to conceal himself somewhere, to
+prevent constant interruptions. He accordingly took a room in the Bible
+house, where he worked from ten in the morning till five in the
+afternoon, and then appeared in the sanctum, seemingly as fresh as ever.</p>
+
+<p>Cooper Institute is the evening school which Peter Cooper, as long ago
+as 1810, resolved to found some day, when he was looking about as an
+apprentice for a place where he could go to school evenings. Through all
+his career in various branches of business he never lost sight of this
+object; and, as his wealth increased, he was pleased<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;137">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a> that it brought
+nearer the realization of his dream.</p>
+
+<p>"See a great lawyer like Rufus Choate," says Dr. Storrs, "in a case
+where his convictions are strong and his feelings are enlisted. He saw
+long ago, as he glanced over the box, that five of those in it were
+sympathetic with him; as he went on he became equally certain of seven;
+the number now has risen to ten; but two are still left whom he feels
+that he has not persuaded or mastered. Upon them he now concentrates his
+power, summing up the facts, setting forth anew and more forcibly the
+principles, urging upon them his view of the case with a more and more
+intense action of his mind upon theirs, until one only is left. Like the
+blow of a hammer, continually repeated until the iron bar crumbles
+beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that one
+mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the
+pleader's purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, 'He surpassed himself.'
+It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and
+overpowering energy to the mind."</p>
+
+<p>"The foreman of the jury, however," said Whipple, "was a hard-hearted,
+practical man, a model of business intellect and integrity, but with an
+incapacity of understanding any intellect or conscience radically
+differing from his own. Mr. Choate's<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;138">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a> argument, as far as the facts and
+the law were concerned, was through in an hour. Still he went on
+speaking. Hour after hour passed, and yet he continued to speak with
+constantly increasing eloquence, repeating and recapitulating, without
+any seeming reason, facts which he had already stated and arguments
+which he had already urged. The truth was, as I gradually learned, that
+he was engaged in a hand-to-hand&mdash;or rather in a brain-to-brain and a
+heart-to-heart&mdash;contest with the foreman, whose resistance he was
+determined to break down, but who confronted him for three hours with
+defiance observable in every rigid line of his honest countenance. 'You
+fool!' was the burden of the advocate's ingenious argument. 'You
+rascal!' was the phrase legibly printed on the foreman's incredulous
+face. But at last the features of the foreman began to relax, and at the
+end the stern lines melted into acquiescence with the opinion of the
+advocate, who had been storming at the defences of his mind, his heart,
+and his conscience for five hours, and had now entered as victor. The
+verdict was 'Not guilty.'"</p>
+
+<p>"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself
+to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle
+spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity."</p>
+
+<p>It is generally thought that when a man<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;139">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a> is said to be dissipated in his
+habits he must be a drinking man, or a gambler, or licentious, or all
+three; but dissipation is of two kinds, coarse and refined. A man can
+dissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power by
+indulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits of
+a viler nature. Property and its cares make some men dissipated; too
+many friends make others. The exactions of "society," the balls,
+parties, receptions, and various entertainments constantly being given
+and attended by the <i>beau monde</i>, constitute a most wasting species of
+dissipation. Others, again, fritter away all their time and strength in
+political agitations, or in controversies and gossip; others in idling
+with music or some other one of the fine arts; others in feasting or
+fasting, as their dispositions and feelings incline. But the man of
+concentration of purpose is never a dissipated man in any sense, good or
+bad. He has no time to devote to useless trifling of any kind, but puts
+in as many strokes of faithful work as possible toward the attainment of
+some definite good.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;140">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>AT ONCE.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit
+of 500,000,000 miles back to the solstice at the appointed
+moment without the loss of one second&mdash;no, not the millionth
+part of a second&mdash;for ages and ages of which it traveled that
+imperial road.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Edward Everett.</span></p>
+
+<p>Despatch is the soul of business.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Chesterfield.</span></p>
+
+<p>Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of
+clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as
+his time.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Horace Mann.</span></p>
+
+<p>By the street of by-and-by one arrives at the house of never.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Cervantes.</span></p>
+
+<p>The greatest thief this world has ever produced is
+procrastination, and he is still at large.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;H. W. Shaw.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says H.&nbsp;C. Bowen.
+"How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself
+intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has acquired a
+reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the
+capital that in after years makes his success a certainty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing commends a young man so much<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;141">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a> to his employers," says John
+Stuart Blackie, "as accuracy and punctuality in the conduct of his
+business. And no wonder. On each man's exactitude depends the
+comfortable and easy going of his machine. If the clock goes fitfully
+nobody knows the time of day; and, if your task is a link in the chain
+of another man's work, you are his clock, and he ought to be able to
+rely on you."</p>
+
+<p>"The whole period of youth," said Ruskin, "is one essentially of
+formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is
+trembling with destinies&mdash;not a moment of which, once passed, the
+appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on
+the cold iron."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, didst thou say?" asked Cotton. "Go to&mdash;I will not hear of
+it. To-morrow! 't is a sharper who stakes his penury against thy
+plenty&mdash;who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes
+and promises, the currency of idiots. <em>To-morrow!</em> it is a period
+nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance
+in the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society
+with those that own it. 'Tis fancy's child, and folly is its father;
+wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic
+visions of the evening." Oh, how many a wreck on the road to success
+could say: "I have spent all my life in the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;142">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a> pursuit of to-morrow, being
+assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I give it as my deliberate and solemn conviction," said Dr. Fitch,
+"that the individual who is tardy in meeting an appointment will never
+be respected or successful in life."</p>
+
+<p>"If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace Greeley,
+"why should he have for their money? What is the difference between
+taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are many men to
+whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars."</p>
+
+<p>A man who keeps his time will keep his word; in truth, he cannot keep
+his word unless he <em>does</em> keep his time.</p>
+
+<p>When the Duchess of Sutherland came late, keeping the court waiting, the
+queen, who was always vexed by tardiness, presented her with her own
+watch, saying, "I am afraid your's does not keep good time."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary," replied
+Washington, when his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by
+saying that his watch was too slow.</p>
+
+<p>"I have generally found that a man who is good at an excuse is good for
+nothing else," said Franklin to a servant who was always late, but
+always ready with an excuse.</p>
+
+<p>One of the best things about school and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;143">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a> college life is that the bell
+which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures,
+teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch which
+is a good timekeeper; one that is <em>nearly</em> right encourages bad habits,
+and is an expensive investment at any price. Wear threadbare clothes if
+you must, but never carry an inaccurate watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Five minutes behind time" has ruined many a man and many a firm.</p>
+
+<p>"He who rises late," says Fuller, "must trot all day, and shall scarcely
+overtake his business at night."</p>
+
+<p>Some people are too late for everything but ruin; when a nobleman
+apologized to George III. for being late, and said, "better late than
+never," the king replied, "No, I say, <em>better never than late</em>."</p>
+
+<p>"Better late than never" is not half so good a maxim as "Better never
+late."</p>
+
+<p>If Samuel Budgett was even a minute late at an appointment he would
+apologize; he was as punctual as a chronometer. Punctuality is
+contagious. Napoleon infused promptness into his officers every minute.
+What power there is in promptness to take the drudgery out of a
+disagreeable task.</p>
+
+<p>"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said
+Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God gave
+them work to do, and He also gave them a competency of time; so<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;144">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a> much
+that if they began at the right moment and wrought with sufficient
+vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good many
+years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allotted
+time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it
+has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines laid
+alongside the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their
+time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the
+time. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters are
+posted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at the
+wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the
+terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not break
+any engagement nor neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it
+too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval."</p>
+
+<p>Of Tours, the wealthy New Orleans ship-owner, it is said that he was as
+methodical and regular as a clock, and that his neighbors were in the
+habit of judging of the time of the day by his movements.</p>
+
+<p>"How," asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much and
+in so short a time?" "When I have anything do, I go and do it," was the
+reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional
+mistakes, will succeed<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;145">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a> when a procrastinator will fail&mdash;even if he have
+the better judgment.</p>
+
+<p>When asked how he got through so much work, Lord Chesterfield replied:
+"Because I never put off till morrow what I can do to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Dewitt, pensionary of Holland, answered the same question: "Nothing is
+more easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off until
+to-morrow what can be done to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his
+enormous achievements. He made it a rule to answer all letters the day
+they were received. He rose at five. By breakfast time he had broken the
+neck of the day's work, as he used to say. Writing to a youth who had
+obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel:
+"Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not
+having your time fully employed&mdash;I mean what the women call dawdling. Do
+instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after
+business, never before it."</p>
+
+<p>Frederick the Great had a maxim: "Time is the only treasure of which it
+is proper to be avaricious."</p>
+
+<p>Leibnitz declared that "the loss of an hour is the loss of a part of
+life."</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, who knew the value of time, remarked that it was the quarter
+hours that<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;146">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a> won battles. The value of minutes has been often recognized,
+and any person watching a railway clerk handing out tickets and change
+during the last few minutes available must have been struck with how
+much could be done in these short periods of time.</p>
+
+<p>At the appointed hour the train starts and by and by is carrying
+passengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour. In a second you are
+carried twenty-nine yards. In one twenty-ninth of a second you pass over
+one yard. Now, one yard is quite an appreciable distance, but one
+twenty-ninth of a second is a period which cannot be appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>The father of the Webster brothers, before going away to be gone for a
+week, gave his boys a stint to cut a field of corn, telling them that
+after it was done, if they had any time left, they might do what they
+pleased. The boys looked the field over on Monday morning and concluded
+they could do all the work in three days, so they decided to play the
+first three days. Thursday morning they went to the field, but it looked
+so much larger than it did on Monday morning, that they decided they
+could not possibly do it in three days, and rather than not do it all,
+they would not touch it. When the angry father returned, he called
+Ezekiel to him and asked him why they had not harvested the corn. "What
+have you been doing?" said the stern father. "Nothing,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;147">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a> father." "And
+what have you been doing, Daniel?" "Helping Zeke, sir."</p>
+
+<p>How many boys, and men, too, waste hours and days "helping Zeke!"</p>
+
+<p>"Remember the world was created in six days," said Napoleon to one of
+his officers. "Ask for whatever you please except time."</p>
+
+<p>Railroads and steamboats have been wonderful educators in promptness. No
+matter who is late they leave right on the minute.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to watch people at a great railroad station, running,
+hurrying, trying to make up time, for they well know when the time
+arrives the train will leave.</p>
+
+<p>Factories, shops, stores, banks, everything opens and closes on the
+minute. The higher the state of civilization the prompter is everything
+done. In countries without railroads, as in Eastern countries,
+everything is behind time. Everybody is indolent and lazy.</p>
+
+<p>The world knows that the prompt man's bills and notes will be paid on
+the day they are due, and will trust him. People will give him credit,
+for they know they can depend upon him. But lack of promptness will
+shake confidence almost as quickly as downright dishonesty. The man who
+has a habit of dawdling or listlessness will show it in everything he
+does. He is late at meals, late at work, dawdles on the street, loses
+his train, misses his appointments, and dawdles at his store until the
+banks are<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;148">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a> closed. Everybody he meets suffers more <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had &quot;of&quot;">or</ins> less from his
+malady, for dawdling becomes practically a disease.</p>
+
+<p>"You will never find time for anything," said Charles Buxton; "if you
+want time you must make it."</p>
+
+<p>The best work we ever do is that which we do now, and can never repeat.
+"Too late," is the curse of the unsuccessful, who forget that "one
+to-day is worth two to-morrows."</p>
+
+<p>Time accepts no sacrifice; it admits of neither redemption nor
+atonement. <em>It is the true avenger.</em> Your enemy may become your
+friend,&mdash;your injurer may do you justice,&mdash;but Time is inexorable, and
+has no mercy.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Then stay the present instant, dear Horatio:<br /></span>
+<span>Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings.<br /></span>
+<span>'Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious<br /></span>
+<span>Than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain.<br /></span>
+<span>O! let it not elude thy grasp; but, like<br /></span>
+<span>The good old patriarch upon record,<br /></span>
+<span>Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Nathaniel Cotton.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;149">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THOROUGHNESS.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Doing well depends upon doing completely.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Persian Proverb.</span></p>
+
+<p>He who does well will always have patrons enough.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Plautus.</span></p>
+
+<p>If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or
+make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his
+house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his
+door.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p>
+
+<p>I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if
+it be wrong, leave it undone.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Gilpin.</span></p>
+
+<p>No two things differ more than Hurry and Dispatch. Hurry is the
+mark of a weak mind, Dispatch of a strong one. * * * Like a
+turnstile, he (the weak man) is in everybody's way, but stops
+nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into
+everything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the
+fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are
+he only burns his fingers.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Colton.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"Make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the
+blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built;
+"six of us have come to work on the new church, and I've left mine at
+home." "As good a one as I know how?" asked David Maydole, doubtfully,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;150">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>
+"but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as I know how to
+make." "Yes, I do," said the carpenter, "I want a good hammer."</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that
+had ever been made. By means of a longer hole than usual, David had
+wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a
+wonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his
+prize to his companions. They all came to the shop next day, and each
+ordered just such a hammer. When the contractor saw the tools, he
+ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than
+those for his men. "I can't make any better ones," said Maydole; "when I
+make a thing, I make it as well as I can, no matter whom it is for."</p>
+
+<p>The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his
+previous business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the village
+to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a
+standing order for all the blacksmith could make. David might have grown
+very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but
+throughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study still
+further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. They were usually
+sold without any warrant of excellence, the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;151">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a> word "Maydole" stamped on
+the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the
+world could produce. Character is power, and is the best advertisement
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he one day to the late James Parton, who told this story, "I
+have made hammers in this little village for twenty-eight years."
+"Well," replied the great historian, "by this time you ought to make a
+pretty good hammer."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't," was the reply, "I can't make a pretty good hammer. I make
+the best hammer that's made. My only care is to make a perfect hammer.
+If folks don't want to pay me what they're worth, they're welcome to buy
+cheaper ones somewhere else. My wants are few, and I'm ready any time to
+go back to my blacksmith's shop, where I worked forty years ago, before
+I thought of making hammers. Then I had a boy to blow by bellows, now I
+have one hundred and fifteen men. Do you see them over there watching
+the heads cook over the charcoal furnace, as your cook, if she knows
+what she is about, watches the chops broiling? Each of them is hammered
+out of a piece of iron, and is tempered under the inspection of an
+experienced man. Every handle is seasoned three years, or until there is
+no shrink left in it. Once I thought I could use machinery in
+manufacturing them; now I know that<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;152">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a> a perfect tool can't be made by
+machinery, and every bit of the work is done by hand."</p>
+
+<p>"In telling this little story," said Parton, "I have told thousands of
+stories. Take the word 'hammer' out of it, and put 'glue' in its place,
+and you have the history of Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, you
+can make the true history of every great business in the world which has
+lasted thirty years."</p>
+
+<p>"We have no secret," said Manager Daniel J. Morrill, of the Cambria Iron
+Works, employing seven thousand men, at Johnstown, Pa. "We always try to
+beat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we've got, and we
+don't care who knows it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't try to see how cheap a machine I can produce, but how good a
+machine," said the late John C. Whitin, of Northbridge, Mass., to a
+customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery.
+Business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion
+to advertise any machinery for sale, New England cotton manufacturers
+were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add,
+as an all-sufficient guaranty of Northbridge products, "Whitin make."
+Put thoroughness into your work: it pays.</p>
+
+<p>"The accurate boy is always the favored one," said President Tuttle. If
+a carpenter must stand at his journeyman's elbow to be<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;153">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a> sure his work is
+right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he might
+as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Girard, can you not assist me by giving me a little work?" asked
+one John Smith, who had formerly worked for the great banker and
+attracted attention by his activity.</p>
+
+<p>"Assistance&mdash;work&mdash;ah? You want work?" "Yes sir; it's a long time since
+I've had anything to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I shall give you some. You see dem stone yondare?" "Yes,
+sir." "Very well; you shall fetch and put them in this place; you see?"
+"Yes sir." "And when you done, come to me at my bank."</p>
+
+<p>Smith finished his task, reported to Mr. Girard, and asked for more
+work. "Ah, ha, oui. You want more work? Very well; you shall go place
+dem stone where you got him. Understandez? You take him back." "Yes,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>Again Smith performed the work and waited on Mr. Girard for payment.
+"Ah, ha, you all finish?" "Yes, sir." "Very well; how much money shall I
+give you?" "One dollar, sir." "Dat is honest. You take no advantage.
+Dare is your dollar." "Can I do anything else for you?" "Oui, come here
+when you get up to-morrow. You shall have more work."</p>
+
+<p>Smith was punctual, but for the third<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;154">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a> time, and yet again for the
+fourth, he was ordered to "take dem stone back again." When he called
+for his pay in the evening Stephen Girard spoke very cordially. "Ah,
+Monsieur Smit, you shall be my man; you mind your own business and do
+it, ask no questions, you do not interfere. You got one vife?" "Yes,
+sir." "Ah, dat is bad. Von vife is bad. Any little chicks?" "Yes, sir,
+five living."</p>
+
+<p>"Five? Dat is good; I like five. I like you, Monsieur Smit; you like to
+work; you mind your business. Now I do something for your five little
+chicks. There: take these five pieces of paper for your five little
+chicks; you shall work for them; you shall mind your own business, and
+your little chicks shall never want five more." In a few years Mr. Smith
+became one of the wealthiest and most respected merchants of
+Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to estimate the great influence upon a life of the early
+formed habit of doing everything to a finish, not leaving it half done,
+or pretty nearly done, but completely done. Nature finishes every little
+leaf, even to every little rib, its edges and stem, as exactly and
+perfectly as though it were the only leaf to be made that year. Even the
+flower that blooms in the mountain dell, where no human eye will ever
+behold it, is finished with the same perfection and exactness of form
+and outline, with the same<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;155">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a> delicate shade of color, with the same
+completeness of beauty, as though it was made for royalty in the queen's
+garden. "Perfection to the finish" is a motto which every youth should
+adopt.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you attain such excellence in your profession?" was asked of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds. "By observing one simple rule, namely, to make each
+picture the best," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>The discipline of being exact is uplifting. Progress is never more rapid
+than it is when we are studying to be accurate. The effort educates all
+the powers. Arthur Helps says: "I do not know that there is anything
+except it be humility, which is so valuable, as an incident of
+education, as accuracy: and accuracy can be taught. Direct lies told to
+the world are as dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoods
+of inaccuracy."</p>
+
+<p>Too many youths enter upon their business in a languid, half-hearted
+way, and do their work in a slipshod manner. The consequence is that
+they inspire neither admiration nor confidence on the part of their
+superiors, and cut off almost every chance of success. There is a loose,
+perfunctory method of doing one's work that never merits advance, and
+very rarely wins it. Instead of buckling to their task with all the
+force they possess, they merely touch it with the tips of their fingers,
+their rule<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;156">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a> apparently being, the maximum of ease with the minimum of
+work. The principle of Strafford, the great minister of Charles I., is
+indicated by his motto, the one word "Thorough." It was said of King
+Hezekiah, "In every work that he began, he did it with all his heart and
+prospered."</p>
+
+<p>The stone-cutter goes to work on a stone and most patiently shapes it.
+He carves that bit of fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. And
+by-and-by the master says, "Well done," and takes it away and gives him
+another block and tells him to work on that. And so he works on that
+from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only
+knows that he is earning his bread. And he continues to put all his
+skill and taste into his work. He has no idea what use will be made of
+these few stones which he has been carving, until afterward, when, one
+day, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the Art
+Gallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. He did not know
+what they were for, but the architect did. And as he stands looking at
+his work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street, he
+says: "I am glad I did it well." And every day as he passes that way, he
+says to himself exultingly, "I did it well." He did not draw the design,
+nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made of
+his work: but he took<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;157">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a> pains in cutting those stems; and when he saw
+they were a part of that magnificent structure, his soul rejoiced.</p>
+
+<p>Work that is not finished, is not work at all; it is merely a botch. We
+often see this defect of incompleteness in a child, which increases in
+youth. All about the house, everywhere, there are half-finished things.
+It is true that children often become tired of things which they begin
+with enthusiasm; but there is a great difference in children about
+finishing what they undertake. A boy, for instance, will start out in
+the morning with great enthusiasm to dig his garden over; but, after a
+few minutes, his enthusiasm has evaporated, and he wants to go fishing.
+He soon becomes tired of this, and thinks he will make a boat. No sooner
+does he get a saw and knife and a few pieces of board about him than he
+makes up his mind that really what he wanted to do, after all, was to
+play ball, and this, in turn, must give way to something else.</p>
+
+<p>One watch, set right, will do to set many by; but, on the other hand,
+one that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole neighborhood.
+The same may be said of the example we individually set to those around
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever I have tried to do in life," said Dickens, "I have tried with
+all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted
+myself to completely."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;158">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>It is no disgrace to be a shoemaker, but it is a disgrace for a
+shoemaker to make bad shoes.</p>
+
+<p>A traveler, recently returned from Jerusalem, found, in conversation
+with Humboldt, that the latter was as conversant with the streets and
+houses of Jerusalem as he was himself. On being asked how long it was
+since he had visited it, the aged philosopher replied: "I have never
+been there; but I expected to go sixty years since, and I prepared
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>So noted for excellency was everything bearing the brand of George
+Washington, that a barrel of flour marked "George Washington, Mount
+Vernon," was exempted from the customary inspection in the West India
+ports.</p>
+
+<p>Pascal, the most wonderful mathematical genius of his time, whose work
+on conic sections, at sixteen, Descartes refused to believe could be
+produced at that age, is considered to have fixed the French language,
+as Luther did the German, by his writings. None of his provincial
+letters, with the exception of the last three, was more than eight
+quarto pages in length, yet he devoted twenty days to the writing of a
+single letter, and one of them was written no less than thirteen times.</p>
+
+<p>The night the Tasmania was wrecked, the captain had given the course
+north by west, sixty-seven degrees. He had taken account of eddies and
+currents. The second officer,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;159">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a> overlooking these, ordered the helmsman
+to make it north by west, fifty-seven degrees, but to bring the ship
+around so gently that the captain wouldn't know it. Hence her
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Rev. Mr. Maley, of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church, had the
+habit of greatly exaggerating anything he talked about. His brethren at
+conference told him that this habit was growing on him, and rendering
+him unpopular in the ministry. Mr. Maley heard them patiently, and then
+said: "Brethren, I am aware of the truth of all you have said, and have
+shed barrels of tears over it."</p>
+
+<p>There is a great difference between going just right and a little
+wrong.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;160">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>TRIFLES.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>In the elder days of Art<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Builders wrought with greatest care<br /></span>
+<span>Each minute and unseen part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For the gods see everywhere.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Longfellow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Think naught a trifle, though it small appear,<br /></span>
+<span>Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,<br /></span>
+<span>And trifles, life.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Young.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The smallest hair throws its shadow.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Goethe.</span></p>
+
+<p>He that despiseth small things shall fall little by little.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Ecclesiastes.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>It is the little rift within the lute,<br /></span>
+<span>That by and by will make the music mute,<br /></span>
+<span>And ever widening slowly silence all.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Tennyson.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>"A pebble in the streamlet scant<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Has turned the course of many a river:<br /></span>
+<span>A dewdrop on the baby plant<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Has warped the giant oak forever."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>It is the close observation of little things which is the
+secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every
+pursuit of life.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Smiles.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"Only!&mdash;But then the onlys<br /></span>
+<span>Make up the mighty all."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is
+worth doing<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;161">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a> well," said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. When
+asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous
+artists he replied, "Because I have neglected nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Do little things now," says a Persian proverb; "so shall big things
+come to thee by and by asking to be done." God will take care of the
+great things if we do not neglect the little ones.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman advertised for a boy to assist him in his office, and nearly
+fifty applicants presented themselves to him. Out of the whole number he
+in a short time selected one and dismissed the rest. "I should like to
+know," said a friend, "on what ground you selected that boy, who had not
+a single recommendation?" "You are mistaken," said the gentleman, "he
+had a great many. He wiped his feet when he came in, and closed the door
+after him, showing that he was careful. He gave up his seat instantly to
+that lame old man, showing that he was kind and thoughtful. He took off
+his cap when he came in, and answered my questions promptly and
+respectfully, showing that he was polite and gentlemanly. He picked up
+the book which I had purposely laid upon the floor, and replaced it on
+the table, while all the rest stepped over it, or shoved it aside; and
+he waited quietly for his turn, instead of pushing and crowding, showing
+that he was honest and orderly.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;162">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a> When I talked to him, I noticed that
+his clothes were carefully brushed, his hair in nice order, and his
+teeth as white as milk; and when he wrote his name, I noticed that his
+finger-nails were clean, instead of being tipped with jet, like that
+handsome little fellow's, in the blue jacket. Don't you call those
+letters of recommendation? I do; and I would give more for what I can
+tell about a boy by using my eyes ten minutes, than for all the fine
+letters he can bring me."</p>
+
+<p>"Least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the
+great laws of nature. All life comes from microscopic beginnings. In
+nature there is nothing small. The microscope reveals as great a world
+below as the telescope above. All of nature's laws govern the smallest
+atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit," said
+a gentleman to Michael Angelo. "But," said the sculptor, "I have
+retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out
+that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that
+limb, etc." "But they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "It may be
+so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and
+perfection is no trifle." That infinite patience which made Michael
+Angelo spend a week<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;163">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a> in bringing out a muscle in a statue with more
+vital fidelity to truth, or Gerhard Dow a day in giving the right effect
+to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between success
+and failure.</p>
+
+<p>"Of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told of
+his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "What is the
+use of a child?" replied Franklin; "it may become a man."</p>
+
+<p>In the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick to
+the bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery.
+Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the
+father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full
+pay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peel
+one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "Ay,
+that they be," replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?"
+"Why, you see, Meester Peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret!
+If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am." "That's so," said Mr. Peel,
+smiling; "but I'd give you something to know. Could you make all the
+looms work as smoothly as yours?" "Ivery one of 'em, meester," replied
+Dick. "Well, what shall I give you for your secret?" asked Mr. Peel, and
+Dick replied, "Gi' me a quart of ale every day as I'm in the mills, and
+I'll tell thee all about it." "Agreed,"<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;164">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a> said Mr. Peel, and Dick
+whispered very cautiously in his ear, "Chalk your bobbins!" That was the
+whole secret, and Mr. Peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, for
+he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. Dick was handsomely
+rewarded with money instead of beer. His little idea has saved the world
+millions of dollars.</p>
+
+<p>The totality of a life at any moment is the product mainly of little
+things. Trifling choices, insignificant exercises of the will,
+unimportant acts often repeated,&mdash;things seemingly of small
+account,&mdash;these are the thousand tiny sculptors that are carving away
+constantly at the rude block of our life, giving it shape and feature.
+Indeed the formation of character is much like the work of an artist in
+stone. The sculptor takes a rough, unshapen mass of marble, and with
+strong, rapid strokes of mallet and chisel quickly brings into view the
+rude outline of his design; but after the outline appears then come
+hours, days, perhaps even years, of patient, minute labor. A novice
+might see no change in the statue from one day to another; for though
+the chisel touches the stone a thousand times, it touches as lightly as
+the fall of a rain-drop, but each touch leaves a mark.</p>
+
+<p>The smallest thing becomes respectable when regarded as the commencement
+of what has advanced or is advancing into<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;165">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a> magnificence. The crude
+settlement of Romulus would have remained an insignificant circumstance
+and might have justly sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length
+commanded the world.</p>
+
+<p>Beecher says that men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations
+and lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in Panama, a
+million madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them,
+would begin to bore the piles down under the water. There would be
+neither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touch
+the post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through.</p>
+
+<p>Men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift
+themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should
+never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their
+souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable
+ruin.</p>
+
+<p>Lichens, of themselves of little value, prepare the way for important
+vegetation. They deposit, in dying, an acid which wears away the rock
+and prepares the mould necessary for the nourishment of superior plants.</p>
+
+<p>It was but a tiny rivulet trickling down the embankment that started the
+terrible Johnstown flood and swept thousands into eternity. One noble
+heroic act has elevated a nation. Franklin's whole career was<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;166">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a> changed
+by a torn copy of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good. Taking up a stone
+to throw at a turtle was the turning point in Theodore Parker's life. As
+he raised the stone something within him said, "Don't do it," and he
+didn't. He went home and asked his mother what it was in him that said
+"don't." She told him it was conscience. Small things become great when
+a great soul sees them. A child, when asked why a certain tree grew
+crooked, answered, "Somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow."</p>
+
+<p>By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boy
+in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a
+dike. He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water
+was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark
+and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. His
+name is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland.</p>
+
+<p>We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the
+ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved
+forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man
+never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food.</p>
+
+<p>The tears of Virgilia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians when
+nothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;167">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the
+tip of her nose; and if Cleopatra's had been an inch shorter Mark Antony
+would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the
+blemish would have changed the history of the world. Anne Boleyn's
+fascinating smile split the great Church of Rome in twain, and gave a
+nation an altered destiny. Napoleon, who feared not to attack the
+proudest monarchs in their capitals, shrank from the political influence
+of one independent woman in private life, Madame de Sta&euml;l.</p>
+
+<p>It was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty,
+but it laid Chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of glass was due to a mere accident&mdash;the building of a
+fire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at Bayonne, in France,
+owes its existence to the fact that a Basque regiment, being hard
+pressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as their
+ammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into the
+barrels of their muskets, which was done, and the first bayonet-charge
+was made.</p>
+
+<p>A jest led to a war between two great nations. The presence of a comma
+in a deed, lost to the owner of an estate five thousand dollars a month
+for eight months. The battle of Corunna was fought and Sir<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;168">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a> John Moore's
+life sacrificed, in 1809, through a dragoon stopping to drink while
+bearing despatches.</p>
+
+<p>"You do no work," said the scissors to the rivet. "Where would your work
+be," said the rivet to the scissors, "if I didn't keep you together?"</p>
+
+<p>Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. Those
+that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend
+it, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of? Little
+courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly
+letter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million&mdash;once in a
+lifetime&mdash;may do a heroic action.</p>
+
+<p>We call the large majority of human lives <em>obscure</em>. Presumptuous that
+we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust
+of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;169">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>COURAGE.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Quit yourselves like men.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;1 Samuel  iv. 9</span></p>
+
+<p>Cowards have no luck.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Elizabeth Kulman.</span></p>
+
+<p>He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day
+surmount a fear.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>To dare is better than to doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">For doubt is always grieving;<br /></span>
+<span>'Tis faith that finds the riddles out;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The prize is for believing.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Henry Burton.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">&mdash;Walk<br /></span>
+<span>Boldly and wisely in that light thou hast;<br /></span>
+<span>There is a hand above will help thee on.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Bailey's Festus.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>"Have hope! Though clouds environ now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And gladness hides her face in scorn,<br /></span>
+<span>Put thou the shadow from thy brow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No night but hath its morn."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"Our enemies are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopyl&aelig;. "And
+we are before them," was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver your
+arms," came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them," was the
+answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: "You will not be able
+to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "Then we will fight in
+the shade," replied a Lacedemonian. What<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;170">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a> wonder that a handful of such
+men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"The hero," says Emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred."</p>
+
+<p>Darius the Great sent ambassadors to the Athenians, to demand earth and
+water, which denoted submission. The Athenians threw them into a ditch
+and told them, there was earth and water enough.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma,
+when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were
+retreating. "No," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors."
+"To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's
+noble defiance to the enemies of France.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare says: "He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the
+hives because the bees have stings."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a bad omen," said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell
+on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness
+for a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare
+venture now upon the sea." So he returned to his house; but his young
+son Leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed
+southward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni had
+been driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two or
+three years<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;171">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a> before. The first land that they saw was probably Labrador,
+a barren, rugged plain. Leif called this country Heluland, or the land
+of flat stones. Sailing onward many days, he came to a low, level coast
+thickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the country
+Markland, probably the modern Nova Scotia. Sailing onward, they came to
+an island which they named Vinland, on account of the abundance of
+delicious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the year 1000. Here
+where the city of Newport, R.&nbsp;I., stands, they spent many months, and
+then returned to Greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and
+strange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and no doubt Eric was
+sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen.</p>
+
+<p>"Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the Gold of
+Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails to
+the wind!"</p>
+
+<p>Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime
+of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have
+enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne at
+twenty, had conquered the whole known world before dying at
+thirty-three. Julius C&aelig;sar captured eight hundred cities, conquered
+three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great
+orator and one of the greatest statesmen<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;172">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a> known, and still was a young
+man. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at
+twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his first
+battle as a colonel at twenty-two. Lafayette was made general of the
+whole French army at twenty. Charlemagne was master of France and
+Germany at thirty. Cond&eacute; was only twenty-two when he conquered at
+Rocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the
+pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was in
+Parliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was
+twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was a Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth
+Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quincey
+at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order.
+Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems at
+fifteen. N.&nbsp;P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college.
+Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. Luther was
+but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the
+bishop and defied the pope. Nelson was a lieutenant in the British navy
+before he was twenty. He was but forty-seven when he received his death
+wound at Trafalgar. Charles the Twelfth was only nineteen when he gained
+the battle of Narva; at thirty-six Cortes was the conqueror<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;173">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a> of Mexico;
+at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India.
+Hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at
+Cann&aelig;, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the Republic of Rome; and
+Napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of Italy, he
+out-generaled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of
+Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the
+allotted limit of life. Victor Hugo and Wellington were both in their
+prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. George
+Bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five.
+Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a
+marvel of literary and scholarly ability.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed," said
+a phrenologist, who was examining Wellington's head. "You are right,"
+replied the Iron Duke, "and but for my sense of duty I should have
+retreated in my first fight." That first fight, on an Indian field, was
+one of the most terrible on record.</p>
+
+<p>Grant never knew when he was beaten. When told that he was surrounded by
+the enemy at Belmont, he quietly replied: "Well, then, we must cut our
+way out."</p>
+
+<p>When General Jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small
+settlement, a<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;174">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a> border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the
+court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge
+ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare approach him. "Call
+a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." But they also shrank with
+fear from the ruffian. "Call me, then," said Jackson; "this court is
+adjourned for five minutes." He left the bench, walked straight up to
+the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped
+his weapons, afterward saying: "There was something in his eye I could
+not resist."</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed
+it to be right. At the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread
+and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had
+refused, Lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate
+whenever an opportunity presented. "Go to Lincoln," people would say,
+when these bounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraid
+of any cause, if it's right."</p>
+
+<p>Abraham Lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with
+little education and no influential friends. When at last he had begun
+the practice of law it required no little daring to cast his fortune
+with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation
+he had gained. Only the most sublime moral courage could have<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;175">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a> sustained
+him as President to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long
+train of disaster; to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; to support
+Grant and Stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press;
+and through it all to do the right as God gave him to see the right.</p>
+
+<p>"Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." To determine to do anything is
+half the battle. "To think a thing is impossible is to make it so."
+"Courage is victory, timidity is defeat."</p>
+
+<p>Don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in
+crossing bridges you have not reached. Don't fool with a nettle! Grasp
+with firmness if you would rob it of its sting. To half will and to hang
+forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life.</p>
+
+<p>Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till their
+effects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what is your
+competitor but a man? <em>Conquer your place in the world</em>, for all things
+serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune
+bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously.
+The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic
+of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure
+men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has
+prevented them<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;176">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a> from making a first effort; and who, if they could have
+been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths
+in the career of usefulness and fame. "No great deed is done," says
+George Eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty."</p>
+
+<p>A mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in such
+constant distress by its fear of a cat that the magician, taking pity on
+it, turned it into a cat itself. Immediately it began to suffer from its
+fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to
+suffer from fear of a tiger, and the magician turned it into a tiger.
+Then it began to suffer from its fear of huntsmen, and the magician, in
+disgust, said, "Be a mouse again. As you have only the heart of a mouse
+it is impossible to help you by giving you the body of a nobler animal."
+And the poor creature again became a mouse.</p>
+
+<p>Young Commodore Oliver H. Perry, not twenty-eight years old, was
+intrusted with the plan to gain control of Lake Erie. With great energy
+Perry directed the construction of nine ships, carrying fifty-four guns,
+and conquered Commodore Barclay, a veteran of European navies, with six
+vessels, carrying sixty-three guns. Perry had no experience in naval
+battles before this.</p>
+
+<p>To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. Feasible
+projects often miscarry through despondency, and are strangled at birth
+by a cowardly imagination.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;177">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a> A ship on a lee shore stands out to sea to
+escape shipwreck. Shrink and you will be despised.</p>
+
+<p>One of Napoleon's drummer boys won the battle of Arcola. Napoleon's
+little army of fourteen thousand men had fought fifty thousand Austrians
+for seventy-two hours; the Austrians' position enabled them to sweep the
+bridge of Arcola, which the French had gained and which they must hold
+to win the battle. The drummer boy, on the shoulders of his sergeant
+(who swam across the river with him), beat the drum all the way across
+the river, and when on the opposite end of the bridge he beat his drum
+so vigorously that the Austrians, remembering the terrible French
+onslaught of the day before, fled in terror, thinking the French army
+was advancing upon them. Napoleon dated his great confidence in himself
+from this drum. This boy's heroic act was represented in stone on the
+front of the Pantheon of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Two days before the battle of Jena Napoleon said: "My lads, you must not
+fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy's
+ranks."</p>
+
+<p>Arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled and
+discouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies in
+mathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-book
+caught his attention and interested him. He found it to be<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;178">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a> a short
+letter from D'Alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, and
+read: "Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolve
+themselves as you advance. Proceed and light will dawn and shine with
+increasing clearness on your path." "That maxim," he said, "was my
+greatest master in mathematics."</p>
+
+<p>Overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, the
+captain of a French brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite of
+all the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, and
+alter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompanied
+by a horrible crash. The boats were lowered, but only to be swept away
+by the waves. As a last resort the captain proposed that some sailors
+should swim ashore with a rope, but not a man would volunteer.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain," said the little twelve-year-old cabin boy, Jacques, timidly,
+"You don't wish to expose the lives of good sailors like these; it does
+not matter what becomes of a little cabin boy. Give me a ball of strong
+string, which will unroll as I go on; fasten one end around my body, and
+I promise you that within an hour the rope shall be well fastened to the
+shore or I will perish in the attempt."</p>
+
+<p>Before anyone could stop him he leaped overboard. His head was soon seen
+like a<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;179">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a> black point rising above the waves and then it disappeared in
+the distance and mist, and but for the occasional pull upon the ball of
+cord all would have thought him dead. At length it fell as if slackened
+and the sailors looked at one another in silence, when a quick, violent
+pull, followed by a second and a third, told that Jacques had reached
+the shore. A strong rope was fastened to the cord and pulled to the
+shore, and by its aid many of the sailors were rescued.</p>
+
+<p>In 1833 Miss Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress of Canterbury,
+Conn., opened her school to negro children as well as to whites. The
+whole place was thrown into uproar; town meetings were called to
+denounce her; the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
+isolate the school from the support of the townspeople; stores and
+churches were closed against teacher and pupils; public conveyances were
+denied them; physicians would not attend them; Miss Crandall's own
+friends dared not visit her; the house was assailed with rotten eggs and
+stones and finally set on fire. Yet the cause was righteous and the
+opposition proved vain and fruitless. Public opinion is often radically
+wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Staunch old Admiral Farragut&mdash;he of the true heart and the iron
+will&mdash;said to another officer of the navy, "Dupont, do you know why you
+didn't get into Charleston with<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;180">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a> your ironclads?" "Oh, it was because
+the channel was so crooked." "No, Dupont, it was not that." "Well, the
+rebel fire was perfectly horrible." "Yes, but it wasn't that." "What was
+it, then?" "<em>It was because you didn't believe you could go in.</em>"</p>
+
+<p>"I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me
+<em>how</em> he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always
+went straight forward and <em>did it</em>." So answered Sir Edward Hawke, when
+his appointment of Howe for some peculiarly responsible duty was
+criticized on the ground that Howe was the junior admiral in the fleet.</p>
+
+<p>There is a tradition among the Indians that Manitou was traveling in the
+invisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beasts
+glare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before an
+impassable river. As he determined to proceed, the thorns turned out
+phantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow.
+When we march on obstacles disappear. Many distinguished foreign and
+American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine
+was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of the
+United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "Colfax does not
+drink," sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. "You are
+right," said the Vice-President, "I dare not."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;181">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>A Western party recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate
+officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during
+the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at
+Beaufort, S.&nbsp;C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied,
+Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he
+could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song.
+He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I must
+drink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers.'" The men were so affected and
+ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying
+courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon.</p>
+
+<p>When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousing
+reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of
+Grant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other
+Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their
+good-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner,
+the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be
+procured for the table at night. When the time came to serve the wine,
+the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietly
+turned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a great
+surprise to the Texans, but they were<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;182">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a> equal to the occasion. Without a
+single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables
+turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the
+liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity,
+nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly
+courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are
+those of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and trying
+to conceal it or make up for it by style." It takes courage for a young
+man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise
+and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your
+comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest
+poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say "No"
+squarely when those around you say "Yes." It takes courage to do your
+duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous
+although neglecting sacred obligations. It takes courage to unmask your
+true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for
+what you really are.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;183">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>WILL-POWER.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring
+a thorough will to do it.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;W. Humboldt.</span></p>
+
+<p>It is firmness that makes the gods on our side.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Voltaire.</span></p>
+
+<p>Stand firm, don't flutter.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Franklin.</span></p>
+
+<p>People do not lack strength they lack will.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Victor Hugo.</span></p>
+
+<p>Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of
+countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Jeremy Collier.</span></p>
+
+<p>When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to
+see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and
+freedom.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;John Foster.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"Do you know," asked Balzac's father, "that in literature a man must be
+either a king or a beggar?" "Very well," replied his son, "<em>I will be a
+king.</em>" After ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he won
+success as an author.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you repair that magistrate's bench with such great care?" asked
+a bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. "Because I wish
+to make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself,"
+replied the other. He did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few years
+later.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;184">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>"<em>I will be marshal of France and a great general</em>," exclaimed a young
+French officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. He
+became a successful general and a marshal of France.</p>
+
+<p>"There is so much power in faith," says Bulwer, "even when faith is
+applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly
+persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems
+impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies."</p>
+
+<p>There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real
+success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a
+Paradise Lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of
+Webster's Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor.
+Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their
+shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry,
+irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt
+and detail.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten?" asked John Hunter. "He will
+do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of a man never
+fails."</p>
+
+<p>"Circumstances," says Milton, "have rarely favored famous men. They have
+fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles."</p>
+
+<p>"We have a half belief," said Emerson,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;185">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a> "that the person is possible who
+can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man
+<em>who is a match for events</em>,&mdash;one who never found his match,&mdash;against
+whom other men being dashed are broken,&mdash;one who can give you any odds
+and beat you."</p>
+
+<p>The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually
+striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time
+very far toward his chosen goal.</p>
+
+<p>At nineteen Bayard Taylor walked to Philadelphia, thirty miles, to find
+a publisher for fifteen of his poems. He wanted to see them printed in a
+book; but no publisher would undertake it. He returned to his home
+whistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had not
+abated.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks on
+account of his poverty. He returned to London with only thirty cents
+left. He tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had in
+his knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. Of that time he wrote: "My
+situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive." But his
+will defied circumstances and he rose above them. For two years he lived
+on two hundred and fifty dollars a year in London, earning every dollar
+of it with his pen.</p>
+
+<p>His untimely death in 1879, at fifty-four,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;186">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a> when Minister to Berlin, was
+lamented by the learned and great of all countries.</p>
+
+<p>We are told of a young New York inventor who about twenty years ago
+spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful,
+would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune,
+and, what he valued more, his usefulness. The next morning the daily
+papers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemed
+vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little
+woman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like a
+fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. He went
+into his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>At length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect.
+"It <em>shall</em> succeed!" he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was crying
+over the papers when he went back. "They are very cruel," she said.
+"They don't understand." "I'll make them understand," he replied
+cheerfully. "It was a fight for six years," he said afterward. "Poverty,
+sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the <em>dogged
+determination</em> that it should succeed." It did succeed. The invention
+was a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happy
+man.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was a terrible example of what<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;187">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a> the power of will can
+accomplish. He always threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon
+his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before
+him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his
+armies,&mdash;"There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the
+Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost
+inaccessible. "Impossible," said he, "is a word only to be found in the
+dictionary of fools." He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes
+employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one,
+not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life
+into them. "I made my generals out of mud," he said.</p>
+
+<p>To think we are able is almost to be so&mdash;to determine upon attainment,
+is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has often
+seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. The strength of
+Suwarrow's character lay in his power of willing, and, like most
+resolute persons, he preached it up as a system.</p>
+
+<p>Before Pizarro, D'Almagro and De Luque obtained any associates or arms
+or soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or the
+powers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn mass in one of
+the great churches, dedicating themselves to the conquest of Peru. The
+people expressed their contempt at such a monstrous project,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;188">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a> and were
+shocked at such sacrilege. But these decided men continued the service
+and afterward retired for their great preparation with an entire
+insensibility to the expressions of contempt. Their firmness was
+absolutely invincible. The world has deplored the results of this
+expedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness of
+decision of its leaders. Such firmness would keep to its course and
+retain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world.</p>
+
+<p>At the battle of Marengo the French army was supposed to be defeated;
+but, while Bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move,
+Dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, as
+it was only about the middle of the afternoon. Napoleon rallied his men,
+renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the Austrians, though
+the unfortunate Dessaix lost his own life on that field.</p>
+
+<p>What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it
+invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships,
+established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any
+chance in C&aelig;sar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with
+Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every
+battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopyl&aelig;,
+Trafalgar,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;189">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a> Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our
+failures to destiny.</p>
+
+<p>A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to
+the wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolves
+to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that
+reaches the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded
+wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith
+and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but
+less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men
+go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they
+lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have
+resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements
+and successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, that in order
+to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand
+shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump
+in and scramble through as well as we can.</p>
+
+<p>Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may
+not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that
+merely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it he
+originates a good in the universe, which the universe could not
+annihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;190">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a> created
+energies of intelligence or matter were combined against it?</p>
+
+<p>A man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but the
+superior of circumstances. He is free; nay, more, he is a king; and
+though this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles,
+once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has a
+royalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him.</p>
+
+<p>What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who
+never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will
+fight on the stumps? Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He
+thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined
+endeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall place
+bounds to his achievements! Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries in
+science, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. Deprive
+Euler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems,
+thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. Lock up
+the poor Bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegory
+in the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of
+his cell. Burn the body of Wycliffe and throw the ashes into the Severn;
+but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeated
+with his principles, to all lands. <em>The world<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;191">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a> always listens to a man
+with a will in him.</em> You might as well snub the sun as such men as
+Bismarck and Grant.</p>
+
+<p>Hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage when
+despondency would give up the battle of life<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had a comma">.</ins> He is the best doctor
+who can implant <em>hope</em> and courage in the human soul. So he is the
+greatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,<br /></span>
+<span>Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky<br /></span>
+<span>Gives us free scope; and only backward pulls<br /></span>
+<span>Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>"How much I could do if I only tried."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;192">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that
+ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Bible.</span></p>
+
+<p>The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer
+himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most
+shameful and vile.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Plato.</span></p>
+
+<p>The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than
+the best which teaches everything else and not that.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;John Sterling.</span></p>
+
+<p>Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Seneca.</span></p>
+
+<p>The energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge,
+must originate in self and be self-directed.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Thomas J. Morgan.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>The foes with which they waged their strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Were passion, self and sin;<br /></span>
+<span>The victories that laureled life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Were fought and won within.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Edward H. Dewart.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"I'll sign it after awhile," a drunkard would reply, when repeatedly
+urged by his wife to sign the pledge; "but I don't like to break off at
+once, the best way is to get used to a thing." "Very well, old man,"
+said his wife, "see if you don't fall into a hole one of these days,
+with no one to help you out."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;193">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>Not long after, when intoxicated, he did fall into a shallow well, but
+his shouts for help were fortunately heard by his wife. "Didn't I tell
+you so?" she asked. "It's lucky I was in hearing or you might have
+drowned." He took hold of the bucket and she tugged at the windlass; but
+when he was near the top her grasp slipped and down he went into the
+water again. This was repeated until he screamed: "Look here, you're
+doing that on purpose, I know you are." "Well, now, I am," admitted the
+wife. "Don't you remember telling me it's best to get used to a thing by
+degrees? I'm afraid if I bring you up sudden, you would not find it
+wholesome." Finding that his case was becoming desperate, he promised to
+sign the pledge at once. His wife raised him out immediately, but warned
+him that if ever he became intoxicated and fell into the well again, she
+would leave him there.</p>
+
+<p>A man captured a young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. It grew
+up like a kitten, fond and gentle. There was no evidence of its savage,
+bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. But one day while
+the master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his hand
+started the blood from a scratch. The moment the beast tasted blood, his
+ferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon his master to tear
+him to pieces. Sometimes the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;194">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a> appetite for drink, which was thought to
+be buried years ago, is roused by the taste or the smell of "the devil
+in solution," and the wretched victim finds himself a helpless slave to
+the passion which he thought dead.</p>
+
+<p>When a young man, Hugh Miller once drank the two glasses of whiskey
+which fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons with
+whom he worked. On reaching home he tried to read Bacon's Essays, his
+favorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehend
+the meaning. "The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt,
+one of degradation," said he. "I had sunk, by my own act, for the time,
+to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege
+to be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable one
+for forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never
+again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking
+usage; and with God's help I was enabled to hold by the determination."</p>
+
+<p>In a certain manufacturing town an employer one Saturday paid to his
+workmen $700 in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. On Monday
+$450 of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by the
+saloon-keepers. When the fact was made known, the workmen were so
+startled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. The
+times would not be so<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;195">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a> "hard" for the workmen if the saloons did not
+take in so much of their wages. If they would organize a strike against
+the saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase of
+wages, and to include an increase of savings.</p>
+
+<p>How often we might read the following sign over the threshold of a
+youthful life: "For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "golden
+chances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little
+sensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife,
+lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent
+possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a
+thousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, a
+brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a
+skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all
+exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a
+shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty
+degeneration of the heart, for Bright's disease, for a drunkard's
+liver."</p>
+
+<p>With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed
+the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a
+mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful
+battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the
+sunlight; but he had conquered the demon<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;196">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a> which had almost killed him.
+Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off
+using tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the end of
+it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew camomile,
+gentian, tooth-picks, but it was of no use. He bought another plug of
+tobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully, but he
+looked at it and said, "You are a <em>weed</em>, and I am a <em>man</em>. I'll master
+you if I die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily.</p>
+
+<p>There was an abbot that desired a piece of ground that lay conveniently
+for him. The owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he was
+contented to let it. The abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm it
+for one crop. He had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns&mdash;a crop that
+lasted three hundred years. So Satan asks to get possession of our souls
+by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong that
+seems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted the
+seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter
+Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever
+issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."</p>
+
+<p>Thomas A. Edison was once asked why<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;197">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a> he was a total abstainer. He said,
+"I thought I had a better use for my head."</p>
+
+<p>Byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his natural
+propensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and control
+his animal appetites was a very different thing. At all events, it
+seemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest.
+Let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life's voyage cultivate
+this one great virtue, "self-control." There is nothing so important to
+a youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivated
+will; everything depends upon it. If he has it, he will succeed; if he
+does not have it, he will fail.</p>
+
+<p>"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer
+himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful
+and vile."</p>
+
+<p>"Silence," says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the
+contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man
+who will not."</p>
+
+<p>Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we
+should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I
+mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted?<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;198">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a> what
+virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our
+vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the
+shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control
+your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.</p>
+
+<p>It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation or
+apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A man
+feels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm of
+passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool.
+And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too.</p>
+
+<p>The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and
+furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon
+Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door.
+His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more;
+and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel
+upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder
+must needs produce a shower." Alcibiades, his friend, talking with him
+about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an
+everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have so
+accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the
+noise of carriages in the street."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;199">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>It is said of Socrates, that whether he was teaching the rules of an
+exact morality, whether he was answering his corrupt judges, or was
+receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, he was still the
+same man; that is to say, calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid&mdash;in a word,
+wise to the last.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not enough to have great qualities," says La Rochefoucauld; "we
+should also have the management of them." No man can call himself
+educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will.</p>
+
+<p>"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said
+Eardley Wilmot; "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it
+would be Godlike to forgive it."</p>
+
+<p>"He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive,
+with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet
+restrain himself and forgive&mdash;these are strong men, the spiritual
+heroes."</p>
+
+<p>To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are
+exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why
+put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is
+remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a
+poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a
+servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you
+feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;200">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a> too
+much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak
+in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the "sweet by and by,"
+when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled.</p>
+
+<p>But self-respect must be accompanied by self-conquest, or our strong
+feelings may prove but runaway horses. He who would command others must
+first learn to obey, and he who would command his own powers must learn
+to be submissive to the still small voice within. Discipline the
+passions, curb pride and impatience, restrain all hasty impulses. Deny
+yourself the gratification of any desire not sanctioned by reason. Shame
+and its consequent degradation follow the loss of our own good opinion
+rather than the esteem of others. Too many yield in the perpetual
+conflict between temptation to gratify the coarser appetites and
+aspiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful. Voices unheard by
+those around us whisper "Don't," but too often self-respect is lost, the
+will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. Such battles must be
+fought by all; be ours the victory born of self-control, aided by that
+Heaven which always helps him who prays while putting his own shoulder
+to the wheel.</p>
+
+<p>No man had a better heart or more thoroughly hated oppression than
+Edmund Burke. He possessed neither experience in affairs, nor a tranquil
+judgment, nor the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;201">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a> rule over his own spirit, so that his genius, under
+the impulse of his bewildering passions, wrought much evil to his
+country and to Europe, even while he rendered noble service to the cause
+of commercial freedom, to Ireland, and to America.</p>
+
+<p>Burns could not resist the temptation to utter his clever sarcasms at
+another's expense, and one of his biographers has said that he made a
+hundred enemies for every ten jokes he made. But Burns could no more
+control his appetite than his tongue.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"Thus thoughtless follies laid him low<br /></span>
+<span>And stained his name."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Xanthus, the philosopher, told his servant that on the morrow he was
+going to have some friends to dine, and asked him to get the best thing
+he could find in the market. The <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had &quot;philsopher&quot;">philosopher</ins> and his guests sat down
+the next day at the table. They had nothing but tongue&mdash;four or five
+courses of tongue&mdash;tongue cooked in this way, and tongue cooked in that
+way, and the philosopher lost his patience, and said to his servant,
+"Didn't I tell you to get the best thing in the market?" He said, "I did
+get the best thing in the market. Isn't the tongue the organ of
+sociality, the organ of eloquence, the organ of kindness, the organ of
+worship?" Then Xanthus said, "To-morrow I want you to get the worst
+thing in the market." And on the morrow the philosopher sat at the
+table, and there was nothing<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;202">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a> there but tongue&mdash;four or five courses of
+tongue&mdash;tongue in this shape, and tongue in that shape&mdash;and the
+philosopher again lost his patience, and said, "Didn't I tell you to get
+the worst thing in the market?" The servant replied, "I did; for isn't
+the tongue the organ of blasphemy, the organ of defamation, the organ of
+lying?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can reform my people," said Peter the Great, "but I cannot reform
+myself." He forbade all Russians to wear beards, and to quell the
+insurrection which resulted, he had 8000 revolters beheaded. With a
+hatchet he began the ghastly work. He had his own son beheaded.</p>
+
+<p>He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. He is wanting in the
+highest attributes of humanity. The honor and nobleness of the old
+"knight-errantry" consisted in defending the innocence of men and
+protecting the chastity of women against the assaults of others. But the
+truer and nobler knighthood protects the property and the character, the
+innocence and the chastity of others against one's self. We should all
+be posted upon our weak points, for after all there are many emergencies
+in life when these weak points, not our strong ones, will measure our
+manhood and our strength. Many a woman whom a mouse would frighten out
+of her wits would not shrink from assisting in terrible surgical
+operations in our city or war hospitals, and many an<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;203">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a> officer and
+soldier who would walk up to the cannon's mouth without a tremor in
+battle, would not dare to say his soul was his own in a society parlor.
+Many a great statesman has quailed before the ringer of scorn of a
+fellow-Congressman, and has been completely cowed by a hiss from the
+gallery or a ridiculing paragraph in a newspaper. We all have tender
+spots, weak spots, and a man can never know his strength who does not
+study his weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Violent passions and ardent feelings are seldom found united with
+complete self-command; but when they are they form the strongest
+possible character, for there is all the power of clear thought and cool
+judgment impelled by the resistless energy of feeling. This combination
+Washington possessed; for in his impetuosity there was no foolish
+rashness, and in his passion no injustice. Besides, whatever violence
+there might be within, the explosion seldom came to the surface, and
+when it did it was arrested at once by the stern mandate of his will. He
+never lost the mastery of himself in any emergency, and in 'ruling his
+spirit' showed himself greater than in 'taking a city.'</p>
+
+<p>"It is one of the astonishing things in his life that, amid the perfect
+chaos of feeling into which he was thrown,&mdash;amid the distracted counsels
+and still more distracted affairs that surrounded him,&mdash;he never once<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;204">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>
+lost the perfect equilibrium of his own mind. The contagion of fear and
+doubt and despair could not touch him. He did not seem susceptible to
+the common influences which affect men. His soul poised on its own
+centre, reposed calmly there through all the storms that beat for seven
+years on his noble breast. The ingratitude and folly of those who should
+have been his allies, the insults of his foes, and the frowns of fortune
+never provoked him into a rash act, or deluded him into a single error."</p>
+
+<p>Horace Mann says that there must be a time when the vista of the future,
+with all its possibilities of glory and of shame, first opens to the
+vision of youth. Then is he summoned to make his choice between truth
+and treachery; between honor and dishonor; between purity and
+profligacy; between moral life and moral death. And as he doubts or
+balances between the heavenward or hellward course; as he struggles to
+rise or consents to fall; is there in all the universe of God a
+spectacle of higher exultation or of deeper pathos? Within him are the
+appetites of a brute and the attributes of an angel; and when these meet
+in council to make up the roll of his destiny and seal his fate, shall
+the beast hound out the seraph? Shall the young man, now conscious of
+the largeness of his sphere and of the sovereignty of his choice, wed
+the low ambitions of the world, and seek, with their emptiness, to fill<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;205">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>
+his immortal desires? Because he has a few animal wants that must be
+supplied, shall he become all animal,&mdash;an epicure and an inebriate,&mdash;and
+blasphemously make it the first doctrine of his catechism,&mdash;"the Chief
+End of Man?"&mdash;to glorify his stomach and enjoy it? Because it is the law
+of self-preservation that he shall provide for himself, and the law of
+religion that he shall provide for his family, when he has one, must he,
+therefore, cut away all the bonds of humanity that bind him to his race,
+forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if he
+can have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of a
+sybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when he
+walks the streets where hunger moans and nakedness shivers?</p>
+
+<p>The strong man is the one who ever keeps himself under strict
+discipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of the
+higher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows them
+to be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by his
+inclinations. He drills and disciplines his desires and keeps the roots
+of his life under ground, and never allows them to interfere with his
+character. He is never the slave of his inclinations, nor the sport of
+impulse. He is the commander of himself and heads his ship due north
+even in the wildest tempests of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;206">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a> passion. He is never the slave of his
+strongest desire.</p>
+
+<p>A noted teacher has said that the propensities and habits are as
+teachable as Latin and Greek, while they are infinitely more essential
+to happiness. We are very largely the creatures of our wills. By
+constantly looking on the bright side of things, by viewing everything
+hopefully, by setting the face as a flint every hour of every day toward
+all that is harmonious and beautiful in life, and refusing to listen to
+the discord or to look at the ugly side of life, by constantly directing
+the thought toward what is noble, grand and true, we can soon form
+habits which will develop into a beautiful character, a harmonious and
+well-rounded life. We are creatures of habit, and by knowing the laws of
+its formation we can, in a little while, build up a network of habit
+about us, which will protect us from most of the ugly, selfish and
+degrading things of life. In fact, the only real happiness and unalloyed
+satisfaction we get out of life, is the product of self-control. It is
+the great guardian of all the virtues, without which none of them is
+safe. It is the sentinel, which stands on guard at the door of life, to
+admit friends and exclude enemies.</p>
+
+<p>"I call that mind free," says Channing, "which jealously guards its
+intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;207">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a> master, which does
+not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens
+itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an
+angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more
+of the oracle within; itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to
+supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call that mind
+free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is
+not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of
+accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and
+acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has
+deliberately espoused. I call that mind free which protects itself
+against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human
+opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's,
+which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much
+to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind free
+which through confidence in God and in the power of virtue has cast off
+all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall,
+which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all
+else be lost. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit,
+which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does
+not live on<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;208">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a> its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise
+rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher
+monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and
+higher exertions. I call that mind free which is jealous of its own
+freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards
+its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;209">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>STICK.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue,
+<i>par excellence</i>, of Man against Destiny, of the One against
+the World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this is
+the courage of the Gospel; and its importance, in a social
+view&mdash;its importance to races and institutions&mdash;cannot be too
+earnestly inculcated.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Bulwer.</span></p>
+
+<p>Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of
+countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Jeremy Collier.</span></p>
+
+<p>To bear is to conquer fate.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Campbell.</span></p>
+
+<p>The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the
+thought that never wanders,&mdash;these are the masters of victory.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Burke.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Let us, then, be up and doing,<br /></span>
+<span>With a heart for any fate;<br /></span>
+<span>Still achieving, still pursuing,<br /></span>
+<span>Learn to labor and to wait.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Longfellow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"How long did it take you to learn to play?" asked a young man of
+Geradini. "Twelve hours a day for twenty years," replied the great
+violinist. Layman Beecher's father, when asked how long it took him to
+write his celebrated sermon on the "Government of God," replied, "About
+forty years."</p>
+
+<p>"If you will study a year I will teach<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;210">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a> you to sing well," said an
+Italian music teacher to a pupil who wished to know what can be hoped
+for with study; "if two years, you may excel. If you will practice the
+scale constantly for three years, I will make you the best tenor in
+Italy; if for four years, you may have the world at your feet."</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that Caffarelli had a fine tenor voice and unusual talent, a
+teacher offered to give him a thorough musical education free of charge,
+provided the pupil would promise never to complain of the course of
+instruction given. The first year the master gave nothing but the
+scales, compelling the youth to practice them over and over again. The
+second year it was the same, the third, and the fourth, the conditions
+of the bargain being the only reply to any question in relation to a
+change from such monotonous drill. The fifth year the teacher introduced
+chromatics and thorough bass, and, at its close, when Caffarelli looked
+for something more brilliant and interesting, the master said: "Go, my
+son, I can teach you nothing more. You are the first singer of Italy and
+of the world." The <em>mastery</em> of scales and diatonics gave him power to
+sing anything.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep at the helm," said President Porter; "steer your own ship, and
+remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the
+work. Strike out.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;211">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a> Assume your own position. Put potatoes in a cart,
+over a rough road, and the small ones go to the bottom."</p>
+
+<p>"Never depend upon your genius," said John Ruskin, in the words of
+Joshua Reynolds; "if you have talent, industry will improve it; if you
+have none, industry will supply the deficiency."</p>
+
+<p>"The only merit to which I lay claim," said Hugh Miller, "is that of
+patient research&mdash;a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass
+me; and this humble faculty of patience when rightly developed may lead
+to more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself."</p>
+
+<p>Titian, the greatest master of color the world has seen, used to say:
+"White, red and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs,
+but he must know how to use them." It took fifty years of constant, hard
+practice to bring him to his full mastery.</p>
+
+<p>"How much grows everywhere if we do but wait!" exclaims Carlyle. "Not a
+difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a
+deformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow
+dear to us."</p>
+
+<p>Persistency is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything
+great. They may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses, or
+eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent in a
+successful man. No matter what opposition<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;212">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a> he meets or what
+discouragements overtake him, he is always persistent. Drudgery cannot
+disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him. He
+will persist, no matter what comes or what goes; it is a part of his
+nature. He could almost as easily stop breathing.</p>
+
+<p>It is not so much brilliancy of intellect or fertility of resource as
+persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man.
+Persistency always gives confidence. Everybody believes in the man who
+persists. He may meet misfortunes, sorrows and reverses, but everybody
+believes that he will ultimately triumph because they know there is no
+keeping him down. "Does he keep at it, is he persistent?" is the
+question which the world asks of a man.</p>
+
+<p>Even the man with small ability will often succeed if he has the quality
+of persistence, where a genius without persistence would fail.</p>
+
+<p>"How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement
+appertaining to it," said Dickens. "I will only add to what I have
+already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
+patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me,
+and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any
+strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my
+success."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;213">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>"I am sorry to say that I don't think this is in your line," said
+Woodfall the reporter, after Sheridan had made his first speech in
+Parliament. "You had better have stuck to your former pursuits." With
+head on his hand Sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, "It
+is in me, and it shall come out of me." From the same man came that
+harangue against Warren Hastings which the orator Fox called the best
+speech ever made in the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>"The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do
+first," said William Wirt, "will do neither." The man who resolves, but
+suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of
+a friend&mdash;who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and
+veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every
+breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or
+useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best
+stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all.</p>
+
+<p>Great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their
+works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have
+been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace
+of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty years
+incessantly on his "Analogy," and even then<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;214">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a> was so dissatisfied that he
+wanted to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his
+style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures.
+Virgil worked eleven years on the &AElig;neid. The note-books of great men
+like Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of the
+years put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was
+twenty-five years writing his "Esprit de Louis," yet you can read it in
+sixty minutes. Adam Smith spent ten years on his "Wealth of Nations." A
+rival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending three days on
+three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "But your five
+hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my three
+lines will live forever," replied Euripides.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Fowell Buxton thought he could do as well as others, if he devoted
+twice as much time and labor as they did. Ordinary means and
+extraordinary application have done most of the great things in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Defoe offered the manuscript of Robinson Crusoe to many booksellers and
+all but one refused it. Addison's first play, Rosamond, was hissed off
+the stage, but the editor of the Spectator and Tattler was made of stern
+stuff and was determined that the world should listen to him, and it
+did.</p>
+
+<p>David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book through the
+press can form no idea of the amount of toil it<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;215">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a> involves. The process
+has increased my respect for authors a thousand-fold. I think I would
+rather cross the African continent again than undertake to write another
+book."</p>
+
+<p>"For the statistics of the negro population of South America alone,"
+says Robert Dale Owen, "I examined more than a hundred and fifty
+volumes."</p>
+
+<p>Another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of his
+book as many as fifty times.</p>
+
+<p>It is said of one of Longfellow's poems that it was written in four
+weeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down.
+Bulwer declared that he had rewritten some of his briefer productions as
+many as eight or nine times before their publication. One of Tennyson's
+pieces was rewritten fifty times. John Owen was twenty years on his
+"Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews;" Gibbon on his "Decline and
+Fall," twenty years; and Adam Clark, on his "Commentary," twenty-six
+years. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great."</p>
+
+<p>A great deal of time is consumed in reading before some books are
+prepared. George Eliot read 1000 books before she wrote "Daniel
+Deronda." Allison read 2000 before he completed his history. It is said
+of another that he read 20,000 and wrote only two books.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;216">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>Virgil spent several years on the Georgics, which could be printed in
+two columns of an ordinary newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>"Generally speaking," said Sydney Smith, "the life of all truly great
+men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonly
+passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent
+humility,&mdash;overlooked, mistaken, condemned by weaker men,&mdash;thinking
+while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something
+within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the
+dregs of the world. And then, when their time has come, and some little
+accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into
+the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and
+mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind."</p>
+
+<p>Malibran said: "If I neglect my practice a day, I see the difference in
+my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all
+the world knows my failure." Constant, persistent struggle she found to
+be the price of her marvelous power.</p>
+
+<p>"If I am building a mountain," said Confucius, "and stop before the last
+basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed."</p>
+
+<p>"Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can
+stand day's work."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;217">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>America will never produce any great art until our resources are
+developed and we get more time. As a people we have not yet learned the
+art of patience. We do not know how to wait. Think of an American artist
+spending seven, eight, ten, and even twelve years on a single painting
+as did Titian, Michael Angelo and many of the other old masters. Think
+of an American sculptor spending years and years upon a single
+masterpiece, as did the Greeks and Romans. We have not yet learned the
+secret of working and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"The single element in all the progressive movements of my pencil," said
+the great David Wilkie, "was persevering industry."</p>
+
+<p>The kind of ability which most men rank highest is that which enables
+its possessor to do what he undertakes, and attain the object of his
+ambition or desire.</p>
+
+<p>"The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an
+ordinary advertisement," says a French writer. "The second insertion he
+sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth
+insertion he looks at the price; the fifth insertion he speaks of it to
+his wife; the sixth insertion he is ready to purchase, and the seventh
+insertion he purchases."</p>
+
+<p>The large fees which make us envy the great lawyer or doctor are not
+remuneration for the few minutes' labor of giving advice,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;218">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a> but for the
+mental stores gathered during the precious spare moments of many a year
+while others were sleeping or enjoying holidays. A client will
+frequently object to paying fifty dollars for an opinion written in five
+minutes, but such an opinion could be written only by one who has read a
+hundred law books. If the lawyer had not previously read those books,
+but should keep a client waiting until he could read them with care,
+there would be fewer complaints that fees of this kind are not earned.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains,
+erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the
+Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway
+through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of
+the new world, and reared in its stead a community of States and
+nations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite
+creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature,
+and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow.
+Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many
+flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted
+cars, and sent them flying from town to town and nation to nation;
+tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the
+lightning's speed. Perseverance has<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;219">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a> whitened the waters of the world
+with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored
+every land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as
+many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements,
+measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and
+computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other
+art," said Reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that one
+object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"If you work hard two weeks without selling a book," wrote a publisher
+to an agent, "you will make a success of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Know thy work and do it," said Carlyle; "and work at it like a
+Hercules. One monster there is in the world&mdash;an idle man."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;220">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SAVE.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>If you want to test a young man and ascertain whether nature
+made him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollars
+and see what he will do with it. If he is born to conquer and
+command, he will put it quietly away till he is ready to use it
+as opportunity offers. If he is born to serve, he will
+immediately begin to spend it in gratifying his ruling
+propensity.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Parton.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>The man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay,<br /></span>
+<span>Provides a home from which to run away.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Young.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou<br /></span>
+<span>shalt sell thy necessaries.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>For age and want save while you may:<br /></span>
+<span>No morning sun lasts a whole day.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Franklin.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never
+speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need
+as a provision against the workhouse.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Bulwer.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"What do you do with all these books?" "Oh, that library is my 'one
+cigar a day,'" was the response. "What do you mean?" "Mean! Just this:
+when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, I'd
+just been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money that
+others would have spent in smoke, and I<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;221">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a> thought I'd try and do the
+same. You remember, I said I should allow myself one cigar a day."
+"Yes." "Well, I never smoked. I just put by the price of a five-cent
+cigar every day, and as the money accumulated I bought books&mdash;the books
+you see there." "Do you mean to say that those books cost no more than
+that? Why there are dollars' worth of them." "Yes, I know there are. I
+had six years more of my apprenticeship to serve when you persuaded me
+to 'be a man.' I put by the money I have told you of, which of course at
+five cents a day amounted to $18.25 a year or $109.50 in six years. I
+keep those books by themselves, as a result of my apprenticeship
+cigar-money; and if you'd done as I did, you would by this time have
+saved many, many more dollars than that, and been in business besides."</p>
+
+<p>If a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents
+every working day, investing at 7 per cent. compound interest, he will
+have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. Twenty
+cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty
+years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. Even a saving
+of one dollar a week from the date of one's majority would give him one
+thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life.
+"What maintains one vice would bring up two children."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;222">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>Who does not feel honored by his relationship to Dr. Franklin, whether
+as a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race?
+Who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality of
+his youth which laid the foundation for so much competence and
+generosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of his
+outlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy over
+the pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of the
+great art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into every
+cottage in Christendom, and made his name immortal? And yet, how few
+there are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn a
+young man who should follow Franklin's example.</p>
+
+<p>Washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when
+President of the United States. He understood that without economy none
+can be rich, and with it none need be poor.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges and
+errors.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately Congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice of
+living beyond one's means.</p>
+
+<p>"We are ruined," says Colton, "not by what we really want, but by what
+we think we do. Therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if
+they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;223">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a> that
+buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed Horace Walpole,
+"for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." A woman once
+bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought it
+might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don't need
+because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined by
+buying good pennyworths."</p>
+
+<p>Barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife would
+have a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousand
+dollars. When the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to get
+chairs "to match," then sideboards, carpets, and tables, "to correspond"
+with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at last
+it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned
+for the furniture, and a new one was built "to correspond" with the sofa
+and <i>et ceteras</i>: "thus," added my friend, "running up an outlay of
+$30,000 caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape of
+servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up a
+fine 'establishment' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a
+habit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;224">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>Cicero said: "Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue."
+Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "Here's something
+wonderfully cheap; let's buy it." "Have you any use for it?" "No, not at
+present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Annual income," says Macawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure,
+nineteen six, result&mdash;happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual
+expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result&mdash;misery."</p>
+
+<p>"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach,
+are disagreeable," says Horace Greeley; "but debt is infinitely worse
+than them all."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had but fifty cents a week to live on," said Greeley, "I'd buy a
+peck of corn and parch it before I'd owe any man a dollar."</p>
+
+<p>To find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life
+is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that
+which will contribute most to their enrichment.</p>
+
+<p>Economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all; it must be
+done by management.</p>
+
+<p>Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a
+sacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simple
+tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. Much<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;225">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a> of
+the economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept out
+of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl for my
+dinner on Sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with one
+apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene
+and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the
+lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for gods and
+heroes.</p>
+
+<p>Like many other boys P.&nbsp;T. Barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for his
+father, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings in
+knick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thus
+increasing his pennies to dollars.</p>
+
+<p>The eccentric John Randolph once sprang from his seat in the House of
+Representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "Mr. Speaker, I
+have found it." And then, in the stillness which followed this strange
+outburst, he added, "I have found the Philosopher's stone: it is <em>Pay as
+you go</em>."</p>
+
+<p>In France, all classes, the men as well as the women, study the economy
+of cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, the
+people live at one-third the expense of Englishmen or Americans. There
+they know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others would
+throw away. There they cook no more for each day than is required for
+that day. With them<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;226">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a> the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cook
+is as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. The
+consequence is, as ex-Secretary McCullough thinks, a French village of
+1000 inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one of
+our large American hotels, and he believes that the entire population of
+France could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in the
+United States. Professor Blot, who resided for some years in the United
+States, remarks, pathetically, that here, "where the markets rival the
+best markets of Europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live.
+There are thousands of families in moderately good circumstances who
+have never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cooked
+steak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal."</p>
+
+<p>There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese parings
+and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill, and
+doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness.
+The misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economy
+apply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully
+economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence,
+that they think they can afford to squander in other directions.
+<i>Punch</i>, in speaking of this "one idea" class of people, says, "They are
+like a man who bought a penny<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;227">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a> herring for his family's dinner, and then
+hired a coach and four to take it home." I never knew a man to succeed
+by practicing this kind of economy. True economy consists in always
+making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little
+longer, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live on
+plainer food if need be. So that under all circumstances, unless some
+unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the
+income. A penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go on
+accumulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could write all across the sky in letters of gold," says Rev.
+William Marsh, "the one word, savings bank."</p>
+
+<p>Boston savings banks have $130,000,000 on deposit, mostly saved in
+driblets. Josiah Quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of
+the palaces on Beacon street.</p>
+
+<p>"Nature uses a grinding economy," says Emerson, "working up all that is
+wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; not a superfluous grain of sand
+for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. She flung
+us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail
+but instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to her
+general stock. Last summer's flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only
+to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. Nature will
+not<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;228">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a> even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. The
+moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces,
+that the parts may be used again for other creations."</p>
+
+<p>"So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says Bulwer.
+"With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man's help; I may at least
+have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' But with &pound;5000 a year I may dread
+a ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whose
+wages I cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first
+long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that
+lies nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales and
+whetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no
+man is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage, that with &pound;5000 a
+year I purchase the worst evils of poverty&mdash;terror and shame; I may so
+well manage my money, that with &pound;100 a year I purchase the best
+blessings of wealth: safety and respect."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;229">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>LIVE UPWARD.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,<br /></span>
+<span>And this thy last deed ere the judgment day."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>If you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Publius Syrus.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+
+<span class="i10">What is a man,<br /></span>
+<span>If his chief good, and market of his time,<br /></span>
+<span>Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more.<br /></span>
+<span>Sure He, that made us with such large discourse,<br /></span>
+<span>Looking before, and after, gave us not<br /></span>
+<span>That capability and godlike Reason<br /></span>
+<span>To rust in us unused.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Shakespeare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. It
+is heaven's own incentive to make purpose great and achievement
+greater.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Anonymous.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>"Endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever it<br /></span>
+<span>may be; neither let anyone go before thee in well<br /></span>
+<span>doing."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>O may I join the choir invisible<br /></span>
+<span>Of those immortal dead who live again<br /></span>
+<span>In minds made better by their presence; live<br /></span>
+<span>In pulses stirred to generosity,<br /></span>
+<span>In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn<br /></span>
+<span>For miserable aims that end with self,<br /></span>
+<span>In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,<br /></span>
+<span>And with their mild persistence urge man's search<br /></span>
+<span>To vaster issues.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;George Eliot.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"Alexander, C&aelig;sar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires," said
+Napo<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;230">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a>leon to Montholon at St. Helena; "but upon what did we rest the
+creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his
+empire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for Him. I
+die before my time and my body will be given back to worms. Such is the
+fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss
+between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is
+proclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the whole
+earth. Call you this dying? Is it not rather living? The death of Christ
+is the death of a God."</p>
+
+<p>"No true man can live a half life," says Phillips Brooks, "when he has
+genuinely learned that it is a half life. The other half, the higher
+half, must haunt him."</p>
+
+<p>"Ideality," says Horace Mann, "is only the <i>avant courier</i> of the mind;
+and where that in a healthy and normal state goes I hold it to be a
+prophecy that realization can follow."</p>
+
+<p>"If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through his
+blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon," writes Bulwer, "what
+stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved
+mankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?&mdash;who has
+not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?&mdash;who has braved the
+present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;231">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>
+glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something
+more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his
+hopes?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I live," wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, "all
+blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know
+and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business."</p>
+
+<p>I have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which man
+turns his eye upward, though I am not anatomist enough to be sure of the
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>"Show me a contented slave," says Burke, "and I will show you a degraded
+man."</p>
+
+<p>"They truly are faithful," says one writer, "who devote their entire
+lives to amendment."</p>
+
+<p>General Grant said of the Chinese Wall: "I believe that the labor
+expended on this wall could have built every railroad in the United
+States, every canal and highway, and most, if not all, our cities."</p>
+
+<p>"The real benefactors of mankind," says Emerson, "are the men and women
+who can raise their fellow beings out of the world of corn and money,
+who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in their
+higher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectual
+realm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness by
+dollars and cents; who can<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;232">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a> make men forget their stomachs and feast on
+being's banquet."</p>
+
+<p>"Men are not so much mistaken in desiring to advance themselves," said
+Beecher, "as in judging what will be an advance, and what the right
+method of obtaining it. An ambition which has conscience in it will
+always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road and
+bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most
+faithful and minute performances of duty. The liberty to go higher than
+we are is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty of our
+present sphere. Thus men are to rise upon their performances and not
+upon their discontent. And this is the secret and golden meaning of the
+command to be <em>content</em> in whatever sphere we are placed. It is not to
+be the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity,
+but the content of industrious fidelity. When men are building the
+foundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below the
+surface, and in disagreeable conditions. But every course of stone which
+they lay raises them higher; and at length, when they reach the surface,
+they have laid such solid work under them that they need not fear now to
+carry up their walls, through towering stories, till they overlook the
+whole neighborhood. A man proves himself fit to go higher who shows that
+he is faithful where he is. A man that will not do well<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;233">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a> in his present
+place, because he longs to be higher, is fit neither to be where he is
+nor yet above it; he is already too high and should be put lower."</p>
+
+<p>Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much, or dare
+too much. What a man does, that he has. In himself is his might. Don't
+waste life on doubts and fears. Spend yourself on the work before you,
+well assured that the performance of this hour's duties will be the best
+preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.</p>
+
+<p>Tradition says that when Solomon received the gift of an emerald vase
+from the Queen of Sheba he filled it with an elixir which he only knew
+how to prepare, one drop of which would prolong life indefinitely. A
+dying criminal begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but Solomon
+refused to prolong a wicked life. When good men asked for it they were
+refused, or failed to obtain it when promised, as the king would forget
+or prefer not to open the vase to get but a single drop. When at last
+the king became ill, and bade his servants bring the vase, he found that
+the contents had all evaporated. So it is often with our hope, our
+faith, our ambition, our aspiration.</p>
+
+<p>A man cannot aspire if he looks down. God has not created us with
+aspirations and longings for heights to which we cannot climb. Live
+upward. The unattained still beckons us toward the summit of life's<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;234">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>
+mountains, into the atmosphere where great souls live and breathe and
+have their being. Even hope is but a promise of the possibility of its
+own fulfillment. Life should be lived in earnest. It is no idle game, no
+farce to amuse and be forgotten. It is a stern reality, fuller of duties
+than the sky of stars. You cannot have too much of that yearning which
+we call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, the
+efforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails of
+attaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-worm
+of disappointed ambition. To all will come a time when the love of glory
+will be seen to be but a splendid delusion, riches empty, rank vain,
+power dependent, and all outward advantages without inward peace a mere
+mockery of wretchedness. The wisest men have taken care to uproot
+selfish ambition from their breasts. Shakespeare considered it so near a
+vice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless,
+lazy man? He becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic. Love brings
+out the poetry in him. It is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet what
+magic it has wrought. Nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he is
+entirely transformed.</p>
+
+<p>Not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a woman
+thirsting<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;235">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a> for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint.
+He despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes even
+kingdoms to gratify his master passion. Mere ambition has impelled many
+a man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation,
+aspiration, has led him beyond the stars. If the aim be right the life
+in its details cannot be far wrong. Your heart must inspire what your
+hands execute, or the work will be poorly done. The hand cannot reach
+higher than does the heart.</p>
+
+<p>But do not strive to reach <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had &quot;impossbile&quot;">impossible</ins> goals. It is wholly in your
+power to develop yourself, but not necessarily so to make yourself a
+king. How many Presidents of the United States or Prime Ministers of
+England are chosen within the working lifetime of a man? What if a
+thousand young men resolve to become President or Prime Minister? While
+such prizes are within your reach, remember that your will must be
+tremendous and your qualifications of the highest order, or you cannot
+hope to secure them. Too many are deluded by ambition beyond their power
+of attainment, or tortured by aspirations totally disproportionate to
+their capacity for execution. You may, indeed, confidently hope to
+become eminent in usefulness and power, but only as you build upon a
+broad foundation of self-culture; while, as a rule, specialists in<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;236">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>
+ambition as in science are apt to become narrow and one-sided. Darwin
+was very fond of poetry and music when young, but after devoting his
+life to science, he was surprised to find Shakespeare tedious. He said
+that, if he were to live his life again, he would read poetry and hear
+music every day, so as not to lose the power of appreciating such
+things.</p>
+
+<p>God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You
+<em>must</em> take it. The only choice is <em>how</em>.</p>
+
+<p>"When I found I was black," said Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I were
+white, and so force men to look below my skin."</p>
+
+<p>In the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society is a
+prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves
+of which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior," which he was evidently
+evolving as he trudged from house to house.</p>
+
+<p>"Disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth,"
+said Plato, "I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can;
+and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men to the utmost of
+my power; and you, too, I invite to this contest, which, I affirm,
+surpasses all contests here."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and
+singly<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;237">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a> toward an object, and in no measure obtained it?" asked Thoreau.
+"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try
+heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no
+advantage in them,&mdash;that it was a vain endeavor?"</p>
+
+<p>"O if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is
+to be a part forever," exclaimed Phillips Brooks, "what patience must
+fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for
+it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills."</p>
+
+<p>Man never reaches heights above his habitual thought. It is not enough
+now and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite. We must
+habitually dwell there. The great man is he who abides easily on heights
+to which others rise occasionally and with difficulty. Don't let the
+maxims of a low prudence daily dinned into your ears lower the tone of
+your high ambition or check your aspirations. Hope lifts us step by step
+up the mysterious ladder, the top of which no eye hath ever seen. Though
+we do not find what hope promised, yet we are stronger for the climbing,
+and we get a broader outlook upon life which repays the effort. Indeed,
+if we do not follow where hope beckons, we gradually slide down the
+ladder in despair. Strive ever to be at the top of your condition. A
+high standard is absolutely necessary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;238">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>"SAND."</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>I shall show the cinders of my spirits<br /></span>
+<span>Through the ashes of my chance.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Shakespeare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Perseverance is a virtue<br /></span>
+<span>That wins each god-like act, and plucks success<br /></span>
+<span>E'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;William Harvard.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Never say "Fail" again.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Richelieu.</span></p>
+
+<p>It is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows the
+blood; the one pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness
+of the fellow," as Oxford men say; it is the one march more
+that wins the campaign; the five minutes' more persistent
+courage that wins the fight. Though your force be less than
+another's, you equal and out-master your opponent if you
+continue it longer and concentrate it more.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Smiles.</span></p>
+
+<p>"I know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign
+mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes of
+companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no
+jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at
+its port."</p></div>
+
+
+<p>"Well done, Tommy Brooks!" exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprise
+when the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a single
+word. The other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a bad
+failure. But when the rest of the class<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;239">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a> had tried, the teacher said
+Tommy had done the best of all, and gave him the prize.</p>
+
+<p>"And now tell me," said she, "how you learned the poem so well."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, ma'am, it was the snail on the wall that taught me how to do
+it," said Tommy. At this the other pupils laughed aloud, but the teacher
+said: "You need not laugh, boys, for we may learn much from such things
+as snails. How did the snail teach you, Tommy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw it crawl up the wall little by little," replied the boy. "It did
+not stop nor turn back, but went on, and on; and I thought I would do
+the same with the poem. So I learned it little by little, and did not
+give up. By the time the snail reached the top of the wall, I had
+learned the whole poem."</p>
+
+<p>"I may here impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck," said
+Addison. "There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable
+spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of old age the misfortunes of
+their lives. Luck forever runs against them, and for others. One with a
+good profession lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time
+a-fishing. Another with a good trade perpetually burnt up his luck by
+his hot temper, which provoked all his employes to leave him. Another
+with a lucrative business lost his luck by amazing diligence at
+everything but his own business. Another who steadily followed his
+trade, as<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;240">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a> steadily followed the bottle. Another who was honest and
+constant to his work, erred by his perpetual misjudgment,&mdash;he lacked
+discretion. Hundreds lose their luck by indulging sanguine expectations,
+by trusting fraudulent men, and by dishonest gains. A man never has good
+luck who has a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working,
+prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained
+of his bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are
+impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of.
+But when I see a tatterdemalion creeping out of a grocery late in the
+forenoon with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat
+turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know he has had bad luck,&mdash;for
+the worst of all luck is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler."</p>
+
+<p>"You have a difficult subject," said Anthony Trollope at Niagara Falls,
+to an artist who had attempted to draw the spray of the waters. "All
+subjects are difficult," was the reply, "to a man who desires to do
+well." "But yours, I fear, is impossible," said Trollope. "You have no
+right to say so till I have finished my picture," protested the artist.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a
+writer." When her father delivered the rejected manuscript of a story
+sent to James T. Fields, editor of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;241">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a> the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, with the
+above message, Miss Alcott said, "Tell him I <em>will</em> succeed as a writer,
+and some day I shall write for the <i>Atlantic</i>." Not long after she sent
+an article to the <i>Atlantic</i> and received a check for $50. With the
+money she said she bought "a second hand carpet for the parlor, a bonnet
+for her sister, shoes and stockings for herself." Her father was calling
+upon Longfellow some time after this, when Longfellow took the
+<i>Atlantic</i>, and said, "I want to read to you Emerson's fine poem upon
+Thoreau's flute." Mr. Alcott interrupted him with delight and said, "My
+daughter Louisa wrote that."</p>
+
+<p>"Men talk as if victory were something fortunate," says Emerson. "<em>Work
+is victory.</em> Wherever work is done victory is obtained. <em>There is no
+chance and no blanks.</em> You want but one verdict; if you have your own,
+you are secure of the rest. But if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are
+near."</p>
+
+<p>"Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can
+stand day's work."</p>
+
+<p>Alexander the Great exclaimed to his soldiers, disaffected after a long
+campaign, "Go home and tell them that you left Alexander to conquer the
+world alone."</p>
+
+<p>"We discount only our own bills, and not those of private persons," said
+the cashier of the Bank of England, when a large bill was offered drawn
+by Anselm<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;242">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a> Rothschild of Frankfort, on Nathan Rothschild of London.
+"Private persons!" exclaimed Nathan, when told of the cashier's remark;
+"I will make these gentlemen see what sort of private persons we are."
+Three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at the
+opening of the office. The teller counted out five sovereigns, looking
+surprised that Baron Rothschild should have troubled himself about such
+a trifle. The baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in the
+balance, as he said "the law gave him the right to do," put them into a
+little canvas bag, and offered a second, then a third, fourth, fiftieth,
+thousandth note. When a bag was full he handed it to a clerk in waiting,
+and proceeded to fill another. In seven hours he had changed &pound;21,000,
+and, with nine employes of his house similarly engaged, had occupied the
+tellers so busily in changing $1,050,000 worth of notes that no one else
+could receive attention. The bankers laughed, but the next morning
+Rothschild appeared with his nine clerks and several drays to carry away
+the gold, remarking, "These gentlemen refuse to pay my bills; I have
+sworn not to keep theirs. They can pay at their leisure, only I notify
+them that I have enough to employ them for two months." The smiles faded
+from the features of the bank officials, as they thought of a draft of
+$55,000,000 in gold<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;243">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a> which they did not hold. Next morning notice was
+given in the newspapers that the Bank of England would pay Rothschild's
+bills as well as its own.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Barnum to a friend in 1841, "I am going to buy the American
+Museum." "Buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the
+showman had not a dollar; "what do you intend buying it with?" "Brass,"
+was the prompt reply, "for silver and gold have I none."</p>
+
+<p>Every one interested in public entertainments in New York knew Barnum,
+and knew the condition of his pocket; but Francis Olmstead, who owned
+the Museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of "a
+good showman, who would do as he agreed," and accepted a proposition to
+give security for the purchaser. Mr. Olmstead was to appoint a
+money-taker at the door, and credit Barnum toward the purchase with all
+above expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to support
+his wife and three children. Mrs. Barnum gladly assented to the
+arrangement, and offered, if need be, to cut down the household expenses
+to a little more than a dollar a day. Some six months later Mr. Olmstead
+happened to enter the ticket office at noon, and found Barnum eating for
+dinner a few slices of bread and some corned beef. "Is this the way you
+eat your dinner?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;244">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>"I have not eaten a warm dinner since I bought the Museum, except on the
+Sabbath; and I intend never to eat another until I get out of debt."
+"Ah! you are safe, and will pay for the Museum before the year is out,"
+said Mr. Olmstead, slapping the young man approvingly on the shoulder.
+He was right, for in less than a year Barnum had paid every cent out of
+the profits of the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>A noted philosopher said: "The favors of fortune are like steep rocks;
+only eagles and creeping things mount to the summit." Lord Campbell, who
+became Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England and amassed a large
+fortune, began life as a drudge in a printing office. A little
+observation shows us that, as a rule, the men who accomplish the most in
+the world are the most useful, and sensible members of society, the men
+who are depended upon most in emergencies, the men of backbone and
+stamina, the bone and sinew of their communities; the men who can always
+be relied upon, who are healthiest and happiest, are, as a rule, of
+ordinary mental calibre and medium capacity. But with persistent and
+untiring industry, these are they, after all, who carry the burdens and
+reap the prizes of life. It is the men and women who keep everlastingly
+at it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if they
+ever accomplish anything great,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;245">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a> they must do it by common drudgery and
+persistent industry and with an unwavering aim in one pursuit. Those who
+believe themselves geniuses are apt to scatter their efforts and thus
+fritter away their great energies without accomplishing anything in
+proportion to their high promise. Often the men who promise the most pay
+the least.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Frank Leslie often refers to the time she lived in her carpetless
+attic while striving to pay her husband's obligations. She has fought
+her way successfully through nine lawsuits, and has paid the entire
+debt. She manages her ten publications entirely herself, signs all
+checks and money-orders, makes all contracts, looks over all proofs, and
+approves the make-up of everything before it goes to press. She has
+developed great business ability, which no one dreamed she possessed.</p>
+
+<p>A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "Oh, by getting up every
+time I fell down," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>The boy Thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poorhouse, and whose
+education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many times
+before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacity
+and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither his
+discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could repress.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all very well," said Charles J. Fox,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;246">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a> "to tell me that a young
+man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on,
+or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man
+who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I will
+back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded
+at the first trial."</p>
+
+<p>It was the last three days of the first voyage of Columbus that told.
+All his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he had
+yielded to the mutiny. It was all in those three days. But what days!</p>
+
+<p>"Often defeated in battle," said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "he
+was always successful in war." He might have said the same of
+Washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphs
+of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest preachers of modern times, Lacordaire, failed again
+and again. Everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was
+determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures he
+was preaching in Notre Dame to immense congregations.</p>
+
+<p>Orange Judd was a remarkable example of success through grit. He earned
+corn by working for farmers, carried it on his back to mill, brought
+back the meal to his room, cooked it himself, milked cows for his pint
+of milk per day, and lived on mush and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;247">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a> milk for months together. He
+worked his way through Wesleyan University, and took a three years'
+post-graduate course at Yale.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! This it
+was that enabled Franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-office
+with a book in his hand. It helped Locke to live on bread and water in a
+Dutch garret. It enabled Gideon Lee to go barefoot in the snow, half
+starved and thinly clad. It sustained Lincoln and Garfield on their hard
+journeys from the log cabin to the White House.</p>
+
+<p>The very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable is
+of priceless value. It often cowes enemies and dispels at the start
+opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable.</p>
+
+<p>"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till
+it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer," said Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and time
+that the tide'll turn."</p>
+
+<p>"Never despair," says Burke, "but if you do, work on in despair."</p>
+
+<p>Once when Marshal Ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees
+which were smiting together, he said, "You may well shake; you would
+shake worse yet if you knew where I am going to take you."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;248">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>"Go it, William!" an old boxer was overheard saying to himself in the
+midst of a fight; "at him again!&mdash;never say 'die'!"</p>
+
+<p>A striking incident is related of the early experience of George Law,
+who, in his day, was one of the most conspicuous financiers and
+capitalists of New York City. When he was a young man he went to New
+York, poor and friendless. One day he was walking along the streets,
+hungry, not knowing where his next meal would come from, and passed a
+new building in course of erection. Through some accident one of the hod
+carriers fell from the structure and dropped dead at his feet. Young
+Law, in his desperation, applied for the job to take the dead man's
+place, and the place was given him. He went to work, and this was how
+one of the wealthiest and shrewdest New York business men got his start.</p>
+
+<p>See young Disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without
+opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through
+the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of
+political and social power. Scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from
+the House of Commons, he simply says, "The time will come when you will
+hear me." The time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed the
+sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.</p>
+
+<p>If impossibilities ever exist, popularly<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;249">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a> speaking, they ought to have
+been found somewhere between the birth and the death of Kitto, that deaf
+pauper and master of Oriental learning. But Kitto did not find them
+there. In the presence of his decision and imperial energy they melted
+away. Kitto begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even if
+he had to subsist like the Hottentots. He told him that he would sell
+his books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raise
+about twelve shillings. He said he could live upon blackberries, nuts
+and field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. Here was real
+grit. What were impossibilities to such a resolute will? Patrick Henry
+voiced that decision which characterized the great men of the Revolution
+when he said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at
+the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not
+what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me
+death!"</p>
+
+<p>Look at Garrison reading this advertisement in a Southern paper: "Five
+thousand dollars will be paid for the head of W.&nbsp;L. Garrison by the
+Governor of Georgia." Behold him again; a broadcloth mob is leading him
+through the streets of Boston by a rope. He is hurried to jail. See him
+return calmly and unflinchingly to his work, beginning at the point at
+which he was interrupted. Note this heading in the <i>Liberator</i>,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;250">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a> the
+type of which he set himself in an attic on State Street, in Boston: "I
+am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not
+retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." Was Garrison heard? Ask a
+race set free largely by his efforts. Even the gallows erected in front
+of his own door did not daunt him. He held the ear of an unwilling world
+with that burning word "freedom," which was destined never to cease its
+vibrations until it had breathed its sweet secret to the last slave.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of
+brawny Cape Cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all
+the speakers announced, except Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone, had fled
+from an open-air platform. "You had better run, Stephen," said she;
+"they are coming." "But who will take care of you?" asked Foster. "This
+gentleman will take care of me," she replied, calmly laying her hand
+within the arm of a burly rioter with a club, who had just sprung upon
+the platform. "Wh&mdash;what did you say?" stammered the astonished rowdy, as
+he looked at the little woman; "yes, I'll take care of you, and no one
+shall touch a hair of your head." With this he forced a way for her
+through the crowd, and, at her earnest request, placed her upon a stump
+and stood guard with his club while she delivered an address so
+effective that the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;251">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a> audience offered no further violence, and even took
+up a collection of twenty dollars to repay Mr. Foster for the damage his
+clothes had received when the riot was at its height.</p>
+
+<p>"Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up," says Cobden; "labor,
+with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in
+bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; labor
+turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the
+foundation of a competence. Luck whines; labor whistles. Luck relies on
+chance; labor, on character."</p>
+
+<p>There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not
+striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are called
+accidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who are
+looking for something. A man incurs about as much risk of being struck
+by lightning as by accidental luck. There is, perhaps, an element of
+luck in the amount of success which crowns the efforts of different men;
+but even here it will usually be found that the sagacity with which the
+efforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecuted
+measure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved.
+Apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to single
+undertakings, while in the long run the rule will hold good. Two
+pearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;252">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a> energy.
+One brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. But let
+both persevere and at the end of five, ten or twenty years it will be
+found that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill and
+industry.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after three
+or four years if the rebellion was not subdued, replied: "Oh, there is
+no alternative but to keep pegging away."</p>
+
+<p>"It is in me and it shall come out," said Sheridan, when told that he
+would never make an orator, as he had failed in his first speech in
+Parliament. He became known as one of the foremost orators of his day.</p>
+
+<p>It takes great courage to fight a lost cause when there is no hope even
+of victory. To contest every inch of ground with as much persistency and
+enthusiasm as if we were assured of victory; this is true courage.</p>
+
+<p>The world admires the man who never flinches from unexpected
+difficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with his
+fate; who dies, if need be, at his post.</p>
+
+<p>President Chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and worked
+thirty-five years after his funeral had been planned.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatest
+Postmaster-General England ever had.</p>
+
+<p>Prescott also put grit in place of eyesight,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;253">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a> and became one of
+America's greatest historians. Francis Parkman put grit in place of
+health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of America in his
+line. Thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears,
+hands, legs, and yet have achieved marvelous success. Indeed, most of
+the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck.
+You cannot keep a man down who has these qualities. He will make
+stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself to
+success.</p>
+
+<p>Grit and pluck are not always exhibited only by poor boys who have no
+chance, for there are many notable examples of pluck, persistence and
+real grit among youth in good circumstances, who never have to fight
+their way to their own loaf. Mr. Mifflin, who has recently become the
+head of the celebrated publishing firm of Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Co., is a
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had &quot;notoble&quot;">notable</ins> example of persistency, push and grit. After graduating at
+Harvard and traveling abroad, he was determined, although not obliged to
+work for a living, to get a position at the Riverside Press in
+Cambridge. He called upon the late Mr. Houghton and asked him for a
+situation. Mr. Houghton told him that he had no opening, and that, even
+if he had, he did not believe that a graduate from Harvard who had money
+and who had traveled abroad would ever be willing to begin at the bottom
+and do the necessary<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;254">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a> drudgery, for boy's pay. Mr. Mifflin protested
+that he was not afraid of hard work, and that he was willing to do
+anything and take any sort of a position, if he could only learn the
+business. But Mr. Houghton would not give him any encouragement. Again
+and again Mr. Mifflin came to the Riverside Press, and pressed his suit,
+but to no purpose. Mr. Mifflin persuaded his father to intercede for
+him, but Mr. Houghton succeeded in convincing him that it would be very
+unwise for his son to attempt it. But young Mifflin was determined not
+to give up. Finally, Mr. Houghton, out of admiration for his persistence
+and pluck, made a place for him, which had been occupied by a boy, for
+$5 a week.</p>
+
+<p>Young Mifflin took hold of the work with such earnestness, and showed so
+much pluck and determination, that Mr. Houghton soon called him into the
+office and raised his pay to $9 a week from the time he began. Although
+the young man lived in Boston, he was always at the Riverside Press in
+Cambridge early in the morning, and would frequently remain after all
+the others had gone. Mr. Houghton happened to go in late one night,
+after everybody had gone, as he supposed, and was surprised to find Mr.
+Mifflin there, taking one of the presses apart. Of course such a young
+man would be advanced. These are the boys who become the heads of
+firms.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;255">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>It is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with
+the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the
+farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with
+the traveler, that secures what all so much desire&mdash;<strong class="smcap">Success</strong>.</p>
+
+<p>Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for the
+place you fill, and that no one else can fill it as well. Put forth your
+whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. Only
+once learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness and
+proportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better of
+yourself; others will think better of you. The world in its very heart
+admires the stern, determined doer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;256">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>ABOVE RUBIES.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The best way to settle the quarrel between capital and labor is
+by allopathic doses of Peter-Cooperism.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Talmage.</span></p>
+
+<p>In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never
+surmounted, love is never outgrown.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p>
+
+<p>"One ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs."</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Virtue alone out-builds the pyramids:<br /></span>
+<span>Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Young.</span></div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He believed that he was born, not for himself, but for the
+whole world.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Lucan.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Wherever man goes to dwell, his character goes with him.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;African Proverb.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>The spirit of a single mind<br /></span>
+<span>Makes that of multitudes take one direction,<br /></span>
+<span>As roll the waters to the breathing wind.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Byron.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"No, say what you have to say in her presence, too," said King Cleomenes
+of Sparta, when his visitor Anistagoras asked him to send away his
+little daughter Gorgo, ten years old, knowing how much harder it is to
+persuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side. So Gorgo sat
+at her father's feet, and listened while the stranger<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;257">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a> offered more and
+more money if Cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboring
+country. She did not understand the matter, but when she saw her father
+look troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, "Papa,
+come away&mdash;come, or this strange man will make you do wrong." The king
+went away with the child, and saved himself and his country from
+dishonor. Character is power, even in a child. When grown to womanhood,
+Gorgo was married to the hero Leonidas. One day a messenger brought a
+tablet sent by a friend who was a prisoner in Persia. But the closest
+scrutiny failed to reveal a single word or line on the white waxen
+surface, and the king and all his noblemen concluded that it was sent as
+a jest. "Let me take it," said Queen Gorgo; and, after looking it all
+over, she exclaimed, "There must be some writing underneath the wax!"
+They scraped away the wax and found a warning to Leonidas from the
+Grecian prisoner, saying that Xerxes was coming with his immense host to
+conquer all Greece. Acting on this warning, Leonidas and the other kings
+assembled their armies and checked the mighty host of Xerxes, which is
+said to have shaken the earth as it marched.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men," said
+Mary, Queen of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;258">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>"The man behind the sermon," said William M. Evarts, "is the secret of
+John Hall's power." In fact if there is not a man with a character
+behind it nothing about it is of the slightest consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray says, "Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's
+faces which is honored wherever presented. You can not help trusting
+such men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a 'promise to
+pay' in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to
+another man's indorsement." <em>Character is credit.</em></p>
+
+<p>In the great monetary panic of 1857, a meeting was called of the various
+bank presidents of New York City. When asked what percentage of specie
+had been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent., some even
+as high as seventy-five per cent., but Moses Taylor of the City Bank
+said: "We had in the bank this morning, $400,000; this evening,
+$470,000." While other banks were badly "run," the confidence in the
+City Bank under Mr. Taylor's management was such that people had
+deposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks.
+Character gives confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no such thing as a small country," said Victor Hugo. "The
+greatness of a people is no more affected by the number of its
+inhabitants than the greatness of an individual is measured by his
+height."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;259">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>"It is the nature of party in England," said John Russell, "to ask the
+assistance of men of genius, but to follow the guidance of men of
+character."</p>
+
+<p>"A handful of good life," says George Herbert, "is worth a bushel of
+learning."</p>
+
+<p>"I have read," Emerson says, "that they who listened to Lord Chatham
+felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he
+said." It has been complained of Carlyle that when he has told all his
+facts about Mirabeau they do not justify his estimate of the latter's
+genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes do
+not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney and
+Sir Walter Raleigh are men of great figure and of few deeds. We cannot
+find the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington in the
+narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is too
+great for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works or
+the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is
+longer than the thunder-clap; but something resided in these men which
+begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part
+of their power was latent. This is that which we call character,&mdash;a
+reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. What
+others effect by talent or eloquence, the man of character<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;260">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a> accomplishes
+by some magnetism. "Half his strength he puts not forth." His victories
+are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing bayonets. He
+conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. "O Iole! how
+didst thou know that Hercules was a god?" "Because," answered Iole, "I
+was content the moment my eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I
+desired that I might see him offer battle, or at least drive his horses
+in the chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he
+conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever else he did."</p>
+
+<p>"Show me," said Omar the Caliph to Amru the warrior, "the sword with
+which you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels." "Ah,"
+replied Amru, "the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper nor
+heavier than the sword of Farezdak the poet." So one hundred and fifty
+pounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value.</p>
+
+<p>"No man throws away his vote," says Francis Willard, "when he places it
+in the ballot-box with his conviction behind it. The party which elected
+Lincoln in 1860 polled only seven thousand votes in 1840. Revolutions
+never go backward, and the fanaticisms of to-day are the victories of
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"O sir, we are beaten," exclaimed the general in command of Sheridan's
+army,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;261">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a> retreating before the victorious Early. "No, sir," replied the
+indignant Sheridan; "you are beaten, but this army is not beaten."
+Drawing his sword, he waved it above his head, and pointed it at the
+pursuing host, while his clarion voice rose above the horrid din in a
+command to charge once more. The lines paused, turned,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"And with the ocean's mighty swing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When heaving to the tempest's wing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">They hurled them on the foe;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">and the Confederate army was wildly routed.</p>
+
+<p>When war with France seemed imminent, in 1798, President Adams wrote to
+George Washington, then a private citizen in retirement at Mount Vernon:
+"We must have your name, if you will permit us to use it; there will be
+more efficacy in it than in many an army." Character is power.</p>
+
+<p>When Pope Paul IV. heard of the death of Calvin he exclaimed with a
+sigh, "Ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in&mdash;riches? No!
+Honors? No! But nothing could move him from his course. Holy Virgin!
+With two such servants, our Church would soon be mistress of both
+worlds."</p>
+
+<p>Eighteen hundred years ago, when night closed over the city of Pompeii,
+a lady sat in her house nursing her son of ten years of age. The child
+had been ill for some days; his form was wasted, his little limbs were<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;262">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>
+shrunk; and we may imagine with what infinite anxiety she watched every
+motion of the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. What did take
+place we know with an exactness very remarkable. That distant mountain
+which reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, Vesuvius, was
+troubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air such
+clouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of Pompeii became
+filled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until they
+reached the level of the windows. There was no chance of escape then by
+the doors; and those who attempted to get away stepped out of their
+first floor windows and rushed over the sulphurous stones&mdash;a short
+distance only, for they were quickly overpowered by the poisonous vapors
+and fell dead. After the stones there fell ashes, and after ashes hot
+water fell in showers, which changed the ashes into clay. Those who ran
+out of their houses during the fall of stones were utterly consumed,
+while those who waited until the ashes began to fall perished likewise,
+but their bodies were preserved by the ashes and water which fell upon
+them. The Pompeiian mother we have mentioned opened the window of her
+house when she thought the fall of stones was over, and with the child
+in her arms took a few hurried steps forward, when, overpowered by the
+sulphur, she fell forward, at which<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;263">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a> moment the shower of ashes began to
+fall, and quickly buried mother and child. The hot water afterward
+changed into a mould; the ashes and the sun baked the fatal clay to such
+a degree of hardness that it has endured to the present day. A short
+time ago the spot where mother and child lay was found, liquid
+plaster-of-Paris was poured into the mould formed by the bodies, and
+then the mould was broken up, leaving the plaster-cast whole. Thus one
+touching incident in the terrible tragedy of eighteen centuries ago has
+been preserved for the admiration and respect of posterity. <em>The arms
+and legs of the child showed a contraction and emaciation which could
+only result from illness.</em> Of the mother only the right arm was
+preserved; she fell upon the ashes, and the remaining portion of her
+body was consumed. <em>But the right hand still clasped the legs of the
+child</em>; on her arm were two gold bracelets, and on her fingers were two
+gold rings&mdash;one set with an emerald, the other with a cut amethyst. This
+touching illustration of <em>a mother's love</em> now rests in the museum of
+the celebrated city.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sitting with Grant once," says General Fisk, "when a
+major-general entered, dressed in the uniform of his rank, who said:
+'Boys, I have a good story to tell you. I believe there are no ladies
+present.' Grant said, 'No, but there are gentlemen present.'"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;264">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>Mr. George W. Childs, in referring to this trait, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Another great trait of his character was his purity in every way. I
+never heard him express or make an indelicate allusion in any way or
+shape. There is nothing I ever heard that man say that could not be
+repeated in the presence of women."</p>
+
+<p>The writer has heard of several incidents illustrating his answer to
+impure stories. On one occasion, when Grant formed one of a dinner-party
+of American gentlemen in a foreign city, conversation drifted into
+references to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said,
+"Gentlemen, please excuse me; I will retire."</p>
+
+<p>When Attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde
+before the gates of Rome in 452, Pope Leo alone of all the people dared
+go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. A single magistrate followed
+him. The Huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man,
+and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that he
+agreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him.</p>
+
+<p>Wellington said that Napoleon's presence in the French army was
+equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers, and Richter said of
+the invincible Luther, "His words were half battles."</p>
+
+<p>"I know no great men," says Voltaire, "except those who have rendered
+great<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;265">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a> services to the human race." Men are measured by what they do;
+not by what they seem or possess.</p>
+
+<p>Francis Horner, of England, was a man of whom Sydney Smith said, that
+"the ten commandments were stamped upon his forehead." The valuable and
+peculiar light in which Horner's history is calculated to inspire every
+right-minded youth is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight,
+possessed of greater influence than any other private man, and admired,
+beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless and the base.
+No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member.
+How was this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant.
+By wealth? Neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous
+sixpence. By office? He held but one; and that for only a few years, of
+no influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were not
+splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition was
+to be right. By eloquence? He spoke in calm, good taste, without any of
+the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination of
+manner? His was only correct and agreeable. By what was it, then? Merely
+by sense, industry, good principles and a good heart, qualities which no
+well constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force
+of his character that raised him;<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;266">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a> and this character was not impressed
+on him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by
+himself. There were many in the House of Commons of far greater ability
+and eloquence. But no one surpassed him in the combination of an
+adequate portion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to show what
+moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and
+goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the
+competition and jealousies of public life.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were rich
+or poor, a peer or a peasant? But what difference may it not make
+whether you did what was right or what was wrong?</p>
+
+<p>At a large dinner-party given by Lord Stratford after the Crimean War,
+it was proposed that every one should write on a slip of paper the name
+which appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. When the
+papers were opened everyone of them contained the name of Florence
+Nightingale.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Blackie, of the University of Edinburgh, said to a class of
+young men: "Money is not needful; power is not needful; liberty is not
+needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone
+is that which can truly save us, and if we are not saved in this sense,
+we certainly<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;267">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a> must be damned." It has been said that "when poverty is
+your inheritance, virtue must be your capital."</p>
+
+<p>"Hence it was," said Franklin, speaking of the influence of his known
+integrity of character, "that I had so much weight with my
+fellow-citizens. I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to
+much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and
+yet I generally carried my point."</p>
+
+<p>When a man's character is gone, all is gone. All peace of mind, all
+complacency in himself is fled forever. He despises himself. He is
+despised by his fellow-men. Within is shame and remorse; without neglect
+and reproach. He is of necessity a miserable and useless man; he is so
+even though he be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously
+every day. It is better to be poor; it is better to be reduced to
+beggary; it is better to be cast into prison, or condemned to perpetual
+slavery, than to be destitute of a good name or endure the pains and the
+evils of a conscious worthlessness of character.</p>
+
+<p>The time is soon coming when, by the common consent of mankind, it will
+be esteemed more honorable to have been John Pounds, putting new and
+beautiful souls into the ragged children of the neighborhood while he
+mended his father's shoes, than to have sat upon the British throne. The
+time<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;268">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a> now is when, if Queen Victoria, in one of her magnificent
+progresses through her realms, were to meet that more than American
+queen, Miss Dix, in her "circumnavigation of charity" among the insane,
+the former should kneel and kiss the hand of the latter; and the ruler
+over more than a hundred millions of people should pay homage to the
+angel whom God has sent to the maniac.</p>
+
+<p>"At your age," said to a youth an old man who had honorably held many
+positions of trust and responsibility, "both position and wealth appear
+enduring things; but at mine a man sees that nothing lasts but
+character."</p>
+
+<p>Several eminent clergymen were discussing the qualities of self-made
+men. They each admitted that they belonged to that class, except a
+certain bishop, who remained silent, and was intensely absorbed in the
+repast. The host was determined to draw him out, and so, addressing him,
+said: "All at this table are self-made men, unless the bishop is an
+exception." The bishop promptly replied, "I am not made yet," and the
+reply contained a profound truth. So long as life lasts, with its
+discipline of joy or sorrow, its opportunities for good or evil, so long
+our characters are being shaped and fixed.</p>
+
+<p>Milton said: "He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life
+an heroic poem." We are responsible for our thoughts,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;269">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a> and unless we
+could command them, mental and moral excellence would be impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Kingsley has well said: "Let any one set his heart to do what is
+right and nothing else, and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped
+with all that goes to make up the heroic expression, with noble
+indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows, perhaps
+even with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns."</p>
+
+<p>Said James Martineau: "God insists on having a concurrence between our
+practice and our thoughts. If we proceed to make a contradiction between
+them, He forthwith begins to abolish it, and if the will will not rise
+to the reason, the reason must be degraded to the will."</p>
+
+<p>"When I say, in conducting your understanding," says Sidney Smith, "love
+knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval
+with life&mdash;what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of
+conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the
+blind fortune which has made you so, and make them call it justice; love
+that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and
+make the proudest feel that it is unjust to laugh at the meanness of
+your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never
+quit you&mdash;which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the
+boundless regions of conception as an<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;270">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a> asylum against the cruelty, the
+injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world&mdash;that which
+will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in
+an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and
+of fraud?"</p>
+
+<p>The Arabs express this by a parable that incarnates, as is their wont,
+the Word in the recital. King Nimrod, say they, one day summoned his
+three sons into his presence. He ordered to be set before them three
+urns under seal. One of the urns was of gold, another of amber, and the
+third of clay. The king bade the eldest of his sons choose among the
+urns that which appeared to him to contain the treasure of greatest
+price. The eldest chose the vase of gold, on which was written the word
+"Empire." He opened it and found it full of blood. The second chose the
+amber vase whereon was written the word "Glory." He opened it and found
+it contained the ashes of the great men who had made a sensation in the
+world. The third son took the only remaining vase, the one of clay; he
+found it quite empty, but on the bottom the potter had written the word
+"God." "Which of these vases weighs the most?" asked the king of the
+courtiers. The men of ambition replied it was the vase of gold; the
+poets and <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had &quot;conquerers&quot;">conquerors</ins>, the amber one; the sages that it was the empty
+vase, because a single letter of the name God<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;271">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a> weighs more than the
+entire globe. We are of the opinion of the sages. We believe the
+greatest things are great but in the proportion of divinity they
+contain.</p>
+
+<p>"Although genius always commands admiration," says Smiles, "character
+most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, the
+latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in
+life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect,
+as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired,
+the latter are followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the
+highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about
+it; but the common lot of men is not heroic. And though the abiding
+sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally
+sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day
+existence. The most influential of all the virtues are those which are
+the most in request for daily use. They wear the best and last the
+longest. We can always better understand and appreciate a man's real
+character by the manner in which he conducts himself toward those who
+are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the
+seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public
+exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman.
+Intellectual culture has no<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;272">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a> necessary relation to purity or excellence
+of character.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, a condition of comparative poverty is compatible with
+character in its highest form. A man may possess only his industry, his
+frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true
+manhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions. It is an
+estate in the general good-will and respect of men; and they who invest
+in it&mdash;though they may not become rich in this world's goods&mdash;will find
+their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won. Without
+principles, a man is like a ship without rudder or compass, left to
+drift hither and thither with every wind that blows."</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast is afforded by the lives of Bacon and More. Bacon sought
+office with as much desire as More avoided it; Bacon used as much
+solicitation to obtain it as More endured to accept it, and each, when
+in it, was equally true to his character. More was simple, as Bacon was
+ostentatious. More was as incorruptible as Bacon was venal. More spent
+his private fortune in office, and Bacon spent the wages of corruption
+there. Both left office poor in worldly goods; but while More was rich
+in honor and good deeds, Bacon was poor in everything; poor in the
+mammon for which he bartered his integrity; poor in the gawd for which
+he sacrificed his peace; poor in the presence of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;273">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a> the worthless; covered
+with shame in the midst of the people; trusting his fame to posterity,
+of which posterity is only able to say, that the wisest of men was
+adviser to the silliest of kings, yet that such a king had a sort of
+majesty when morally compared with the official director of his
+conscience. Both More and Bacon served each a great purpose for the
+world. More illustrated the beauty of holiness; Bacon expounded the
+infinitude of science. Bacon became the prophet of intellect; More, the
+martyr of conscience. The one pours over our understandings the light of
+knowledge; but the other inflames our hearts with the love of virtue.</p>
+
+<p>All have read of the proud Egyptian king who ordered a colossal
+staircase built in his new palace, and was chagrined to find that he
+required a ladder to climb from one step to the next. A king's legs are
+as short as those of a beggar. So, too, a prince's ability to enjoy the
+pleasures of life is no greater than that of a pauper.</p>
+
+<p>"All that is valuable in this world is to be had for nothing. Genius,
+beauty, health, piety, love, are not bought and sold. The richest man on
+earth would vainly offer a fortune to be qualified to write a verse like
+Milton, or to compose a melody like Mozart. You may summon all the
+physicians, but they cannot procure for you the sweet, healthful sleep
+which the tired laborer gets<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;274">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a> without price. Let no man, then, call
+himself a proprietor. He owns but the breath as it traverses his lips
+and the idea as it flits across his mind; and of that breath he may be
+deprived by the sting of a bee, and that idea, perhaps, truly belongs to
+another."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths:<br /></span>
+<span>In feelings, not in figures on a dial.<br /></span>
+<span>We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives<br /></span>
+<span>Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best;<br /></span>
+<span>And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;275">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MORAL SUNSHINE.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise
+very well.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Sidney Smith.</span></p>
+
+<p>The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Whipple.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>This one sits shivering in fortune's smile,<br /></span>
+<span>Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath;<br /></span>
+<span>This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while<br /></span>
+<span>Laughs in the teeth of death.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;T. B. Aldrich.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>There is no real life but cheerful life.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Addison.</span></p>
+
+<p>Next to the virtue, the fun in this world is what we can least
+spare.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Agnes Strickland.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Joy in one's work is the consummate tool.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Phillips Brooks.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Joy is the mainspring in the whole<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Of endless Natures calm rotation.<br /></span>
+<span>Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In the great timepiece of Creation.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Schiller.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"He is as stiff as a poker," said a friend of a man who could never be
+coaxed or tempted to smile. "Stiff as a poker," exclaimed another, "why
+he would set an example to a poker."</p>
+
+<p>Even Christians are not celebrated for entering into the <em>joy</em> of their
+Lord.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that "Pascal would not<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;276">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a> permit himself to be conscious of
+the relish of his food; he prohibited all seasonings and spices, however
+much he might wish for and need them; and he actually died because he
+forced his diseased stomach to receive at each meal a certain amount of
+aliment, neither more nor less, whatever might be his appetite at the
+time, or his utter want of appetite. He wore a girdle armed with iron
+spikes, which he was accustomed to drive in upon his body (his fleshless
+ribs) as often as he thought himself in need of such admonition. He was
+annoyed and offended if any in his hearing might chance to say that they
+had just seen a beautiful woman. He rebuked a mother who permitted her
+own children to give her their kisses. Toward a loving sister, who
+devoted herself to his comfort, he assumed an artificial harshness of
+manner for the <em>express purpose</em>, as he acknowledged, of revolting her
+sisterly affection."</p>
+
+<p>And all this sprung from the simple principle that earthly enjoyment was
+inconsistent with religion.</p>
+
+<p>We should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind,
+as we would against a temptation to crime. A depressed mind prevents the
+free action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. It stops
+the secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the blood
+in the brain, and deranges the entire functions of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;277">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a> the body. Scrofula
+and consumption often follow protracted depressions of mind. That "fatal
+murmur" which is heard in the upper lobes of the lungs in the first
+stages of consumption, often follows depressed spirits after some great
+misfortune or sorrow. Victims of suicide are almost always in a
+depressed state from exhausted vitality, loss of nervous energy,
+dyspepsia, worry, anxiety, trouble, or grief.</p>
+
+<p>"Mirth is God's medicine," says a wise writer; "everybody ought to bathe
+in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety&mdash;all the rust of life, ought to be
+scoured off by the oil of mirth." It is better than emery. Every man
+ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon
+without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every
+pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with
+springs, in which one can ride over the roughest roads and scarcely feel
+anything but a pleasant rocking motion.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you," said Southey, "of the Spaniard who always put on
+spectacles when about to eat cherries, in order that the fruit might
+look larger and more tempting. In like manner I make the most of my
+enjoyments; and though I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles, I
+pack them in as small a compass as I can for myself, and never let them
+annoy others." We all know the power of good cheer to magnify
+everything.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;278">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>Travelers are told by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold and
+desolation of almost perpetual winter, that "Iceland is the best land
+the sun shines upon."</p>
+
+<p>"You are on the shady side of seventy, I expect?" was asked of an old
+man. "No," was the reply, "I am on the sunny side; for I am on the side
+nearest to glory."</p>
+
+<p>A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his
+mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much
+misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in
+every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly
+joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full
+of careering and rejoicing insects; that everywhere the good outbalances
+the bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm.</p>
+
+<p>"Bishop F&eacute;nelon is a delicious man," said Lord Peterborough; "I had to
+run away from him to prevent his making me a Christian."</p>
+
+<p>Hume, the historian, never said anything truer than&mdash;"To be happy, the
+person must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity
+to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom of
+looking on the bright side of every event was better than<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;279">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a> having a
+thousand pounds a year income. But Hume rated the value in dollars and
+cents of cheerfulness still higher. He said he would rather have a
+cheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side of
+things than to be master of an estate with 10,000 pounds a year.</p>
+
+<p>"We have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that of
+being pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>"If a word or two will render a man happy," said a Frenchman, "he must
+be a wretch indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting another
+man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what
+the other gains."</p>
+
+<p>The sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one who
+will be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, one
+who will of all things meet life's experiences with a sweet temper. It
+is impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother or
+sister, as its presiding genius. And it is a rule, with exceptions, that
+good appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. If, with these
+advantages, a girl or woman, boy or man, is still snappish or surly, why
+it must be due to her or his total depravity.</p>
+
+<p>Some things she should not do; she shouldn't dose herself, or study up
+her case, or plunge suddenly into vigorous exercise. Moderation is a
+safe rule to begin with, and,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;280">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a> indeed, to keep on with&mdash;moderation in
+study, in work, in exercise, in everything except fresh air, good,
+simple food, and sleep. Few people have too much of these. The average
+girl at home can find no more sanitary gymnastics than in doing part of
+the lighter housework. This sort of exercise has object, and interest,
+and use, which raises it above mere drill. Add to this a merry romp with
+younger brothers and sisters, a brisk daily walk, the use for a few
+moments twice a day of dumb bells in a cool, airy room, and it is safe
+to predict a steady advance toward that ideal state of being in which we
+forget our bodies and just enjoy ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not work that kills men," says Beecher; "it is worry. Work is
+healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is
+rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but
+friction."</p>
+
+<p>Helen Hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by
+everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations
+of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, as
+speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do
+not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, and
+we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets&mdash;that is, makes
+more or less complaint of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;281">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a> something or other, which probably every one
+in the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which most
+probably nobody can help. Why say anything about it? It is cold, it is
+hot, it is wet, it is dry, somebody has broken an appointment,
+ill-cooked a meal; stupidity or bad faith somewhere has resulted in
+discomfort. There are plenty of things to fret about. It is simply
+astonishing, how much annoyance and discomfort may be found in the
+course of every-day living, even of the simplest, if one only keeps a
+sharp eye out on that side of things. Some people seem to be always
+hunting for deformities, discords and shadows, instead of beauty,
+harmony and light. We are born to trouble, as sparks fly upward. But
+even to the sparks flying upward, in the blackest of smoke, there is a
+blue sky above, and the less time they waste on the road, the sooner
+they will reach it. Fretting is all time wasted on the road.</p>
+
+<p>About two things we should never fret, that which we cannot help, and
+that which we can help. Better find one of your own faults than ten of
+your neighbor's.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week
+and next year, that whiten our heads and wrinkle our faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Every man we meet looks as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with
+plenty of it on<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;282">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a> hand," said a French lady driving in New York.</p>
+
+<p>The pendulum of a certain clock began to calculate how often it would
+have to swing backward and forward in the week and in the month to come;
+then looking further into the future, it made a calculation for a year,
+etc. The pendulum got frightened and stopped. Do one day's work at a
+time. Do not worry about the trouble of to-morrow. Most of the trouble
+in life is borrowed trouble, which never actually comes.</p>
+
+<p>"As all healthy action, physical, intellectual and moral, depends
+primarily on cheerfulness," says E.&nbsp;P. Whipple, "and as every duty,
+whether it be to follow a plow or to die at the stake, should be done in
+a cheerful spirit, the exploration of the sources and conditions of this
+most vigorous, exhilarating and creative of the virtues may be as useful
+as the exposition of any topic of science or system of prudential art."</p>
+
+<p>Christ, the great teacher, did not shut Himself up with monks, away from
+temptation of the great world outside. He taught no long-faced, gloomy
+theology. He taught the gospel of gladness and good cheer. His doctrines
+are touched with the sunlight, and flavored with the flowers of the
+fields. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and happy,
+romping children are in them. True piety is cheerful as the day.</p>
+
+<p>Cranmer cheers his brother martyrs, and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;283">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a> Latimer walks with a face
+shining with cheerfulness to the stake, upholds his fellow's spirits,
+and seasons all his sermons with pleasant anecdotes.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches," said Emerson,
+"and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of
+wisdom."</p>
+
+<p>In answer to the question, "How shall we overcome temptation," a noted
+writer said, "Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the
+second, and cheerfulness is the third." A habit of cheerfulness,
+enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a
+fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of
+active life. He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happy
+side of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in the
+flowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a great
+advantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. His
+habitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner
+with grace.</p>
+
+<p>We often forget that the priceless charm which will secure to us all
+these desirable gifts is within our reach. It is the charm of a sunny
+temper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold,
+more to be desired than fine rubies. It is an aroma, whose fragrance
+fills the air with the odors of Paradise.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;284">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>"It is from these enthusiastic fellows," says an admirer, "that you
+hear&mdash;what they fully believe, bless them!&mdash;that all countries are
+beautiful, all dinners grand, all pictures superb, all mountains high,
+all women beautiful. When such a one has come back from his country
+trip, after a hard year's work, he has always found the cosiest of
+nooks, the cheapest houses, the best of landladies, the finest views,
+and the best dinners. But with the other the case is indeed altered. He
+has always been robbed; he has positively seen nothing; his landlady was
+a harpy, his bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was so tough that he
+could not get his teeth through it."</p>
+
+<p>"He goes on to talk of the sun in his glory," says Izaak Walton, "the
+fields, the meadows, the streams which they have seen, the birds which
+they have heard; he asks what would the blind and deaf give to see and
+hear what they have seen."</p>
+
+<p>Of Lord Holland's sunshiny face, Rogers said: "He always comes to
+breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen."</p>
+
+<p>But oh, for the glorious spectacles worn by the good-natured man!&mdash;oh,
+for those wondrous glasses, finer than the Claude Lorraine glass, which
+throw a sunlit view over everything, and make the heart glad with little
+things, and thankful for small mercies! Such glasses had honest Izaak<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;285">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>
+Walton, who, coming in from a fishing expedition on the river Lea, burst
+out into such grateful little talks as this: "Let us, as we walk home
+under the cool shade of this honeysuckle hedge, mention some of the
+thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met. And that
+our present happiness may appear the greater, and we more thankful for
+it, I beg you to consider with me, how many do at this very time lie
+under the torment of the gout or the toothache, and this we have been
+free from; and let me tell you, that every misery I miss is a new
+blessing."</p>
+
+<p>The hypochondriac who nurses his spleen never looks forward cheerfully,
+but lounges in his invalid chair, and croaks like a raven, foreboding
+woe. "Ah," says he, "you will never succeed; these things always fail."</p>
+
+<p>The Thug of India, whose prayer is a homicide, and whose offering is the
+body of a victim, is melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>The Fijiian, waiting to smash the skull of a victim, and to prepare a
+bakola for his gods, is gloomy as fear and death.</p>
+
+<p>The melancholy of the Eastern Jews after their black fast, and the
+ill-temper of monks and nuns after their Fridays and Wednesdays, is very
+observable; it is the recompense which a proud nature takes out of the
+world for its selfish sacrifice. Melancholia is the black bile which the
+Greeks presumed<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;286">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a> overran and pervaded the bodies of such persons; and
+fasting does undoubtedly produce this.</p>
+
+<p>"I once talked with a Rosicrucian about the Great Secret," said Addison.
+"He talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and converted
+everything that was near it to the highest perfection. 'It gives lustre
+to the sun,' said he, 'and water to the diamond. It irradiates every
+metal, and enriches lead with the property of gold. It brightens smoke
+into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. A single ray
+dissipates pain and care from the person on whom it falls.' Then I found
+his great secret was Content."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>My crown is in my heart, not on my head:<br /></span>
+<span>Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:<br /></span>
+<span>A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Shakespeare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Yet, with a heart that's ever kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">A gentle spirit gay,<br /></span>
+<span>You've spring perennial in your mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And round you make a May.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Thackeray.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;287">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOLD UP YOUR HEAD.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Thoroughly to believe in one's own self, so one's self were
+thorough, were to do great things.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Tennyson.</span></p>
+
+<p>If there be a faith that can remove mountains, it is faith in
+one's own power.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Marie Ebner-Eschenbach.</span></p>
+
+<p>Let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest,
+the greatest quality of true manliness.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Kossuth.</span></p>
+
+<p>It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. * * * Trust
+thyself; every breast vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
+place that divine Providence has found for you, the society of
+your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have
+always done so. * * * Nothing is at last sacred but the
+integrity of our own mind.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>This above all,&mdash;to thine own self be true;<br /></span>
+<span>And it must follow, as the night the day,<br /></span>
+<span>Thou canst not then be false to any man.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Shakespeare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>"Yes," said a half-drunken man in a cellar to a parish visitor, a young
+girl, "I am a tough and a drunkard, and am just out of jail, and my wife
+is starving; but that doesn't give you the right to come into my house
+without knocking to ask questions."</p>
+
+<p>Another zealous girl declared in a reform club in New York City that she
+always went<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;288">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a> to visit the poor in her carriage, with the crest on the
+door and liveried servants. "It gives me authority," she said. "They
+listen to my words with more respect."</p>
+
+<p>The Fr&auml;ulein Barbara, who founded the home for degraded and drunken
+sailors in London, used other means to gain influence over them. "I
+too," she would say, taking the poor applicant by the hand when he came
+to her door, "I, too, as well as you, am one of those for whom Christ
+died. We are brother and sister, and will help each other."</p>
+
+<p>An English artist, engaged in painting a scene in the London slums,
+applied to the Board of Guardians of the poor in Chelsea for leave to
+sketch into it, as types of want and wretchedness, certain picturesque
+paupers then in the almshouse. The board refused permission on the
+ground that "a man does not cease to have self-respect and rights
+because he is a pauper, and that his misfortunes should not be paraded
+before the world."</p>
+
+<p>The incident helps to throw light on the vexed problem of the
+intercourse of the rich with the poor. Kind but thoughtless people, who
+take up the work of "slumming," intent upon elevating and reforming the
+needy classes, are apt to forget that these unfortunates have
+self-respect and rights and sensitive feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not derided," said Diogenes,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;289">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a> when some one told him he was
+derided. "Only those are ridiculed who feel the ridicule and are
+discomposed by it."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Franklin used to say that if a man makes a sheep of himself the
+wolves will eat him. Not less true is it that if a man is supposed to be
+a sheep, wolves will very likely try to eat him.</p>
+
+<p>"O God, assist our side," prayed the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, a general
+in the Prussian service, before going into battle. "At least, avoid
+assisting the enemy, and leave the result to me."</p>
+
+<p>"If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is," said Schelling,
+"he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoretical
+respect for himself, and a practical will soon follow." A person under
+the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.
+"Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men," said
+Kossuth; "but let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the
+rest, the greatest quality of true manliness." Froude wrote: "A tree
+must be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. A man
+must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be
+independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any
+superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be
+built."</p>
+
+<p>"I think he is a most extraordinary man,"<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;290">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a> said John J. Ingalls,
+speaking of Grover Cleveland. "While the Senate was in session to induct
+Hendricks into office, I had an opportunity to study Cleveland, as he
+sat there like a sphinx. He occupied a seat immediately in front of the
+vice-president's stand, and from where I sat, I had an unobstructed view
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to fathom, if possible, what manner of a man it was who had
+defeated us and taken the patronage of the government over to the
+democracy. We had a new master, so to speak, and a democrat at that, and
+I looked him over with a good deal of curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"There sat a man, the president of the United States, beginning his rule
+over the destinies of sixty millions of people, who less than three
+years before was an obscure lawyer, scarcely known outside of Erie
+County, shut up in a dingy office over a livery stable. He had been
+mayor of the city of Buffalo at a time when a crisis in its affairs
+demanded a courageous head and a firm hand and he supplied them. The
+little prestige thus gained made him the democratic nominee for
+governor, and at a time (his luck still following him) when the
+Republican party of the State was rent with dissensions. He was elected,
+and (still more luck) by the unprecedented and unheard of majority of
+nearly 200,000 votes. Two years later his party nominated him for
+president and he was elected.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;291">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>"There sat this man before me, wholly undisturbed by the pageantry of
+the occasion, calmly waiting to perform his part in the drama, just as
+an actor awaits his cue to appear on a stage. It was his first visit to
+Washington. He had never before seen the Capitol and knew absolutely
+nothing of the machinery of government. All was a mystery to him, but a
+stranger not understanding the circumstances would have imagined that
+the proceedings going on before him were a part of his daily life.</p>
+
+<p>"The man positively did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle
+during the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betray
+the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thought
+of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he
+struck me as a remarkable illustration of the possibilities of American
+citizenship.</p>
+
+<p>"But the most marvelous exhibition of the man's nerve and of the
+absolute confidence he has in himself was yet to come. After the
+proceedings in the Senate chamber Cleveland was conducted to the east
+end of the Capitol to take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural
+address. He wore a close buttoned Prince Albert coat, and between the
+buttons he thrust his right hand, while his left he carried behind him.
+In this position he stood until the applause<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;292">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a> which greeted him had
+subsided, when he began his address.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked for him to produce a manuscript, but he did not, and as he
+progressed in clear and distinct tones, without hesitation, I was
+amazed. With sixty millions of people, yes, with the entire civilized
+world looking on, this man had the courage to deliver an inaugural
+address making him President of the United States as coolly and as
+unconcernedly as if he were addressing a ward meeting. It was the most
+remarkable spectacle this or any other country has ever beheld."</p>
+
+<p>Believe in yourself; you may succeed when others do not believe in you,
+but never when you do not believe in yourself.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! John Hunter, still hard at work!" exclaimed a physician on finding
+the old anatomist at the dissecting table. "Yes, doctor, and you'll find
+it difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven takes a hundred years to form a great genius for the
+regeneration of an empire and afterward rests a hundred years," said
+Kaunitz, who had administered the affairs of his country with great
+success for half a century. "This makes me tremble for the Austrian
+monarchy after my death."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it beautiful that I can sing so?" asked Jenny Lind, na&iuml;vely, of a
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>"My Lord," said William Pitt in 1757 to the Duke of Devonshire, "I am
+sure that I<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;293">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a> can save this country and that nobody else can." He did
+save it.</p>
+
+<p>What seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strong
+expression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men have
+usually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of his
+place in history and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his own
+fame. Kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read his
+books or not. "I may well wait a century for a reader since God has
+waited six thousand years for an observer like myself." "Fear not," said
+Julius C&aelig;sar to his pilot frightened in a storm, "thou bearest C&aelig;sar and
+his good fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>When the Directory at Paris found that Napoleon had become in one month
+the most famous man in Europe they determined to check his career, and
+appointed Kellerman his associate in command. Napoleon promptly, but
+respectfully, tendered his resignation, saying, "One bad general is
+better than two good ones; war, like government, is mainly decided by
+tact." This decision immediately brought the Directory to terms.</p>
+
+<p>Emperor Francis was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descent
+of his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the account
+published, remarking, "I had rather be the descendant of an honest<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;294">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a> man
+than of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence with
+myself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolph
+of Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates from the battle of
+Montenotte."</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon was informed that the British Government had decreed that
+he should be recognized only as general, he said, "They cannot prevent
+me from being myself."</p>
+
+<p>An Englishman asked Napoleon at Elba who was the greatest general of the
+age, adding, "I think Wellington." To which the Emperor replied, "He has
+not yet measured himself against me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market,"
+said Washington Irving; "but it must not cower at home and expect to be
+sought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of
+forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over
+with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that
+valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a
+mere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more useful than a
+sleeping lion."</p>
+
+<p>"Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears."</p>
+
+<p>"You may deceive all the people some of the time," said Lincoln, "some
+of the people all the time, but not all the people all<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;295">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a> the time." We
+cannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our
+own respect is to deserve it. What would you think of a man who would
+neglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect?</p>
+
+<p>"Self-reliance is a grand element of character," says Michael Reynolds.
+"It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with
+men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's
+memory."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;296">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>BOOKS AND SUCCESS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Ignorance is the curse of God,<br /></span>
+<span>Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Shakespeare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the
+other perpetual.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Socrates.</span></p>
+
+<p>If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it
+away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best
+interest.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Franklin.</span></p>
+
+<p>My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange
+for the treasures of India.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Gibbon.</span></p>
+
+<p>If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down
+at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I
+would spurn them all.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;F&eacute;nelon.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Who of us can tell<br /></span>
+<span>What he had been, had Cadmus never taught<br /></span>
+<span>The art that fixes into form the thought,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Had Plato never spoken from his cell,<br /></span>
+<span>Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Bulwer.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes
+into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the
+unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that
+true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Washington Irving.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"Do you want to know," asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to you
+in<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;297">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a> this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a
+boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were my
+delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at
+last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to
+me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I
+seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I took
+to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was
+doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature.
+There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I had
+to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * From the days when we
+used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a
+devouring hunger to read books. It made small matter what they were, so
+they were books. Half a volume of an old encyclop&aelig;dia came along&mdash;the
+first I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot even
+guess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Society
+with the greatest delight.</p>
+
+<p>"There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it is
+in reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin
+to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are
+of a wholesome nature. And I remember<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;298">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a> this because it touches this
+beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of
+1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; and
+sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: 'I notice thou's
+fond of reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was Irving's
+'Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'as
+them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old days of
+Crusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into
+my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him,
+thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I
+was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with the
+wind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger to
+read never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the
+fire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one
+place to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The world
+centred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to come
+out of it; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being a
+minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that I
+should be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a passion
+like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming,
+mechanism or music, and you give him<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;299">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a> thereby a lever to lift his world,
+and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. There were two
+or three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave the
+roughs a wide berth. The books did their work, too, about that drink,
+and fought the devil with a finer fire."</p>
+
+<p>"In education," says Herbert Spencer, "the process of self-development
+should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to
+make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They
+should be <em>told</em> as little as possible, and induced to <em>discover</em> as
+much as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction;
+and that to achieve the best results each mind must progress somewhat
+after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success of
+self-made men."</p>
+
+<p>"My books," said Thomas Hood, "kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the
+tavern, and the saloon. The associate of Pope and Addison, the mind
+accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of Shakespeare and
+Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company or slaves."</p>
+
+<p>"When I get a little money," said Erasmus, "I buy books, and if any is
+left, I buy food and clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"Hundreds of books read once," says Robertson, "have passed as
+completely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the discipline
+of mind got by writing down,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;300">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a> not copying, an abstract of a book which
+is worth the trouble fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides,
+enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit."</p>
+
+<p>"This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you," says Trollope, "is
+your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures
+that God has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be more
+ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in
+which there is no alloy."</p>
+
+<p>The Bible was begun in the desert in Arabia ages before Homer sang and
+flourished in Asia Minor. Millions of books have since gone into
+oblivion. Empires have risen and fallen. Revolutions have swept over and
+changed the earth. It has always been subject to criticism and obloquy.
+Mighty men have sought its overthrow. Works of Greek poets who catered
+to men's depraved tastes have, in spite of everything, perished. The
+Bible is a book of religion; and can be tried by no other standard.</p>
+
+<p>"Read Plutarch," said Emerson, "and the world is a proud place peopled
+with men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-gods standing around
+us who will not let us sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no business, no avocation whatever," says Wyttenbach, "which
+will not permit a man, who has an inclination, to<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;301">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a> give a little time,
+every day, to the studies of his youth."</p>
+
+<p>"All the sport in the park," said Lady Jane Grey, "is but a shadow of
+that pleasure I find in Plato."</p>
+
+<p>"In the lap of Eternity," said Heinsius, "among so many divine souls, I
+take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity
+all the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Death itself divides not the wise," says Bulwer. "Thou meetest Plato
+when thine eyes moisten over the Ph&aelig;do. May Homer live with all men
+forever!"</p>
+
+<p>"When a man reads," says President Porter, "he should put himself into
+the most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energies
+of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused
+by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition or
+review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or
+neglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief or full notes,
+in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from
+the drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book."</p>
+
+<p>"Reading is to the mind," says Addison, "what exercise is to the body.
+As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the
+other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished
+and confirmed."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;302">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>"There is a world of science necessary in choosing books," said Bulwer.
+"I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last
+light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose draught for the
+plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am
+told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was
+new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about."</p>
+
+<p>"When I served when a young man in India," said a distinguished English
+soldier and diplomatist; "when it was the turning point in my life; when
+it was a mere chance whether I should become a mere card-playing,
+hooka-smoking lounger, I was fortunately quartered for two years in the
+neighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Books," says E.&nbsp;P. Whipple, "are lighthouses erected in the great sea
+of time."</p>
+
+<p>"As a rule," said Benjamin Disraeli, "the most successful man in life is
+the man who has the best information."</p>
+
+<p>"You get into society, in the widest sense," says Geikie, "in a great
+library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not
+dreading repulses. From that great crowd you can choose what companions
+you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride,
+but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;303">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a> humility.
+You may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority;
+for books are perfectly well-bred, and hurt no one's feelings by any
+discriminations." Sir William Waller observed, "In my study, I am sure
+to converse with none but wise men, but abroad it is impossible for me
+to avoid the society of fools." "It is the glorious prerogative of the
+empire of knowledge," says Webster, "that what it gains it never loses.
+On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its
+ends become means, all its attainments help to new conquests."</p>
+
+<p>"At this hour, five hundred years since their creation," says De
+Quincey, "the tales of Chaucer, never equaled on this earth for their
+tenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many
+in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the
+modernization of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, one
+thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the pagan tales of
+Ovid, never equaled on this earth for the gayety of their movement and
+the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no Past so long as Books shall live," says Lytton.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder Cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so he
+might live and die among his books," says Geikie.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;304">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a> "No wonder Petrarch
+was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. It
+seems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitz
+should have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at his
+desk. Buckle's last words, 'My poor book!' tell a passion that forgot
+death; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tear stole down
+the manly cheeks of Scott as they wheeled him into his library, when he
+had come back to Abbotsford to die. Southey, white-haired, a living
+shadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer open
+or read, is altogether pathetic."</p>
+
+<p>"No entertainment is so cheap as reading," says Mary Wortley Montagu;
+"nor any pleasure so lasting." Good books elevate the character, purify
+the taste, <em>take the attractiveness out of low pleasures</em>, and lift us
+upon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be mean
+directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of a
+man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his
+reading; but it will not be about his reading.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of his
+poverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearer
+forget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, the
+downtrodden his degradation, as books. They are friends to<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;305">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a> the lonely,
+companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless,
+good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. They bring
+light into darkness, and sunshine into shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-five years ago, when I was a boy," said Rev. J.&nbsp;A. James, "a
+school-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for only
+fifteen minutes. At the end of that time it was returned to him, but
+that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have asked God on
+my knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but I believe that I
+shall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage I received
+during those fifteen minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Did Homer and Plato and Socrates and Virgil ever dream that their words
+would echo through the ages, and aid in shaping men's lives in the
+nineteenth century? They were mere infants when on earth in comparison
+with the mighty influence and power they now yield. Every life on the
+American continent has in some degree been influenced by them. Christ,
+when on earth, never exerted one millionth part of the influence He
+wields to-day. While He reigns supreme in few human hearts, He touches
+all more or less, the atheist as well as the saint. On the other hand
+who shall say how many crimes were committed the past year by wicked men
+buried long ago? Their books, their pictures, their terrible<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;306">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a> examples,
+live in all they reach, and incite to evil deeds. How important, then,
+is the selection of books which are to become a part of your being.</p>
+
+<p>Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may
+be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away
+our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but
+he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds.</p>
+
+<p>"Good books and the wild woods are two things with which man can never
+become too familiar," says George W. Cable. "The friendship of trees is
+a sort of self-love and is very wholesome. All inanimate nature is but a
+mirror, and it is greater far to have the sense of beauty than it is to
+be only its insensible depository.</p>
+
+<p>"The books that inspire imagination, whether in truth or fiction; that
+elevate the thoughts, are the right kind to read. Our emotions are
+simply the vibrations of our soul.</p>
+
+<p>"The moment fiction becomes mendacious it is bad, for it induces us to
+believe a lie. Fiction purely as fiction must be innocent and beautiful,
+and its beauty must be more than skin deep. Every field of art is a
+playground and we are extra pleased when the artist makes that field a
+gymnasium also."</p>
+
+<p>Cotton Mather's "Essay to do Good"<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;307">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></a> read by the boy Franklin influenced
+the latter's whole life. He advised everybody to read with a pen in hand
+and to make notes of all they read.</p>
+
+<p>James T. Fields visited Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail.
+Pomeroy told him he had been a great reader of "blood and thunder"
+stories; that he had read sixty dime novels about scalping and other
+bloody performances; and he thought there was no doubt that these books
+had put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderous
+acts.</p>
+
+<p>Many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life under the
+influence of Marryat's novels. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon," read at the
+age of seven years, sent one boy whom I knew to the army before he was
+fourteen. Many a man has committed crime from the leavening, multiplying
+influence of a bad book read when a boy. The chaplain of Newgate prison
+in London, in one of his annual reports to the Lord Mayor, referring to
+many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, said
+that he discovered that "all these boys, without exception, had been in
+the habit of reading those cheap periodicals" which were published for
+the alleged amusement of youth of both sexes. There is not a police
+court or a prison in this country where similar cases could not be
+found. One can hardly measure the moral ruin that<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;308">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a> has been caused in
+this generation by the influence of bad books.</p>
+
+<p>In the parlor window of the old mossy vicarage where Coleridge spent his
+dreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of Oriental
+fancy, the "Arabian Nights," and he has told us with what mingled desire
+and apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until the
+morning sunshine had touched and illuminated it, when, seizing it
+hastily, he would carry it off in triumph to some leafy nook in the
+vicarage garden, and plunge delightedly into its maze of marvels and
+enchantments.</p>
+
+<p>Beecher said that Ruskin's works taught him the secret of seeing, and
+that no man could ever again be quite the same man or look at the world
+in the same way after reading him. Samuel Drew said, "Locke's 'Essay on
+the Understanding' awakened me from stupor, and induced me to form a
+resolution to abandon the groveling views I had been accustomed to
+maintain." An English tanner, whose leather gained a great reputation,
+said he should not have made it so good if he had not read Carlyle. The
+lives of Washington and Henry Clay, which Lincoln borrowed from
+neighbors in the wilderness, and devoured by the light of the cabin
+fire, inspired his life. In his early manhood he read Paine's "Age of
+Reason," and Volney's "Ruins," which so influenced his mind that he
+wrote an essay to prove the<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;309">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></a> unreliability of the Bible. These two books
+nearly unbalanced his moral character. But, fortunately, the books which
+fell into his hands in after years corrected this evil influence. The
+trend of many a life for good or ill, for success or failure, has been
+determined by a single book. The books which we read early in life are
+those which influence us most. When Garfield was working for a neighbor
+he read "Sinbad the Sailor" and the "Pirate's Own Book." These books
+revealed a new world to him, and his mother with difficulty kept him
+from going to sea. He was fascinated with the sea life which these books
+pictured to his young imagination. The "Voyages of Captain Cook" led
+William Carey to go on a mission to the heathen. "The Imitation of
+Christ" and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying" determined the character of
+John Wesley. "Shakespeare and the Bible," said John Sharp, "made me
+Archbishop of York." The "Vicar of Wakefield" awakened the poetical
+genius in Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been the bosom friend of Leander and Romeo," said Lowell. "I
+seem to go behind Shakespeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand.
+Sometimes, in my sorrow, a line from Spenser steals in upon my memory as
+if by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast from
+the distant trump of a knight pricking toward the court of Faerie, and I
+am<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;310">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></a> straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshine
+of a previous and long-agone experience."</p>
+
+<p>"Who gets more enjoyment out of eating," asks Amos R. Wells, "the
+pampered millionaire, whose tongue is the wearied host of myriads of
+sugary, creamy, spicy guests, or the little daughter of the laborer,
+trotting about all the morning with helpful steps, who has come a long
+two miles with her father's dinner to eat it with him from a tin pail?
+And who gets the more pleasure out of reading, the satiated
+fiction-glutton, her brain crammed with disordered fragments of
+countless scenes of adventure, love and tragedy, impatient of the same
+old situations, the familiar characters, the stale plots&mdash;she or the
+girl who is fired with a love for history, say, who wants to know all
+about the grand old, queer old Socrates, and then about his friends, and
+then about the times in which he lived, and then about the way in which
+they all lived, then about the Socratic legacy to the ages? Why, will
+that girl ever be done with the feast? Can you not see, looking down on
+her joy with a blessing, the very Lord of the banquet, who has ordered
+all history and ordained that the truth He fashions shall be stranger
+always than the fiction man contrives? Take the word of a man who has
+made full trial of both. Solid reading is as much more inter<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;311">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a>esting and
+attractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more recreative
+than frivolous living."</p>
+
+<p>"I solemnly declare," said Sidney Smith, "that but for the love of
+knowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher
+as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; for
+the fire of our minds is like the fires which the Persians burn in the
+mountains, it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be
+quenched! Upon something it must act and feed&mdash;upon the pure spirit of
+knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. Therefore, when
+I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great
+love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life&mdash;what do I say
+but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that
+which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which
+has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you
+are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest
+feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that
+which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you&mdash;which will open
+to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of
+conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the
+pain that may be your lot in the world&mdash;that which will make your<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;312">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312"></a>
+motives habitually great and honorable, <em>and light up in an instant a
+thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud</em>?"</p>
+
+<p>Do I feel like hearing an eloquent sermon? Spurgeon and Beecher,
+Whitefield, Hall, Collyer, Phillips Brooks, Canon Farrar, Dr. Parker,
+Talmage, are all standing on my bookcase, waiting to give me their
+greatest efforts at a moment's notice. Do I feel indisposed, and need a
+little recreation? This afternoon I will take a trip across the
+Atlantic, flying against the wind and over breakers without fear of
+seasickness on the ocean greyhounds. I will inspect the world renowned
+Liverpool docks; take a run up to Hawarden, call on Mr. Gladstone; fly
+over to London, take a run through the British Museum and see the
+wonderful collection from all nations; go through the National Art
+Gallery, through the Houses of Parliament, visit Windsor Castle and
+Buckingham Palace, call upon Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales; take a
+run through the lake region and call upon the great writers, visit
+Oxford and Cambridge; cross the English Channel, stop at Rouen, where
+Joan of Arc was burned to death by the English, take a flying trip to
+Paris, visit the tomb of Napoleon, the Louvre Gallery; take a peep at
+one of the greatest pieces of sculpture in existence, the Venus de Milo
+(which a rich and ignorant person<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;313">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></a> offered to buy if they would give him
+a fresh one), take a glance at some of the greatest paintings in
+existence along the miles of galleries; take a peep into the Grand Opera
+House, the grandest in the world (to make room for which 427 buildings
+were demolished), promenade through the Champs de Elys&eacute;e, pass under the
+triumphal arch of Napoleon, take a run out to Versailles and inspect the
+famous palace of Louis XIV., upon which he spent perhaps $100,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>Do I desire to hear eloquent speeches? Through my books I can enter the
+Parliament and listen to the thrilling oratory of Disraeli, of
+Gladstone, of Bright, of O'Connor; they will admit me to the floor of
+the Senate, where I can hear the matchless oratory of a Webster, of a
+Clay, of a Calhoun, of a Sumner, of Everett, of Wilson. They will pass
+me into the Roman Forum, where I can hear Cicero, or to the rostrums of
+Greece, where I may listen spell-bound to the magic oratory of a
+Demosthenes.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter how poor I am," says Channing; "no matter though the
+prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the
+sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if
+Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, and
+Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
+the human heart, and Franklin to<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;314">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a> enrich me with his practical
+wisdom,&mdash;I shall not pine for the want of intellectual companionship,
+and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called
+the best society in the place where I live."</p>
+
+<p>"With the dead there is no rivalry," says Macaulay. "In the dead there
+is no change. Plato is never sullen; Cervantes is never petulant;
+Demosthenes never comes unseasonably; Dante never stays too long; no
+difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero; no heresy can
+excite the horror of Bossuet."</p>
+
+<p>"Heed not the idle assertion that literary pursuits will disqualify you
+for the active business of life," says Alexander H. Everett. "Reject it
+as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by
+experience."</p>
+
+<p>The habit of reading may become morbid. There is a novel-reading
+disease. There are people who are almost as much tied to their novels as
+an intemperate man is tied to his bottle. The more of these novels they
+read, the weaker their minds become. They remember nothing; they read
+for the stimulus; their reasoning powers become weaker and weaker, their
+memory more treacherous. The mind is ruined for healthy intellectual
+food. They have no taste for history or biography, or anything but
+cheap, trashy, sensational novels.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;315">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></a>The passive reception of other men's thoughts is not education. Beware
+of intellectual dram drinking and intellectual dissipation. It is
+emasculating. Beware of the book which does not make you determined to
+go and do something and be something in the world.</p>
+
+<p>The great difference between the American graduate and the graduates
+from the English universities is that the latter have not read many
+books superficially, but a few books well. The American graduate has a
+smattering of many books, but has not become master of any. The same is
+largely true of readers in general; they want to know a little of
+everything. They want to read all the latest publications, good, bad and
+indifferent, if it is only new. As a rule our people want light reading,
+"something to read" that will take up the attention, kill time on the
+railroad or at home. As a rule English people read more substantial
+books, older books, books which have established their right to exist.
+They are not so eager for "recent publications."</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Cook advises youth to always make notes of their reading. Mr.
+Cook uses the margins of his books for his notes, and marks all of his
+own books very freely, so that every volume in his library becomes a
+notebook. He advises all young men and young women to keep commonplace
+books. We cannot too heartily recommend this<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;316">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></a> habit of taking notes. It
+is a great aid to memory, and it helps wonderfully to locate or to find
+for future use what we have read. It helps to assimilate and make our
+own whatever we read. The habit of taking notes of lectures and sermons
+is an excellent one. One of the greatest aids to education is the habit
+of writing out an analysis or a skeleton of a book or article after we
+have read it; also of a sermon or a lecture. This habit has made many a
+strong, vigorous thinker and writer. In this connection we cannot too
+strongly recommend the habit of saving clippings from our readings
+wherever possible of everything which would be likely to assist us in
+the future. These scrap-books, indexed, often become of untold
+advantage, especially if in the line of our work. Much of what we call
+genius in great men comes from these note-books and scrap-books.</p>
+
+<p>How many poor boys and girls who thought they had "no chance" in life
+have been started upon noble careers by the grand books of Smiles, Todd,
+Mathews, Munger, Whipple, Geikie, Thayer, and others.</p>
+
+<p>You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of
+any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get
+from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true that
+the facts learned from books are worth<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;317">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317"></a> more than the dust from the
+stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the
+axe. Bacon says: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
+and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be
+read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few
+to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a
+full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and,
+therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he
+confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he
+had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories
+make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy
+deep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;318">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>RICHES WITHOUT WINGS.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Eph. iv. I.</span></p>
+
+<p>Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an
+uncovetous spirit.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Selden.</span></p>
+
+<p>Less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is to
+possess it.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Reynolds.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Rich, from the very want of wealth,<br /></span>
+<span>In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Gray.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its
+nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he
+wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Franklin.</span></p>
+
+<p>There are treasures laid up in the heart, treasures of charity,
+piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes
+with him beyond death, when he leaves this world.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Buddhist Scriptures.</span></p>
+
+<p>"It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better
+than rubies, and all things that may be desired are not to be
+compared to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful,
+unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless,
+selfish life."</p>
+
+<p>I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to
+feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel
+that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be
+bought&mdash;neither by com<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;319">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></a>fort, neither by pride,&mdash;and although I
+be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is
+the poor man beside me.
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Emerson.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>"I don't want such things," said Epictetus to the rich Roman orator who
+was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; "and besides," said
+the stoic, "you are poorer than I am, after all. You have silver
+vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. My mind to me a
+kingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation in
+lieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you;
+mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, how many things are in the world of which Diogenes hath no need!"
+exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at
+a country fair.</p>
+
+<p>"One would think," said Boswell, "that the proprietor of all this
+(Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsfield) must be happy." "Nay, sir,"
+said Johnson, "all this excludes but one evil, poverty."</p>
+
+<p>"What property has he left behind him?" people ask when a man dies; but
+the angel who receives him asks, "What good deeds hast thou sent before
+thee?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is the best thing to possess?" asked an ancient philosopher of his
+pupils. One answered, "Nothing is better than a good eye,"&mdash;a figurative
+expression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;320">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></a> said, "A
+good companion is the best thing in the world;" a third chose a good
+neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazar said: "A good heart
+is better than them all." "True," said the master; "thou hast
+comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath
+a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and
+will easily see what is fit to be done by him."</p>
+
+<p>"My kingdom for a horse," said Richard III. of England amid the press of
+Bosworth Field. "My kingdom for a moment," said Queen Elizabeth on her
+death-bed. And millions of others, when they have felt earth, its riches
+and power slipping from their grasp, have shown plainly that deep down
+in their hearts they value such things at naught when really compared
+with the blessed light of life, the stars and flowers, the companionship
+of friends, and far above all else, the opportunity of growth and
+development here and of preparation for future life.</p>
+
+<p>Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark wrote on the window of her prison,
+with her diamond ring: "Oh, keep me innocent; make others great."</p>
+
+<p>"These are my jewels," said Cornelia to the Campanian lady who asked to
+see her gems; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning from
+school. The reply was worthy the daughter of Scipio Africanus<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;321">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></a> and wife
+of Tiberius Gracchus. The most valuable production of any country is its
+crop of men.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take away thy treasures," said a tyrant to a philosopher. "Nay,
+that thou canst not," was the retort; "for, in the first place, I have
+none that thou knowest of. My treasure is in heaven, and my heart is
+there."</p>
+
+<p>Some people are born happy. No matter what their circumstances are they
+are joyous, content and satisfied with everything. They carry a
+perpetual holiday in their eye and see joy and beauty everywhere. When
+we meet them they impress us as just having met with some good luck, or
+that they have some good news to tell you. Like the bees that extract
+honey from every flower, they have a happy alchemy which transmutes even
+gloom into sunshine. In the sick room they are better than the physician
+and more potent than drugs. All doors open to these people. They are
+welcome everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>We make our own worlds and people them, while memory, the scribe,
+faithfully registers the account of each as we pass the milestones
+dotting the way. Are we not, then, responsible for the inhabitants of
+our little worlds? We should fill them with the true, the beautiful and
+the good, since we are endowed with the faculty of creating.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;322">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></a>"Genius," says Whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty of
+acquiring poverty." It is the men of talent who make money out of the
+work of the men of genius. Somebody has truly said, that the greatest
+works have brought the least benefit to their authors. They were beyond
+the reach of appreciation before appreciation came.</p>
+
+<p>There is an Eastern legend of a powerful genius, who promised a
+beautiful maiden a gift of rare value if she would pass through a field
+of corn and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither and
+thither, select the largest and ripest ear,&mdash;the value of the gift to be
+in proportion to the size and perfection of the ear she should choose.
+She passed through the field, seeing a great many well worth gathering,
+but always hoping to find a larger and more perfect one, she passed them
+all by, when, coming to a part of the field where the stalks grew more
+stunted, she disdained to take one from these, and so came through to
+the other side without having selected any.</p>
+
+<p>A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not the
+highest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not truly
+successful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul into
+dollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart.
+He strangled all other emotions and hushed and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;323">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323"></a> stifled all nobler
+aspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe
+of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one
+of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest
+souls that ever went out of it.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his
+fellow lawyers called him "perversely honest." Nothing could induce him
+to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after
+learning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable time
+to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred
+dollars, he returned the money, saying: "Madam, you have not a peg to
+hang your case on." "But you have earned that money," said the lady.
+"No, no," replied Lincoln, "that would not be right. I can't take pay
+for doing my duty."</p>
+
+<p>Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he
+had no time to make money. Charles Sumner, when a senator, declined to
+lecture at any price, saying that his time belonged to Massachusetts and
+the nation. Spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in America at one
+thousand dollars a night, because he said he could do better: he could
+stay in London and try to save fifty souls. All honor to the comparative
+few in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendencies
+of<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;324">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324"></a> our age, still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope of
+rewards other than gold or popular favor. These are our truly great men
+and women. They labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zeal
+because they give time and thought to higher things.</p>
+
+<p>King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched might
+be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy.
+His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the
+flowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, were
+all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might be
+taken from him. He had learned that many other things are intrinsically
+far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The "beggarly Homer, who strolled, God knows when, in the infancy and
+barbarism of the world," was richer far than Cr&oelig;sus and added more
+wealth to the world than the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts and Goulds.</p>
+
+<p>An Arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in the
+desert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bag
+full of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope. "I shall never
+forget," said he, "the relish and delight that I felt on supposing it to
+be dried wheat, nor the bitterness and despair I suffered on discovering
+that the bag contained pearls."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;325">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325"></a>It is an interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author,
+or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has
+more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in
+the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign
+influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely
+intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world
+means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success
+in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society.
+Character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible mark
+determines the only true value of all people and all their work. Dr.
+Hunter said: "No man was ever a great man who wanted to be one." Artists
+cannot help putting themselves and their own characters into their
+works. The vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. The gross, the
+bizarre, the sensitive, the delicate, all come out on the canvas and
+tell the story of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Who would not choose to be a millionaire of deeds with a Lincoln, a
+Grant, a Florence Nightingale, a Childs; a millionaire of ideas with
+Emerson, with Lowell, with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth; a millionaire
+of statesmanship with a Gladstone, a Bright, a Sumner, a Washington?</p>
+
+<p>Some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial
+temperament<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;326">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326"></a> which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a
+shipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, and
+friends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some
+so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. Some
+are rich in integrity and character.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the richest of men?" asked Socrates. "He who is content with the
+least, for contentment is nature's riches."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, sir," said a devotee of Mammon to John Bright, "that I am
+worth a million sterling?" "Yes," said the irritated but calm-spirited
+respondent, "I do; and I know that it is all you are worth."</p>
+
+<p>A bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his noble wife,
+"My dear, I am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of the
+sheriff." After a few moments of silence the wife looked into his face
+and asked, "Will the sheriff sell you?" "Oh, no." "Will the sheriff sell
+me?" "Oh, no." "Then do not say we have lost everything. All that is
+most valuable remains to us&mdash;manhood, womanhood, childhood. We have lost
+but the results of our skill and industry. We can make another fortune
+if our hearts and hands are left us."</p>
+
+<p>"We say a man is 'made'," said Beecher. "What do we mean? That he has
+got the control of his lower instincts, so that they are only fuel to
+his higher feelings, giving force<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;327">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327"></a> to his nature? That his affections
+are like vines, sending out on all sides blossoms and clustering fruits?
+That his tastes are so cultivated that all beautiful things speak to
+him, and bring him their delights? That his understanding is opened, so
+that he walks through every hall of knowledge, and gathers its
+treasures? That his moral feelings are so developed and quickened that
+he holds sweet commerce with Heaven? O, no&mdash;none of these things. He is
+cold and dead in heart, and mind, and soul. Only his passions are alive;
+but&mdash;he is worth five hundred thousand dollars!</p>
+
+<p>"And we say a man is 'ruined.' Are his wife and children dead? O, no.
+Have they had a quarrel, and are they separated from him? O, no. Has he
+lost his reputation through crime? No. Is his reason gone? O, no; it is
+as sound as ever. Is he struck through with disease? No. He has lost his
+property, and he is ruined. The <em>man</em> ruined! When shall we learn that
+'a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
+possesseth?'"</p>
+
+<p>"How is it possible," asks an ancient philosopher, "that a man who has
+nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a
+slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has
+sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me who am
+without a city, without a house, without possessions,<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;328">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328"></a> without a slave;
+I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no pr&aelig;torium, but
+only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am I
+not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any
+of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or even falling into
+that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse
+any man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are a plebeian," said a patrician to Cicero. "I am a plebeian,"
+replied the great Roman orator; "the nobility of my family begins with
+me, that of yours will end with you." No man deserves to be crowned with
+honor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drink
+and accumulate money is surely not successful. The world is no better
+for his living in it. He never wiped a tear from a sad face, never
+kindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. There is no flesh in his heart; he
+worships no god but gold.</p>
+
+<p>Why should I scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portion
+of this earth? This is my world now; why should I envy others its mere
+legal possession? It belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. I need not
+envy the so-called owners of estates in Boston and New York. They are
+merely taking care of my property and<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;329">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"></a> keeping it in excellent condition
+for me. For a few pennies for railroad fare whenever I wish I can see
+and possess the best of it all. It has cost me no effort, it gives me no
+care; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns,
+the finer sculptures and paintings within, are always ready for me
+whenever I feel a desire to look upon them. I do not wish to carry them
+home with me, for I could not give them half the care they now receive;
+besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and I should be
+worrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. I have much of the
+wealth of the world now. It is all prepared for me without any pains on
+my part. All around me are working hard to get things that will please
+me, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. The little I
+pay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less than
+it would cost to care for the least of all I use. Life and landscape are
+mine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. What
+more do I want? All the ages have been working for me; all mankind are
+my servants. I am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy task
+in this land of opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>There is scarcely an idea more infectious or potent than the love of
+money. It is a yellow fever, decimating its votaries and ruining more
+families in the land, than all<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;330">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330"></a> the plagues or diseases put together.
+Instances of its malevolent power occur to every reader. Almost every
+square foot of land of our continent during the early buccaneer period
+(some call it the march of civilization), has been ensanguined through
+the madness for treasure. Read the pages of our historian Prescott, and
+you will see that the whole anti-Puritan history of America resolves
+itself into an awful slaughter for gold. Discoveries were only side
+issues.</p>
+
+<p>Speak, history, who are life's victors? Unroll thy long scroll and say,
+have they won who first reached the goal, heedless of a brother's
+rights? And has he lost in life's great race who stopped "to raise a
+fallen child, and place him on his feet again," or to give a fainting
+comrade care; or to guide or assist a feeble woman? Has he lost who
+halts before the throne when duty calls, or sorrow, or distress? Is
+there no one to sing the p&aelig;an of the conquered who fell in the battle of
+life? of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife? of
+the low and humble, the weary and broken-hearted, who strove and who
+failed, in the eyes of men, but who did their duty as God gave them to
+see it?</p>
+
+<p>"We have yet no man who has leaned <em>entirely</em> on his character, and
+eaten angel's food," said Emerson; "who, trusting to<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;331">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331"></a> his sentiments,
+found life made of miracles; who, working for <em>universal aims</em>, found
+himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew
+not how, and yet it was done by his own hands."</p>
+
+<p>At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the
+common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious
+subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap
+literature. He believed that a paper might be instructive and not be
+dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the "Penny Magazine," which
+acquired a circulation of two hundred thousand the first year. Knight
+projected the "Penny Cyclopedia," the "Library of Entertaining
+Knowledge," "Half-Hours with the Best Authors," and other useful works
+at a low price. His whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating
+the common people by cheap, yet wholesome publications. He died in
+poverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over his
+ashes.</p>
+
+<p>How many rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of
+luxury, that are only glittering caverns of selfishness and discontent!
+"Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred
+therewith."</p>
+
+<p>"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger,"
+says Beecher.<span class="pagenum" title="Page&nbsp;332">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332"></a> "It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or
+poor according to what he <em>is</em>, not according to what he <em>has</em>."</p>
+
+<p>If our thoughts are great and noble, no mean surroundings can make us
+miserable. It is the mind that makes the body rich.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Howe'er it be, it seems to me,<br /></span>
+<span>'Tis only noble to be good.<br /></span>
+<span>Kind hearts are more than coronets,<br /></span>
+<span>And simple faith than Norman blood.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Tennyson.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Be noble! and the nobleness that lies<br /></span>
+<span>In other men, sleeping, but never dead,<br /></span>
+<span>Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.<br /></span>
+<span class="citation">&mdash;Lowell.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"></a>PUSHING TO THE FRONT</h2>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Or</span>, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES, by <span class="smcap">Orison Swett Marden</span>. A book
+of inspiration and help to the youth of America who long to be
+somebody and to do something in the world, many of whom, hedged
+in as it were by iron walls of circumstances feel that they
+have "no chance in life." &rarr; Passed through <em>a dozen editions
+its first year</em>. It is used <em>in Boston and other public
+schools</em>, and has been republished and heartily received in
+foreign countries.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center"><b>With 24 fine full-page portraits. Crown 8vo., $1.50.</b></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<blockquote><p>A modern wonder. It should be in the hands of every American
+youth.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Bishop Newman.</span></p>
+
+<p>It is the most stimulating and suggestive book for young men I
+ever read.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Mrs. Mary A. Livermore.</span></p>
+
+<p>Best book of the kind ever written.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Golden Rule.</span></p>
+
+<p>There is an uplift on every page, and wisdom in every
+paragraph.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Epworth Herald.</span></p>
+
+<p>I have read with unusual interest your book "Pushing to the
+Front." It cannot but be an inspiration to every boy or girl
+who reads it.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Wm. McKinley.</span></p>
+
+<p>A most interesting and valuable book to the youth of America.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.</span></p>
+
+<p>An admirable book, a timely contribution of advice and
+inspiration to youth.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Chauncey M. Depew.</span></p>
+
+<p>The author has done a most valuable service to the young life
+of the country.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Bishop J.&nbsp;H. Vincent.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Sold by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by</p>
+
+<p class="center">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO.,<br />
+NEW YORK and BOSTON.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h3><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334"></a>A New, Handsomely Illustrated Magazine.</h3>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>SUCCESS</h2>
+
+<h4>EDITED BY</h4>
+
+<h3>ORISON SWETT MARDEN.</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Author of "Pushing to the Front, or Success Under Difficulties;"
+"Architects of Fate," etc.</i></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 33%;' />
+
+<p class="center">The key note of the magazine will be to inspire, encourage and stimulate
+to higher purposes all who are anxious to add to their knowledge and
+culture, and to make the most of themselves and their opportunities.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 33%;' />
+
+<h3>FEATURES.</h3>
+
+<p>The following departments and subjects will be given especial attention:
+The Progress of the World, Self-Culture, Civics, "What Career?" Health,
+Science and Invention, Literature, Correspondence, Editorial Talks,
+Stories of Great Lives, Healthful Sports, Poetry, Short Historical
+Stories, Opportunities for Girls, The Young Man in Business, Problems,
+Incidents and Anecdotes, Miscellaneous Reading.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 33%;' />
+
+<h3><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a>PARTIAL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.</h3>
+
+<ul class="off">
+<li>Charles Dudley Warner.</li>
+<li>Edna Dean Proctor.</li>
+<li>George W. Cable.</li>
+<li>Thos. Wentworth Higginson.</li>
+<li>Oliver Optic.</li>
+<li>Hezekiah Butterworth.</li>
+<li>Bishop John P. Newman.</li>
+<li>Frank H. Vincent.</li>
+<li>Dr. <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had &quot;Brooker&quot;">Booker</ins> T. Washington.</li>
+<li>Abby Morton Diaz.</li>
+<li>John Ritchie, Jr.</li>
+<li>Marie A. Molineux.</li>
+<li>Rev. Dr. David Gregg.</li>
+<li>Rev. Dr. J. L. Withrow.</li>
+<li>Dr. A. H. Campbell.</li>
+<li>Henry Wood.</li>
+<li>Mary A. Livermore.</li>
+<li>Bishop J. H. Vincent.</li>
+<li>Rev. Edward Everett Hale.</li>
+<li>John Wanamaker.</li>
+<li>William M. Thayer.</li>
+<li>Harriet Prescott Spofford.</li>
+<li>Justice John M. Harlan.</li>
+<li>Rev. Dr. R. S. McArthur.</li>
+<li>Mrs. Sarah White Lee.</li>
+<li>A. E. Winship.</li>
+<li>Helen M. Winslow.</li>
+<li>Frank H. Vizetelly.</li>
+<li>Rev. Dr. Alexander McKenzie.</li>
+<li>Dr. Ellen A. Wallace.</li>
+<li>A.D. Mayo.</li>
+<li>Cyrus C. Adams.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p class="center"><b>Subscription, $1.00 per year.</b></p>
+
+<p class="center">&rarr; <b><i>Send in your name for descriptive prospectus, illustrated premium
+list, and free sample copy.</i></b></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 33%;' />
+
+<p class="center">SUCCESS PUBLISHING CO.,<br />
+
+BOSTON, MASS.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336"></a>ARCHITECTS OF FATE</h2>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Or</span>, STEPS TO SUCCESS AND POWER, by <span class="smcap">Orison Swett Marden</span>. A book
+of inspiration to character-building, self-culture, to a full
+and rich manhood and womanhood, by most invigorating examples
+of noble achievement. It is characterized by the same
+remarkable qualities as its companion volume "Pushing to the
+Front."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center"><b>With 32 fine full-page portraits. Crown 8vo., 486 pages, $1.50.</b></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<blockquote><p>"Architects of Fate," like "Pushing to the Front," is a
+remarkable book, and of immense value in the training of youth.
+There is inspiration, encouragement and helpfulness on every
+page.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Edward Everett Hale.</span></p>
+
+<p>There are enough brilliant sayings and lively anecdotes in this
+book to supply an after-dinner speaker or conversationalist for
+a lifetime. It is wise, witty, inspiring.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Woman's Journal.</span></p>
+
+<p>It will be a missionary of the highest type wherever it goes.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;New York Times.</span></p>
+
+<p>Artistic, logical, stimulating mentally and morally.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Rev. Dr. Lorimer.</span></p>
+
+<p>It teaches the lofty aim, the high resolve, the fixed purpose,
+the pure ideal.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;Phila. Public Ledger.</span></p>
+
+<p>An ideal book for youth.
+<span class="citation2">&mdash;N. Y. Herald.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Sold by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by</p>
+
+<p class="center">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO.,<br />
+NEW YORK and BOSTON.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap-break" />
+<h2><a name="corrections" id="corrections"></a>Transcriber's List of Corrections</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table class="notes" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="1" summary="corrections">
+<tr><th colspan="2">Location</th><th rowspan="2">Original</th><th rowspan="2">Correction</th></tr>
+<tr><th>Chapter</th><th>Page</th></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>Chapter VII.</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td>
+<td>Diction-tionary [<i>at line break</i>]</td>
+<td>Dictionary</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Chapter XI.</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td>
+<td>more of less</td>
+<td>more or less</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Chapter XV.</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td>
+<td>battle of life,</td>
+<td>battle of life.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Chapter XVI.</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td>
+<td>philsopher</td>
+<td>philosopher</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Chapter XIX.</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td>
+<td>impossbile</td>
+<td>impossible</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Chapter XX.</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td>
+<td>notoble</td>
+<td>notable</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Chapter XXI.</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td>
+<td>conquerers</td>
+<td>conquerors</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Success [<i>advertisement</i>]</td>
+<td><a href="#Page_335">[&mdash;]</a></td>
+<td>Dr. Brooker T. Washington.</td>
+<td>Dr. Booker T. Washington.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed, by Orison Swett Marden
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed, by Orison Swett Marden
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: How to Succeed
+       or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune
+
+Author: Orison Swett Marden
+
+Release Date: February 3, 2007 [EBook #20513]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO SUCCEED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Karina Aleksandrova
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Notes:
+
+  1. Several misprints corrected. A complete list of corrections may be
+     found at the end of the text.
+
+  2. Symbol of a hand pointing right has been replaced with a right
+     arrow: ==>.
+
+
+
+
+                    HOW TO SUCCEED;
+
+                          OR,
+
+         Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune.
+
+                    [Illustration]
+
+                       ...BY...
+
+            ORISON SWETT MARDEN, A.M., M.D.
+
+                       Author of
+
+ "Pushing to the Front; or, Success Under Difficulties," and
+    "Architects of Fate; or, Steps to Success and Power."
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+                      PUBLISHED BY
+                 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
+                LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor,
+                 BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+                    Copyright, 1896,
+                    BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     CHAPTER.                           PAGE.
+
+         I. First, Be a Man,                5
+        II. Seize Your Opportunity,        14
+       III. How Did He Begin?              27
+        IV. Out of Place,                  49
+         V. What Shall I Do?               58
+        VI. Will You Pay the Price?        66
+       VII. Foundation Stones,             81
+      VIII. The Conquest of Obstacles,     99
+        IX. Dead in Earnest,              115
+         X. To Be Great, Concentrate,     128
+        XI. At Once,                      140
+       XII. Thoroughness,                 149
+      XIII. Trifles,                      160
+       XIV. Courage,                      169
+        XV. Will Power,                   183
+       XVI. Guard Your Weak Point,        192
+      XVII. Stick,                        209
+     XVIII. Save,                         220
+       XIX. Live Upward,                  229
+        XX. Sand,                         238
+       XXI. Above Rubies,                 256
+      XXII. Moral Sunshine,               275
+     XXIII. Hold Up Your Head,            287
+      XXIV. Books and Success,            296
+       XXV. Riches Without Wings,         318
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO SUCCEED.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FIRST, BE A MAN.
+
+     The great need at this hour is manly men. We want no
+     goody-goody piety; we have too much of it. We want men who will
+     do right, though the heavens fall, who believe in God, and who
+     will confess Him.
+     --REV. W. J. DAWSON.
+
+     All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want
+     a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand.
+     This man--it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!... How to
+     constitute one's self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not
+     how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.
+     --ALEXANDER DUMAS.
+
+
+"I thank God I am a Baptist," said a little, short Doctor of Divinity,
+as he mounted a step at a convention. "Louder! louder!" shouted a man in
+the audience; "we can't hear." "Get up higher," said another. "I can't,"
+replied the doctor, "to be a Baptist is as high as one can get."
+
+But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a
+_man_.
+
+Rousseau says: "According to the order of nature, men being equal, their
+common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well
+educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to
+fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters little
+to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar.
+To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him,
+it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _Let
+him first be a man_; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another, as
+she pleases, he will be always found in his place."
+
+"First of all," replied the boy James A. Garfield, when asked what he
+meant to be, "I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I
+can succeed in nothing."
+
+"Hear me, O men," cried Diogenes, in the market place at Athens; and,
+when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully, "I called for
+men, not pigmies."
+
+One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good
+animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the
+coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must
+have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. It
+is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and
+beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal
+existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse
+throughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when
+scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice.
+
+Dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping out
+of debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by being
+industrious.
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Godfrey Kneller, the artist, to a Guinea slave
+trader, who entered the room where his uncle was talking with Alexander
+Pope, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world."
+"I don't know how great men you may be," said the Guinea man, as he
+looked contemptuously upon their diminutive physical proportions, "but I
+don't like your looks; I have often bought a much better man than either
+of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."
+
+A man is never so happy as when he suffices to himself, and can walk
+without crutches or a guide. Said Jean Paul Richter: "I have made as
+much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should
+require more."
+
+"The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage," wrote Voltaire to
+Helvetius; "these are what we require to be happy."
+
+Although millions are out of employment in the United States, how
+difficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent,
+industrious man or woman, young or old, for any position, whether as a
+domestic servant, an office boy, a teacher, a brakeman, a conductor, an
+engineer, a clerk, a bookkeeper, or whatever we may want. It is almost
+impossible to find a really _competent_ person in any department, and
+oftentimes we have to make many trials before we can get a position
+fairly well filled.
+
+It is a superficial age; very few prepare for their work. Of thousands
+of young women trying to get a living at typewriting, many are so
+ignorant, so deficient in the common rudiments even, that they spell
+badly, use bad grammar, and know scarcely anything of punctuation. In
+fact, they murder the English language. They can copy, "parrot like,"
+and that is about all.
+
+The same superficiality is found in nearly all kinds of business. It is
+next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his
+trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling
+good material and wasting valuable time.
+
+In the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness,
+but usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moral
+breadth.
+
+The merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a sense
+an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removed
+alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence of
+human converse. In society, the most accomplished man of mere
+professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality in
+his dexterity.
+
+"The aim of every man," said Humboldt, "should be to secure the highest
+and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and
+consistent whole."
+
+Some men impress us as immense possibilities. They seem to have a sweep
+of intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal; they
+seem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seen
+everything. Nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. But
+somehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. They raise
+great hopes only to dash them. They are men of great promise, but they
+never pay. There is some indefinable want in their make-up.
+
+What the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit, who
+does not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and who would
+give the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into three
+classes: men, women and ministers. Wanted, a clergyman who does not look
+upon his congregation from the standpoint of old theological books, and
+dusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the merchant as in his store, the
+clerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading before the jury, the
+physician standing over the sick bed; in other words, who looks upon the
+great throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing, scheming, ambitious,
+impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of their number, who can
+live with them, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and
+experience their sensations.
+
+The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every
+profession, every occupation, every calling: "Wanted--A Man."
+
+Wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a mere
+walking bundle of precedents.
+
+Wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. A
+man should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and symmetrical
+in his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that no one
+would suspect how he gets his living.
+
+Nothing is more apparent in this age of specialties than the dwarfing,
+crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions.
+Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the
+professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the
+age tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business
+man to a mere money-making career.
+
+Think of a man, the grandest of God's creations, spending his life-time
+standing beside a machine for making screws. There is nothing to call
+out his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, judging,
+deciding.
+
+He stands there year after year, until he seems but a piece of
+mechanism. His powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, to
+inferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the machine he
+tends.
+
+Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who
+has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"
+though all the world say "Yes."
+
+Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not
+permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his
+manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt
+or paralyze his other faculties.
+
+Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low
+estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a
+living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture,
+discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.
+
+As Nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewarding
+their observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes their
+violation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induce
+us to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implanted
+within us. She nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all great
+blessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding up
+before us glittering prizes, which we may almost touch, but never quite
+possess. She covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of character
+building through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over the
+future; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and she
+fail in her great purpose. How else could Nature call the youth away
+from all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting to
+his imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunt
+his dreams until he resolves to make them real. As a mother teaches her
+babe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child may
+reach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength,
+compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so Nature goes before us
+through life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with one
+object in view--the development of the man.
+
+In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which
+stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure on
+the canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its real
+significance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds its
+true expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object of
+creation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to the
+central figure of the created universe--Man. Nature writes this thought
+upon every leaf; she thunders it in every creation; it exhales from
+every flower; it twinkles in every star.
+
+     Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide,
+     And let in manhood--let in happiness;
+     Admit the boundless theatre of thought
+     From nothing up to God ... which makes a man!
+     --YOUNG.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SEIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY.
+
+     "The blowing winds are but our servants
+     When we hoist a sail."
+
+     You must come to know that each admirable genius is but a
+     successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your
+     own.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     Who waits until the wind shall silent keep,
+       Who never finds the ready hour to sow,
+     Who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap.
+     --HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
+
+     The secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for his
+     opportunity_ when it comes.
+     --DISRAELI.
+
+     Do the best you can where you are; and, when that is
+     accomplished, God will open a door for you, and a voice will
+     call, "Come up hither into a higher sphere."
+     --BEECHER.
+
+     Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a
+     distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
+     --CARLYLE.
+
+
+"When I was a boy," said General Grant, "my mother one morning found
+herself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some from a
+neighbor. Going into the house without knocking, I overheard a letter
+read from the son of a neighbor, who was then at West Point, stating
+that he had failed in examination and was coming home. I got the butter,
+took it home, and, without waiting for breakfast ran to the office of
+the congressman for our district. 'Mr. Hamer,' I said, 'will you
+appoint me to West Point?' 'No, ---- is there, and has three years to
+serve.' 'But suppose he should fail, will you send me?' Mr. Hamer
+laughed. 'If he don't go through, no use for you to try, Uly.' 'Promise
+me you will give me the chance, Mr. Hamer, anyhow.' Mr. Hamer promised.
+The next day the defeated lad came home, and the congressman, laughing
+at my sharpness, gave me the appointment. Now," said Grant, "it was my
+mother's being without butter that made me general and president." But
+he was mistaken. It was his own shrewdness to see the chance, and the
+promptness to seize it, that urged him upward.
+
+"There is nobody," says a Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visit
+once in his life; but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she
+goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy.
+The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or
+clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly,
+and catch it when on the wing.
+
+The utmost which can be said about the matter is, that circumstances
+will, and do combine to help men at some periods of their lives, and
+combine to thwart them at others. Thus much we freely admit; but there
+is no fatality in these combinations, neither any such thing as "luck"
+or "chance," as commonly understood. They come and go like all other
+opportunities and occasions in life, and if they are seized upon and
+made the most of, the man whom they benefit is fortunate; but if they
+are neglected and allowed to pass by unimproved, he is unfortunate.
+
+"Charley," says Moses H. Grinnell to a clerk born in New York City,
+"take my overcoat tip to my house on Fifth Avenue." Mr. Charley takes
+the coat, mutters something about "I'm not an errand boy. I came here to
+learn business," and moves reluctantly. Mr. Grinnell sees it, and at the
+same time one of his New England clerks says, "I'll take it up." "That
+is right, do so," says Mr. G., and to himself he says, "that boy is
+smart, he will work," and he gives him plenty to do. He gets promoted,
+gets the confidence of business men as well as of his employers, and is
+soon known as a successful man.
+
+The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes
+and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own
+advancement, who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him
+on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every
+opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him
+to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds
+it up into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart open
+that he may catch every noble impulse and everything which may inspire
+him, will be sure to live a successful life; there are no ifs or ands
+about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from success.
+
+_Zion's Herald_ says that Isaac Rich, who gave one million and three
+quarters to found Boston University of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
+began business thus: at eighteen he went from Cape Cod to Boston with
+three or four dollars in his possession, and looked about for something
+to do, rising early, walking far, observing closely, reflecting much.
+Soon he had an idea: he bought three bushels of oysters, hired a
+wheelbarrow, found a piece of board, bought six small plates, six iron
+forks, a three-cent pepper-box, and one or two other things. He was at
+the oyster-boat buying his oysters at three o'clock in the morning,
+wheeled them three miles, set up his board near a market, and began
+business. He sold out his oysters as fast as he could get them, at a
+good profit. In that same market he continued to deal in oysters and
+fish for forty years, became king of the business, and ended by founding
+a college. His success was won by industry and honesty.
+
+"Give me a chance," says Haliburton's Stupid, "and I will show you." But
+most likely he has had his chance already and neglected it.
+
+"Well, boys," said Mr. A., a New York merchant, to his four clerks one
+winter morning in 1815, "this is good news. Peace has been declared. Now
+_we_ must be up and doing. We shall have our hands full, but we can do
+as much as anybody."
+
+He was owner and part owner of several ships lying dismantled during the
+war, three miles up the river, which was covered with ice an inch thick.
+He knew that it would be a month before the ice yielded for the season,
+and that thus the merchants in other towns where the harbors were open,
+would have time to be in the foreign markets before him. His decision
+therefore was instantly taken.
+
+"Reuben," he continued, addressing one of his clerks, "go and collect as
+many laborers as possible to go up the river. Charles, do you find
+Mr.----, the rigger, and Mr.----, the sailmaker, and tell them I want
+them immediately. John, engage half-a-dozen truckmen for to-day and
+to-morrow. Stephen, do you hunt up as many gravers and caulkers as you
+can, and hire them to work for me." And Mr. A. himself sallied forth to
+provide the necessary implements for icebreaking. Before twelve o'clock
+that day, upward of an hundred men were three miles up the river,
+clearing the ships and cutting away ice, which they sawed out in large
+squares, and then thrust under the main mass to open up the channel. The
+roofing over the ships was torn off, and the clatter of the caulkers'
+mallets was like to the rattling of a hail-storm, loads of rigging were
+passed up on the ice, riggers went to and fro with belt and knife,
+sailmakers busily plied their needles, and the whole presented an
+unusual scene of stir and activity and well-directed labor. Before night
+the ships were afloat, and moved some distance down the channel; and by
+the time they had reached the wharf, namely, in some eight or ten days,
+their rigging and spars were aloft, their upper timbers caulked, and
+everything ready for them to go to sea.
+
+Thus Mr. A. competed on equal terms with the merchants of open seaports.
+Large and quick gains rewarded his enterprise, and then his neighbors
+spoke depreciatingly of his "good luck." But, as the writer from whom we
+get the story says, Mr. A. was equal to his opportunity, and this was
+the secret of his good fortune.
+
+A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and
+supposed it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward,
+she walked the streets near the Peabody Institute to get money to
+purchase food. She cut up an old, worn out, ragged cloak to make a hood
+of, when lo! in the lining of the cloak, she discovered the diamond
+bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth thirty-five hundred
+dollars, but did not know it.
+
+Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities if we could
+only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more
+than diamond bracelets, in power to do good.
+
+In our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four
+out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand,
+and in meeting common everyday wants. It is a sorry day for a young man
+who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do
+better somewhere else. Several Brazilian shepherds organized a party to
+go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of clear pebbles
+to play checkers with on the voyage. They discovered after arriving at
+Sacramento, after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, that they
+were all diamonds. They returned to Brazil only to find that the mines
+had been taken up by others and sold to the government.
+
+The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold for forty-two
+dollars by the owner, to get money to pay his passage to other mines
+where he thought he could get rich.
+
+Professor Agassiz told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm
+of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to
+sell out and try some more remunerative business.
+
+He studied coal measures and coal oil deposits, and experimented for a
+long time. He sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into the
+oil business two hundred miles away. Only a short time afterward the man
+who bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which the
+farmer had ignorantly tried to drain off.
+
+A man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Boston talking with
+a friend as to what he could do to help mankind. "I should think it
+would be a good thing," said the friend, "to begin by getting up an
+easier and cheaper chair."
+
+"I will do it," he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair. He
+found a great deal of rattan thrown away by the East India merchant
+ships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it. He began the manufacture of
+rattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by what
+he has done with what was before thrown away. While this man was
+dreaming about some far off success, he at that very time had fortune
+awaiting only his ingenuity and industry.
+
+If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will
+find millions of others have the same wants, the same demands. The
+safest business is always connected with men's prime necessities. They
+must have clothing, dwellings; they must eat. They want comforts,
+facilities of all kinds, for use and pleasure, luxury, education,
+culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any
+methods which men use, supply any demand or contribute in any way to
+their well-being, can make a fortune.
+
+But it is detrimental to the highest success to undertake anything
+merely because it is profitable. If the vocation does not supply a human
+want, if it is not healthful, if it is degrading, if it is narrowing,
+don't touch it.
+
+A selfish vocation never pays. If it belittles the manhood, blights the
+affections, dwarfs the mental life, chills the charities and shrivels
+the soul, don't touch it. Choose that occupation, if possible, which
+will be the most helpful to the largest number.
+
+It is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionaire
+manufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles on which
+they made their fortune.
+
+One of the greatest hindrances to advancement and promotion in life is
+the lack of observation and the disinclination to take pains. A keen,
+cultivated observation will see a fortune where others see only poverty.
+An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could
+ill afford to get another pair, said to himself, "I will make a metallic
+lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather." He succeeded in
+doing so and now he is a very rich man.
+
+An observing barber in Newark, N. J., thought he could make an
+improvement on shears for cutting hair, and invented "clippers" and
+became very rich. A Maine man was called from the hayfield to wash out
+the clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to
+wash before. He invented the washing-machine and made a fortune. A man
+who was suffering terribly with toothache, said to himself, "There must
+be some way of filling teeth to prevent them aching;" he invented gold
+filling for teeth.
+
+The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means.
+Want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the
+mother of all great inventions. Ericsson began the construction of a
+screw-propeller in a bath-room. John Harrison, the great inventor of the
+marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts
+of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of
+an old church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his
+famous reaper in an old grist-mill. The first model dry-dock was made in
+an attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass.,
+began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse-shed.
+
+Opportunities? They crowd around us. Forces of nature plead to be used
+in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his
+attention to electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to
+develop the God-given powers within him.
+
+There is power lying latent everywhere, waiting for the observant eye to
+discover it.
+
+First find out what the people need and then supply that want. An
+invention to make the smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a
+very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent
+office at Washington is full of wonderful devices, ingenious mechanism;
+not one in hundreds is of earthly use to the inventor or to the world,
+and yet how many families have been impoverished and have struggled for
+years mid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless
+inventions. These men did not study the wants of humanity. A. T.
+Stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was one
+dollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which people would not
+purchase. After that he made it a rule never to buy anything which
+people did not want.
+
+The first thing a youth, entering the city to make his home there, needs
+to do is to make himself a necessity to the person who employs him,
+according to the Boston _Herald_. Whatever he may have been at home, it
+counts for nothing until he has done something that makes known the
+quality of the stuff that is in him. If he shirks work, however humble
+it may be, the work will soon be inclined to shirk him. But the youth
+who comes into a city to make his way in the world, and is not afraid of
+doing his best whether he is paid for it or not, is not long in finding
+remunerative employment. The people who seem so indifferent to employing
+young people from the country are eagerly watching for the newcomers,
+but they look for qualities of character and service in actual work
+before they manifest confidence or give recognition. It is the youth who
+is deserving that wins his way to the front, and when once he has been
+tested his promotion is only a question of time. It is the same with
+young women. There are seemingly no places for them where they can earn
+a decent living, but the moment they fill their places worthily there is
+room enough for them, and progress is rapid. What the city people desire
+most is to find those who have ability to take important places, and the
+question of gaining a position in the city resolves itself at once into
+the question of what the young persons have brought with them from home.
+It is the staying qualities that have been in-wrought from childhood
+which are now in requisition, and the success of the boy or girl is
+determined by the amount of energetic character that has been developed
+in the early years at home. Take up the experience of every man or
+woman who has made a mark in the city for the last hundred years, and it
+has been the sterling qualities of the home training that have
+constituted the success of later years.
+
+Don't think you have no chance in life because you have no capital to
+begin with. Most of the rich men of to-day began poor. The chances are
+you would be ruined if you had capital. You can only use to advantage
+what has become a part of yourself by your earning it. It is estimated
+that not one rich man's son in ten thousand dies rich. God has given
+every man a capital to start with; we are born rich. He is rich who has
+good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head,
+a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands,
+with five chances on each. Equipped? Every man is equipped as only God
+could equip him. What a fortune he possesses in the marvelous mechanism
+of his body and mind. It is individual effort that has accomplished
+everything worth accomplishing in this world. Money to start with is
+only a crutch, which, if any misfortune knocks it from under you, would
+only make your fall all the more certain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+HOW DID HE BEGIN?
+
+     There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day,
+     using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began life
+     as poor boys.
+     --SETH LOW.
+
+     Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul
+     within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into
+     Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them
+     to lotus dreams.
+     --OUIDA.
+
+     'Tis a common proof,
+     That lowliness is young ambition's ladder
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+"Fifty years ago," said Hezekiah Conant, the millionaire manufacturer
+and philanthropist of Pawtucket, R. I., "I persuaded my father to let me
+leave my home in Dudley, Mass., and strike out for myself. So one
+morning in May, 1845, the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and,
+dressed in our Sunday clothes, father and I started for Worcester. Our
+object was to get me the situation offered by an advertisement in the
+Worcester County _Gazette_ as follows:
+
+     BOY WANTED.
+
+     WANTED IMMEDIATELY.--At the _Gazette_ Office, a well disposed
+     boy, able to do heavy rolling. Worcester, May 7.
+
+"The financial inducements were thirty dollars the first year,
+thirty-five the next, and forty dollars the third year and board in the
+employer's family. These conditions were accepted, and I began work the
+next day. The _Gazette_ was an ordinary four-page sheet. I soon learned
+what 'heavy rolling' meant for the paper was printed on a 'Washington'
+hand-press, the edition of about 2000 copies requiring two laborious
+intervals of about ten hours each, every week. The printing of the
+outside was generally done Friday and kept me very busy all day. The
+inside went to press about three or four o'clock Tuesday afternoon, and
+it was after three o'clock on Wednesday morning before I could go to
+bed, tired and lame from the heavy rolling. In addition, I also had the
+laborious task of carrying a quantity of water from the pump behind the
+block around to the entrance in front, and then up two flights of
+stairs, usually a daily job. I was at first everybody's servant. I was
+abused, called all sorts of nicknames, had to sweep out the office,
+build fires in winter, run errands, post bills, carry papers, wait on
+the editor, in fact I led the life of a genuine printer's devil; but
+when I showed them at length that I had learned to set type and run the
+press, I got promoted, and another boy was hired to succeed to my task,
+with all its decorations. That was my first success, and from that day
+to this I have never asked anybody to get me a job or situation, and
+never used a letter of recommendation; but when an important job was in
+prospect the proposed employers were given all facilities to learn of my
+abilities and character. If some young men are easily discouraged, I
+hope they may gain encouragement and strength from my story. It is a
+long, rough road at first, but, like the ship on the ocean, you must lay
+your course for the place where you hope to land, and take advantage of
+all favoring circumstances."
+
+"Don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give
+you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." Horace Greeley
+looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed how seedy
+they were, and replied: "You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new
+place, and I want to help him all I can." He had spent but six dollars
+for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive one hundred
+and thirty-five from Judge J. M. Sterrett of the Erie _Gazette_ for
+substitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to
+his father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania,
+and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from
+wolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, with
+tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice, he resolved to seek
+his fortune in New York City. Slinging his bundle of clothes on a stick
+over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to Buffalo,
+rode on a canal boat to Albany, descended the Hudson in a barge, and
+reached New York, just as the sun was rising, August 18, 1831.
+
+For days Horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores of
+buildings and asking if they wanted "a hand;" but "no" was the
+invariable reply. His quaint appearance led many to think he was an
+escaped apprentice. One Sunday at his boarding-place he heard that
+printers were wanted at "West's Printing-office." He was at the door at
+five o'clock Monday morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven.
+The latter had no idea that the country greenhorn could set type for the
+Polyglot Testament on which help was needed, but said: "Fix up a case
+for him and we'll see if he _can_ do anything." When the proprietor came
+in, he objected to the newcomer and told the foreman to let him go when
+his first day's work was done. That night Horace showed a proof of the
+largest and most correct day's work that had then been done. In ten
+years Horace was a partner in a small printing-office. He founded the
+_New Yorker_, the best weekly paper in the United States, but it was not
+profitable. When Harrison was nominated for President in 1840, Greeley
+started _The Log Cabin_, which reached the then fabulous circulation of
+ninety thousand. But on this paper at a penny a copy, he made no money.
+His next venture was the New York _Tribune_, price one cent. To start it
+he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five thousand copies of the
+first number. It was difficult to give them all away. He began with six
+hundred subscribers, and increased the list to eleven thousand in six
+weeks. The demand for the _Tribune_ grew faster than new machinery could
+be obtained to print it. It was a paper whose editor always tried to be
+_right_.
+
+At the World's Fair in New York in 1853 President Pierce might have been
+seen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. He was attracted
+by the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed that
+he would become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed like
+small business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but he did it
+well and with enthusiasm. In fact he was bound to do it as well as it
+could be done. Young Gould supported himself by odd jobs at surveying,
+paying his way by erecting sundials for farmers at a dollar apiece,
+frequently taking his pay in board. Thus he laid the foundation for the
+business career in which he became so rich.
+
+Fred. Douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not
+own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his
+master's debts. To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he
+had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he
+would become President of the United States. He saw his mother but two
+or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve miles
+to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn.
+He had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of the
+plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. But somehow,
+unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of
+paper and patent medicine almanacs, and no limits could then be placed
+to his career. He put to shame thousands of white boys. He fled from
+slavery at twenty-one, went North and worked as a stevedore in New York
+and New Bedford. At Nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak in an
+anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he was
+made agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Massachusetts. While traveling
+from place to place to lecture, he would study with all his might. He
+was sent to Europe to lecture, and won the friendship of several
+Englishmen, who gave him $750, with which he purchased his freedom. He
+edited a paper in Rochester, N. Y., and afterward conducted the _New
+Era_ in Washington. For several years he was Marshal of the District of
+Columbia. He became the first colored man in the United States, the peer
+of any man in the country, and died honored by all in 1895.
+
+"What has been done can be done again," said the boy with no chance who
+became Lord Beaconsfield, England's great prime minister. "I am not a
+slave, I am not a captive, and by energy I can overcome greater
+obstacles." Jewish blood flowed in his veins, and everything seemed
+against him, but he remembered the example of Joseph, who became prime
+minister of Egypt four thousand years before, and that of Daniel, who
+was prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuries
+before the birth of Christ. He pushed his way up through the lower
+classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes,
+until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of political
+and social power. Rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down in the House
+of Commons, he simply said, "The time will come when you shall hear me."
+The time did come, and the boy with no chance but a determined will,
+swayed the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.
+
+"I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a
+day," said William Cobbett. "The edge of my berth, or that of the
+guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit
+of board lying on my lap was my writing table, and the task did not
+demand anything like a year of my life. I had no money to purchase
+candles or oil; in winter it was rarely that I could get any evening
+light but that of the fire, and only my turn, even of that. To buy a pen
+or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of my food,
+though in a state of half starvation. I had no moment of time that I
+could call my own, and I had to read and write amidst the talking,
+laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of
+the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their
+freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the _farthing_ I had to
+give, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a
+great sum to me. I was as tall as I am now, and I had great health and
+great exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was
+_twopence a week_ for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon
+one occasion I had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, on a
+Friday, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which I had destined
+for the purchase of a red herring in the morning, but when I pulled off
+my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life,
+I found that I had lost my half-penny. I buried my head under the
+miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child.
+
+"If I, under such circumstances, could encounter and overcome this
+task," he added, "is there, can there be in the world, a youth to find
+any excuse for its non-performance?"
+
+"I have talked with great men," Lincoln told his fellow-clerk and
+friend, Greene, according to _McClure's Magazine_, "and I do not see how
+they differ from others."
+
+He made up his mind to put himself before the public, and talked of his
+plans to his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walked
+seven or eight miles to debating clubs. "Practicing polemics," was what
+he called the exercise.
+
+He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. Grammar
+was what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, and asked
+his advice.
+
+"If you are going before the public," Mr. Graham told him, "you ought to
+do it."
+
+But where could he get a grammar? There was but one in the neighborhood,
+Mr. Graham said, and that was six miles away.
+
+Without waiting for more information the young man rose from the
+breakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, borrowed this rare
+copy of Kirkham's Grammar, and before night was deep in its mysteries.
+From that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his leisure to
+mastering the contents of the book. Frequently he asked his friend
+Greene to "hold the book" while he recited, and when puzzled by a point
+he would consult Mr. Graham.
+
+Lincoln's eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood became
+interested. The Greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept him in
+mind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper let him
+come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright to
+read by at night. It was not long before the grammar was mastered.
+
+"Well," Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, Greene, "if that's what they
+call science, I think I'll go at another."
+
+He had made another discovery--that he could conquer subjects.
+
+The poor and friendless lad, George Peabody, weary, footsore and hungry,
+called at a tavern in Concord, N. H., and asked to be allowed to saw
+wood for lodging and breakfast. Half a century later he called there
+again, but then George Peabody was one of the greatest millionaire
+bankers of the world. Bishop Fowler says: "It is one of the greatest
+encouragements of our age, that ordinary men with extraordinary industry
+reach the highest stations."
+
+Greeley's father, because the boy tried to yoke the off ox on the near
+side, said: "Ah! that boy will never get along in the world. He'll
+never know enough to come in when it rains."
+
+He was too poor to wear stockings. But Horace persevered, and became one
+of the greatest editors of his century.
+
+Handel's father hated music, and would not allow a musical instrument in
+the house; but the boy with an aim secured a little spinet, hid it in
+the attic, where he practiced every minute he could steal without
+detection, until he surprised the great players and composers of Europe
+by his wonderful knowledge of music. He was very practical in his work,
+and studied the taste and sensitiveness of audiences until he knew
+exactly what they wanted; then he would compose something to supply the
+demand. He analyzed the effect of sounds and combinations of sounds upon
+the senses, and wrote directly to human needs. His greatest work, "The
+Messiah," was composed in Dublin for the benefit of poor debtors who
+were imprisoned there. The influence of this masterpiece was tremendous.
+It was said it out-preached the preacher, out-prayed prayers, reformed
+the wayward, softened stony hearts, as it told the wonderful story of
+redemption, in sound.
+
+A. T. Stewart began life as a teacher in New York at $300 a year. He
+soon resigned and began that career as a merchant in which he achieved a
+success almost without precedent. Honesty, one price, cash on delivery,
+and business on business principles were his invariable rules. Absolute
+regularity and system reigned in every department. In fifty years he
+made a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars. He was nominated
+as Secretary of the Treasury in 1869, but it was found that the law
+forbids a merchant to occupy that position. He offered to resign, or to
+give the entire profits of his business to the poor of New York as long
+as he should remain in office. President Grant declined to accept such
+an offer.
+
+Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by
+astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of
+astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting
+precious time over horoscopes. "I supplicate you," he writes to
+Moestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at Tuebingen, do what you can
+to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and
+other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on
+beans." He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served
+anyone who would pay him.
+
+Who could have predicted that the modest, gentle boy, Raphael, without
+either riches or noted family, would have worked his way to such renown,
+or that one of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inches
+square (the Mother of Jesus), would be sold to the Empress of Russia,
+for $66,000? His Ansedei Madonna, was bought by the National Gallery for
+$350,000. Think of Michael Angelo working for six florins a month, and
+eighteen years on St. Peter's for nothing!
+
+Dr. Johnson was so afflicted with king's-evil that he lost the use of
+one eye. The youth could not even engage in the pastimes of his mates,
+as he could not see the gutter without bending his head down near the
+street. He read and studied terribly. Finally a friend offered to send
+him to Oxford, but he failed to keep his promise, and the boy had to
+leave. He returned home, and soon afterward his father died insolvent.
+He conquered adverse fortune and bodily infirmities with the fortitude
+of a true hero.
+
+Ichabod Washburn, a poor boy born near Plymouth Rock, was apprenticed to
+a blacksmith in Worcester, Mass., and was so bashful that he scarcely
+dared to eat in the presence of others; but he determined that he would
+make the best wire in the world, and would contrive ways and means to
+manufacture it in enormous quantities. At that time there was no good
+wire made in the United States. One house in England had the monopoly of
+making steel wire for pianos for more than a century. Young Washburn,
+however, had grit, and was bound to succeed. His wire became the
+standard everywhere. At one time he made 250,000 yards of iron wire
+daily, consuming twelve tons of metal, and requiring the services of
+seven hundred men. He amassed an immense fortune, of which he gave away
+a large part during his life, and bequeathed the balance to charitable
+institutions.
+
+John Jacob Astor left home at seventeen to acquire a fortune. His
+capital consisted of two dollars, and three resolutions,--to be honest,
+to be industrious and not to gamble. Two years later he reached New
+York, and began work in a fur store at two dollars a week and his board.
+Soon learning the details of the business, he began operations on his
+own account. By giving personal attention to every purchase and sale,
+roaming the woods to trade with the Indians, or crossing the Atlantic to
+sell his furs at a great profit in England, he soon became the leading
+fur dealer in the United States. His idea of what constitutes a fortune
+expanded faster than his acquisitions. At fifty he owned millions; at
+sixty his millions owned him. He invested in land, becoming in time the
+richest owner of real estate in America. Generous to his family, he
+seldom gave much for charity. He once subscribed fifty dollars for some
+benevolent purpose, when one of the committee of solicitation said, "We
+did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars." "Ah!"
+chuckled the rich furrier, "William has a rich father. Mine was poor."
+
+Elihu Burritt wrote in a diary kept at Worcester, whither he went to
+enjoy its library privileges, such entries as these: "Monday, June 18,
+headache, 40 pages Cuvier's 'Theory of the Earth,' 64 pages of French,
+11 hours' forging. Tuesday, June 19, 60 lines Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10
+lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of stars, 10 hours' forging.
+Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines Syriac, 11 hours' forging."
+He mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. He became
+eminent as the "Learned Blacksmith," and for his noble work in the
+service of humanity. Edward Everett said of the manner in which this boy
+with no chance acquired great learning: "It is enough to make one who
+has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame."
+
+"I was born in poverty," said Vice-President Henry Wilson. "Want sat by
+my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has none
+to give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served an
+apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each year,
+and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and six
+sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum of
+one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was born
+till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel weary
+miles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * In the
+first month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the woods,
+drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before daylight
+and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of six
+dollars for the month's work! Each of these dollars looked as large to
+me as the moon looks to-night."
+
+"Many a farmer's son," says Thurlow Weed, "has found the best
+opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while
+tending 'sap-bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At night
+you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having
+been gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we would
+always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazing
+bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned
+to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passed
+many a delightful night in reading. I remember in this way to have read
+a history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained from it a
+better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the
+actors in that great national tragedy, than I have received from all
+subsequent reading. I remember also how happy I was in being able to
+borrow the books of a Mr. Keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow,
+shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet."
+
+"That fellow will beat us all some day," said a merchant, speaking of
+John Wanamaker and his close attention to his work. What a prediction to
+make of a young man who started business with a little clothing in a
+hand cart in the streets of Philadelphia. But this youth had _the
+indomitable spirit of a conqueror in him_, and you could not keep him
+down. General Grant said to George W. Childs, "Mr. Wanamaker could
+command an army." His great energy, method, industry, economy, and high
+moral principle, attracted President Harrison, who appointed him
+Postmaster-General.
+
+Jacques Aristide Boucicault began his business life as an employe in a
+dry goods house in a small provincial town in France. After a few years
+he went to Paris, where he prospered so rapidly that in 1853 he became a
+partner and later the sole proprietor of the Bon Marche, then only a
+small shop, which became under his direction the most unique
+establishment in the world. His idea was to establish a combined
+philanthropic and commercial house on a large scale. Every one who
+worked for him was advanced progressively, according to his length of
+employment and the value of the services he rendered. He furnished free
+tuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employes; a
+provident fund affording a small capital for males and a marriage
+portion for females at the expiration of ten or fifteen years of
+service; a free reading room for the public; and a free art gallery for
+artists to exhibit their paintings or sculptures. After his sudden death
+in 1877, his only son carried forward his father's projects until he,
+too, died in 1879, when his widow, Marguerite Guerin, continued and
+extended his business and beneficent plans until her death in 1887. So
+well did this family lay the foundations of a building covering 108,000
+square feet, with many accessory buildings of smaller size, and of a
+business employing 3600 persons with sales amounting to nearly
+$20,000,000 annually, that every department is still conducted with all
+its former success in accordance with the instructions of the founders.
+They are here no longer in their bodily presence, but their spirit,
+their ideas, still pervade the vast establishment. Everything is still
+sold at a small profit and at a price plainly marked, and any article
+which may have ceased to please the purchaser can, without the slightest
+difficulty, be exchanged or its value refunded.
+
+When James Gordon Bennett was forty years old, he collected all his
+property, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two
+barrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher,
+newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer's devil, he started the
+New York _Herald_. In all his literary work up to this time he had
+tried to imitate Franklin's style; and, as is the fate of all imitators,
+he utterly failed.
+
+He lost twenty years of his life trying to be somebody else. He first
+showed the material he was made of in the "Salutatory," of the _Herald_,
+viz., "Our only guide shall be good, sound and practical common-sense
+applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life.
+We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and
+care nothing for any election or any candidate from President down to
+constable. We shall endeavor to record facts upon every public and
+proper subject stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when
+suitable, just, independent, fearless and good-tempered."
+
+Joseph Hunter was a carpenter, Robert Burns a ploughman, Keats a
+druggist, Thomas Carlyle a mason, Hugh Miller a stone mason. Rubens, the
+artist, was a page, Swedenborg, a mining engineer. Dante and Descartes
+were soldiers. Ben Johnson was a brick layer and worked at building
+Lincoln Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket.
+Jeremy Taylor was a barber. Andrew Johnson was a tailor. Cardinal Wolsey
+was a butcher's son. So were Defoe and Kirke White. Michael Faraday was
+the son of a blacksmith. He even excelled his teacher, Sir Humphry Davy,
+who was an apprentice to an apothecary.
+
+Virgil was the son of a porter, Homer of a farmer, Pope of a merchant,
+Horace of a shopkeeper, Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a money
+scrivener, Shakespeare of a wool stapler, and Oliver Cromwell of a
+brewer.
+
+John Wanamaker's first salary was $1.25 per week. A. T. Stewart began
+his business life as a school teacher. James Keene drove a milk wagon in
+a California town. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York _World_,
+once acted as stoker on a Mississippi steamboat. When a young man, Cyrus
+Field was a clerk in a New England store. George W. Childs was an errand
+boy for a bookseller at $4 a month. Andrew Carnegie began work in a
+Pittsburg telegraph office at $3 a week. C. P. Huntington sold butter
+and eggs for what he could get a pound or dozen. Whitelaw Reid was once
+a correspondent of a newspaper in Cincinnati at $5 per week. Adam
+Forepaugh was once a butcher in Philadelphia.
+
+Sarah Bernhardt was a dressmaker's apprentice. Adelaide Neilson began
+life as a child's nurse. Miss Braddon, the novelist, was a utility
+actress in the provinces. Charlotte Cushman was the daughter of poor
+people.
+
+Mr. W. O. Stoddard, in his "Men of Business," tells a characteristic
+story of the late Leland Stanford. When eighteen years of age his father
+purchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as he
+wished. He told Leland that he could have all he could make from the
+timber if he would leave the land clear of trees. A new market had just
+then been created for cord wood, and Leland took some money that he had
+saved, hired other choppers to help him, and sold over two thousand
+cords of wood to the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad at a net profit of
+$2600. He used this sum to start him in his law studies, and thus, as
+Mr. Stoddard says, chopped his way to the bar.
+
+It is said that the career of Benjamin Franklin is full of inspiration
+for any young man. When he left school for good he was only twelve years
+of age. At first he did little but read. He soon found, however, that
+reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to
+act upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable to
+understand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle,
+and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But
+the printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely
+inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the _third time_
+the "_Cocker's Arithmetic_," _which had baffled him at school_, and
+_ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure_. He then mastered a
+work upon navigation, which included the rudiments of geometry, and thus
+tasted "the inexhaustible charm of mathematics." He pursued a similar
+course, we are told, in acquiring the art of composition, in which, at
+length, he excelled most of the men of his time. When he was but a boy
+of sixteen, he wrote so well that the pieces which he slyly sent to his
+brother's paper were thought to have been written by some of the most
+learned men in the colony.
+
+Henry Clay, the "mill-boy of the slashes," was one of seven children of
+a widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, where
+he was drilled only in the "three R's." But he used every spare moment
+to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among
+self-made men.
+
+The most successful man is he who has triumphed over obstacles,
+disadvantages and discouragements.
+
+It is Goodyear in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure until
+the pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is Edison biding his time in
+baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power
+glows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler's bench
+nourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of love
+to benighted India;--these are the cases and examples of true success.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+OUT OF PLACE.
+
+     The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be
+     born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment
+     and happiness.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     The art of putting the right man in the right place is perhaps
+     the first in the science of government, but the art of finding
+     a satisfactory position for the discontented is the most
+     difficult.
+     --TALLEYRAND.
+
+     It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the
+     misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order
+     to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who
+     now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share
+     they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to
+     them by such a division.
+     --ADDISON.
+
+     I was born to other things.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     How many a rustic Milton has passed by,
+     Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
+     In unremitting drudgery and care!
+     How many a vulgar Cato has compelled
+     His energies, no longer tameless then,
+     To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail.
+     --SHELLEY.
+
+
+"But I'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was
+about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a
+salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful," said the
+youth. "How? Tell me how." "I don't know, sir, I don't know." "Nor do
+I," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "Only
+don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. Try me at something besides
+selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell." "I know that, too," said
+the principal; "that is what is wrong." "But I can make myself useful
+somehow," persisted the young man; "I know I can." He was placed in the
+counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and
+in a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, but
+an eminent accountant.
+
+"Out of an art," says Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake
+him for an imbecile--at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and
+how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of
+which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden
+key, admits you to follow, an humble reverent visitor."
+
+A man out of place is like a fish out of water. Its fins mean nothing,
+they are only a hindrance. The fish can do nothing but flounder out of
+its element. But as soon as the fins feel the water, they mean
+something. Fifty-two per cent of our college graduates studied law, not
+because, in many cases, they have the slightest natural aptitude for it,
+but because it is put down as the proper road to promotion.
+
+A man never grows in personal power and moral stamina when out of his
+place. If he grows at all, it is a narrow, one-sided, stunted growth,
+not a manly growth. Nature abhors the slightest perversion of natural
+aptitude or deviation from the sealed orders which accompany every soul
+into this world.
+
+A man out of place is not half a man. He feels unmanned, unsexed. He
+cannot respect himself, hence he cannot be respected.
+
+You can enter all kinds of horses for a race, but only those which have
+natural adaptation for speed will make records; the others will only
+make themselves ridiculous by their lumbering, unnatural exertions to
+win. How many truck and family-horse lawyers make themselves ridiculous
+by trying to speed on the law track, where courts and juries only laugh
+at them. The effort to redeem themselves from scorn may enable them by
+unnatural exertions to become fairly passable, but the same efforts
+along the line of their strength or adaptation would make them kings in
+their line.
+
+"Jonathan," said Mr. Chace, when his son told of having nearly fitted
+himself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on Monday
+morning." It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop to
+work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a United
+States Senator from Rhode Island.
+
+Galileo was sent to the university at Pisa at seventeen, with the
+strict injunction not to neglect medical subjects for the alluring study
+of philosophy or literature. But when he was eighteen he discovered the
+great principle of the pendulum by a lamp left swinging in the
+cathedral.
+
+John Adams' father was a shoemaker; and, trying to teach his son the
+art, gave him some "uppers" to cut out by a pattern which had a
+three-cornered hole in it to hang it up by. The future statesman
+followed the pattern, hole and all.
+
+There is a tradition that Tennyson's first poems were published at the
+instigation of his father's coachman. His grandfather gave the lad ten
+shillings for writing an elegy on his grandmother. As he handed it to
+him, he said; "There, that's the first money you ever earned by your
+poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last."
+
+Murillo's mother had marked her boy for a priest, but nature had already
+laid her hand upon him and marked him for her own. His mother was
+shocked on returning from church one day to find that the child had
+taken down the sacred family picture, "Jesus and the Lamb," and had
+painted his own hat on the Saviour's head, and had changed the lamb into
+a dog.
+
+The poor boy's home was broken up, and he started out on foot and alone
+to seek his fortune. All he had was courage and determination to make
+something of himself. He not only became a famous artist, but a man of
+great character.
+
+"Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned," says
+Thackeray, "have a great tenderness and pity for the folks who are not
+endowed with the prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a
+regard for dunces,--those of my own school days were among the
+pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest
+in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by
+the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble
+prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before
+his beard grew."
+
+"In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon the town of
+Sidmouth, the tide rose to a terrible height. In the midst of this
+sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach,
+was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her
+mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the
+Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was
+up: but I need not tell you the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean
+beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she
+should not have meddled with a tempest."
+
+How many Dame Partingtons there are of both sexes, and in every walk of
+life!
+
+The young swan is restless and uneasy until she finds the element she
+has never before seen. Then,
+
+           "With arched neck
+     Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
+     Her state with oary feet."
+
+What a wretched failure was that of Haydon the painter. He thought he
+failed through the world's ingratitude or injustice, but his failure was
+due wholly to his being out of place. His bitter disappointments at his
+half successes were really pitiable because to him they were more than
+failures. He had not the slightest sense of color, yet went through life
+under the delusion that he was an artist.
+
+"If it is God's will to take any of my children by death, I hope it may
+be Isaac," said the father of Dr. Isaac Barrow. "Why do you tell that
+blockhead the same thing twenty times over?" asked John Wesley's father.
+"Because," replied his mother, "if I had told him but nineteen times,
+all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand and
+remember."
+
+A man out of place may manage to get a living, but he has lost the
+buoyancy, energy and enthusiasm which are as natural to a man in his
+place as his breath. He is industrious, but he works mechanically and
+without heart. It is to support himself and family, _not because he
+cannot help it_. Dinner time does not come two hours before he realizes
+it; a man out of place is constantly looking at his watch and thinking
+of his salary.
+
+If a man is in his place he is happy, joyous, cheerful, energetic,
+fertile in resources. The days are all too short for him. All his
+faculties give their consent to his work; say "yes" to his occupation.
+He is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are
+at play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of his
+faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of
+forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling of
+exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded
+cattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman's study,
+composing sermons to put the congregation to sleep.
+
+To be out of place is demoralizing to all the powers of manhood. We
+can't cheat nature out of her aim; if she has set all the currents of
+your life toward medicine or law, you will only be a botch at anything
+else. Will-power and application cannot make a farmer of a born painter
+any more than a lumbering draught horse can be changed into a race
+horse. When the powers are not used along the line of their strength
+they become demoralized, weakened, deteriorated. Self-respect,
+enthusiasm and courage ooze out; we become half-hearted and success is
+impossible.
+
+Scott was called the great blockhead while in Edinburgh College. Grant's
+mother called the future General and President, "Useless Grant," because
+he was so unhandy and dull.
+
+Erskine had at length found his place as a lawyer; he carried everything
+before him at the bar. Had he remained in the navy he would probably
+never have been heard from. When elected to Parliament, his lofty spirit
+was chilled by the cold sarcasm and contemptuous indifference of Pitt,
+whom he was expected by his friends to annihilate. But he was again out
+of his place; he was shorn of his magic power and his eloquent tongue
+faltered from a consciousness of being out of his place.
+
+Gould failed as a storekeeper, tanner and surveyor and civil engineer,
+before he got into a railroad office where he "struck his gait."
+
+When extracts from James Russell Lowell's poem at Harvard were shown his
+father at Rome, instead of being pleased the latter said, "James
+promised me when I left home, that he would give up poetry and stick to
+books. I had hoped that he had become less flighty." The world is full
+of people at war with their positions.
+
+Man only grows when he is developing along the lines of his own
+individuality, and not when he is trying to be somebody else. All
+attempts to imitate another man, when there is no one like you in all
+creation, as the pattern was broken when you were born, is not only to
+ruin your own pattern, but to make only an echo of the one imitated.
+There is no strength off the lines of our own individuality.
+
+Anywhere else we are dwarfs, weaklings, echoes, and the echo even of a
+great man is a sorry contrast to even the smallest human being who is
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WHAT SHALL I DO?
+
+     No man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents,
+     nor a good one who mistook them.
+     --SWIFT.
+
+     Blessed is he who has found his work,--let him ask no other
+     blessing.
+     --CARLYLE.
+
+     Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line
+     of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will
+     succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times
+     worse than nothing.
+     --SYDNEY SMITH.
+
+     He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom,
+     and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
+     --BEECHER.
+
+     I am glad to think
+     I am not bound to make the world go round;
+     But only to discover and to do,
+     With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.
+     --JEAN INGELOW.
+
+
+"Do that which is assigned you," says Emerson, "and you cannot hope too
+much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance
+brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of
+the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all
+these."
+
+"I felt that I was in the world to do something, and thought I must,"
+said Whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. It is the man
+who must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any other of
+the overstocked professions, who will succeed. His certain call--that
+is, his love for it, and his fidelity to it--are the imperious factors
+of his career. If a man enters a profession simply because his
+grandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants him to, with no
+love or adaptability for it, it were far better for him to be a day
+laborer. In the humbler work, his intelligence may make him a leader; in
+the other career he might do as much harm as a boulder rolled from its
+place upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express.
+
+Lowell said: "It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not,
+that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in
+the rough."
+
+"The age has no aversion to preaching as such," said Phillips Brooks,
+"it may not listen to your preaching." But though it may not listen to
+your preaching, it will wear your boots, or buy your flour, or see stars
+through your telescope. It has a use for every person, and it is his
+business to find out what that use is.
+
+The following advertisement appeared several times in a paper without
+bringing a letter:
+
+     "WANTED.--Situation by a Practical Printer, who is competent to
+     take charge of any department in a printing and publishing
+     house. Would accept a professorship in any of the academies.
+     Has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship,
+     geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. Has had some
+     experience as a lay preacher. Would have no objection to form a
+     small class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in
+     the higher branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he would be
+     invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass or
+     tenor singer in a choir."
+
+At length there appeared this addition to the notice:
+
+     "P.S. Will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than
+     the usual rates."
+
+This secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen no
+more.
+
+Don't wait for a higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge the
+position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. Fill it
+as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more
+thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow-workmen. Study
+your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your
+employer points. The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in
+simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in
+surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a
+larger salary.
+
+"He that hath a trade," says Franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hath
+a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs is
+higher than a gentleman on his knees."
+
+_Follow your bent._ You cannot long fight successfully against your
+aspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the
+longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks;
+but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine
+it and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or
+in some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to
+practice in perfection." Nature hates all botched and half-finished
+work, and will pronounce her curse upon it.
+
+Your talent is your _call_. Your legitimate destiny speaks in your
+character.
+
+If you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of every
+faculty of your being.
+
+If possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount of
+your experience and tastes. You will then not only have a congenial
+vocation, but will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge,
+which is your true capital.
+
+There is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his own
+peculiar part in life. A very few--the geniuses, we call them--have this
+marked in an unusual degree, and very early in life.
+
+A man's business does more to make him than anything else. It hardens
+his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his
+mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his
+wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition,
+makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's
+work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. No
+man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. A man without
+employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a
+man. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. A
+good cranium full of brains is not a man. The bone and muscle and brain
+must know how to do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a
+man's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before they
+constitute a man.
+
+Whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. Most people look
+upon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a living.
+What a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the great
+school of life, the great man-developer, the character-builder; that
+which should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into symmetry,
+harmony and beauty, all the God-given faculties within us! How we shrink
+from the task and evade the lessons which were intended for the
+unfolding of life's great possibilities into usefulness and power, as
+the sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the flower.
+
+"Girls, you cheapen yourselves by lack of purpose in life," says Rena
+L. Miner. "You show commendable zeal in pursuing your studies; your
+alertness in comprehending and ability in surmounting difficult problems
+have become proverbial; nine times out of ten you outrank your brothers
+thus far; but when the end is attained, the goal reached, whether it be
+the graduating certificate from a graded school, or a college diploma,
+for nine out of every ten it might as well be added thereto, 'dead to
+further activity,' or, 'sleeping until marriage shall resurrect her.'
+
+"Crocheting, placquing, dressing, visiting, music, and flirtations, make
+up the sum total for the expense and labor expended for your existence.
+If forced to earn your support, you are content to stand behind a
+counter, or teach school term after term in the same grade, while the
+young men who graduated with you walk up the grades, as up a ladder, to
+professorship and good salary, from which they swing off into law,
+physics, or perhaps the legislative firmament, leaving difficulties and
+obstacles like nebulae in their wake.--You girls, satisfied with
+mediocrity, have an eye mainly for the 'main chance'--marriage. If you
+marry wealthy,--which is marrying well according to the modern popular
+idea,--you dress more elegantly, cultivate more fashionable society,
+leave your thinking for your husband and your minister to do for you,
+and become in the economy of life but a sentient nonentity. If you are
+true to the grand passion, and accept with it poverty, you bake, brew,
+scrub, spank the children, and talk with your neighbor over the back
+fence for recreation, spending the years literally like the horse in a
+treadmill, all for the lack of a purpose,--a purpose sufficiently potent
+to convert the latent talent into a gem of living beauty, a creative
+force which makes all adjuncts secondary, like planets to their central
+sun. Choose some one course or calling, and master it in all its
+details, sleep by it, swear by it, work for it, and, if marriage crowns
+you, it can but add new glory to your labor."
+
+Dr. Hall says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's
+right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and
+smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;
+girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and
+the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to
+dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense,--girls who have
+a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are
+independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a
+trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of
+defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theatre, or lacerate
+their feet with high heels and endanger their health with corsets;
+girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers
+at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want
+good girls,--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to
+the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sin
+and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirl
+of ten has all too often. And we want careful girls and prudent girls,
+who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in
+comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may
+have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between
+the essentials and non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to
+spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in
+the home rather than an expense and a useless burden. We want girls with
+hearts,--girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that
+flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own
+beautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls,
+and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and
+impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with
+little desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls
+scattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather
+does under the spell of summer showers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+WILL YOU PAY THE PRICE?
+
+     The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     All desire knowledge, but no one is willing to pay the price.
+     --JUVENAL.
+
+     There is no royal path which leads to geometry.
+     --EUCLID.
+
+     There is no road to success but through a clear, strong
+     purpose. A purpose underlies character, culture, position,
+     attainment of whatever sort.
+     --T. T. MUNGER.
+
+     Remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is not
+     action; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whose
+     law of improvement is not energy.
+     --E. B. HALL.
+
+     "We have but what we make, and every good
+     Is locked by nature in a granite hand,
+     Sheer labor must unclench."
+
+
+"Oh, if I could thus put a dream on canvas!" exclaimed an enthusiastic
+young artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. "Dream on canvas!"
+growled the master, "it is the ten thousand touches with the brush you
+must learn to put on canvas that make your dream."
+
+"There is but one method of attaining excellence," said Sydney Smith,
+"and that is hard labor."
+
+"If only Milton's imagination could have conceived his visions," says
+Waters, "his consummate industry alone could have carved the immortal
+lines which enshrine them. If only Newton's mind could reach out to the
+secrets of nature, even his genius could only do it by the homeliest
+toil. The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night's dreams, but, like
+coral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formed
+their broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions of
+persevering labor. The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished
+like a night's phantasy, had not his industry given them permanence."
+
+Salvini contributes the following to the _Century_ as to his habits of
+study before he had established himself as a past master of tragedy: "I
+imposed upon myself a new method of study. While I was busying myself
+with the part of Saul, I read and reread the Bible, so as to become
+impregnated with the appropriate sentiments, manners and local color.
+When I took up Othello, I pored over the history of the Venetian
+Republic and that of the Moorish invasion of Spain. I studied the
+passions of the Moors, their art of war, their religious beliefs, nor
+did I overlook the romance of Giraldi Cinthio, in order the better to
+master that sublime character. I did not concern myself about a
+superficial study of the words, or of some point of scenic effect, or of
+greater or less accentuation of certain phrases with a view to win
+passing applause; a vaster horizon opened out before me--an infinite sea
+on which my bark could navigate in security, without fear of falling in
+with reefs."
+
+His method was not new, but he considered it so, and gives his opinion
+in quotation-marks. He speaks of characters with which, his name is not
+always associated by writers on the stage, but is correct, I think, in
+the main.
+
+Many years ago a little boy entered Harrow school and was put in a class
+beyond his years, wherein all the other boys had the advantage of
+previous instruction. His master used to reprove his dullness, but all
+his efforts could not raise him from the lowest place in the class. The
+boy finally procured the elementary books which the other boys had
+studied. He devoted the hours of play and many of the hours of sleep to
+mastering the elementary principles of these books. This boy was soon at
+the head of his class and the pride of Harrow. The statue of that boy,
+Sir William Jones, stands to-day in St. Paul's Cathedral; for he lived
+to be the greatest Oriental scholar of Europe.
+
+"What is the secret of success in business?" asked a friend of Cornelius
+Vanderbilt. "Secret! there is no secret about it," replied the
+commodore; "all you have to do is to attend to your business and go
+ahead." If you would adopt Vanderbilt's method, know your business,
+attend to it, and keep down expenses until your fortune is safe from
+business perils.
+
+"Work or starve," is nature's motto,--and it is written on the stars and
+the sod alike,--starve mentally, starve morally, starve physically. It
+is an inexorable law of nature that whatever is not used, dies. "Nothing
+for nothing," is her maxim. If we are idle and shiftless by choice, we
+shall be nerveless and powerless by necessity.
+
+The mottoes of great men often give us glimpses of the secret of their
+characters and success. "Work! work! work!" was the motto of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, David Wilkie, and scores of other men who have left their mark
+upon the world. Voltaire's motto was "Toujours au travail" (always at
+work). Scott's maxim was "Never be doing nothing." Michael Angelo was a
+wonderful worker. He even slept in his clothes ready to spring to his
+work as soon as he awoke. He kept a block of marble in his bedroom that
+he might get up in the night and work when he could not sleep. His
+favorite device was an old man in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it,
+bearing this inscription: "Ancora imparo" (still I'm learning). Even
+after he was blind he would ask to be wheeled into the Belvidere, to
+examine the statues with his hands. Cobden used to say, "I'm working
+like a horse without a moment to spare." It was said that Handel, the
+musician, did the work of a dozen men. Nothing ever daunted him. He
+feared neither ridicule nor defeat. Lord Palmerston worked like a slave,
+even in his old age. Being asked when he considered a man in his prime,
+he replied, "Seventy-nine," that being his own age. Humboldt was one of
+the world's great workers. In summer he arose at four in the morning for
+thirty years. He used to say work was as much of a necessity as eating
+or sleeping. Sir Walter Scott was a phenomenal worker. He wrote the
+"Waverley Novels" at the rate of twelve volumes a year. He averaged a
+volume every two months during his whole working life. What an example
+is this to the young men of to-day, of the possibilities of an earnest
+life! Edmund Burke was one of the most prodigious workers that ever
+lived.
+
+George Stephenson used to work at meal time, getting out loads of coal
+while the miners were at dinner in order that he might earn a few extra
+shillings to buy a spelling-book and an arithmetic. His associates
+thought he was very foolish, and asked him what good it would do to
+learn to read and cipher. He told them he was determined to improve his
+mind; so he studied whenever he could snatch a minute before the
+engine's fire, and in every possible situation until he had a good,
+practical, common-sense education.
+
+Garibaldi's father decided that Guiseppe should be a minister, because
+the boy was so sorry for a cricket which lost its leg. Samuel Morse's
+father concluded that his son would preach well because he could not
+keep his head above water in a dangerous attempt to catch bait in the
+Mystic River. President Dwight told young Morse he would never make a
+painter, and hinted that he never would amount to much any way if he did
+not study more. Although under the teaching of West and Allston in
+London, he became a tolerable portrait painter, he did not find his
+sphere until returning from England on a sailing vessel, he heard
+Professor Jackson explain an electrical experiment in Paris, when the
+thought of the telegraph flashed into his mind and he found no rest,
+until he flashed over the wire the first message, "What hath God
+wrought!" on the experimental line between Baltimore and Washington:
+this was May 24, 1844.
+
+William H. Vanderbilt was by far the wealthiest man in the world.
+Chauncey M. Depew estimated his fortune at two hundred millions. He left
+his eight children ten millions each, except Cornelius and William K.,
+who had sixty-five millions each. Commodore Vanderbilt, his father,
+amassed a fortune of eighty millions of dollars in his own lifetime, and
+that too at a time when it was more difficult to make money than it is
+now.
+
+Mr. C. P. Huntington is a good example of a self-made man. His father
+was a Connecticut farmer. The farm was left to him, but he traded it off
+for a lot of clocks which he peddled in mining districts for gold dust
+and nuggets. He and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened a
+hardware store in California. They united with Leland Stanford in the
+construction of a railroad, and they all got rich rapidly. Mr.
+Huntington is one of the greatest railroad operators of the country. He
+always acted upon the principle that he would control the stock of any
+road in which he was interested. He is one of the most methodical men of
+all the millionaires of this country. He is very plain in his manner,
+strictly temperate, and very abstemious in his living. He said he never
+knew what it was to be tired.
+
+Russell Sage used to keep a grocery store in Troy, N. Y. He finally
+associated himself with Jay Gould, who used to be a constant borrower of
+money of him. Mr. Sage probably keeps more ready money on hand than any
+other millionaire. He can nearly always control ten millions or more at
+call. He has never speculated in stocks to any extent. Mr. Sage's word
+is as good as any bond. He has no taste for ordinary diversions, except
+driving.
+
+Philip D. Armour, who has the appearance of a prosperous farmer, was
+born on a farm near Watertown, N. J. He became fired with a desire to
+see the "Boundless West." His mind seemed to run to hogs, and with a
+financial instinct he made up his mind that there was a fortune in
+transporting the hogs from where they were so plenty to where there were
+so few of them and so many to eat them. He could now purchase every hog
+in the world and then have money left to buy a railroad or two.
+
+Mrs. Hetty Green is probably the richest woman in the world. Her fortune
+has grown from the little industry of her father in New Bedford, Mass.
+She has raised the nine millions left her by her father and nine
+millions left her by her aunt to thirty millions. She is a woman of
+great ability and courage. She once took with her five millions of
+dollars of securities in a satchel on a street car to deposit with her
+banker on Wall street.
+
+The probabilities are that billionaires will be as plentiful in the
+twentieth century as millionaires are to-day, through hard work,
+self-denial, rigid economy, method, accuracy, and strict temperance, for
+not one of the self-made millionaires are intemperate. John D.
+Rockefeller never tastes intoxicating liquor. He seems as unvarying in
+his method and system as the laws of the universe. Jay Gould did not use
+wine or intoxicating liquor of any kind. Mr. Huntington does not even
+drink coffee, while William Waldorf Astor merely takes a sip of wine
+for courtesy's sake. Not one of the leading millionaires uses tobacco,
+and not one of them is profane. Very rich men are almost always honest
+in their dealings, so far as their word is concerned. William Waldorf
+Astor, until recently, has been considered the richest man in the world,
+but John D. Rockefeller surpasses him now, it is said. The whole wealth
+of Croesus was little more than the income of this modern Croesus
+for one year. Mr. Rockefeller controls about eighty or ninety millions
+of capital stock in the Standard Oil Trust. The Standard Oil Company is
+one of the best managed corporations in the world.
+
+Two centuries and a quarter ago, a little, tempest-tossed,
+weather-beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wild Atlantic,
+landed upon the bleakest shore of New England. From her deck disembarked
+a hundred and one careworn exiles.
+
+To the casual observer no event could seem more insignificant. The
+contemptuous eye of the world scarcely deigned to notice it. Yet the
+famous vessel that bore Caesar and his fortunes, carried but an ignoble
+freight compared with that of the Mayflower. Though landed by a
+treacherous pilot upon a barren and inhospitable coast, they sought
+neither richer fields nor a more congenial climate, but liberty and
+opportunity.
+
+A lady once asked Turner the secret of his great success.
+
+"I have no secret, madam, but hard work."
+
+"This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because
+they fail to learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from
+ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing."
+
+See Balzac, in his lonely garret, toiling, toiling, waiting, waiting,
+amid poverty and hunger, but neither hunger, debt, poverty nor
+discouragement could induce him to swerve a hair's breadth from his
+purpose. He could wait, even while a world scoffed.
+
+"Mankind is more indebted to industry than to ingenuity," says Addison;
+"the gods set up their favors at a price and industry is the purchaser."
+
+Rome was a mighty nation while industry led her people, but when her
+great conquests of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above work,
+that moment her glory began to fade, and vice and corruption, induced by
+idleness, doomed the proud city to an ignominious history. Even Cicero,
+Rome's great orator, said, "All artisans are engaged in a disgraceful
+occupation;" and Aristotle said, "The best regulated states will not
+permit a mechanic to be a citizen, for it is impossible for one who
+lives the life of a mechanic, or hired servant, to practice a life of
+virtue. Some were born to be slaves." But, fortunately there came a
+mightier than Rome, Cicero or Aristotle, whose magnificent life and
+example forever lifted the false ban from labor and redeemed it from
+disgrace. He gave dignity to the most menial service, and significance
+to labor.
+
+Christ did not say, "Come unto me all ye pleasure hunters, ye indolent
+and ye lazy;" but "Come all ye that _labor_ and are _heavy laden_."
+
+Columbus was a persistent and practical, as well as an intellectual
+hero. He went from one state to another, urging kings and emperors to
+undertake the first visiting of a world which his instructed spirit
+already discerned in the far-off seas. He first tried his own countrymen
+at Genoa, but found none ready to help him. He then went to Portugal,
+and submitted his project to John II., who laid it before his council.
+It was scouted as extravagant and chimerical. Nevertheless, the king
+endeavored to steal Columbus's idea. A fleet was sent forth in the
+direction indicated by the navigator, but, being frustrated by storms
+and winds, it returned to Lisbon after four days' voyaging.
+
+Columbus returned to Genoa, and again renewed his propositions to the
+Republic, but without success. Nothing discouraged him. The finding of
+the New World was the irrevocable object of his life. He went to Spain,
+and landed at the town of Palos, in Andalusia. He went by chance to a
+convent of Franciscans, knocked at the door and asked for a little bread
+and water. The prior gratefully received the stranger, entertained him,
+and learned from him the story of his life. He encouraged him in his
+hopes, and furnished him with an admission to the Court of Spain, then
+at Cordova. King Ferdinand received him graciously, but before coming to
+a decision he desired to lay the project before a council of his wisest
+men at Salamanca. Columbus had to reply, not only to the scientific
+arguments laid before him, but to citations from the Bible. The Spanish
+clergy declared that the theory of the antipodes was hostile to the
+faith. The earth, they said, was an immense flat disk; and if there was
+a new earth beyond the ocean, then all men could not be descended from
+Adam. _Columbus was considered a fool._
+
+Still bent on his idea, he wrote to the King of England, then to the
+King of France, without effect. At last, in 1492, Columbus was
+introduced by Louis de Saint Angel to Queen Isabella of Spain. The
+friends who accompanied him pleaded his cause with so much force and
+conviction that he at length persuaded the queen to aid him.
+
+Lord Ellenborough was a great worker. He had a very hard time in getting
+a start at the bar, but was determined never to relax his industry until
+success came to him. When he was worked down to absolute exhaustion, he
+had this card which he kept constantly before his eyes, lest he might be
+tempted to relax his efforts: "Read or Starve."
+
+Show me a man who has made fifty thousand dollars, and I will show you
+in that man an equivalent of energy, attention to detail,
+trustworthiness, punctuality, professional knowledge, good address,
+common sense, and other marketable qualities. The farmer respects his
+savings bank book not unnaturally, for it declares with all the
+solemnity of a sealed and stamped document that for a certain length of
+time he rose at six o'clock each morning to oversee his labors, that he
+patiently waited upon seasonable weather, that he understood buying and
+selling. To the medical man, his fee serves as a medal to indicate that
+he was brave enough to face small pox and other infectious diseases, and
+his self-respect is fostered thereby.
+
+The barrister's brief is marked with the price of his legal knowledge,
+of his eloquence, or of his brave endurance during a period of
+hope-deferred brieflessness.
+
+A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing for his album.
+Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you only
+five minutes," objected the rich man. "Yes, but it took me thirty years
+to learn how to do it in five minutes."
+
+"I prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an
+hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "In that,"
+said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they also
+thought nothing of it."
+
+Virgil seems to have accomplished about four lines a week; but then they
+have lasted eighteen hundred years and will last eighteen hundred more.
+
+Seven years Virgil is said to have expended in the composition of the
+Georgics, and they could all be printed in about seven columns of an
+ordinary newspaper. Tradition reports that he was in the habit of
+composing a few lines in the morning and spending the rest of the day in
+polishing them. Campbell used to say that if a poet made one good line a
+week, he did very well indeed; but Moore thought that if a poet did his
+duty, he could get a line done every day.
+
+What an army of young men enters the success-contest every year as raw
+recruits! Many of them are country youths flocking to the cities to buy
+success. Their young ambitions have been excited by some book, or fired
+by the story of some signal success, and they dream of becoming Astors
+or Girards, Stewarts or Wanamakers, Vanderbilts or Goulds, Lincolns or
+Garfields, until their innate energy impels them to try their own
+fortune in the magic metropolis. But what are you willing to pay for
+"success," as you call it, young man? Do you realize what that word
+means in a great city in the nineteenth century, where men grow gray at
+thirty and die of old age at forty,--where the race of life has become
+so intense that the runners are treading on the heels of those before
+them; and "woe to him who stops to tie his shoestring?" Do you know that
+only two or three out of every hundred will ever win permanent success,
+and only because they have kept everlastingly at it; and that the rest
+will sooner or later fail and many die in poverty because they have
+given up the struggle.
+
+There are multitudes of men who never rely wholly upon themselves and
+achieve independence. They are like summer vines, which never grow even
+ligneous, but stretch out a thousand little hands to grasp the stronger
+shrubs; and if they cannot reach them, they lie dishevelled in the
+grass, hoof-trodden, and beaten of every storm. It will be found that
+the first real movement upward will not take place until, in a spirit of
+resolute self-denial, indolence, so natural to almost every one, is
+mastered. Necessity is, usually, the spur that sets the sluggish
+energies in motion. Poverty, therefore, is often of inestimable value as
+an incentive to the best endeavors of which we are capable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FOUNDATION STONES.
+
+     In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should
+     be made.
+     --CICERO.
+
+     How great soever a genius may be, ... certain it is that he
+     will never shine in his full lustre, nor shed the full
+     influence he is capable of, unless to his own experience he
+     adds that of other men and other ages.
+     --BOLINGBROKE.
+
+     It is for want of the little that human means must add to the
+     wonderful capacity for improvement, born in man, that by far
+     the greatest part of the intellect, innate in our race,
+     perishes undeveloped and unknown.
+     --EDWARD EVERETT.
+
+     If any man fancies that there is some easier way of gaining a
+     dollar than by squarely earning it, he has lost his clue to his
+     way through this mortal labyrinth and must henceforth wander as
+     chance may dictate.
+     --HORACE GREELEY.
+
+     What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on
+     what we already are; and what we are will be the result of
+     previous years of self-discipline.
+     --H. P. LIDDON.
+
+     Learn to labor and to wait.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+"What avails all this sturdiness?" asked an oak tree which had grown
+solitary for two hundred years, bitterly handled by frosts and wrestled
+by winds. "Why am I to stand here useless? My roots are anchored in
+rifts of rocks; no herds can lie down under my shadow; I am far above
+singing birds, that seldom come to rest among my leaves; I am set as a
+mark for storms, that bend and tear me; my fruit is serviceable for no
+appetite; it had been better for me to have been a mushroom, gathered in
+the morning for some poor man's table, than to be a hundred-year oak,
+good for nothing."
+
+While it yet spoke, the axe was hewing at its base. It died in sadness,
+saying as it fell, "Weary ages for nothing have I lived."
+
+The axe completed its work. By and by the trunk and root form the knees
+of a stately ship, bearing the country's flag around the world. Other
+parts form keel and ribs of merchantmen, and having defied the mountain
+storms, they now equally resist the thunder of the waves and the murky
+threat of scowling hurricanes. Other parts are laid into floors, or
+wrought into wainscoting, or carved for frames of noble pictures, or
+fashioned into chairs that embosom the weakness of old age. Thus the
+tree, in dying, came not to its end, but to its beginning of life. It
+voyaged the world. It grew to parts of temples and dwellings. It held
+upon its surface the soft tread of children and the tottering steps of
+patriarchs. It rocked in the cradle. It swayed the limbs of age by the
+chimney corner, and heard, secure within, the roar of those old,
+unwearied tempests that once surged about its mountain life. All its
+early struggles and hardships had enabled it to grow tough and hard and
+beautiful of grain, alike useful and ornamental.
+
+"Sir, you have been to college, I presume?" asked an illiterate but
+boastful exhorter of a clergyman. "Yes, sir," was the reply. "I am
+thankful," said the former, "that the Lord opened my mouth without any
+learning." "A similar event," retorted the clergyman, "happened in
+Balaam's time."
+
+Why not allow the schoolboy to erase from his list of studies all
+subjects that appear to him useless? Would he not erase every thing
+which taxed his pleasure and freedom? Would he not obey the call of his
+blood, rather than the advice of his teacher? Ignorant men who have made
+money tell him that the study of geography is useless; his tea will come
+over the sea to him whether he knows where China is or not; what
+difference does it make whether verbs agree with their subjects or not?
+Why waste time learning geometry or algebra? Who keeps accounts by
+these? Learning spoils a man for business, they tell him; they begrudge
+the time and money spent in education. They want cheap and rapid transit
+through college for their children. Veneer will answer every practical
+purpose for them, instead of solid mahogany, or even paint and pine will
+do.
+
+It is said that the editors of the Dictionary of American Biography
+who diligently searched the records of living and dead Americans, found
+15,142 names worthy of a place in their six volumes of annals of
+successful men, and 5326, or more than one-third of them, were
+college-educated men. One in forty of the college educated attained a
+success worthy of mention, and but one in 10,000 of those not so
+educated; so that the college-bred man had two hundred and fifty times
+the chances for success that others had. Medical records, it is said,
+show that but five per cent. of the practicing physicians of the United
+States are college graduates; and yet forty-six per cent. of the
+physicians who became locally famous enough to be mentioned by those
+editors came from that small five per cent. of college educated persons.
+Less than four per cent. of the lawyers were college-bred, yet they
+furnished more than one-half of all who became successful. Not one per
+cent. of the business men of the country were college educated, yet that
+small fraction of college-bred men had seventeen times the chances of
+success that their fellow men of business had. In brief, the
+college-educated lawyer has fifty per cent. more chances for success
+than those not so favored; the college-educated physician, forty-six per
+cent. more; the author, thirty-seven per cent. more; the statesman,
+thirty-three per cent.; the clergyman, fifty-eight per cent.; the
+educator, sixty-one per cent.; the scientist, sixty-three per cent. You
+should therefore get the best and most complete education that it is
+possible for you to obtain.
+
+Knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hidden
+mysteries of a successful life.
+
+"I do not remember," said Beecher, "a book in all the depths of
+learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of
+art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not
+known to have been long and patiently elaborated."
+
+"You are a fool to stick so close to your work all the time," said one
+of Vanderbilt's young friends; "we are having our fun while we are
+young, for when will we if not now?" But Cornelius was either earning
+more money by working overtime, or saving what he had earned, or at home
+asleep, recruiting for the next day's labor and preparing for a large
+harvest later. Like all successful men, he made finance a study. When he
+entered the railroad business, it was estimated that his fortune was
+thirty-five or forty million dollars.
+
+"The spruce young spark," says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his
+mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily
+during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast
+horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the
+business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting
+his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not
+earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a
+situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to
+despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits
+and acquiring fortune."
+
+"When a man has done his work," says Ruskin, "and nothing can any way be
+materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with
+his fate if he will; but what excuse can you find for willfulness of
+thought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on your
+decisions? A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home
+forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! A youth
+thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity
+of a moment! A youth thoughtless, when his every action is a
+foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation
+of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than
+now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly
+thoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be done
+there."
+
+"On to Berlin," was the shout of the French army in July, 1870; but, to
+the astonishment of the world, the French forces were cut in two and
+rolled as by a tidal wave into Metz and around Sedan. Soon two French
+armies and the Emperor surrendered, and German troopers paraded the
+streets of captured Paris.
+
+But as men thought it out, as Professor Wells tells us, they came to see
+that it was not France that was beaten, but only Louis Napoleon and a
+lot of nobles, influential only because they bore titles or were
+favorites. Louis Napoleon, the feeble bearer of a great name, was
+emperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happy
+accidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta and
+Solferino. But the unmasking time came in the Franco-Prussian War, as it
+always comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men.
+And such were the German leaders,--William, strong, upright, warlike,
+"every inch a king;" Von Roon, Minister of War, a master of
+administrative detail; Bismarck, the master mind of European politics;
+and, above all, Von Moltke, chief of staff, who hurled armies by
+telegraph, as he sat at his cabinet, as easily as a master moves
+chessmen against a stupid opponent.
+
+Said Captain Bingham: "You can have no idea of the wonderful machine
+that the German army is and how well it is prepared for war. A chart is
+made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with
+the different nations. And every officer's place in the scheme is laid
+out beforehand. There is a schedule of trains which will supersede all
+other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that
+the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take
+such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice. When the
+Franco-Prussian War was declared, Von Moltke was awakened at midnight
+and told of the fact. He said coolly to the official who aroused him,
+'Go to pigeonhole No. ---- in my safe and take a paper from it and
+telegraph as there directed to the different troops of the empire.' He
+then turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual hour in the
+morning. Every one else in Berlin was excited about the war, but Von
+Moltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who met him said,
+'General, you seem to be taking it very easy. Aren't you afraid of the
+situation? I should think you would be busy.' 'Ah,' replied Von Moltke,
+'all of my work for this time has been done long beforehand, and
+everything that can be done now has been done.'"
+
+"A rare man this Von Moltke!" exclaims Professor Wells; "one who made
+himself ready for his opportunities beyond all men known to the modern
+world. Of an impoverished family, he rose very slowly and by his own
+merit. He yielded to no temptation, vice, or dishonesty, of course, nor
+to the greater and ever present temptation to idleness, for he
+constantly worked to the limit of human endurance. He was ready for
+every emergency, not by accident, but because he made himself ready by
+painstaking labor, before the opportunity came. His favorite motto was,
+'_Help yourself and others will help you_.' Hundreds of his age in the
+Prussian army were of nobler birth, thousands of greater fortune, but he
+made himself superior to them all by extraordinary fidelity and
+diligence.
+
+"The greatest master of strategy the world has ever seen was sixty-six
+years at school to himself before he was ready for his task. Though born
+with the century, and an army officer at nineteen, he was an old man
+when, in 1866, as Prussian chief of staff, he crushed Austria at Sadowa
+and drove her out of Germany. Four years later the silent, modest
+soldier of seventy, ready for the still greater opportunity, smote
+France, and changed the map of Europe. Glory and the field-marshal's
+baton, after fifty-one years of hard work! No wonder Louis Napoleon was
+beaten by such men as he. All Louis Napoleons have been, and always will
+be. Opportunity always finds out frauds. It does not make men, but shows
+the world what they have made of themselves."
+
+Sir Henry Havelock joined the army of India in his twenty-eighth year,
+and waited till he was sixty-two for the opportunity to show himself
+fitted to command and skillful to plan. During those four and thirty
+years of waiting, he was busy preparing himself for that march to
+Lucknow which was to make him famous as a soldier.
+
+Farragut,
+
+     "The viking of our western clime
+     Who made his mast a throne,"
+
+began his naval career as a mere boy, and was sixty-four years old
+before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself; but when the great
+test of his life came, the reserve of half a century's preparation made
+him master of the situation.
+
+Alexander Hamilton said, "Men give me credit for genius. All the genius
+I have lies just in this: when I have a subject in hand I study it
+profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its
+bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make
+the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of
+labor and thought." The law of labor is equally binding on genius and
+mediocrity.
+
+"Fill up the cask! fill up the cask!" said old Dr. Bellamy when asked by
+a young clergyman for advice about the composition of sermons. "Fill up
+the cask! and then if you tap it anywhere you will get a good stream.
+But if you put in but little, it will dribble, dribble, dribble, and
+you must tap, tap, tap, and then you get but a small stream, after all."
+
+"The merchant is in a dangerous position," says Dr. W. W. Patton, "whose
+means are in goods trusted out all over the country on long credits, and
+who in an emergency has no money in the bank upon which to draw. A heavy
+deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of strength. And
+he only is intellectually strong, who has made heavy deposits in the
+bank of memory, and can draw upon his faculties at any time, according
+to the necessities of the case."
+
+They say that more life, if not more labor, was spent on the piles
+beneath the St. Petersburg church of St. Isaac's, to get a foundation,
+than on all the magnificent marbles and malachite which have since been
+lodged in it.
+
+Fifty feet of Bunker Hill Monument is under ground, unseen, and
+unappreciated by the thousands who tread about that historic shaft. The
+rivers of India run under ground, unseen, unheard, by the millions who
+tramp above, but are they therefore lost? Ask the golden harvest waving
+above them if it feels the water flowing beneath? The superstructure of
+a lifetime cannot stand upon the foundation of a day.
+
+C. H. Parkhurst says that in manhood, as much as in house-building, the
+foundation keeps asserting itself all the way from the first floor to
+the roof. The stones laid in the underpinning may be coarse and
+inelegant, but, even so, each such stone perpetuates itself in silent
+echo clear up through to the finial. The body is in that respect like an
+old Stradivarius violin, the ineffable sweetness of whose music is
+outcome and quotation from the coarse fibre of the case upon which its
+strings are strung. It is a very pleasant delusion that what we call the
+higher qualities and energies of a person maintain that self-centered
+kind of existence that enables them to discard and contemn all
+dependence upon what is lower and less refined than themselves, but it
+is a delusion that always wilts in an atmosphere of fact. Climb high as
+we like our ladder will still require to rest on the ground; and it is
+probable that the keenest intellectual intuition, and the most delicate
+throb of passion would, if analysis could be carried so far, be
+discovered to have its connections with the rather material affair that
+we know as the body.
+
+Lincoln took the postmastership for the sake of reading all the papers
+that came to town. He read everything he could lay his hands on; the
+Bible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washington and Life of
+Franklin, Life of Henry Clay, AEsop's Fables; he read them over and over
+again until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read a
+novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his
+contact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out an
+analysis of it. What a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoods
+student, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows,
+after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but could
+not afford to buy!
+
+"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this
+busy city of New York for over thirty years," said Dr. Cuyler, "and I
+find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures
+lies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success is
+oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. The
+easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time
+dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher
+of charity. They who understand and practice Abraham Lincoln's homely
+maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success."
+
+It is better to deserve success than to merely have it; few deserve it
+who do not attain it. There is no failure in this country for those
+whose personal habits are good, and who follow some honest calling
+industriously, unselfishly, and purely. If one desires to succeed, he
+must pay the price, work.
+
+No matter how weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger.
+No matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, or
+how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by
+patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty,
+grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception,
+strength and precision of thought, and moderation of desire.
+
+It would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious association of
+genius and idleness, to show that the greatest poets, orators,
+statesmen, and historians--men of the most imposing and brilliant
+talents--have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries and
+arrangers of indexes; and the most obvious reason why they have been
+superior to other men, is, that they have taken more pains.
+
+Even the great genius, Lord Bacon, left large quantities of material
+entitled "Sudden thoughts set down for use." John Foster was an
+indefatigable worker. "He used to hack, split, twist, and pull up by the
+roots, or practice any other severity on whatever did not please him."
+Chalmers was asked in London what Foster was doing. "Hard at it" he
+said, "at the rate of a line a week."
+
+When a young lawyer, Daniel Webster once looked in vain through all the
+libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of $50 the necessary
+books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his
+client was a poor blacksmith. He won his case, but, on account of the
+poverty of his client, only charged $15, thus losing heavily on the
+books bought, to say nothing of his time. Years after, as he was passing
+through New York city, he was consulted by Aaron Burr on an important
+but puzzling case then pending before the Supreme Court. Webster saw in
+a moment that it was just like the blacksmith's case, an intricate
+question of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him
+simple as the multiplication table. Going back to the time of Charles
+II., he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and
+accuracy of sequence that Burr asked, in great surprise: "Mr. Webster,
+have you been consulted before in this case?"
+
+"Most certainly not. I never heard of your case till this evening."
+
+"Very well," said Burr, "proceed." And when he had finished, Webster
+received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he
+had spent for his early client.
+
+What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and
+wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can
+spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah
+Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who
+can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;"
+a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance
+to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von
+Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for
+their first great opportunities; a Garfield, burning his lamp fifteen
+minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a Grant, fighting on
+in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and
+politicians everywhere; a Field's untiring perseverance, spending years
+and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; a
+Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel
+with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all
+remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice;
+a Titian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;" a Stephenson,
+working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a
+condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long
+years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a Thurlow Weed, walking
+two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to
+borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it
+before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in a
+world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a
+Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair" was refused
+by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret,
+whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate;
+not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men
+who can work and wait.
+
+That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He
+that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is
+impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own
+slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and
+be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college
+course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. The
+facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate
+who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and
+reflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all
+fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and
+moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means
+of it will he become what he ought to become,--man, in the highest
+sense of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge,
+it is the misdirection of the mind. "One step in knowledge," says
+Bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to
+Heaven."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES.
+
+     Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer
+     them.
+     --WENDELL PHILLIPS.
+
+     Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous
+     difficulties.
+     --SPURGEON.
+
+     The rugged metal of the mine
+     Must burn before its surface shine.
+     --BYRON.
+
+     When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens
+     which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no
+     telescope could do.
+     --BEECHER.
+
+     No man ever worked his way in a dead calm.
+     --JOHN NEAL.
+
+     "Kites rise against, not with, the wind."
+
+       Then welcome each rebuff,
+       That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+     Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go.
+     --BROWNING.
+
+
+"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" said
+one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. "Tut, you
+blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if
+there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." Just so with
+every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep
+out unworthy competitors.
+
+"Life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate
+from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks,
+that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them
+or no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to
+sleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while
+there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the
+stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and
+do its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes are not
+wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who
+labor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our temple building,
+whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life
+with cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our daily business, the
+fierce animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when
+we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of
+defeat--these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life
+ever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them? We are here, my
+brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God's quarry and on
+God's anvil for a nobler life to come." Only the muscle that is used is
+developed.
+
+"Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better
+things," said Beecher. "Far up the mountain side lies a block of
+granite, and says to itself, 'How happy am I in my serenity--above the
+winds, above the trees, almost above the flight of birds! Here I rest,
+age after age, and nothing disturbs me.'
+
+"Yet what is it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the
+cliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death.
+
+"By and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes he
+drills a hole in its top, and the rock says, 'What does this mean?' Then
+the black powder is poured in, and with a blast that makes the mountain
+echo, the block is blown asunder, and goes crashing down into the
+valley. 'Ah!' it exclaims as it falls, 'why this rending?' Then come
+saws to cut and fashion it; and humbled now, and willing to be nothing,
+it is borne away from the mountain and conveyed to the city. Now it is
+chiseled and polished, till, at length, finished in beauty, by block and
+tackle it is raised, with mighty hoistings, high in air, to be the
+top-stone on some monument of the country's glory."
+
+"It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this
+constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and
+the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. Let
+every man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy would
+follow."
+
+"Do you wish to live without a trial?" asks a modern teacher. "Then you
+wish to die but half a man. Without trial you cannot guess at your own
+strength. Men do not learn to swim on a table. They must go into deep
+water and buffet the waves. Hardship is the native soil of manhood and
+self-reliance. Trials are rough teachers, but rugged schoolmasters make
+rugged pupils. A man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to his
+grave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. Difficulties are God's
+errands. And when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof of
+God's confidence. We should reach after the highest good."
+
+Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a
+standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite
+direction. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car
+tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging of the
+teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain--until the
+motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy
+wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "Friction is a very good
+thing," remarked a passenger.
+
+There is a beautiful tale of Scandinavian mythology. A hero, under the
+promise of becoming a demi-god, is bidden in the celestial halls to
+perform three test-acts of prowess. He is to drain the drinking-horn of
+Thor. Then he must run a race with a courser so fleet that he fairly
+spurns the ground under his flying footsteps. Then he must wrestle with
+a toothless old woman, whose sinewy hands, as wiry as eagle claws in the
+grapple, make his very flesh to quiver. He is victorious in them all.
+But as the crown of success is placed upon his temples, he discovers for
+the first time that he has had for his antagonist the three greatest
+forces of nature. He raced with thought, he wrestled with old age, he
+drank the sea. Nature, like the God of nature, wrestles with us as a
+friend, not an enemy, wanting us to gain the victory, and wrestles with
+us that we may understand and enjoy her best blessings. Every greatest
+and highest earthly good has come to us unfolded and enriched by this
+terrible wrestling with nature.
+
+A curious society still exists in Paris composed of dramatic authors who
+meet once a month and dine together. Their number has no fixed limit,
+only every member to be eligible must have been hissed. An eminent
+dramatist is selected for chairman and holds the post for three months.
+His election generally follows close upon a splendid failure. Some of
+the world-famous ones have enjoyed this honor. Dumas, Jr., Zola and
+Offenbach have all filled the chair and presided at the monthly dinner.
+These dinners are given on the last Friday of the month, and are said to
+be extraordinarily hilarious.
+
+"I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man," said George
+Macdonald of Milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to write
+it."
+
+"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads a
+man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant
+purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turn
+disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearls the sand
+which annoys it.
+
+"Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of
+the storm wind is to the eagle,--a force against him that lifts him
+higher."
+
+"I do not see," says Emerson, "how any man can afford, for the sake of
+his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It
+is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation,
+want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges
+every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power."
+
+"Adversity is a severe instructor," says Edmund Burke, "set over us by
+one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as He loves us better too.
+He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill.
+Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us
+acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its
+relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial."
+
+Strong characters, like the palm tree, seem to thrive best when most
+abused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years
+are often unable to bear prosperity. Their good fortune takes the spring
+out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a
+vigorous climate. Some people never come to themselves until baffled,
+rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around
+them. Trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their
+victory.
+
+"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if
+the truth were known," said Albion Tourgee. "Grant's failure as a
+subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to
+accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to."
+
+"What is defeat?" asked Wendell Phillips. "Nothing but education." And a
+life's disaster may become the landmark from which there has begun a new
+era, a broader life for man.
+
+"To make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must
+live like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a
+young lawyer so much good as to be half starved."
+
+We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the very
+power by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we could never
+have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced
+and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. Our trials, our
+sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way.
+
+"Obstacles," says Mitchell, "are great incentives. I lived for whole
+years upon Virgil and found myself well off." Poverty, Horace tells us,
+drove him to poetry.
+
+Nothing more unmans a man than to take away from him the spur of
+necessity, which urges him onward and upward to the goal of his
+ambition. Man is naturally lazy, and wealth induces indolence. The great
+object of life is development, the unfolding and drawing out of our
+powers, and whatever tempts us to a life of indolence or inaction, or to
+seek pleasure merely, whatever furnishes us a crutch when we can develop
+our muscles better by walking, all helps, guides, props, whatever tempts
+to a life of inaction, in whatever guise it may come, is a curse. I
+always pity the boy or girl with inherited wealth, for the temptation to
+hide their talents in a napkin, undeveloped, is very, very great. It is
+not natural for them to walk when they can ride, to go alone when they
+can be helped.
+
+Quentin Matsys was a blacksmith at Antwerp. When in his twentieth year
+he wished to marry the daughter of a painter. The father refused his
+consent. "Wert thou a painter," said he, "she should be thine; but a
+blacksmith--never!" "_I will be_ a painter," said the young man. He
+applied to his new art with so much perseverance that in a short time he
+produced pictures which gave a promise of the highest excellence. He
+gained for his reward the fair hand for which he sighed, and rose ere
+long to a high rank in his profession.
+
+Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant
+one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch
+them grow. The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. Its roots
+reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into
+the earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as if
+in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. Sometimes its
+upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has been
+expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a
+firmer anchorage. Then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defy
+the hurricane. The gales which sport so rudely with its wide branches
+find more than their match, and only serve still further to toughen
+every minutest fibre from pith to bark.
+
+The acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling.
+Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far
+and wide for support.
+
+Take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. Place one in the country
+away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only
+the district school, the Sunday school, and a few books. Remove wealth
+and props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material in
+him, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends him strength for the
+next conflict. If he falls, he rises with more determination than
+before. Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher
+he rebounds. Obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasium
+in which the fibres of his manhood are developed. He compels respect and
+recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put the other boy
+in a Vanderbilt family. Give him French and German nurses; gratify every
+wish. Place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him to
+Harvard. Give him thousands a year for spending money, and let him
+travel extensively.
+
+The two meet. The city lad is ashamed of his country brother. The plain,
+threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of the
+country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of the
+other. The poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no chance
+in life," and envies the city youth. He thinks that it is a cruel
+Providence that places such a wide gulf between them. They meet again as
+men, but how changed! It is as easy to distinguish the sturdy, self-made
+man from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth,
+position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell the
+difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one from
+the sapling of the forest. If you think there is no difference, place
+each plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in a hurricane at sea.
+
+The athlete does not carry the gymnasium away with him, but he carries
+the skill and muscle which give him his reputation.
+
+The lessons you learn at school will give you strength and skill in
+after life, and power, just in proportion to the accuracy, the clearness
+of perception with which you learn your lessons. The school was your
+gymnasium. You do not carry away the Greek and Latin text-books, the
+geometry and algebra into your occupations any more than the athlete
+carries the apparatus of the gymnasium, but you carry away the skill and
+the power if you have been painstaking, accurate and faithful.
+
+"It is in me, and it _shall_ come out!" And it did. For Richard
+Brinsley Sheridan became the most brilliant, eloquent and amazing
+statesman of his day. Yet if his first efforts had been but moderately
+successful, he might have been content with mere mediocrity. It was his
+defeats that nerved him to strive for eminence and win it. But it took
+hard, persistent work in his case to secure it, just as it did in that
+of so many others.
+
+Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing
+criticism of his first book, "Hours of Idleness," published when he was
+but nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, "There is scarce an instance
+in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byron
+reached." In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott,
+Southey and Campbell. Many an orator like "stuttering Jack Curran," or
+"Orator Mum," as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by
+ridicule and abuse.
+
+Where the sky is gray and the climate unkindly, where the soil yields
+nothing save to the diligent hand, and life itself cannot be supported
+without incessant toil, man has reached his highest range of physical
+and intellectual development.
+
+The most beautiful and the strongest animals, as a rule, have come from
+the same narrow belt of latitude which has produced the heroes of the
+world.
+
+The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developed
+in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, and
+where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and on
+a stubborn soil. It is no chance that returns to the Hindoo ryot a penny
+and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makes
+Mexico with her mineral wealth poor, and New England with its granite
+and ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, it
+is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, and
+calls the race out of barbarism. Labor found the world a wilderness and
+has made it a garden.
+
+The law of adaptation by which conditions affect an organism is simple
+and well known. It is that which callouses the palm of the oarsman,
+strengthens the waist of the wrestler, fits the back to its burden. It
+inexorably compels the organism to adapt itself to its conditions, to
+like them, and so to survive them.
+
+As soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear
+the down and feathers from their nest. The rude and rough experience of
+the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert
+in pursuing his prey.
+
+Benjamin Franklin ran away and George Law was turned out of doors.
+Thrown upon their own resources, they early acquired the energy and
+skill to overcome difficulties.
+
+Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out,"
+while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "come
+out."
+
+From an aimless, idle and useless brain, emergencies often call out
+powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see a
+young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a
+parent or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has
+knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused the
+slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was written in
+prison. The "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared in Bedford Jail. The "Life and
+Times" of Baxter, Eliot's "Monarchia of Man," and Penn's "No Cross, No
+Crown," were written by prisoners. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote "The History
+of the World" during his imprisonment of thirteen years. Luther
+translated the Bible while confined in the Castle of Wartburg. For
+twenty years Dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death.
+His works were burned in public after his death; but genius will not
+burn.
+
+Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of
+the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying
+their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither
+do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and
+happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the
+faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of
+the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to
+outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism
+worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous
+sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry
+and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements
+of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickest
+families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter the
+diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been
+unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for
+acquaintances.
+
+This is the crutch age. "Helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. We
+have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries,
+newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are all
+worked out in "explanations" and "keys." Our boys are too often tutored
+through college with very little study. "Short roads" and "abridged
+methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are used
+everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. Newspapers
+give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and
+self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious of
+delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces,
+and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from Eden's
+curse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+DEAD IN EARNEST.
+
+     It is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead. What
+     made Demosthenes the greatest of all orators was that he
+     appeared the most entirely possessed by the feelings he wished
+     to inspire. The effect produced by Charles Fox, who by the
+     exaggerations of party spirit, was often compared to
+     Demosthenes, seems to have arisen wholly from this earnestness,
+     which made up for the want of almost every grace, both of
+     manner and style.
+     --ANON.
+
+     Twelve poor men taken out of boats and creeks, without any help
+     of learning, should conquer the world to the cross.
+     --STEPHEN CARNOCK.
+
+     For his heart was in his work, and the heart
+     Giveth grace unto every art.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+     He did it with all his heart and prospered.
+     --II. CHRONICLES.
+
+     The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he
+     gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else
+     are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a
+     gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the
+     truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.
+     --LOWELL.
+
+
+"The emotions," says Whipple, "may all be included in the single word
+'enthusiasm,' or that impulsive force which liberates the mental power
+from the ice of timidity as spring loosens the streams from the grasp
+of winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. The mind of youth,
+when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, is
+keen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating facts
+into faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with that
+joyous fullness of creative life which radiates thoughts as
+inspirations, and magnetizes as well as informs."
+
+"Columbus, my hero," exclaims Carlyle, "royalist sea-king of all! It is
+no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste, deep waters; around
+thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before
+thee the unpenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wild
+water-mountains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am
+told), are not there on thy behalf! Meseems _they_ have other work than
+floating thee forward:--and the huge winds, that sweep from Ursa Major
+to the tropics and equator, dancing their giant-waltz through the
+kingdoms of chaos and immensity, they care little about filling rightly
+or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle
+skiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, my
+brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling
+wide as the world here. Secret, far-off, invisible to all hearts but
+thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that.
+Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad southwester spend itself, saving
+thyself by dexterous science of defence the while: valiantly, with swift
+decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favoring east wind, the
+possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness,
+despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage: thou wilt swallow down
+complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;--how
+much wilt thou swallow down? There shall be a depth of silence in thee,
+deeper than this sea, which is but ten miles deep: a silence
+unsoundable; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great man. Yes, my
+world-soldier, thou of the world marine-service,--thou wilt have to be
+greater than this tumultuous unmeasured world here round thee is: thou,
+in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shall embrace it, harness
+it down; and make it bear thee on,--to new Americas, or whither God
+wills!"
+
+With what concentration of purpose did Washington put the whole weight
+of his character into the scales of our cause in the Revolution! With
+what earnest singleness of aim did Lincoln in the cabinet, Grant in the
+field, throw his whole soul into the contest of our civil war?
+
+The power of Phillips Brooks, at which men wondered, lay in his
+tremendous earnestness.
+
+"No matter what your work is," says Emerson, "let it be yours; no matter
+if you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what you
+are doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and you open the door by
+which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you." Again,
+he says: "God will not have His works made manifest by cowards. A man is
+relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his
+best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.
+It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt, his genius
+deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope."
+
+"I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important
+question," said Henry Clay; "but on such occasions I seem to be
+unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject
+before me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of
+surrounding objects."
+
+"I have been so busy for twenty years trying to save the souls of other
+people," said Livingstone, "that I had forgotten that I have one of my
+own until a savage auditor asked me if I felt the influence of the
+religion I was advocating."
+
+"Well, I've worked hard enough for it," said Malibran when a critic
+expressed his admiration of her D in alt, reached by running up three
+octaves from low D; "I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued it
+everywhere,--when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair; and at last
+I found it on the toe of a shoe that I was putting on."
+
+"People smile at the enthusiasm of youth," said Charles Kingsley; "that
+enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh,
+perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever
+lost it."
+
+"Should I die this minute," said Nelson at an important crisis, "want of
+frigates would be found written on my heart."
+
+Said Dr. Arnold, the celebrated instructor: "I feel more and more the
+need of intercourse with men who take life in earnest. It is painful to
+me to be always on the surface of things. Not that I wish for much of
+what is called religious conversation. That is often apt to be on the
+surface. But I want a sign which one catches by a sort of masonry, that
+a man knows what he is about in life. When I find this it opens my heart
+with as fresh a sympathy as when I was twenty years younger."
+
+Archimedes, the greatest geometer of antiquity, was consulted by the
+king in regard to a gold crown suspected of being fraudulently alloyed
+with silver. While considering the best method of detecting any fraud,
+he plunged into a full bathing tub; and, with the thought that the water
+that overflowed must be equal in weight to his body, he discovered the
+method of obtaining the bulk of the crown compared with an equally
+heavy mass of pure gold. Excited by the discovery, he ran through the
+streets undressed, crying, "I have found it."
+
+Equally celebrated is his remark, "Give me where to stand and I will
+move the world."
+
+His only remark to the Roman soldier who entered his room while engaged
+in geometrical study, was, "Don't step on my circle."
+
+Refusing to follow the soldier to Marcellus, who had captured the city,
+he was killed on the spot. He is said to have remarked, "My head, but
+not my circle."
+
+"Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world," says
+Emerson, "is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs
+after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning,
+established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an example. They did
+they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an
+overmatch for a troop of cavalry. The women fought like men and
+conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed.
+They were temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh needed
+to feed them. They conquered Asia and Africa and Spain on barley. The
+Caliph Omar's walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw it
+than another man's sword."
+
+Horace Vernet's enthusiasm and devotion to the one idea of his life knew
+no bounds. He had himself lashed to the mast in a terrible gale on the
+Mediterranean when all others on board were seized with terror, and with
+great delight sketched the towering waves which threatened every minute
+to swallow the vessel. Several writers tell the story that a great
+artist, Giotto, about to paint the crucifixion, induced a poor man to
+let him bind him upon a cross in order that he might get a better idea
+of the terrible scene that he was about to put upon the canvas. He
+promised faithfully that he would release his model in an hour, but to
+the latter's horror the painter seized a dagger and plunged it into his
+heart; and, while the blood was streaming from the ghastly wound,
+painted his death agony.
+
+Beecher was a very dull boy and was the last member of the family of
+whom anything was expected. He had a weak memory, and disliked study. He
+shunned society and wanted to go to sea. Even when he went to college
+many of his classmates stood ahead of him, who have fallen into
+oblivion. But when he was converted his whole life changed: he was full
+of enthusiasm, hopefulness and zeal. Nothing was too menial for him to
+undertake to carry his purpose. He chopped wood, built the fire in his
+little church in Lawrenceburg, Ind., of only eighteen members, cleaned
+the lamps, swept the floor and washed the windows. He built the fire,
+baked, washed, when his wife was ill. The pent-up enthusiasm of his
+ambitious life burst the barriers of his inhospitable surroundings until
+he blossomed out into America's greatest pulpit orator.
+
+When Handel was a little boy he bought a clavichord, hid it in the
+attic, and went there at night to play upon it, muffling the strings
+with small pieces of fine woolen cloth so that the sounds should not
+wake the family. Michael Angelo neglected school to copy drawings which
+he dared not carry home. Murillo filled the margin of his school-book
+with drawings. Dryden read Polybius before he was ten years old. Le
+Brum, when a boy, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the
+house. Pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen. Blaise Pascal, the
+French mathematician, composed at sixteen a tract on the conic sections.
+
+Professor Agassiz was so enthusiastic in his work and so loved the
+fishes, the fowl and the cattle that it is said these creatures would
+die for him to give him their skeletons. His father wanted him to fit
+for commercial life, but the fish haunted him day and night.
+
+Confucius said that "he was so eager in the pursuit of knowledge that he
+forgot his food;" and that, "in the joy of its attainment, he forgot his
+sorrows;" and that "he did not even perceive that old age was coming
+on."
+
+"That boy tries to make himself useful," said an employer of the errand
+boy, George W. Childs. It is this trying to be useful and helpful that
+promotes us in life.
+
+Once, when Mr. Harvey, an accomplished mathematician, was in a
+bookseller's shop, he saw a poor lad of mean appearance enter and write
+something on a slip of paper and give it to the proprietor. On inquiry
+he found this was a poor deaf boy, Kitto, who afterward became one of
+the most noted Biblical scholars in the world, and who wrote his first
+book in the poor-house. He had come to borrow a book. When a lad he had
+fallen backward from a ladder thirty-five feet upon the pavement with a
+load of slates that he was carrying to the roof. The poor lad was so
+thirsty for books that he would borrow from booksellers who would loan
+them to him out of pity, read them and return them.
+
+The _Youth's Companion_ says that Mr. Edison in his new biography--his
+"Life and Inventions"--describes the accidental method by which he
+discovered the principle of the phonograph. There is a kind of accident
+that happens only to a certain kind of man.
+
+"I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," Mr. Edison says, "when
+the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger.
+That set me to thinking. If I could record the actions of the point,
+and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why
+the thing would not talk.
+
+"I tried the experiment first on a slip of telegraph paper and found
+that the point made an alphabet. I shouted the words 'Halloo! Halloo!'
+into the mouthpiece, ran the paper back over the steel point, and heard
+a faint 'Halloo! Halloo!' in return.
+
+"I determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my
+assistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. They
+laughed at me. That's the whole story. The phonograph is the result of
+the pricking of a finger."
+
+It is one thing to hit upon an idea, however, and another thing to carry
+it out to perfection. The machine would talk, but, like many young
+children, it had difficulty with certain sounds--in the present case
+with aspirants and sibilants. Mr. Edison's biographers say, but the
+statement is somewhat exaggerated:
+
+"He has frequently spent from fifteen to twenty hours daily, for six or
+seven months on a stretch, dinning the word 'Spezia,' for example, into
+the stubborn surface of the wax. 'Spezia,' roared the inventor, 'Pezia'
+lisped the phonograph in tones of ladylike reserve, and so on through
+thousands of graded repetitions till the desired results were obtained.
+
+"The primary education of the phonograph was comical in the extreme. To
+hear those grave and reverend signors, rich in scientific honors,
+patiently reiterating:
+
+     Mary had a little lamb,
+     A little lamb, _lamb_, LAMB,
+
+and elaborating that point with anxious gravity, was to receive a
+practical demonstration of the eternal unfitness of things."
+
+Milton, when blind, old and poor, showed a royal cheerfulness and never
+"bated one jot of heart or hope, but steered right onward."
+
+Dickens' characters seemed to possess him, and haunt him day and night
+until properly portrayed in his stories.
+
+At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the
+common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious
+subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap
+literature. He believed that a paper could be instructive and not be
+dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the _Penny Magazine_, which
+acquired a circulation of 200,000 the first year. Knight projected the
+_Penny Cyclopedia_, the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge_, _Half-Hours
+With the Best Authors_, and other useful books at a low price. His whole
+adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by
+cheap, yet wholesome, publications. He died in poverty, but grateful
+people have erected a noble monument over his ashes.
+
+Demosthenes roused the torpid spirits of his countrymen to a vigorous
+effort to preserve their independence against the designs of an
+ambitious and artful prince, and Philip had just reason to say he was
+more afraid of that man than of all the fleets and armies of the
+Athenians.
+
+Horace Greeley was a hampered genius who never had a chance to show
+himself until he started the _Tribune_, into which he poured his whole
+individuality, life and soul.
+
+Emerson lost the first years of his life trying to be somebody else. He
+finally came to himself and said: "If a single man plant himself
+indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the whole world will come
+round to him in the end." "Though we travel the world over to find the
+beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not." "The man that
+stands by himself the universe stands by him also." "Take Michael
+Angelo's course, 'to confide in one's self and be something of worth and
+value.'" "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or
+commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him
+alone."
+
+Many unknown writers would make fame and fortune if, like Bunyan and
+Milton and Dickens and George Eliot and Scott and Emerson, they would
+write their own lives in their MSS., if they would write about things
+they have seen, that they have felt, that they have known. It is life
+thoughts that stir and convince, that move and persuade, that carry
+their very iron particles into the blood. The real heaven has never been
+outdone by the ideal.
+
+Neither poverty nor misfortune could keep Linnaeus from his botany.
+
+The English and Austrian armies called Napoleon the
+one-hundred-thousand-man. His presence was considered equal to that
+force in battle.
+
+The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches--that there is
+always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's
+life an answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+TO BE GREAT, CONCENTRATE.
+
+     Let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and
+     then stick to it.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     "He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither."
+
+     None sends his arrow to the mark in view,
+     Whose hand is feeble, or his aim untrue.
+     --COWPER.
+
+     He who wishes to fulfill his mission must be a man of one idea,
+     that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing all
+     his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life.
+     --BATE.
+
+     The shortest way to do anything is to do only one thing at a
+     time.
+     --CECIL.
+
+     The power of concentration is one of the most valuable of
+     intellectual attainments.
+     --HORACE MANN.
+
+     The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one
+     direction.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius
+     and art.
+     --CICERO.
+
+
+"It puffed like a locomotive," said a boy of the donkey engine; "it
+whistled like the steam-cars, but it didn't go anywhere."
+
+The world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puff
+and pull, but they don't go anywhere, they have no definite aim, no
+controlling purpose.
+
+The great secret of Napoleon's power lay in his marvelous ability to
+concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place
+in the enemy's ranks he would mass his men and hurl them upon the enemy
+like an avalanche until he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of
+concentration there is in that man's life! He was such a master of
+himself that he could concentrate his powers upon the smallest detail as
+well as upon an empire.
+
+When Napoleon had anything to say he always went straight to his mark.
+He had a purpose in everything he did; there was no dilly-dallying nor
+shilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. It was the
+same with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. He always hit the
+bull's eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness
+of aim. He knew what he wanted to do, and did it. He was like a great
+burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he
+burned a hole wherever he went.
+
+The sun's rays scattered do no execution, but concentrated in a burning
+glass, they melt solid granite; yes, a diamond, even. There are plenty
+of men who have ability enough, the rays of their faculties taken
+separately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, to
+concentrate them upon a single object. They lack the burning glass of a
+purpose, to focalize upon one spot the separate rays of their ability.
+Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they have
+no power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them upon
+one point, until they burn a hole in whatever they undertake.
+
+This power to bring all of one's scattered forces into one focal point
+makes all the difference between success and failure. The sun might
+blaze out upon the earth forever without burning a hole in it or setting
+anything on fire; whereas a very few of these rays concentrated in a
+burning glass would, as stated, transform a diamond into vapor.
+
+Sir James Mackintosh was a man of marvelous ability. He excited in
+everybody who knew him great expectations, but there was no purpose in
+his life to act as a burning glass to collect the brilliant rays of his
+intellect, by which he might have dazzled the world. Most men have
+ability enough, if they could only focalize it into one grand, central,
+all-absorbing purpose, to accomplish great things.
+
+"To encourage me in my efforts to cultivate the power of attention,"
+said a friend of John C. Calhoun, "he stated that to this end he had
+early subjected his mind to such a rigid course of discipline, and had
+persisted without faltering until he had acquired a perfect control over
+it; that he could now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased,
+without wandering even for a moment; that it was his uniform habit,
+when he set out alone to walk or ride, to select a subject for
+reflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander from it
+until he was satisfied with its examination."
+
+"My friend laughs at me because I have but one idea," said a learned
+American chemist; "but I have learned that if I wish ever to make a
+breach in a wall, I must play my guns continually upon one point."
+
+"It is his will that has made him what he is," said an intimate friend
+of Philip D. Armour, the Chicago millionaire. "He fixes his eye on
+something ahead, and no matter what rises upon the right or the left he
+never sees it. He goes straight in pursuit of the object ahead, and
+overtakes it at last. He never gives up what he undertakes."
+
+While Horace Greeley would devote a column of the New York _Tribune_ to
+an article, Thurlow Weed would treat the same subject in a few words in
+the Albany _Evening Journal_, and put the argument into such shape as to
+carry far more conviction.
+
+"If you would be pungent," says Southey, "be brief; for it is with words
+as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."
+
+"The only valuable kind of study," said Sydney Smith, "is to read so
+heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to
+sit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved the
+Capitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers
+gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannae,
+and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at the
+actions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it will
+take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own
+study or on the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beaten
+face and admiring the splendor of his single eye."
+
+"Never study on speculation," says Waters; "all such study is vain. Form
+a plan; have an object; then work for it; learn all you can about it,
+and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculation
+is that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day;
+which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brass
+door-plate with the name of Thompson on it, thinking it might be useful
+some day!"
+
+"I resolved, when I began to read law," said Edward Sugden, afterward
+Lord St. Leonard, "to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and
+never go on to a second reading till I had entirely accomplished the
+first. Many of the competitors read as much in a day as I did in a week;
+but at the end of twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the day
+it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection."
+
+"Very often," says Sidney Smith, "the modern precept of education is,
+'Be ignorant of nothing.' But my advice is, have the courage to be
+ignorant of a great number of things, that you may avoid the calamity of
+being ignorant of all things."
+
+"Lord, help me to take fewer things into my hands, and to do them well,"
+is a prayer recommended by Paxton Hood to an overworked man.
+
+"Many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life," said Edward
+Bulwer Lytton, "and as much about the world as if I had never been a
+student, have said to me, 'When do you get time to write all your books?
+How on earth do you contrive to do so much work?' I shall surprise you
+by the answer I made. The answer is this--I contrive to do so much work
+by never doing too much at a time. A man to get through work well must
+not overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction of
+fatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow.
+Now, since I began really and earnestly to study, which was not till I
+had left college, and was actually in the world, I may perhaps say that
+I have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men of
+my time. I have traveled much and I have seen much; I have mixed much
+in politics, and in the various business of life; and in addition to all
+this, I have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjects
+requiring much special research. And what time do you think, as a
+general rule, I have devoted to study, to reading, and writing? Not more
+than three hours a day; and, when Parliament is sitting, not always
+that. But then, during these three hours, I have given my whole
+attention to what I was about."
+
+"The things that are crowded out of a life are the test of that life.
+Not what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our
+might we attain."
+
+"One great cause of failure of young men in business," says Carnegie,
+"is lack of concentration. They are prone to seek outside investments.
+The cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. Every dollar of
+capital and credit, every business-thought, should be concentrated upon
+the one business upon which a man has embarked. He should never scatter
+his shot. It is a poor business which will not yield better returns for
+increased capital than any outside investment. No man or set of men or
+corporation can manage a business-man's capital as well as he can manage
+it himself. The rule, 'Do not put all your eggs in one basket,' does not
+apply to a man's life-work. Put all your eggs in one basket and then
+watch that basket, is the true doctrine--the most valuable rule of all."
+
+"A man must not only desire to be right," said Beecher, "he must _be_
+right. You may say, 'I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion
+crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and
+I hope Providence will direct the ball.' Providence won't. You must do
+it; and if you do not, you are a dead man."
+
+The ruling idea of Milton's life and the key to his mental history is
+his resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in itself
+is singular, for it is probably shared in by every poet in his turn. As
+every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to become
+Lord-Chancellor, and every private in the French army carries in his
+haversack the baton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of the
+dream of Parnassus that it should embody itself in a form of surpassing
+brilliance. What distinguishes Milton from the crowd of youthful
+literary aspirants, _audax juventa_, is his constancy of resolve. He not
+only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under the
+importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life into
+the pursuit of place, profit, honor--the thorns which spring up and
+smother the wheat--but carried out his dream in its integrity in old
+age. He formed himself for this achievement and no other. Study at home,
+travel abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service,
+the practice of the domestic virtues, were so many parts of the
+schooling which was to make a poet.
+
+Bismarck adopted it as the aim of his public life "to snatch Germany
+from Austrian oppression," and to gather round Prussia, in a North
+German Confederation, all the states whose tone of thought, religion,
+manners and interest "were in harmony with those of Prussia." "To attain
+this end," he once said in conversation, "I would brave all
+dangers--exile, the scaffold itself. What matter if they hang me,
+provided the rope with which I am hung binds this new Germany firmly to
+the Prussian throne?"
+
+It is related of Greeley that, when he was writing his "American
+Conflict," he found it necessary to conceal himself somewhere, to
+prevent constant interruptions. He accordingly took a room in the Bible
+house, where he worked from ten in the morning till five in the
+afternoon, and then appeared in the sanctum, seemingly as fresh as ever.
+
+Cooper Institute is the evening school which Peter Cooper, as long ago
+as 1810, resolved to found some day, when he was looking about as an
+apprentice for a place where he could go to school evenings. Through all
+his career in various branches of business he never lost sight of this
+object; and, as his wealth increased, he was pleased that it brought
+nearer the realization of his dream.
+
+"See a great lawyer like Rufus Choate," says Dr. Storrs, "in a case
+where his convictions are strong and his feelings are enlisted. He saw
+long ago, as he glanced over the box, that five of those in it were
+sympathetic with him; as he went on he became equally certain of seven;
+the number now has risen to ten; but two are still left whom he feels
+that he has not persuaded or mastered. Upon them he now concentrates his
+power, summing up the facts, setting forth anew and more forcibly the
+principles, urging upon them his view of the case with a more and more
+intense action of his mind upon theirs, until one only is left. Like the
+blow of a hammer, continually repeated until the iron bar crumbles
+beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that one
+mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the
+pleader's purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, 'He surpassed himself.'
+It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and
+overpowering energy to the mind."
+
+"The foreman of the jury, however," said Whipple, "was a hard-hearted,
+practical man, a model of business intellect and integrity, but with an
+incapacity of understanding any intellect or conscience radically
+differing from his own. Mr. Choate's argument, as far as the facts and
+the law were concerned, was through in an hour. Still he went on
+speaking. Hour after hour passed, and yet he continued to speak with
+constantly increasing eloquence, repeating and recapitulating, without
+any seeming reason, facts which he had already stated and arguments
+which he had already urged. The truth was, as I gradually learned, that
+he was engaged in a hand-to-hand--or rather in a brain-to-brain and a
+heart-to-heart--contest with the foreman, whose resistance he was
+determined to break down, but who confronted him for three hours with
+defiance observable in every rigid line of his honest countenance. 'You
+fool!' was the burden of the advocate's ingenious argument. 'You
+rascal!' was the phrase legibly printed on the foreman's incredulous
+face. But at last the features of the foreman began to relax, and at the
+end the stern lines melted into acquiescence with the opinion of the
+advocate, who had been storming at the defences of his mind, his heart,
+and his conscience for five hours, and had now entered as victor. The
+verdict was 'Not guilty.'"
+
+"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself
+to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle
+spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity."
+
+It is generally thought that when a man is said to be dissipated in his
+habits he must be a drinking man, or a gambler, or licentious, or all
+three; but dissipation is of two kinds, coarse and refined. A man can
+dissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power by
+indulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits of
+a viler nature. Property and its cares make some men dissipated; too
+many friends make others. The exactions of "society," the balls,
+parties, receptions, and various entertainments constantly being given
+and attended by the _beau monde_, constitute a most wasting species of
+dissipation. Others, again, fritter away all their time and strength in
+political agitations, or in controversies and gossip; others in idling
+with music or some other one of the fine arts; others in feasting or
+fasting, as their dispositions and feelings incline. But the man of
+concentration of purpose is never a dissipated man in any sense, good or
+bad. He has no time to devote to useless trifling of any kind, but puts
+in as many strokes of faithful work as possible toward the attainment of
+some definite good.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+AT ONCE.
+
+     Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit
+     of 500,000,000 miles back to the solstice at the appointed
+     moment without the loss of one second--no, not the millionth
+     part of a second--for ages and ages of which it traveled that
+     imperial road.
+     --EDWARD EVERETT.
+
+     Despatch is the soul of business.
+     --CHESTERFIELD.
+
+     Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of
+     clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as
+     his time.
+     --HORACE MANN.
+
+     By the street of by-and-by one arrives at the house of never.
+     --CERVANTES.
+
+     The greatest thief this world has ever produced is
+     procrastination, and he is still at large.
+     --H. W. SHAW.
+
+
+"Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says H. C. Bowen.
+"How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself
+intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has acquired a
+reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the
+capital that in after years makes his success a certainty!"
+
+"Nothing commends a young man so much to his employers," says John
+Stuart Blackie, "as accuracy and punctuality in the conduct of his
+business. And no wonder. On each man's exactitude depends the
+comfortable and easy going of his machine. If the clock goes fitfully
+nobody knows the time of day; and, if your task is a link in the chain
+of another man's work, you are his clock, and he ought to be able to
+rely on you."
+
+"The whole period of youth," said Ruskin, "is one essentially of
+formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is
+trembling with destinies--not a moment of which, once passed, the
+appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on
+the cold iron."
+
+"To-morrow, didst thou say?" asked Cotton. "Go to--I will not hear of
+it. To-morrow! 't is a sharper who stakes his penury against thy
+plenty--who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopes
+and promises, the currency of idiots. _To-morrow!_ it is a period
+nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance
+in the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society
+with those that own it. 'Tis fancy's child, and folly is its father;
+wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantastic
+visions of the evening." Oh, how many a wreck on the road to success
+could say: "I have spent all my life in the pursuit of to-morrow, being
+assured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me."
+
+"I give it as my deliberate and solemn conviction," said Dr. Fitch,
+"that the individual who is tardy in meeting an appointment will never
+be respected or successful in life."
+
+"If a man has no regard for the time of other men," said Horace Greeley,
+"why should he have for their money? What is the difference between
+taking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are many men to
+whom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars."
+
+A man who keeps his time will keep his word; in truth, he cannot keep
+his word unless he _does_ keep his time.
+
+When the Duchess of Sutherland came late, keeping the court waiting, the
+queen, who was always vexed by tardiness, presented her with her own
+watch, saying, "I am afraid your's does not keep good time."
+
+"Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary," replied
+Washington, when his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by
+saying that his watch was too slow.
+
+"I have generally found that a man who is good at an excuse is good for
+nothing else," said Franklin to a servant who was always late, but
+always ready with an excuse.
+
+One of the best things about school and college life is that the bell
+which strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures,
+teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch which
+is a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad habits,
+and is an expensive investment at any price. Wear threadbare clothes if
+you must, but never carry an inaccurate watch.
+
+"Five minutes behind time" has ruined many a man and many a firm.
+
+"He who rises late," says Fuller, "must trot all day, and shall scarcely
+overtake his business at night."
+
+Some people are too late for everything but ruin; when a nobleman
+apologized to George III. for being late, and said, "better late than
+never," the king replied, "No, I say, _better never than late_."
+
+"Better late than never" is not half so good a maxim as "Better never
+late."
+
+If Samuel Budgett was even a minute late at an appointment he would
+apologize; he was as punctual as a chronometer. Punctuality is
+contagious. Napoleon infused promptness into his officers every minute.
+What power there is in promptness to take the drudgery out of a
+disagreeable task.
+
+"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends," said
+Hamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God gave
+them work to do, and He also gave them a competency of time; so much
+that if they began at the right moment and wrought with sufficient
+vigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good many
+years ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allotted
+time was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, it
+has dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines laid
+alongside the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and their
+time run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of the
+time. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters are
+posted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at the
+wharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of the
+terminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not break
+any engagement nor neglect any duty; but they systematically go about it
+too late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval."
+
+Of Tours, the wealthy New Orleans ship-owner, it is said that he was as
+methodical and regular as a clock, and that his neighbors were in the
+habit of judging of the time of the day by his movements.
+
+"How," asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much and
+in so short a time?" "When I have anything do, I go and do it," was the
+reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional
+mistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator will fail--even if he have
+the better judgment.
+
+When asked how he got through so much work, Lord Chesterfield replied:
+"Because I never put off till morrow what I can do to-day."
+
+Dewitt, pensionary of Holland, answered the same question: "Nothing is
+more easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off until
+to-morrow what can be done to-day."
+
+Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his
+enormous achievements. He made it a rule to answer all letters the day
+they were received. He rose at five. By breakfast time he had broken the
+neck of the day's work, as he used to say. Writing to a youth who had
+obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel:
+"Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not
+having your time fully employed--I mean what the women call dawdling. Do
+instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after
+business, never before it."
+
+Frederick the Great had a maxim: "Time is the only treasure of which it
+is proper to be avaricious."
+
+Leibnitz declared that "the loss of an hour is the loss of a part of
+life."
+
+Napoleon, who knew the value of time, remarked that it was the quarter
+hours that won battles. The value of minutes has been often recognized,
+and any person watching a railway clerk handing out tickets and change
+during the last few minutes available must have been struck with how
+much could be done in these short periods of time.
+
+At the appointed hour the train starts and by and by is carrying
+passengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour. In a second you are
+carried twenty-nine yards. In one twenty-ninth of a second you pass over
+one yard. Now, one yard is quite an appreciable distance, but one
+twenty-ninth of a second is a period which cannot be appreciated.
+
+The father of the Webster brothers, before going away to be gone for a
+week, gave his boys a stint to cut a field of corn, telling them that
+after it was done, if they had any time left, they might do what they
+pleased. The boys looked the field over on Monday morning and concluded
+they could do all the work in three days, so they decided to play the
+first three days. Thursday morning they went to the field, but it looked
+so much larger than it did on Monday morning, that they decided they
+could not possibly do it in three days, and rather than not do it all,
+they would not touch it. When the angry father returned, he called
+Ezekiel to him and asked him why they had not harvested the corn. "What
+have you been doing?" said the stern father. "Nothing, father." "And
+what have you been doing, Daniel?" "Helping Zeke, sir."
+
+How many boys, and men, too, waste hours and days "helping Zeke!"
+
+"Remember the world was created in six days," said Napoleon to one of
+his officers. "Ask for whatever you please except time."
+
+Railroads and steamboats have been wonderful educators in promptness. No
+matter who is late they leave right on the minute.
+
+It is interesting to watch people at a great railroad station, running,
+hurrying, trying to make up time, for they well know when the time
+arrives the train will leave.
+
+Factories, shops, stores, banks, everything opens and closes on the
+minute. The higher the state of civilization the prompter is everything
+done. In countries without railroads, as in Eastern countries,
+everything is behind time. Everybody is indolent and lazy.
+
+The world knows that the prompt man's bills and notes will be paid on
+the day they are due, and will trust him. People will give him credit,
+for they know they can depend upon him. But lack of promptness will
+shake confidence almost as quickly as downright dishonesty. The man who
+has a habit of dawdling or listlessness will show it in everything he
+does. He is late at meals, late at work, dawdles on the street, loses
+his train, misses his appointments, and dawdles at his store until the
+banks are closed. Everybody he meets suffers more or less from his
+malady, for dawdling becomes practically a disease.
+
+"You will never find time for anything," said Charles Buxton; "if you
+want time you must make it."
+
+The best work we ever do is that which we do now, and can never repeat.
+"Too late," is the curse of the unsuccessful, who forget that "one
+to-day is worth two to-morrows."
+
+Time accepts no sacrifice; it admits of neither redemption nor
+atonement. _It is the true avenger._ Your enemy may become your
+friend,--your injurer may do you justice,--but Time is inexorable, and
+has no mercy.
+
+     Then stay the present instant, dear Horatio:
+     Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings.
+     'Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious
+     Than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain.
+     O! let it not elude thy grasp; but, like
+     The good old patriarch upon record,
+     Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.
+     --NATHANIEL COTTON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THOROUGHNESS.
+
+     Doing well depends upon doing completely.
+     --PERSIAN PROVERB.
+
+     He who does well will always have patrons enough.
+     --PLAUTUS.
+
+     If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or
+     make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his
+     house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his
+     door.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if
+     it be wrong, leave it undone.
+     --GILPIN.
+
+     No two things differ more than Hurry and Dispatch. Hurry is the
+     mark of a weak mind, Dispatch of a strong one. * * * Like a
+     turnstile, he (the weak man) is in everybody's way, but stops
+     nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into
+     everything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the
+     fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are
+     he only burns his fingers.
+     --COLTON.
+
+
+"Make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the
+blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built;
+"six of us have come to work on the new church, and I've left mine at
+home." "As good a one as I know how?" asked David Maydole, doubtfully,
+"but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as I know how to
+make." "Yes, I do," said the carpenter, "I want a good hammer."
+
+It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that
+had ever been made. By means of a longer hole than usual, David had
+wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a
+wonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his
+prize to his companions. They all came to the shop next day, and each
+ordered just such a hammer. When the contractor saw the tools, he
+ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than
+those for his men. "I can't make any better ones," said Maydole; "when I
+make a thing, I make it as well as I can, no matter whom it is for."
+
+The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his
+previous business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the village
+to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a
+standing order for all the blacksmith could make. David might have grown
+very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but
+throughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study still
+further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. They were usually
+sold without any warrant of excellence, the word "Maydole" stamped on
+the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the
+world could produce. Character is power, and is the best advertisement
+in the world.
+
+"Yes," said he one day to the late James Parton, who told this story, "I
+have made hammers in this little village for twenty-eight years."
+"Well," replied the great historian, "by this time you ought to make a
+pretty good hammer."
+
+"No, I can't," was the reply, "I can't make a pretty good hammer. I make
+the best hammer that's made. My only care is to make a perfect hammer.
+If folks don't want to pay me what they're worth, they're welcome to buy
+cheaper ones somewhere else. My wants are few, and I'm ready any time to
+go back to my blacksmith's shop, where I worked forty years ago, before
+I thought of making hammers. Then I had a boy to blow by bellows, now I
+have one hundred and fifteen men. Do you see them over there watching
+the heads cook over the charcoal furnace, as your cook, if she knows
+what she is about, watches the chops broiling? Each of them is hammered
+out of a piece of iron, and is tempered under the inspection of an
+experienced man. Every handle is seasoned three years, or until there is
+no shrink left in it. Once I thought I could use machinery in
+manufacturing them; now I know that a perfect tool can't be made by
+machinery, and every bit of the work is done by hand."
+
+"In telling this little story," said Parton, "I have told thousands of
+stories. Take the word 'hammer' out of it, and put 'glue' in its place,
+and you have the history of Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, you
+can make the true history of every great business in the world which has
+lasted thirty years."
+
+"We have no secret," said Manager Daniel J. Morrill, of the Cambria Iron
+Works, employing seven thousand men, at Johnstown, Pa. "We always try to
+beat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we've got, and we
+don't care who knows it."
+
+"I don't try to see how cheap a machine I can produce, but how good a
+machine," said the late John C. Whitin, of Northbridge, Mass., to a
+customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery.
+Business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion
+to advertise any machinery for sale, New England cotton manufacturers
+were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add,
+as an all-sufficient guaranty of Northbridge products, "Whitin make."
+Put thoroughness into your work: it pays.
+
+"The accurate boy is always the favored one," said President Tuttle. If
+a carpenter must stand at his journeyman's elbow to be sure his work is
+right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he might
+as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way.
+
+"Mr. Girard, can you not assist me by giving me a little work?" asked
+one John Smith, who had formerly worked for the great banker and
+attracted attention by his activity.
+
+"Assistance--work--ah? You want work?" "Yes sir; it's a long time since
+I've had anything to do."
+
+"Very well, I shall give you some. You see dem stone yondare?" "Yes,
+sir." "Very well; you shall fetch and put them in this place; you see?"
+"Yes sir." "And when you done, come to me at my bank."
+
+Smith finished his task, reported to Mr. Girard, and asked for more
+work. "Ah, ha, oui. You want more work? Very well; you shall go place
+dem stone where you got him. Understandez? You take him back." "Yes,
+sir."
+
+Again Smith performed the work and waited on Mr. Girard for payment.
+"Ah, ha, you all finish?" "Yes, sir." "Very well; how much money shall I
+give you?" "One dollar, sir." "Dat is honest. You take no advantage.
+Dare is your dollar." "Can I do anything else for you?" "Oui, come here
+when you get up to-morrow. You shall have more work."
+
+Smith was punctual, but for the third time, and yet again for the
+fourth, he was ordered to "take dem stone back again." When he called
+for his pay in the evening Stephen Girard spoke very cordially. "Ah,
+Monsieur Smit, you shall be my man; you mind your own business and do
+it, ask no questions, you do not interfere. You got one vife?" "Yes,
+sir." "Ah, dat is bad. Von vife is bad. Any little chicks?" "Yes, sir,
+five living."
+
+"Five? Dat is good; I like five. I like you, Monsieur Smit; you like to
+work; you mind your business. Now I do something for your five little
+chicks. There: take these five pieces of paper for your five little
+chicks; you shall work for them; you shall mind your own business, and
+your little chicks shall never want five more." In a few years Mr. Smith
+became one of the wealthiest and most respected merchants of
+Philadelphia.
+
+It is difficult to estimate the great influence upon a life of the early
+formed habit of doing everything to a finish, not leaving it half done,
+or pretty nearly done, but completely done. Nature finishes every little
+leaf, even to every little rib, its edges and stem, as exactly and
+perfectly as though it were the only leaf to be made that year. Even the
+flower that blooms in the mountain dell, where no human eye will ever
+behold it, is finished with the same perfection and exactness of form
+and outline, with the same delicate shade of color, with the same
+completeness of beauty, as though it was made for royalty in the queen's
+garden. "Perfection to the finish" is a motto which every youth should
+adopt.
+
+"How did you attain such excellence in your profession?" was asked of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds. "By observing one simple rule, namely, to make each
+picture the best," he replied.
+
+The discipline of being exact is uplifting. Progress is never more rapid
+than it is when we are studying to be accurate. The effort educates all
+the powers. Arthur Helps says: "I do not know that there is anything
+except it be humility, which is so valuable, as an incident of
+education, as accuracy: and accuracy can be taught. Direct lies told to
+the world are as dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoods
+of inaccuracy."
+
+Too many youths enter upon their business in a languid, half-hearted
+way, and do their work in a slipshod manner. The consequence is that
+they inspire neither admiration nor confidence on the part of their
+superiors, and cut off almost every chance of success. There is a loose,
+perfunctory method of doing one's work that never merits advance, and
+very rarely wins it. Instead of buckling to their task with all the
+force they possess, they merely touch it with the tips of their fingers,
+their rule apparently being, the maximum of ease with the minimum of
+work. The principle of Strafford, the great minister of Charles I., is
+indicated by his motto, the one word "Thorough." It was said of King
+Hezekiah, "In every work that he began, he did it with all his heart and
+prospered."
+
+The stone-cutter goes to work on a stone and most patiently shapes it.
+He carves that bit of fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. And
+by-and-by the master says, "Well done," and takes it away and gives him
+another block and tells him to work on that. And so he works on that
+from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only
+knows that he is earning his bread. And he continues to put all his
+skill and taste into his work. He has no idea what use will be made of
+these few stones which he has been carving, until afterward, when, one
+day, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the Art
+Gallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. He did not know
+what they were for, but the architect did. And as he stands looking at
+his work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street, he
+says: "I am glad I did it well." And every day as he passes that way, he
+says to himself exultingly, "I did it well." He did not draw the design,
+nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made of
+his work: but he took pains in cutting those stems; and when he saw
+they were a part of that magnificent structure, his soul rejoiced.
+
+Work that is not finished, is not work at all; it is merely a botch. We
+often see this defect of incompleteness in a child, which increases in
+youth. All about the house, everywhere, there are half-finished things.
+It is true that children often become tired of things which they begin
+with enthusiasm; but there is a great difference in children about
+finishing what they undertake. A boy, for instance, will start out in
+the morning with great enthusiasm to dig his garden over; but, after a
+few minutes, his enthusiasm has evaporated, and he wants to go fishing.
+He soon becomes tired of this, and thinks he will make a boat. No sooner
+does he get a saw and knife and a few pieces of board about him than he
+makes up his mind that really what he wanted to do, after all, was to
+play ball, and this, in turn, must give way to something else.
+
+One watch, set right, will do to set many by; but, on the other hand,
+one that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole neighborhood.
+The same may be said of the example we individually set to those around
+us.
+
+"Whatever I have tried to do in life," said Dickens, "I have tried with
+all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted
+myself to completely."
+
+It is no disgrace to be a shoemaker, but it is a disgrace for a
+shoemaker to make bad shoes.
+
+A traveler, recently returned from Jerusalem, found, in conversation
+with Humboldt, that the latter was as conversant with the streets and
+houses of Jerusalem as he was himself. On being asked how long it was
+since he had visited it, the aged philosopher replied: "I have never
+been there; but I expected to go sixty years since, and I prepared
+myself."
+
+So noted for excellency was everything bearing the brand of George
+Washington, that a barrel of flour marked "George Washington, Mount
+Vernon," was exempted from the customary inspection in the West India
+ports.
+
+Pascal, the most wonderful mathematical genius of his time, whose work
+on conic sections, at sixteen, Descartes refused to believe could be
+produced at that age, is considered to have fixed the French language,
+as Luther did the German, by his writings. None of his provincial
+letters, with the exception of the last three, was more than eight
+quarto pages in length, yet he devoted twenty days to the writing of a
+single letter, and one of them was written no less than thirteen times.
+
+The night the Tasmania was wrecked, the captain had given the course
+north by west, sixty-seven degrees. He had taken account of eddies and
+currents. The second officer, overlooking these, ordered the helmsman
+to make it north by west, fifty-seven degrees, but to bring the ship
+around so gently that the captain wouldn't know it. Hence her
+destruction.
+
+Rev. Mr. Maley, of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church, had the
+habit of greatly exaggerating anything he talked about. His brethren at
+conference told him that this habit was growing on him, and rendering
+him unpopular in the ministry. Mr. Maley heard them patiently, and then
+said: "Brethren, I am aware of the truth of all you have said, and have
+shed barrels of tears over it."
+
+There is a great difference between going just right and a little
+wrong.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+TRIFLES.
+
+     In the elder days of Art
+       Builders wrought with greatest care
+     Each minute and unseen part,
+       For the gods see everywhere.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+     Think naught a trifle, though it small appear,
+     Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
+     And trifles, life.
+     --YOUNG.
+
+     The smallest hair throws its shadow.
+     --GOETHE.
+
+     He that despiseth small things shall fall little by little.
+     --ECCLESIASTES.
+
+     It is the little rift within the lute,
+     That by and by will make the music mute,
+     And ever widening slowly silence all.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     "A pebble in the streamlet scant
+       Has turned the course of many a river:
+     A dewdrop on the baby plant
+       Has warped the giant oak forever."
+
+     It is the close observation of little things which is the
+     secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every
+     pursuit of life.
+     --SMILES.
+
+     "Only!--But then the onlys
+     Make up the mighty all."
+
+
+"My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is
+worth doing well," said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. When
+asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous
+artists he replied, "Because I have neglected nothing."
+
+"Do little things now," says a Persian proverb; "so shall big things
+come to thee by and by asking to be done." God will take care of the
+great things if we do not neglect the little ones.
+
+A gentleman advertised for a boy to assist him in his office, and nearly
+fifty applicants presented themselves to him. Out of the whole number he
+in a short time selected one and dismissed the rest. "I should like to
+know," said a friend, "on what ground you selected that boy, who had not
+a single recommendation?" "You are mistaken," said the gentleman, "he
+had a great many. He wiped his feet when he came in, and closed the door
+after him, showing that he was careful. He gave up his seat instantly to
+that lame old man, showing that he was kind and thoughtful. He took off
+his cap when he came in, and answered my questions promptly and
+respectfully, showing that he was polite and gentlemanly. He picked up
+the book which I had purposely laid upon the floor, and replaced it on
+the table, while all the rest stepped over it, or shoved it aside; and
+he waited quietly for his turn, instead of pushing and crowding, showing
+that he was honest and orderly. When I talked to him, I noticed that
+his clothes were carefully brushed, his hair in nice order, and his
+teeth as white as milk; and when he wrote his name, I noticed that his
+finger-nails were clean, instead of being tipped with jet, like that
+handsome little fellow's, in the blue jacket. Don't you call those
+letters of recommendation? I do; and I would give more for what I can
+tell about a boy by using my eyes ten minutes, than for all the fine
+letters he can bring me."
+
+"Least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the
+great laws of nature. All life comes from microscopic beginnings. In
+nature there is nothing small. The microscope reveals as great a world
+below as the telescope above. All of nature's laws govern the smallest
+atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean.
+
+"I cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit," said
+a gentleman to Michael Angelo. "But," said the sculptor, "I have
+retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out
+that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that
+limb, etc." "But they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "It may be
+so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and
+perfection is no trifle." That infinite patience which made Michael
+Angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue with more
+vital fidelity to truth, or Gerhard Dow a day in giving the right effect
+to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between success
+and failure.
+
+"Of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told of
+his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "What is the
+use of a child?" replied Franklin; "it may become a man."
+
+In the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick to
+the bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery.
+Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the
+father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full
+pay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peel
+one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "Ay,
+that they be," replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?"
+"Why, you see, Meester Peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret!
+If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am." "That's so," said Mr. Peel,
+smiling; "but I'd give you something to know. Could you make all the
+looms work as smoothly as yours?" "Ivery one of 'em, meester," replied
+Dick. "Well, what shall I give you for your secret?" asked Mr. Peel, and
+Dick replied, "Gi' me a quart of ale every day as I'm in the mills, and
+I'll tell thee all about it." "Agreed," said Mr. Peel, and Dick
+whispered very cautiously in his ear, "Chalk your bobbins!" That was the
+whole secret, and Mr. Peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, for
+he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. Dick was handsomely
+rewarded with money instead of beer. His little idea has saved the world
+millions of dollars.
+
+The totality of a life at any moment is the product mainly of little
+things. Trifling choices, insignificant exercises of the will,
+unimportant acts often repeated,--things seemingly of small
+account,--these are the thousand tiny sculptors that are carving away
+constantly at the rude block of our life, giving it shape and feature.
+Indeed the formation of character is much like the work of an artist in
+stone. The sculptor takes a rough, unshapen mass of marble, and with
+strong, rapid strokes of mallet and chisel quickly brings into view the
+rude outline of his design; but after the outline appears then come
+hours, days, perhaps even years, of patient, minute labor. A novice
+might see no change in the statue from one day to another; for though
+the chisel touches the stone a thousand times, it touches as lightly as
+the fall of a rain-drop, but each touch leaves a mark.
+
+The smallest thing becomes respectable when regarded as the commencement
+of what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. The crude
+settlement of Romulus would have remained an insignificant circumstance
+and might have justly sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length
+commanded the world.
+
+Beecher says that men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations
+and lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in Panama, a
+million madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them,
+would begin to bore the piles down under the water. There would be
+neither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touch
+the post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through.
+
+Men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift
+themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should
+never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their
+souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable
+ruin.
+
+Lichens, of themselves of little value, prepare the way for important
+vegetation. They deposit, in dying, an acid which wears away the rock
+and prepares the mould necessary for the nourishment of superior plants.
+
+It was but a tiny rivulet trickling down the embankment that started the
+terrible Johnstown flood and swept thousands into eternity. One noble
+heroic act has elevated a nation. Franklin's whole career was changed
+by a torn copy of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good. Taking up a stone
+to throw at a turtle was the turning point in Theodore Parker's life. As
+he raised the stone something within him said, "Don't do it," and he
+didn't. He went home and asked his mother what it was in him that said
+"don't." She told him it was conscience. Small things become great when
+a great soul sees them. A child, when asked why a certain tree grew
+crooked, answered, "Somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow."
+
+By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boy
+in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a
+dike. He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water
+was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark
+and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. His
+name is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland.
+
+We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the
+ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved
+forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man
+never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food.
+
+The tears of Virgilia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians when
+nothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus.
+
+Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the
+tip of her nose; and if Cleopatra's had been an inch shorter Mark Antony
+would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the
+blemish would have changed the history of the world. Anne Boleyn's
+fascinating smile split the great Church of Rome in twain, and gave a
+nation an altered destiny. Napoleon, who feared not to attack the
+proudest monarchs in their capitals, shrank from the political influence
+of one independent woman in private life, Madame de Stael.
+
+It was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty,
+but it laid Chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand
+people.
+
+The discovery of glass was due to a mere accident--the building of a
+fire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at Bayonne, in France,
+owes its existence to the fact that a Basque regiment, being hard
+pressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as their
+ammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into the
+barrels of their muskets, which was done, and the first bayonet-charge
+was made.
+
+A jest led to a war between two great nations. The presence of a comma
+in a deed, lost to the owner of an estate five thousand dollars a month
+for eight months. The battle of Corunna was fought and Sir John Moore's
+life sacrificed, in 1809, through a dragoon stopping to drink while
+bearing despatches.
+
+"You do no work," said the scissors to the rivet. "Where would your work
+be," said the rivet to the scissors, "if I didn't keep you together?"
+
+Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. Those
+that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend
+it, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of? Little
+courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly
+letter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million--once in a
+lifetime--may do a heroic action.
+
+We call the large majority of human lives _obscure_. Presumptuous that
+we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust
+of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+COURAGE.
+
+     Quit yourselves like men.
+     --1 SAMUEL iv. 9.
+
+     Cowards have no luck.
+     --ELIZABETH KULMAN.
+
+     He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day
+     surmount a fear.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     To dare is better than to doubt,
+       For doubt is always grieving;
+     'Tis faith that finds the riddles out;
+       The prize is for believing.
+     --HENRY BURTON.
+
+                                       --Walk
+     Boldly and wisely in that light thou hast;
+     There is a hand above will help thee on.
+     --BAILEY'S FESTUS.
+
+     "Have hope! Though clouds environ now,
+       And gladness hides her face in scorn,
+     Put thou the shadow from thy brow--
+       No night but hath its morn."
+
+
+"Our enemies are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylae. "And
+we are before them," was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver your
+arms," came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them," was the
+answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: "You will not be able
+to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "Then we will fight in
+the shade," replied a Lacedemonian. What wonder that a handful of such
+men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth.
+
+"The hero," says Emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred."
+
+Darius the Great sent ambassadors to the Athenians, to demand earth and
+water, which denoted submission. The Athenians threw them into a ditch
+and told them, there was earth and water enough.
+
+"Bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma,
+when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were
+retreating. "No," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors."
+"To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's
+noble defiance to the enemies of France.
+
+Shakespeare says: "He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the
+hives because the bees have stings."
+
+"It is a bad omen," said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell
+on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness
+for a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare
+venture now upon the sea." So he returned to his house; but his young
+son Leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed
+southward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni had
+been driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two or
+three years before. The first land that they saw was probably Labrador,
+a barren, rugged plain. Leif called this country Heluland, or the land
+of flat stones. Sailing onward many days, he came to a low, level coast
+thickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the country
+Markland, probably the modern Nova Scotia. Sailing onward, they came to
+an island which they named Vinland, on account of the abundance of
+delicious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the year 1000. Here
+where the city of Newport, R. I., stands, they spent many months, and
+then returned to Greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and
+strange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and no doubt Eric was
+sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen.
+
+"Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the Gold of
+Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails to
+the wind!"
+
+Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime
+of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have
+enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne at
+twenty, had conquered the whole known world before dying at
+thirty-three. Julius Caesar captured eight hundred cities, conquered
+three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great
+orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young
+man. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at
+twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his first
+battle as a colonel at twenty-two. Lafayette was made general of the
+whole French army at twenty. Charlemagne was master of France and
+Germany at thirty. Conde was only twenty-two when he conquered at
+Rocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the
+pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was in
+Parliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was
+twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was a Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth
+Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quincey
+at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order.
+Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems at
+fifteen. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college.
+Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. Luther was
+but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the
+bishop and defied the pope. Nelson was a lieutenant in the British navy
+before he was twenty. He was but forty-seven when he received his death
+wound at Trafalgar. Charles the Twelfth was only nineteen when he gained
+the battle of Narva; at thirty-six Cortes was the conqueror of Mexico;
+at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India.
+Hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at
+Cannae, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the Republic of Rome; and
+Napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of Italy, he
+out-generaled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of
+Austria.
+
+Equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the
+allotted limit of life. Victor Hugo and Wellington were both in their
+prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. George
+Bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five.
+Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a
+marvel of literary and scholarly ability.
+
+"Your Grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed," said
+a phrenologist, who was examining Wellington's head. "You are right,"
+replied the Iron Duke, "and but for my sense of duty I should have
+retreated in my first fight." That first fight, on an Indian field, was
+one of the most terrible on record.
+
+Grant never knew when he was beaten. When told that he was surrounded by
+the enemy at Belmont, he quietly replied: "Well, then, we must cut our
+way out."
+
+When General Jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small
+settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the
+court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge
+ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare approach him. "Call
+a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." But they also shrank with
+fear from the ruffian. "Call me, then," said Jackson; "this court is
+adjourned for five minutes." He left the bench, walked straight up to
+the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped
+his weapons, afterward saying: "There was something in his eye I could
+not resist."
+
+Lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed
+it to be right. At the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread
+and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had
+refused, Lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate
+whenever an opportunity presented. "Go to Lincoln," people would say,
+when these bounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraid
+of any cause, if it's right."
+
+Abraham Lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with
+little education and no influential friends. When at last he had begun
+the practice of law it required no little daring to cast his fortune
+with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation
+he had gained. Only the most sublime moral courage could have sustained
+him as President to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long
+train of disaster; to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; to support
+Grant and Stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press;
+and through it all to do the right as God gave him to see the right.
+
+"Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." To determine to do anything is
+half the battle. "To think a thing is impossible is to make it so."
+"Courage is victory, timidity is defeat."
+
+Don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in
+crossing bridges you have not reached. Don't fool with a nettle! Grasp
+with firmness if you would rob it of its sting. To half will and to hang
+forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life.
+
+Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till their
+effects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what is your
+competitor but a man? _Conquer your place in the world_, for all things
+serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune
+bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously.
+The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic
+of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure
+men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has
+prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have
+been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths
+in the career of usefulness and fame. "No great deed is done," says
+George Eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty."
+
+A mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in such
+constant distress by its fear of a cat that the magician, taking pity on
+it, turned it into a cat itself. Immediately it began to suffer from its
+fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to
+suffer from fear of a tiger, and the magician turned it into a tiger.
+Then it began to suffer from its fear of huntsmen, and the magician, in
+disgust, said, "Be a mouse again. As you have only the heart of a mouse
+it is impossible to help you by giving you the body of a nobler animal."
+And the poor creature again became a mouse.
+
+Young Commodore Oliver H. Perry, not twenty-eight years old, was
+intrusted with the plan to gain control of Lake Erie. With great energy
+Perry directed the construction of nine ships, carrying fifty-four guns,
+and conquered Commodore Barclay, a veteran of European navies, with six
+vessels, carrying sixty-three guns. Perry had no experience in naval
+battles before this.
+
+To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. Feasible
+projects often miscarry through despondency, and are strangled at birth
+by a cowardly imagination. A ship on a lee shore stands out to sea to
+escape shipwreck. Shrink and you will be despised.
+
+One of Napoleon's drummer boys won the battle of Arcola. Napoleon's
+little army of fourteen thousand men had fought fifty thousand Austrians
+for seventy-two hours; the Austrians' position enabled them to sweep the
+bridge of Arcola, which the French had gained and which they must hold
+to win the battle. The drummer boy, on the shoulders of his sergeant
+(who swam across the river with him), beat the drum all the way across
+the river, and when on the opposite end of the bridge he beat his drum
+so vigorously that the Austrians, remembering the terrible French
+onslaught of the day before, fled in terror, thinking the French army
+was advancing upon them. Napoleon dated his great confidence in himself
+from this drum. This boy's heroic act was represented in stone on the
+front of the Pantheon of Paris.
+
+Two days before the battle of Jena Napoleon said: "My lads, you must not
+fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy's
+ranks."
+
+Arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled and
+discouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies in
+mathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-book
+caught his attention and interested him. He found it to be a short
+letter from D'Alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, and
+read: "Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolve
+themselves as you advance. Proceed and light will dawn and shine with
+increasing clearness on your path." "That maxim," he said, "was my
+greatest master in mathematics."
+
+Overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, the
+captain of a French brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite of
+all the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, and
+alter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompanied
+by a horrible crash. The boats were lowered, but only to be swept away
+by the waves. As a last resort the captain proposed that some sailors
+should swim ashore with a rope, but not a man would volunteer.
+
+"Captain," said the little twelve-year-old cabin boy, Jacques, timidly,
+"You don't wish to expose the lives of good sailors like these; it does
+not matter what becomes of a little cabin boy. Give me a ball of strong
+string, which will unroll as I go on; fasten one end around my body, and
+I promise you that within an hour the rope shall be well fastened to the
+shore or I will perish in the attempt."
+
+Before anyone could stop him he leaped overboard. His head was soon seen
+like a black point rising above the waves and then it disappeared in
+the distance and mist, and but for the occasional pull upon the ball of
+cord all would have thought him dead. At length it fell as if slackened
+and the sailors looked at one another in silence, when a quick, violent
+pull, followed by a second and a third, told that Jacques had reached
+the shore. A strong rope was fastened to the cord and pulled to the
+shore, and by its aid many of the sailors were rescued.
+
+In 1833 Miss Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress of Canterbury,
+Conn., opened her school to negro children as well as to whites. The
+whole place was thrown into uproar; town meetings were called to
+denounce her; the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
+isolate the school from the support of the townspeople; stores and
+churches were closed against teacher and pupils; public conveyances were
+denied them; physicians would not attend them; Miss Crandall's own
+friends dared not visit her; the house was assailed with rotten eggs and
+stones and finally set on fire. Yet the cause was righteous and the
+opposition proved vain and fruitless. Public opinion is often radically
+wrong.
+
+Staunch old Admiral Farragut--he of the true heart and the iron
+will--said to another officer of the navy, "Dupont, do you know why you
+didn't get into Charleston with your ironclads?" "Oh, it was because
+the channel was so crooked." "No, Dupont, it was not that." "Well, the
+rebel fire was perfectly horrible." "Yes, but it wasn't that." "What was
+it, then?" "_It was because you didn't believe you could go in._"
+
+"I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me
+_how_ he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always
+went straight forward and _did it_." So answered Sir Edward Hawke, when
+his appointment of Howe for some peculiarly responsible duty was
+criticized on the ground that Howe was the junior admiral in the fleet.
+
+There is a tradition among the Indians that Manitou was traveling in the
+invisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beasts
+glare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before an
+impassable river. As he determined to proceed, the thorns turned out
+phantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow.
+When we march on obstacles disappear. Many distinguished foreign and
+American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine
+was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of the
+United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "Colfax does not
+drink," sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. "You are
+right," said the Vice-President, "I dare not."
+
+A Western party recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate
+officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during
+the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at
+Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied,
+Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he
+could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song.
+He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I must
+drink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers.'" The men were so affected and
+ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying
+courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon.
+
+When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousing
+reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of
+Grant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other
+Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their
+good-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner,
+the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be
+procured for the table at night. When the time came to serve the wine,
+the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietly
+turned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a great
+surprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the occasion. Without a
+single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables
+turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that
+night.
+
+Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the
+liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity,
+nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly
+courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are
+those of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and trying
+to conceal it or make up for it by style." It takes courage for a young
+man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise
+and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your
+comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest
+poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say "No"
+squarely when those around you say "Yes." It takes courage to do your
+duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous
+although neglecting sacred obligations. It takes courage to unmask your
+true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for
+what you really are.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+WILL-POWER.
+
+     In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring
+     a thorough will to do it.
+     --W. HUMBOLDT.
+
+     It is firmness that makes the gods on our side.
+     --VOLTAIRE.
+
+     Stand firm, don't flutter.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     People do not lack strength they lack will.
+     --VICTOR HUGO.
+
+     Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of
+     countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way.
+     --JEREMY COLLIER.
+
+     When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to
+     see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and
+     freedom.
+     --JOHN FOSTER.
+
+
+"Do you know," asked Balzac's father, "that in literature a man must be
+either a king or a beggar?" "Very well," replied his son, "_I will be a
+king._" After ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he won
+success as an author.
+
+"Why do you repair that magistrate's bench with such great care?" asked
+a bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. "Because I wish
+to make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself,"
+replied the other. He did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few years
+later.
+
+"_I will be marshal of France and a great general_," exclaimed a young
+French officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. He
+became a successful general and a marshal of France.
+
+"There is so much power in faith," says Bulwer, "even when faith is
+applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly
+persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems
+impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies."
+
+There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real
+success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a
+Paradise Lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words of
+Webster's Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor.
+Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their
+shoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry,
+irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt
+and detail.
+
+"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten?" asked John Hunter. "He will
+do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of a man never
+fails."
+
+"Circumstances," says Milton, "have rarely favored famous men. They have
+fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles."
+
+"We have a half belief," said Emerson, "that the person is possible who
+can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man
+_who is a match for events_,--one who never found his match,--against
+whom other men being dashed are broken,--one who can give you any odds
+and beat you."
+
+The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually
+striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time
+very far toward his chosen goal.
+
+At nineteen Bayard Taylor walked to Philadelphia, thirty miles, to find
+a publisher for fifteen of his poems. He wanted to see them printed in a
+book; but no publisher would undertake it. He returned to his home
+whistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had not
+abated.
+
+In Europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks on
+account of his poverty. He returned to London with only thirty cents
+left. He tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had in
+his knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. Of that time he wrote: "My
+situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive." But his
+will defied circumstances and he rose above them. For two years he lived
+on two hundred and fifty dollars a year in London, earning every dollar
+of it with his pen.
+
+His untimely death in 1879, at fifty-four, when Minister to Berlin, was
+lamented by the learned and great of all countries.
+
+We are told of a young New York inventor who about twenty years ago
+spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful,
+would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune,
+and, what he valued more, his usefulness. The next morning the daily
+papers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemed
+vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little
+woman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like a
+fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. He went
+into his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands.
+
+At length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect.
+"It _shall_ succeed!" he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was crying
+over the papers when he went back. "They are very cruel," she said.
+"They don't understand." "I'll make them understand," he replied
+cheerfully. "It was a fight for six years," he said afterward. "Poverty,
+sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the _dogged
+determination_ that it should succeed." It did succeed. The invention
+was a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happy
+man.
+
+Napoleon was a terrible example of what the power of will can
+accomplish. He always threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon
+his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before
+him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his
+armies,--"There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the
+Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost
+inaccessible. "Impossible," said he, "is a word only to be found in the
+dictionary of fools." He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes
+employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one,
+not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life
+into them. "I made my generals out of mud," he said.
+
+To think we are able is almost to be so--to determine upon attainment,
+is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has often
+seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. The strength of
+Suwarrow's character lay in his power of willing, and, like most
+resolute persons, he preached it up as a system.
+
+Before Pizarro, D'Almagro and De Luque obtained any associates or arms
+or soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or the
+powers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn mass in one of
+the great churches, dedicating themselves to the conquest of Peru. The
+people expressed their contempt at such a monstrous project, and were
+shocked at such sacrilege. But these decided men continued the service
+and afterward retired for their great preparation with an entire
+insensibility to the expressions of contempt. Their firmness was
+absolutely invincible. The world has deplored the results of this
+expedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness of
+decision of its leaders. Such firmness would keep to its course and
+retain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world.
+
+At the battle of Marengo the French army was supposed to be defeated;
+but, while Bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move,
+Dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, as
+it was only about the middle of the afternoon. Napoleon rallied his men,
+renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the Austrians, though
+the unfortunate Dessaix lost his own life on that field.
+
+What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it
+invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships,
+established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any
+chance in Caesar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with
+Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every
+battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylae,
+Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our
+failures to destiny.
+
+A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to
+the wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolves
+to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that
+reaches the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded
+wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith
+and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but
+less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men
+go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they
+lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have
+resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements
+and successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, that in order
+to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand
+shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump
+in and scramble through as well as we can.
+
+Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may
+not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that
+merely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it he
+originates a good in the universe, which the universe could not
+annihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all created
+energies of intelligence or matter were combined against it?
+
+A man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but the
+superior of circumstances. He is free; nay, more, he is a king; and
+though this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles,
+once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has a
+royalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him.
+
+What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who
+never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will
+fight on the stumps? Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He
+thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined
+endeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall place
+bounds to his achievements! Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries in
+science, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. Deprive
+Euler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems,
+thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. Lock up
+the poor Bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegory
+in the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of
+his cell. Burn the body of Wycliffe and throw the ashes into the Severn;
+but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeated
+with his principles, to all lands. _The world always listens to a man
+with a will in him._ You might as well snub the sun as such men as
+Bismarck and Grant.
+
+Hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage when
+despondency would give up the battle of life. He is the best doctor
+who can implant _hope_ and courage in the human soul. So he is the
+greatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements.
+
+     "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
+     Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
+     Gives us free scope; and only backward pulls
+     Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."
+
+     "How much I could do if I only tried."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT.
+
+     He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that
+     ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
+     --BIBLE.
+
+     The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer
+     himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most
+     shameful and vile.
+     --PLATO.
+
+     The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than
+     the best which teaches everything else and not that.
+     --JOHN STERLING.
+
+     Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
+     --SENECA.
+
+     The energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge,
+     must originate in self and be self-directed.
+     --THOMAS J. MORGAN.
+
+     The foes with which they waged their strife
+       Were passion, self and sin;
+     The victories that laureled life,
+       Were fought and won within.
+     --EDWARD H. DEWART.
+
+
+"I'll sign it after awhile," a drunkard would reply, when repeatedly
+urged by his wife to sign the pledge; "but I don't like to break off at
+once, the best way is to get used to a thing." "Very well, old man,"
+said his wife, "see if you don't fall into a hole one of these days,
+with no one to help you out."
+
+Not long after, when intoxicated, he did fall into a shallow well, but
+his shouts for help were fortunately heard by his wife. "Didn't I tell
+you so?" she asked. "It's lucky I was in hearing or you might have
+drowned." He took hold of the bucket and she tugged at the windlass; but
+when he was near the top her grasp slipped and down he went into the
+water again. This was repeated until he screamed: "Look here, you're
+doing that on purpose, I know you are." "Well, now, I am," admitted the
+wife. "Don't you remember telling me it's best to get used to a thing by
+degrees? I'm afraid if I bring you up sudden, you would not find it
+wholesome." Finding that his case was becoming desperate, he promised to
+sign the pledge at once. His wife raised him out immediately, but warned
+him that if ever he became intoxicated and fell into the well again, she
+would leave him there.
+
+A man captured a young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. It grew
+up like a kitten, fond and gentle. There was no evidence of its savage,
+bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. But one day while
+the master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his hand
+started the blood from a scratch. The moment the beast tasted blood, his
+ferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon his master to tear
+him to pieces. Sometimes the appetite for drink, which was thought to
+be buried years ago, is roused by the taste or the smell of "the devil
+in solution," and the wretched victim finds himself a helpless slave to
+the passion which he thought dead.
+
+When a young man, Hugh Miller once drank the two glasses of whiskey
+which fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons with
+whom he worked. On reaching home he tried to read Bacon's Essays, his
+favorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehend
+the meaning. "The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt,
+one of degradation," said he. "I had sunk, by my own act, for the time,
+to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege
+to be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable one
+for forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never
+again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking
+usage; and with God's help I was enabled to hold by the determination."
+
+In a certain manufacturing town an employer one Saturday paid to his
+workmen $700 in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. On Monday
+$450 of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by the
+saloon-keepers. When the fact was made known, the workmen were so
+startled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. The
+times would not be so "hard" for the workmen if the saloons did not
+take in so much of their wages. If they would organize a strike against
+the saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase of
+wages, and to include an increase of savings.
+
+How often we might read the following sign over the threshold of a
+youthful life: "For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "golden
+chances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little
+sensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife,
+lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent
+possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a
+thousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, a
+brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a
+skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all
+exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a
+shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty
+degeneration of the heart, for Bright's disease, for a drunkard's
+liver."
+
+With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed
+the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a
+mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful
+battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the
+sunlight; but he had conquered the demon which had almost killed him.
+Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off
+using tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the end of
+it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew camomile,
+gentian, tooth-picks, but it was of no use. He bought another plug of
+tobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully, but he
+looked at it and said, "You are a _weed_, and I am a _man_. I'll master
+you if I die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily.
+
+There was an abbot that desired a piece of ground that lay conveniently
+for him. The owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he was
+contented to let it. The abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm it
+for one crop. He had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns--a crop that
+lasted three hundred years. So Satan asks to get possession of our souls
+by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong that
+seems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted the
+seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground.
+
+"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter
+Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever
+issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."
+
+Thomas A. Edison was once asked why he was a total abstainer. He said,
+"I thought I had a better use for my head."
+
+Byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his natural
+propensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and control
+his animal appetites was a very different thing. At all events, it
+seemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest.
+Let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life's voyage cultivate
+this one great virtue, "self-control." There is nothing so important to
+a youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivated
+will; everything depends upon it. If he has it, he will succeed; if he
+does not have it, he will fail.
+
+"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer
+himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful
+and vile."
+
+"Silence," says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the
+contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy."
+
+"He is a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man
+who will not."
+
+Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we
+should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I
+mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what
+virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our
+vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the
+shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control
+your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.
+
+It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation or
+apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A man
+feels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm of
+passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool.
+And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too.
+
+The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and
+furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon
+Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door.
+His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more;
+and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel
+upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder
+must needs produce a shower." Alcibiades, his friend, talking with him
+about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an
+everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have so
+accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the
+noise of carriages in the street."
+
+It is said of Socrates, that whether he was teaching the rules of an
+exact morality, whether he was answering his corrupt judges, or was
+receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, he was still the
+same man; that is to say, calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid--in a word,
+wise to the last.
+
+"It is not enough to have great qualities," says La Rochefoucauld; "we
+should also have the management of them." No man can call himself
+educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will.
+
+"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said
+Eardley Wilmot; "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it
+would be Godlike to forgive it."
+
+"He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive,
+with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet
+restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, the spiritual
+heroes."
+
+To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are
+exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why
+put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is
+remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a
+poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a
+servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you
+feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too
+much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak
+in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the "sweet by and by,"
+when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled.
+
+But self-respect must be accompanied by self-conquest, or our strong
+feelings may prove but runaway horses. He who would command others must
+first learn to obey, and he who would command his own powers must learn
+to be submissive to the still small voice within. Discipline the
+passions, curb pride and impatience, restrain all hasty impulses. Deny
+yourself the gratification of any desire not sanctioned by reason. Shame
+and its consequent degradation follow the loss of our own good opinion
+rather than the esteem of others. Too many yield in the perpetual
+conflict between temptation to gratify the coarser appetites and
+aspiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful. Voices unheard by
+those around us whisper "Don't," but too often self-respect is lost, the
+will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. Such battles must be
+fought by all; be ours the victory born of self-control, aided by that
+Heaven which always helps him who prays while putting his own shoulder
+to the wheel.
+
+No man had a better heart or more thoroughly hated oppression than
+Edmund Burke. He possessed neither experience in affairs, nor a tranquil
+judgment, nor the rule over his own spirit, so that his genius, under
+the impulse of his bewildering passions, wrought much evil to his
+country and to Europe, even while he rendered noble service to the cause
+of commercial freedom, to Ireland, and to America.
+
+Burns could not resist the temptation to utter his clever sarcasms at
+another's expense, and one of his biographers has said that he made a
+hundred enemies for every ten jokes he made. But Burns could no more
+control his appetite than his tongue.
+
+     "Thus thoughtless follies laid him low
+     And stained his name."
+
+Xanthus, the philosopher, told his servant that on the morrow he was
+going to have some friends to dine, and asked him to get the best thing
+he could find in the market. The philosopher and his guests sat down
+the next day at the table. They had nothing but tongue--four or five
+courses of tongue--tongue cooked in this way, and tongue cooked in that
+way, and the philosopher lost his patience, and said to his servant,
+"Didn't I tell you to get the best thing in the market?" He said, "I did
+get the best thing in the market. Isn't the tongue the organ of
+sociality, the organ of eloquence, the organ of kindness, the organ of
+worship?" Then Xanthus said, "To-morrow I want you to get the worst
+thing in the market." And on the morrow the philosopher sat at the
+table, and there was nothing there but tongue--four or five courses of
+tongue--tongue in this shape, and tongue in that shape--and the
+philosopher again lost his patience, and said, "Didn't I tell you to get
+the worst thing in the market?" The servant replied, "I did; for isn't
+the tongue the organ of blasphemy, the organ of defamation, the organ of
+lying?"
+
+"I can reform my people," said Peter the Great, "but I cannot reform
+myself." He forbade all Russians to wear beards, and to quell the
+insurrection which resulted, he had 8000 revolters beheaded. With a
+hatchet he began the ghastly work. He had his own son beheaded.
+
+He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. He is wanting in the
+highest attributes of humanity. The honor and nobleness of the old
+"knight-errantry" consisted in defending the innocence of men and
+protecting the chastity of women against the assaults of others. But the
+truer and nobler knighthood protects the property and the character, the
+innocence and the chastity of others against one's self. We should all
+be posted upon our weak points, for after all there are many emergencies
+in life when these weak points, not our strong ones, will measure our
+manhood and our strength. Many a woman whom a mouse would frighten out
+of her wits would not shrink from assisting in terrible surgical
+operations in our city or war hospitals, and many an officer and
+soldier who would walk up to the cannon's mouth without a tremor in
+battle, would not dare to say his soul was his own in a society parlor.
+Many a great statesman has quailed before the ringer of scorn of a
+fellow-Congressman, and has been completely cowed by a hiss from the
+gallery or a ridiculing paragraph in a newspaper. We all have tender
+spots, weak spots, and a man can never know his strength who does not
+study his weaknesses.
+
+"Violent passions and ardent feelings are seldom found united with
+complete self-command; but when they are they form the strongest
+possible character, for there is all the power of clear thought and cool
+judgment impelled by the resistless energy of feeling. This combination
+Washington possessed; for in his impetuosity there was no foolish
+rashness, and in his passion no injustice. Besides, whatever violence
+there might be within, the explosion seldom came to the surface, and
+when it did it was arrested at once by the stern mandate of his will. He
+never lost the mastery of himself in any emergency, and in 'ruling his
+spirit' showed himself greater than in 'taking a city.'
+
+"It is one of the astonishing things in his life that, amid the perfect
+chaos of feeling into which he was thrown,--amid the distracted counsels
+and still more distracted affairs that surrounded him,--he never once
+lost the perfect equilibrium of his own mind. The contagion of fear and
+doubt and despair could not touch him. He did not seem susceptible to
+the common influences which affect men. His soul poised on its own
+centre, reposed calmly there through all the storms that beat for seven
+years on his noble breast. The ingratitude and folly of those who should
+have been his allies, the insults of his foes, and the frowns of fortune
+never provoked him into a rash act, or deluded him into a single error."
+
+Horace Mann says that there must be a time when the vista of the future,
+with all its possibilities of glory and of shame, first opens to the
+vision of youth. Then is he summoned to make his choice between truth
+and treachery; between honor and dishonor; between purity and
+profligacy; between moral life and moral death. And as he doubts or
+balances between the heavenward or hellward course; as he struggles to
+rise or consents to fall; is there in all the universe of God a
+spectacle of higher exultation or of deeper pathos? Within him are the
+appetites of a brute and the attributes of an angel; and when these meet
+in council to make up the roll of his destiny and seal his fate, shall
+the beast hound out the seraph? Shall the young man, now conscious of
+the largeness of his sphere and of the sovereignty of his choice, wed
+the low ambitions of the world, and seek, with their emptiness, to fill
+his immortal desires? Because he has a few animal wants that must be
+supplied, shall he become all animal,--an epicure and an inebriate,--and
+blasphemously make it the first doctrine of his catechism,--"the Chief
+End of Man?"--to glorify his stomach and enjoy it? Because it is the law
+of self-preservation that he shall provide for himself, and the law of
+religion that he shall provide for his family, when he has one, must he,
+therefore, cut away all the bonds of humanity that bind him to his race,
+forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if he
+can have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of a
+sybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when he
+walks the streets where hunger moans and nakedness shivers?
+
+The strong man is the one who ever keeps himself under strict
+discipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of the
+higher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows them
+to be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by his
+inclinations. He drills and disciplines his desires and keeps the roots
+of his life under ground, and never allows them to interfere with his
+character. He is never the slave of his inclinations, nor the sport of
+impulse. He is the commander of himself and heads his ship due north
+even in the wildest tempests of passion. He is never the slave of his
+strongest desire.
+
+A noted teacher has said that the propensities and habits are as
+teachable as Latin and Greek, while they are infinitely more essential
+to happiness. We are very largely the creatures of our wills. By
+constantly looking on the bright side of things, by viewing everything
+hopefully, by setting the face as a flint every hour of every day toward
+all that is harmonious and beautiful in life, and refusing to listen to
+the discord or to look at the ugly side of life, by constantly directing
+the thought toward what is noble, grand and true, we can soon form
+habits which will develop into a beautiful character, a harmonious and
+well-rounded life. We are creatures of habit, and by knowing the laws of
+its formation we can, in a little while, build up a network of habit
+about us, which will protect us from most of the ugly, selfish and
+degrading things of life. In fact, the only real happiness and unalloyed
+satisfaction we get out of life, is the product of self-control. It is
+the great guardian of all the virtues, without which none of them is
+safe. It is the sentinel, which stands on guard at the door of life, to
+admit friends and exclude enemies.
+
+"I call that mind free," says Channing, "which jealously guards its
+intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does
+not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens
+itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an
+angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more
+of the oracle within; itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to
+supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call that mind
+free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is
+not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of
+accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and
+acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has
+deliberately espoused. I call that mind free which protects itself
+against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human
+opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's,
+which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much
+to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind free
+which through confidence in God and in the power of virtue has cast off
+all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall,
+which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all
+else be lost. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit,
+which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does
+not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise
+rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher
+monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and
+higher exertions. I call that mind free which is jealous of its own
+freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards
+its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+STICK.
+
+     Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue,
+     _par excellence_, of Man against Destiny, of the One against
+     the World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this is
+     the courage of the Gospel; and its importance, in a social
+     view--its importance to races and institutions--cannot be too
+     earnestly inculcated.
+     --BULWER.
+
+     Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of
+     countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way.
+     --JEREMY COLLIER.
+
+     To bear is to conquer fate.
+     --CAMPBELL.
+
+     The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the
+     thought that never wanders,--these are the masters of victory.
+     --BURKE.
+
+     Let us, then, be up and doing,
+     With a heart for any fate;
+     Still achieving, still pursuing,
+     Learn to labor and to wait.
+     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+"How long did it take you to learn to play?" asked a young man of
+Geradini. "Twelve hours a day for twenty years," replied the great
+violinist. Layman Beecher's father, when asked how long it took him to
+write his celebrated sermon on the "Government of God," replied, "About
+forty years."
+
+"If you will study a year I will teach you to sing well," said an
+Italian music teacher to a pupil who wished to know what can be hoped
+for with study; "if two years, you may excel. If you will practice the
+scale constantly for three years, I will make you the best tenor in
+Italy; if for four years, you may have the world at your feet."
+
+Perceiving that Caffarelli had a fine tenor voice and unusual talent, a
+teacher offered to give him a thorough musical education free of charge,
+provided the pupil would promise never to complain of the course of
+instruction given. The first year the master gave nothing but the
+scales, compelling the youth to practice them over and over again. The
+second year it was the same, the third, and the fourth, the conditions
+of the bargain being the only reply to any question in relation to a
+change from such monotonous drill. The fifth year the teacher introduced
+chromatics and thorough bass, and, at its close, when Caffarelli looked
+for something more brilliant and interesting, the master said: "Go, my
+son, I can teach you nothing more. You are the first singer of Italy and
+of the world." The _mastery_ of scales and diatonics gave him power to
+sing anything.
+
+"Keep at the helm," said President Porter; "steer your own ship, and
+remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the
+work. Strike out. Assume your own position. Put potatoes in a cart,
+over a rough road, and the small ones go to the bottom."
+
+"Never depend upon your genius," said John Ruskin, in the words of
+Joshua Reynolds; "if you have talent, industry will improve it; if you
+have none, industry will supply the deficiency."
+
+"The only merit to which I lay claim," said Hugh Miller, "is that of
+patient research--a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass
+me; and this humble faculty of patience when rightly developed may lead
+to more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself."
+
+Titian, the greatest master of color the world has seen, used to say:
+"White, red and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs,
+but he must know how to use them." It took fifty years of constant, hard
+practice to bring him to his full mastery.
+
+"How much grows everywhere if we do but wait!" exclaims Carlyle. "Not a
+difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a
+deformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow
+dear to us."
+
+Persistency is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything
+great. They may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses, or
+eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent in a
+successful man. No matter what opposition he meets or what
+discouragements overtake him, he is always persistent. Drudgery cannot
+disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him. He
+will persist, no matter what comes or what goes; it is a part of his
+nature. He could almost as easily stop breathing.
+
+It is not so much brilliancy of intellect or fertility of resource as
+persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man.
+Persistency always gives confidence. Everybody believes in the man who
+persists. He may meet misfortunes, sorrows and reverses, but everybody
+believes that he will ultimately triumph because they know there is no
+keeping him down. "Does he keep at it, is he persistent?" is the
+question which the world asks of a man.
+
+Even the man with small ability will often succeed if he has the quality
+of persistence, where a genius without persistence would fail.
+
+"How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement
+appertaining to it," said Dickens. "I will only add to what I have
+already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
+patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me,
+and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any
+strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my
+success."
+
+"I am sorry to say that I don't think this is in your line," said
+Woodfall the reporter, after Sheridan had made his first speech in
+Parliament. "You had better have stuck to your former pursuits." With
+head on his hand Sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, "It
+is in me, and it shall come out of me." From the same man came that
+harangue against Warren Hastings which the orator Fox called the best
+speech ever made in the House of Commons.
+
+"The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do
+first," said William Wirt, "will do neither." The man who resolves, but
+suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of
+a friend--who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and
+veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every
+breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or
+useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best
+stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all.
+
+Great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their
+works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have
+been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace
+of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty years
+incessantly on his "Analogy," and even then was so dissatisfied that he
+wanted to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his
+style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures.
+Virgil worked eleven years on the AEneid. The note-books of great men
+like Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of the
+years put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was
+twenty-five years writing his "Esprit de Louis," yet you can read it in
+sixty minutes. Adam Smith spent ten years on his "Wealth of Nations." A
+rival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending three days on
+three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "But your five
+hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my three
+lines will live forever," replied Euripides.
+
+Sir Fowell Buxton thought he could do as well as others, if he devoted
+twice as much time and labor as they did. Ordinary means and
+extraordinary application have done most of the great things in the
+world.
+
+Defoe offered the manuscript of Robinson Crusoe to many booksellers and
+all but one refused it. Addison's first play, Rosamond, was hissed off
+the stage, but the editor of the Spectator and Tattler was made of stern
+stuff and was determined that the world should listen to him, and it
+did.
+
+David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book through the
+press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. The process
+has increased my respect for authors a thousand-fold. I think I would
+rather cross the African continent again than undertake to write another
+book."
+
+"For the statistics of the negro population of South America alone,"
+says Robert Dale Owen, "I examined more than a hundred and fifty
+volumes."
+
+Another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of his
+book as many as fifty times.
+
+It is said of one of Longfellow's poems that it was written in four
+weeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down.
+Bulwer declared that he had rewritten some of his briefer productions as
+many as eight or nine times before their publication. One of Tennyson's
+pieces was rewritten fifty times. John Owen was twenty years on his
+"Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews;" Gibbon on his "Decline and
+Fall," twenty years; and Adam Clark, on his "Commentary," twenty-six
+years. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great."
+
+A great deal of time is consumed in reading before some books are
+prepared. George Eliot read 1000 books before she wrote "Daniel
+Deronda." Allison read 2000 before he completed his history. It is said
+of another that he read 20,000 and wrote only two books.
+
+Virgil spent several years on the Georgics, which could be printed in
+two columns of an ordinary newspaper.
+
+"Generally speaking," said Sydney Smith, "the life of all truly great
+men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonly
+passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent
+humility,--overlooked, mistaken, condemned by weaker men,--thinking
+while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something
+within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the
+dregs of the world. And then, when their time has come, and some little
+accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into
+the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and
+mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind."
+
+Malibran said: "If I neglect my practice a day, I see the difference in
+my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all
+the world knows my failure." Constant, persistent struggle she found to
+be the price of her marvelous power.
+
+"If I am building a mountain," said Confucius, "and stop before the last
+basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed."
+
+"Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can
+stand day's work."
+
+America will never produce any great art until our resources are
+developed and we get more time. As a people we have not yet learned the
+art of patience. We do not know how to wait. Think of an American artist
+spending seven, eight, ten, and even twelve years on a single painting
+as did Titian, Michael Angelo and many of the other old masters. Think
+of an American sculptor spending years and years upon a single
+masterpiece, as did the Greeks and Romans. We have not yet learned the
+secret of working and waiting.
+
+"The single element in all the progressive movements of my pencil," said
+the great David Wilkie, "was persevering industry."
+
+The kind of ability which most men rank highest is that which enables
+its possessor to do what he undertakes, and attain the object of his
+ambition or desire.
+
+"The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an
+ordinary advertisement," says a French writer. "The second insertion he
+sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth
+insertion he looks at the price; the fifth insertion he speaks of it to
+his wife; the sixth insertion he is ready to purchase, and the seventh
+insertion he purchases."
+
+The large fees which make us envy the great lawyer or doctor are not
+remuneration for the few minutes' labor of giving advice, but for the
+mental stores gathered during the precious spare moments of many a year
+while others were sleeping or enjoying holidays. A client will
+frequently object to paying fifty dollars for an opinion written in five
+minutes, but such an opinion could be written only by one who has read a
+hundred law books. If the lawyer had not previously read those books,
+but should keep a client waiting until he could read them with care,
+there would be fewer complaints that fees of this kind are not earned.
+
+We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains,
+erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the
+Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway
+through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of
+the new world, and reared in its stead a community of States and
+nations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite
+creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature,
+and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow.
+Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many
+flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted
+cars, and sent them flying from town to town and nation to nation;
+tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the
+lightning's speed. Perseverance has whitened the waters of the world
+with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored
+every land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as
+many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements,
+measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and
+computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities.
+
+"Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other
+art," said Reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that one
+object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed."
+
+"If you work hard two weeks without selling a book," wrote a publisher
+to an agent, "you will make a success of it."
+
+"Know thy work and do it," said Carlyle; "and work at it like a
+Hercules. One monster there is in the world--an idle man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+SAVE.
+
+     If you want to test a young man and ascertain whether nature
+     made him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollars
+     and see what he will do with it. If he is born to conquer and
+     command, he will put it quietly away till he is ready to use it
+     as opportunity offers. If he is born to serve, he will
+     immediately begin to spend it in gratifying his ruling
+     propensity.
+     --PARTON.
+
+     The man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay,
+     Provides a home from which to run away.
+     --YOUNG.
+
+     Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou
+     shalt sell thy necessaries.
+
+     For age and want save while you may:
+     No morning sun lasts a whole day.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never
+     speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need
+     as a provision against the workhouse.
+     --BULWER.
+
+
+"What do you do with all these books?" "Oh, that library is my 'one
+cigar a day,'" was the response. "What do you mean?" "Mean! Just this:
+when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, I'd
+just been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money that
+others would have spent in smoke, and I thought I'd try and do the
+same. You remember, I said I should allow myself one cigar a day."
+"Yes." "Well, I never smoked. I just put by the price of a five-cent
+cigar every day, and as the money accumulated I bought books--the books
+you see there." "Do you mean to say that those books cost no more than
+that? Why there are dollars' worth of them." "Yes, I know there are. I
+had six years more of my apprenticeship to serve when you persuaded me
+to 'be a man.' I put by the money I have told you of, which of course at
+five cents a day amounted to $18.25 a year or $109.50 in six years. I
+keep those books by themselves, as a result of my apprenticeship
+cigar-money; and if you'd done as I did, you would by this time have
+saved many, many more dollars than that, and been in business besides."
+
+If a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six cents
+every working day, investing at 7 per cent. compound interest, he will
+have thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. Twenty
+cents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fifty
+years it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. Even a saving
+of one dollar a week from the date of one's majority would give him one
+thousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life.
+"What maintains one vice would bring up two children."
+
+Who does not feel honored by his relationship to Dr. Franklin, whether
+as a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race?
+Who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality of
+his youth which laid the foundation for so much competence and
+generosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of his
+outlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy over
+the pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of the
+great art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into every
+cottage in Christendom, and made his name immortal? And yet, how few
+there are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn a
+young man who should follow Franklin's example.
+
+Washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even when
+President of the United States. He understood that without economy none
+can be rich, and with it none need be poor.
+
+Napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges and
+errors.
+
+Unfortunately Congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice of
+living beyond one's means.
+
+"We are ruined," says Colton, "not by what we really want, but by what
+we think we do. Therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if
+they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that
+buys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy."
+
+"I hope that there will not be another sale," exclaimed Horace Walpole,
+"for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left." A woman once
+bought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought it
+might come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don't need
+because it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined by
+buying good pennyworths."
+
+Barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife would
+have a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousand
+dollars. When the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to get
+chairs "to match," then sideboards, carpets, and tables, "to correspond"
+with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at last
+it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned
+for the furniture, and a new one was built "to correspond" with the sofa
+and _et ceteras_: "thus," added my friend, "running up an outlay of
+$30,000 caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape of
+servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up a
+fine 'establishment' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a
+habit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity."
+
+Cicero said: "Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue."
+Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "Here's something
+wonderfully cheap; let's buy it." "Have you any use for it?" "No, not at
+present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time."
+
+"Annual income," says Macawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure,
+nineteen six, result--happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual
+expenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result--misery."
+
+"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach,
+are disagreeable," says Horace Greeley; "but debt is infinitely worse
+than them all."
+
+"If I had but fifty cents a week to live on," said Greeley, "I'd buy a
+peck of corn and parch it before I'd owe any man a dollar."
+
+To find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in life
+is to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and that
+which will contribute most to their enrichment.
+
+Economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all; it must be
+done by management.
+
+Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a
+sacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simple
+tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. Much of
+the economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept out
+of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl for my
+dinner on Sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with one
+apartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene
+and docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the
+lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for gods and
+heroes.
+
+Like many other boys P. T. Barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for his
+father, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings in
+knick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thus
+increasing his pennies to dollars.
+
+The eccentric John Randolph once sprang from his seat in the House of
+Representatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "Mr. Speaker, I
+have found it." And then, in the stillness which followed this strange
+outburst, he added, "I have found the Philosopher's stone: it is _Pay as
+you go_."
+
+In France, all classes, the men as well as the women, study the economy
+of cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, the
+people live at one-third the expense of Englishmen or Americans. There
+they know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others would
+throw away. There they cook no more for each day than is required for
+that day. With them the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cook
+is as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. The
+consequence is, as ex-Secretary McCullough thinks, a French village of
+1000 inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one of
+our large American hotels, and he believes that the entire population of
+France could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in the
+United States. Professor Blot, who resided for some years in the United
+States, remarks, pathetically, that here, "where the markets rival the
+best markets of Europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live.
+There are thousands of families in moderately good circumstances who
+have never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cooked
+steak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal."
+
+There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese parings
+and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill, and
+doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness.
+The misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economy
+apply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully
+economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence,
+that they think they can afford to squander in other directions.
+_Punch_, in speaking of this "one idea" class of people, says, "They are
+like a man who bought a penny herring for his family's dinner, and then
+hired a coach and four to take it home." I never knew a man to succeed
+by practicing this kind of economy. True economy consists in always
+making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little
+longer, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live on
+plainer food if need be. So that under all circumstances, unless some
+unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the
+income. A penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go on
+accumulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained.
+
+"I wish I could write all across the sky in letters of gold," says Rev.
+William Marsh, "the one word, savings bank."
+
+Boston savings banks have $130,000,000 on deposit, mostly saved in
+driblets. Josiah Quincy used to say that the servant girls built most of
+the palaces on Beacon street.
+
+"Nature uses a grinding economy," says Emerson, "working up all that is
+wasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; not a superfluous grain of sand
+for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. She flung
+us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nail
+but instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to her
+general stock. Last summer's flowers and foliage decayed in autumn only
+to enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. Nature will
+not even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. The
+moment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces,
+that the parts may be used again for other creations."
+
+"So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them," says Bulwer.
+"With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man's help; I may at least
+have 'my crust of bread and liberty.' But with L5000 a year I may dread
+a ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whose
+wages I cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first
+long-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that
+lies nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales and
+whetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no
+man is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage, that with L5000 a
+year I purchase the worst evils of poverty--terror and shame; I may so
+well manage my money, that with L100 a year I purchase the best
+blessings of wealth: safety and respect."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+LIVE UPWARD.
+
+     "Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,
+     And this thy last deed ere the judgment day."
+
+     If you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest.
+     --PUBLIUS SYRUS.
+
+
+                              What is a man,
+     If his chief good, and market of his time,
+     Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more.
+     Sure He, that made us with such large discourse,
+     Looking before, and after, gave us not
+     That capability and godlike Reason
+     To rust in us unused.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+     Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. It
+     is heaven's own incentive to make purpose great and achievement
+     greater.
+     --ANONYMOUS.
+
+     "Not failure, but low aim, is crime."
+
+     "Endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever it
+     may be; neither let anyone go before thee in well
+     doing."
+
+     O may I join the choir invisible
+     Of those immortal dead who live again
+     In minds made better by their presence; live
+     In pulses stirred to generosity,
+     In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
+     For miserable aims that end with self,
+     In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
+     And with their mild persistence urge man's search
+     To vaster issues.
+     --GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+
+"Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires," said
+Napoleon to Montholon at St. Helena; "but upon what did we rest the
+creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his
+empire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for Him. I
+die before my time and my body will be given back to worms. Such is the
+fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss
+between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is
+proclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the whole
+earth. Call you this dying? Is it not rather living? The death of Christ
+is the death of a God."
+
+"No true man can live a half life," says Phillips Brooks, "when he has
+genuinely learned that it is a half life. The other half, the higher
+half, must haunt him."
+
+"Ideality," says Horace Mann, "is only the _avant courier_ of the mind;
+and where that in a healthy and normal state goes I hold it to be a
+prophecy that realization can follow."
+
+"If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through his
+blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon," writes Bulwer, "what
+stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has loved
+mankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?--who has
+not sought, but relinquished, his own renown?--who has braved the
+present censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled upon
+glory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him something
+more powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his
+hopes?"
+
+"If I live," wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, "all
+blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know
+and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business."
+
+I have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which man
+turns his eye upward, though I am not anatomist enough to be sure of the
+fact.
+
+"Show me a contented slave," says Burke, "and I will show you a degraded
+man."
+
+"They truly are faithful," says one writer, "who devote their entire
+lives to amendment."
+
+General Grant said of the Chinese Wall: "I believe that the labor
+expended on this wall could have built every railroad in the United
+States, every canal and highway, and most, if not all, our cities."
+
+"The real benefactors of mankind," says Emerson, "are the men and women
+who can raise their fellow beings out of the world of corn and money,
+who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in their
+higher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectual
+realm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness by
+dollars and cents; who can make men forget their stomachs and feast on
+being's banquet."
+
+"Men are not so much mistaken in desiring to advance themselves," said
+Beecher, "as in judging what will be an advance, and what the right
+method of obtaining it. An ambition which has conscience in it will
+always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road and
+bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most
+faithful and minute performances of duty. The liberty to go higher than
+we are is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty of our
+present sphere. Thus men are to rise upon their performances and not
+upon their discontent. And this is the secret and golden meaning of the
+command to be _content_ in whatever sphere we are placed. It is not to
+be the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity,
+but the content of industrious fidelity. When men are building the
+foundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below the
+surface, and in disagreeable conditions. But every course of stone which
+they lay raises them higher; and at length, when they reach the surface,
+they have laid such solid work under them that they need not fear now to
+carry up their walls, through towering stories, till they overlook the
+whole neighborhood. A man proves himself fit to go higher who shows that
+he is faithful where he is. A man that will not do well in his present
+place, because he longs to be higher, is fit neither to be where he is
+nor yet above it; he is already too high and should be put lower."
+
+Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much, or dare
+too much. What a man does, that he has. In himself is his might. Don't
+waste life on doubts and fears. Spend yourself on the work before you,
+well assured that the performance of this hour's duties will be the best
+preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.
+
+Tradition says that when Solomon received the gift of an emerald vase
+from the Queen of Sheba he filled it with an elixir which he only knew
+how to prepare, one drop of which would prolong life indefinitely. A
+dying criminal begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but Solomon
+refused to prolong a wicked life. When good men asked for it they were
+refused, or failed to obtain it when promised, as the king would forget
+or prefer not to open the vase to get but a single drop. When at last
+the king became ill, and bade his servants bring the vase, he found that
+the contents had all evaporated. So it is often with our hope, our
+faith, our ambition, our aspiration.
+
+A man cannot aspire if he looks down. God has not created us with
+aspirations and longings for heights to which we cannot climb. Live
+upward. The unattained still beckons us toward the summit of life's
+mountains, into the atmosphere where great souls live and breathe and
+have their being. Even hope is but a promise of the possibility of its
+own fulfillment. Life should be lived in earnest. It is no idle game, no
+farce to amuse and be forgotten. It is a stern reality, fuller of duties
+than the sky of stars. You cannot have too much of that yearning which
+we call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, the
+efforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails of
+attaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-worm
+of disappointed ambition. To all will come a time when the love of glory
+will be seen to be but a splendid delusion, riches empty, rank vain,
+power dependent, and all outward advantages without inward peace a mere
+mockery of wretchedness. The wisest men have taken care to uproot
+selfish ambition from their breasts. Shakespeare considered it so near a
+vice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue.
+
+Who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless,
+lazy man? He becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic. Love brings
+out the poetry in him. It is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet what
+magic it has wrought. Nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he is
+entirely transformed.
+
+Not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a woman
+thirsting for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint.
+He despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes even
+kingdoms to gratify his master passion. Mere ambition has impelled many
+a man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation,
+aspiration, has led him beyond the stars. If the aim be right the life
+in its details cannot be far wrong. Your heart must inspire what your
+hands execute, or the work will be poorly done. The hand cannot reach
+higher than does the heart.
+
+But do not strive to reach impossible goals. It is wholly in your
+power to develop yourself, but not necessarily so to make yourself a
+king. How many Presidents of the United States or Prime Ministers of
+England are chosen within the working lifetime of a man? What if a
+thousand young men resolve to become President or Prime Minister? While
+such prizes are within your reach, remember that your will must be
+tremendous and your qualifications of the highest order, or you cannot
+hope to secure them. Too many are deluded by ambition beyond their power
+of attainment, or tortured by aspirations totally disproportionate to
+their capacity for execution. You may, indeed, confidently hope to
+become eminent in usefulness and power, but only as you build upon a
+broad foundation of self-culture; while, as a rule, specialists in
+ambition as in science are apt to become narrow and one-sided. Darwin
+was very fond of poetry and music when young, but after devoting his
+life to science, he was surprised to find Shakespeare tedious. He said
+that, if he were to live his life again, he would read poetry and hear
+music every day, so as not to lose the power of appreciating such
+things.
+
+God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You
+_must_ take it. The only choice is _how_.
+
+"When I found I was black," said Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I were
+white, and so force men to look below my skin."
+
+In the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society is a
+prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves
+of which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior," which he was evidently
+evolving as he trudged from house to house.
+
+"Disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth,"
+said Plato, "I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can;
+and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men to the utmost of
+my power; and you, too, I invite to this contest, which, I affirm,
+surpasses all contests here."
+
+"Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and
+singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it?" asked Thoreau.
+"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try
+heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no
+advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor?"
+
+"O if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is
+to be a part forever," exclaimed Phillips Brooks, "what patience must
+fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for
+it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills."
+
+Man never reaches heights above his habitual thought. It is not enough
+now and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite. We must
+habitually dwell there. The great man is he who abides easily on heights
+to which others rise occasionally and with difficulty. Don't let the
+maxims of a low prudence daily dinned into your ears lower the tone of
+your high ambition or check your aspirations. Hope lifts us step by step
+up the mysterious ladder, the top of which no eye hath ever seen. Though
+we do not find what hope promised, yet we are stronger for the climbing,
+and we get a broader outlook upon life which repays the effort. Indeed,
+if we do not follow where hope beckons, we gradually slide down the
+ladder in despair. Strive ever to be at the top of your condition. A
+high standard is absolutely necessary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+"SAND."
+
+     I shall show the cinders of my spirits
+     Through the ashes of my chance.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+                            Perseverance is a virtue
+     That wins each god-like act, and plucks success
+     E'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.
+     --WILLIAM HARVARD.
+
+     Never say "Fail" again.
+     --RICHELIEU.
+
+     It is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows the
+     blood; the one pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness
+     of the fellow," as Oxford men say; it is the one march more
+     that wins the campaign; the five minutes' more persistent
+     courage that wins the fight. Though your force be less than
+     another's, you equal and out-master your opponent if you
+     continue it longer and concentrate it more.
+     --SMILES.
+
+     "I know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign
+     mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes of
+     companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no
+     jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at
+     its port."
+
+
+"Well done, Tommy Brooks!" exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprise
+when the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a single
+word. The other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a bad
+failure. But when the rest of the class had tried, the teacher said
+Tommy had done the best of all, and gave him the prize.
+
+"And now tell me," said she, "how you learned the poem so well."
+
+"Please, ma'am, it was the snail on the wall that taught me how to do
+it," said Tommy. At this the other pupils laughed aloud, but the teacher
+said: "You need not laugh, boys, for we may learn much from such things
+as snails. How did the snail teach you, Tommy?"
+
+"I saw it crawl up the wall little by little," replied the boy. "It did
+not stop nor turn back, but went on, and on; and I thought I would do
+the same with the poem. So I learned it little by little, and did not
+give up. By the time the snail reached the top of the wall, I had
+learned the whole poem."
+
+"I may here impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck," said
+Addison. "There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable
+spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of old age the misfortunes of
+their lives. Luck forever runs against them, and for others. One with a
+good profession lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time
+a-fishing. Another with a good trade perpetually burnt up his luck by
+his hot temper, which provoked all his employes to leave him. Another
+with a lucrative business lost his luck by amazing diligence at
+everything but his own business. Another who steadily followed his
+trade, as steadily followed the bottle. Another who was honest and
+constant to his work, erred by his perpetual misjudgment,--he lacked
+discretion. Hundreds lose their luck by indulging sanguine expectations,
+by trusting fraudulent men, and by dishonest gains. A man never has good
+luck who has a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working,
+prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained
+of his bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are
+impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of.
+But when I see a tatterdemalion creeping out of a grocery late in the
+forenoon with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat
+turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know he has had bad luck,--for
+the worst of all luck is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler."
+
+"You have a difficult subject," said Anthony Trollope at Niagara Falls,
+to an artist who had attempted to draw the spray of the waters. "All
+subjects are difficult," was the reply, "to a man who desires to do
+well." "But yours, I fear, is impossible," said Trollope. "You have no
+right to say so till I have finished my picture," protested the artist.
+
+"Tell Louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a
+writer." When her father delivered the rejected manuscript of a story
+sent to James T. Fields, editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, with the
+above message, Miss Alcott said, "Tell him I _will_ succeed as a writer,
+and some day I shall write for the _Atlantic_." Not long after she sent
+an article to the _Atlantic_ and received a check for $50. With the
+money she said she bought "a second hand carpet for the parlor, a bonnet
+for her sister, shoes and stockings for herself." Her father was calling
+upon Longfellow some time after this, when Longfellow took the
+_Atlantic_, and said, "I want to read to you Emerson's fine poem upon
+Thoreau's flute." Mr. Alcott interrupted him with delight and said, "My
+daughter Louisa wrote that."
+
+"Men talk as if victory were something fortunate," says Emerson. "_Work
+is victory._ Wherever work is done victory is obtained. _There is no
+chance and no blanks._ You want but one verdict; if you have your own,
+you are secure of the rest. But if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are
+near."
+
+"Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can
+stand day's work."
+
+Alexander the Great exclaimed to his soldiers, disaffected after a long
+campaign, "Go home and tell them that you left Alexander to conquer the
+world alone."
+
+"We discount only our own bills, and not those of private persons," said
+the cashier of the Bank of England, when a large bill was offered drawn
+by Anselm Rothschild of Frankfort, on Nathan Rothschild of London.
+"Private persons!" exclaimed Nathan, when told of the cashier's remark;
+"I will make these gentlemen see what sort of private persons we are."
+Three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at the
+opening of the office. The teller counted out five sovereigns, looking
+surprised that Baron Rothschild should have troubled himself about such
+a trifle. The baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in the
+balance, as he said "the law gave him the right to do," put them into a
+little canvas bag, and offered a second, then a third, fourth, fiftieth,
+thousandth note. When a bag was full he handed it to a clerk in waiting,
+and proceeded to fill another. In seven hours he had changed L21,000,
+and, with nine employes of his house similarly engaged, had occupied the
+tellers so busily in changing $1,050,000 worth of notes that no one else
+could receive attention. The bankers laughed, but the next morning
+Rothschild appeared with his nine clerks and several drays to carry away
+the gold, remarking, "These gentlemen refuse to pay my bills; I have
+sworn not to keep theirs. They can pay at their leisure, only I notify
+them that I have enough to employ them for two months." The smiles faded
+from the features of the bank officials, as they thought of a draft of
+$55,000,000 in gold which they did not hold. Next morning notice was
+given in the newspapers that the Bank of England would pay Rothschild's
+bills as well as its own.
+
+"Well," said Barnum to a friend in 1841, "I am going to buy the American
+Museum." "Buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the
+showman had not a dollar; "what do you intend buying it with?" "Brass,"
+was the prompt reply, "for silver and gold have I none."
+
+Every one interested in public entertainments in New York knew Barnum,
+and knew the condition of his pocket; but Francis Olmstead, who owned
+the Museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of "a
+good showman, who would do as he agreed," and accepted a proposition to
+give security for the purchaser. Mr. Olmstead was to appoint a
+money-taker at the door, and credit Barnum toward the purchase with all
+above expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to support
+his wife and three children. Mrs. Barnum gladly assented to the
+arrangement, and offered, if need be, to cut down the household expenses
+to a little more than a dollar a day. Some six months later Mr. Olmstead
+happened to enter the ticket office at noon, and found Barnum eating for
+dinner a few slices of bread and some corned beef. "Is this the way you
+eat your dinner?" he asked.
+
+"I have not eaten a warm dinner since I bought the Museum, except on the
+Sabbath; and I intend never to eat another until I get out of debt."
+"Ah! you are safe, and will pay for the Museum before the year is out,"
+said Mr. Olmstead, slapping the young man approvingly on the shoulder.
+He was right, for in less than a year Barnum had paid every cent out of
+the profits of the establishment.
+
+A noted philosopher said: "The favors of fortune are like steep rocks;
+only eagles and creeping things mount to the summit." Lord Campbell, who
+became Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England and amassed a large
+fortune, began life as a drudge in a printing office. A little
+observation shows us that, as a rule, the men who accomplish the most in
+the world are the most useful, and sensible members of society, the men
+who are depended upon most in emergencies, the men of backbone and
+stamina, the bone and sinew of their communities; the men who can always
+be relied upon, who are healthiest and happiest, are, as a rule, of
+ordinary mental calibre and medium capacity. But with persistent and
+untiring industry, these are they, after all, who carry the burdens and
+reap the prizes of life. It is the men and women who keep everlastingly
+at it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if they
+ever accomplish anything great, they must do it by common drudgery and
+persistent industry and with an unwavering aim in one pursuit. Those who
+believe themselves geniuses are apt to scatter their efforts and thus
+fritter away their great energies without accomplishing anything in
+proportion to their high promise. Often the men who promise the most pay
+the least.
+
+Mrs. Frank Leslie often refers to the time she lived in her carpetless
+attic while striving to pay her husband's obligations. She has fought
+her way successfully through nine lawsuits, and has paid the entire
+debt. She manages her ten publications entirely herself, signs all
+checks and money-orders, makes all contracts, looks over all proofs, and
+approves the make-up of everything before it goes to press. She has
+developed great business ability, which no one dreamed she possessed.
+
+A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "Oh, by getting up every
+time I fell down," he replied.
+
+The boy Thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poorhouse, and whose
+education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many times
+before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacity
+and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither his
+discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could repress.
+
+"It is all very well," said Charles J. Fox, "to tell me that a young
+man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on,
+or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man
+who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I will
+back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded
+at the first trial."
+
+It was the last three days of the first voyage of Columbus that told.
+All his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he had
+yielded to the mutiny. It was all in those three days. But what days!
+
+"Often defeated in battle," said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "he
+was always successful in war." He might have said the same of
+Washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphs
+of any kind.
+
+One of the greatest preachers of modern times, Lacordaire, failed again
+and again. Everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was
+determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures he
+was preaching in Notre Dame to immense congregations.
+
+Orange Judd was a remarkable example of success through grit. He earned
+corn by working for farmers, carried it on his back to mill, brought
+back the meal to his room, cooked it himself, milked cows for his pint
+of milk per day, and lived on mush and milk for months together. He
+worked his way through Wesleyan University, and took a three years'
+post-graduate course at Yale.
+
+Oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! This it
+was that enabled Franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-office
+with a book in his hand. It helped Locke to live on bread and water in a
+Dutch garret. It enabled Gideon Lee to go barefoot in the snow, half
+starved and thinly clad. It sustained Lincoln and Garfield on their hard
+journeys from the log cabin to the White House.
+
+The very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable is
+of priceless value. It often cowes enemies and dispels at the start
+opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable.
+
+"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till
+it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer," said Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and time
+that the tide'll turn."
+
+"Never despair," says Burke, "but if you do, work on in despair."
+
+Once when Marshal Ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees
+which were smiting together, he said, "You may well shake; you would
+shake worse yet if you knew where I am going to take you."
+
+"Go it, William!" an old boxer was overheard saying to himself in the
+midst of a fight; "at him again!--never say 'die'!"
+
+A striking incident is related of the early experience of George Law,
+who, in his day, was one of the most conspicuous financiers and
+capitalists of New York City. When he was a young man he went to New
+York, poor and friendless. One day he was walking along the streets,
+hungry, not knowing where his next meal would come from, and passed a
+new building in course of erection. Through some accident one of the hod
+carriers fell from the structure and dropped dead at his feet. Young
+Law, in his desperation, applied for the job to take the dead man's
+place, and the place was given him. He went to work, and this was how
+one of the wealthiest and shrewdest New York business men got his start.
+
+See young Disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without
+opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through
+the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of
+political and social power. Scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from
+the House of Commons, he simply says, "The time will come when you will
+hear me." The time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed the
+sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.
+
+If impossibilities ever exist, popularly speaking, they ought to have
+been found somewhere between the birth and the death of Kitto, that deaf
+pauper and master of Oriental learning. But Kitto did not find them
+there. In the presence of his decision and imperial energy they melted
+away. Kitto begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even if
+he had to subsist like the Hottentots. He told him that he would sell
+his books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raise
+about twelve shillings. He said he could live upon blackberries, nuts
+and field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. Here was real
+grit. What were impossibilities to such a resolute will? Patrick Henry
+voiced that decision which characterized the great men of the Revolution
+when he said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at
+the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not
+what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me
+death!"
+
+Look at Garrison reading this advertisement in a Southern paper: "Five
+thousand dollars will be paid for the head of W. L. Garrison by the
+Governor of Georgia." Behold him again; a broadcloth mob is leading him
+through the streets of Boston by a rope. He is hurried to jail. See him
+return calmly and unflinchingly to his work, beginning at the point at
+which he was interrupted. Note this heading in the _Liberator_, the
+type of which he set himself in an attic on State Street, in Boston: "I
+am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not
+retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." Was Garrison heard? Ask a
+race set free largely by his efforts. Even the gallows erected in front
+of his own door did not daunt him. He held the ear of an unwilling world
+with that burning word "freedom," which was destined never to cease its
+vibrations until it had breathed its sweet secret to the last slave.
+
+At a time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of
+brawny Cape Cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all
+the speakers announced, except Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone, had fled
+from an open-air platform. "You had better run, Stephen," said she;
+"they are coming." "But who will take care of you?" asked Foster. "This
+gentleman will take care of me," she replied, calmly laying her hand
+within the arm of a burly rioter with a club, who had just sprung upon
+the platform. "Wh--what did you say?" stammered the astonished rowdy, as
+he looked at the little woman; "yes, I'll take care of you, and no one
+shall touch a hair of your head." With this he forced a way for her
+through the crowd, and, at her earnest request, placed her upon a stump
+and stood guard with his club while she delivered an address so
+effective that the audience offered no further violence, and even took
+up a collection of twenty dollars to repay Mr. Foster for the damage his
+clothes had received when the riot was at its height.
+
+"Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up," says Cobden; "labor,
+with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in
+bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; labor
+turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the
+foundation of a competence. Luck whines; labor whistles. Luck relies on
+chance; labor, on character."
+
+There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not
+striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are called
+accidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who are
+looking for something. A man incurs about as much risk of being struck
+by lightning as by accidental luck. There is, perhaps, an element of
+luck in the amount of success which crowns the efforts of different men;
+but even here it will usually be found that the sagacity with which the
+efforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecuted
+measure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved.
+Apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to single
+undertakings, while in the long run the rule will hold good. Two
+pearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal energy.
+One brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. But let
+both persevere and at the end of five, ten or twenty years it will be
+found that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill and
+industry.
+
+Lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after three
+or four years if the rebellion was not subdued, replied: "Oh, there is
+no alternative but to keep pegging away."
+
+"It is in me and it shall come out," said Sheridan, when told that he
+would never make an orator, as he had failed in his first speech in
+Parliament. He became known as one of the foremost orators of his day.
+
+It takes great courage to fight a lost cause when there is no hope even
+of victory. To contest every inch of ground with as much persistency and
+enthusiasm as if we were assured of victory; this is true courage.
+
+The world admires the man who never flinches from unexpected
+difficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with his
+fate; who dies, if need be, at his post.
+
+President Chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and worked
+thirty-five years after his funeral had been planned.
+
+Henry Fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatest
+Postmaster-General England ever had.
+
+Prescott also put grit in place of eyesight, and became one of
+America's greatest historians. Francis Parkman put grit in place of
+health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of America in his
+line. Thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears,
+hands, legs, and yet have achieved marvelous success. Indeed, most of
+the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck.
+You cannot keep a man down who has these qualities. He will make
+stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself to
+success.
+
+Grit and pluck are not always exhibited only by poor boys who have no
+chance, for there are many notable examples of pluck, persistence and
+real grit among youth in good circumstances, who never have to fight
+their way to their own loaf. Mr. Mifflin, who has recently become the
+head of the celebrated publishing firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., is a
+notable example of persistency, push and grit. After graduating at
+Harvard and traveling abroad, he was determined, although not obliged to
+work for a living, to get a position at the Riverside Press in
+Cambridge. He called upon the late Mr. Houghton and asked him for a
+situation. Mr. Houghton told him that he had no opening, and that, even
+if he had, he did not believe that a graduate from Harvard who had money
+and who had traveled abroad would ever be willing to begin at the bottom
+and do the necessary drudgery, for boy's pay. Mr. Mifflin protested
+that he was not afraid of hard work, and that he was willing to do
+anything and take any sort of a position, if he could only learn the
+business. But Mr. Houghton would not give him any encouragement. Again
+and again Mr. Mifflin came to the Riverside Press, and pressed his suit,
+but to no purpose. Mr. Mifflin persuaded his father to intercede for
+him, but Mr. Houghton succeeded in convincing him that it would be very
+unwise for his son to attempt it. But young Mifflin was determined not
+to give up. Finally, Mr. Houghton, out of admiration for his persistence
+and pluck, made a place for him, which had been occupied by a boy, for
+$5 a week.
+
+Young Mifflin took hold of the work with such earnestness, and showed so
+much pluck and determination, that Mr. Houghton soon called him into the
+office and raised his pay to $9 a week from the time he began. Although
+the young man lived in Boston, he was always at the Riverside Press in
+Cambridge early in the morning, and would frequently remain after all
+the others had gone. Mr. Houghton happened to go in late one night,
+after everybody had gone, as he supposed, and was surprised to find Mr.
+Mifflin there, taking one of the presses apart. Of course such a young
+man would be advanced. These are the boys who become the heads of
+firms.
+
+It is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with
+the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the
+farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with
+the traveler, that secures what all so much desire--SUCCESS.
+
+Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for the
+place you fill, and that no one else can fill it as well. Put forth your
+whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. Only
+once learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness and
+proportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better of
+yourself; others will think better of you. The world in its very heart
+admires the stern, determined doer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ABOVE RUBIES.
+
+     The best way to settle the quarrel between capital and labor is
+     by allopathic doses of Peter-Cooperism.
+     --TALMAGE.
+
+     In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never
+     surmounted, love is never outgrown.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     "One ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs."
+
+     Virtue alone out-builds the pyramids:
+     Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall.
+     --YOUNG.
+
+     He believed that he was born, not for himself, but for the
+     whole world.
+     --LUCAN.
+
+     Wherever man goes to dwell, his character goes with him.
+     --AFRICAN PROVERB.
+
+     The spirit of a single mind
+     Makes that of multitudes take one direction,
+     As roll the waters to the breathing wind.
+     --BYRON.
+
+
+"No, say what you have to say in her presence, too," said King Cleomenes
+of Sparta, when his visitor Anistagoras asked him to send away his
+little daughter Gorgo, ten years old, knowing how much harder it is to
+persuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side. So Gorgo sat
+at her father's feet, and listened while the stranger offered more and
+more money if Cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboring
+country. She did not understand the matter, but when she saw her father
+look troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, "Papa,
+come away--come, or this strange man will make you do wrong." The king
+went away with the child, and saved himself and his country from
+dishonor. Character is power, even in a child. When grown to womanhood,
+Gorgo was married to the hero Leonidas. One day a messenger brought a
+tablet sent by a friend who was a prisoner in Persia. But the closest
+scrutiny failed to reveal a single word or line on the white waxen
+surface, and the king and all his noblemen concluded that it was sent as
+a jest. "Let me take it," said Queen Gorgo; and, after looking it all
+over, she exclaimed, "There must be some writing underneath the wax!"
+They scraped away the wax and found a warning to Leonidas from the
+Grecian prisoner, saying that Xerxes was coming with his immense host to
+conquer all Greece. Acting on this warning, Leonidas and the other kings
+assembled their armies and checked the mighty host of Xerxes, which is
+said to have shaken the earth as it marched.
+
+"I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men," said
+Mary, Queen of Scotland.
+
+"The man behind the sermon," said William M. Evarts, "is the secret of
+John Hall's power." In fact if there is not a man with a character
+behind it nothing about it is of the slightest consequence.
+
+Thackeray says, "Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's
+faces which is honored wherever presented. You can not help trusting
+such men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a 'promise to
+pay' in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to
+another man's indorsement." _Character is credit._
+
+In the great monetary panic of 1857, a meeting was called of the various
+bank presidents of New York City. When asked what percentage of specie
+had been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent., some even
+as high as seventy-five per cent., but Moses Taylor of the City Bank
+said: "We had in the bank this morning, $400,000; this evening,
+$470,000." While other banks were badly "run," the confidence in the
+City Bank under Mr. Taylor's management was such that people had
+deposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks.
+Character gives confidence.
+
+"There is no such thing as a small country," said Victor Hugo. "The
+greatness of a people is no more affected by the number of its
+inhabitants than the greatness of an individual is measured by his
+height."
+
+"It is the nature of party in England," said John Russell, "to ask the
+assistance of men of genius, but to follow the guidance of men of
+character."
+
+"A handful of good life," says George Herbert, "is worth a bushel of
+learning."
+
+"I have read," Emerson says, "that they who listened to Lord Chatham
+felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he
+said." It has been complained of Carlyle that when he has told all his
+facts about Mirabeau they do not justify his estimate of the latter's
+genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes do
+not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney and
+Sir Walter Raleigh are men of great figure and of few deeds. We cannot
+find the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington in the
+narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is too
+great for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works or
+the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is
+longer than the thunder-clap; but something resided in these men which
+begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part
+of their power was latent. This is that which we call character,--a
+reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. What
+others effect by talent or eloquence, the man of character accomplishes
+by some magnetism. "Half his strength he puts not forth." His victories
+are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing bayonets. He
+conquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. "O Iole! how
+didst thou know that Hercules was a god?" "Because," answered Iole, "I
+was content the moment my eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I
+desired that I might see him offer battle, or at least drive his horses
+in the chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he
+conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever else he did."
+
+"Show me," said Omar the Caliph to Amru the warrior, "the sword with
+which you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels." "Ah,"
+replied Amru, "the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper nor
+heavier than the sword of Farezdak the poet." So one hundred and fifty
+pounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value.
+
+"No man throws away his vote," says Francis Willard, "when he places it
+in the ballot-box with his conviction behind it. The party which elected
+Lincoln in 1860 polled only seven thousand votes in 1840. Revolutions
+never go backward, and the fanaticisms of to-day are the victories of
+to-morrow."
+
+"O sir, we are beaten," exclaimed the general in command of Sheridan's
+army, retreating before the victorious Early. "No, sir," replied the
+indignant Sheridan; "you are beaten, but this army is not beaten."
+Drawing his sword, he waved it above his head, and pointed it at the
+pursuing host, while his clarion voice rose above the horrid din in a
+command to charge once more. The lines paused, turned,--
+
+    "And with the ocean's mighty swing,
+     When heaving to the tempest's wing,
+     They hurled them on the foe;"
+
+and the Confederate army was wildly routed.
+
+When war with France seemed imminent, in 1798, President Adams wrote to
+George Washington, then a private citizen in retirement at Mount Vernon:
+"We must have your name, if you will permit us to use it; there will be
+more efficacy in it than in many an army." Character is power.
+
+When Pope Paul IV. heard of the death of Calvin he exclaimed with a
+sigh, "Ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in--riches? No!
+Honors? No! But nothing could move him from his course. Holy Virgin!
+With two such servants, our Church would soon be mistress of both
+worlds."
+
+Eighteen hundred years ago, when night closed over the city of Pompeii,
+a lady sat in her house nursing her son of ten years of age. The child
+had been ill for some days; his form was wasted, his little limbs were
+shrunk; and we may imagine with what infinite anxiety she watched every
+motion of the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. What did take
+place we know with an exactness very remarkable. That distant mountain
+which reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, Vesuvius, was
+troubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air such
+clouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of Pompeii became
+filled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until they
+reached the level of the windows. There was no chance of escape then by
+the doors; and those who attempted to get away stepped out of their
+first floor windows and rushed over the sulphurous stones--a short
+distance only, for they were quickly overpowered by the poisonous vapors
+and fell dead. After the stones there fell ashes, and after ashes hot
+water fell in showers, which changed the ashes into clay. Those who ran
+out of their houses during the fall of stones were utterly consumed,
+while those who waited until the ashes began to fall perished likewise,
+but their bodies were preserved by the ashes and water which fell upon
+them. The Pompeiian mother we have mentioned opened the window of her
+house when she thought the fall of stones was over, and with the child
+in her arms took a few hurried steps forward, when, overpowered by the
+sulphur, she fell forward, at which moment the shower of ashes began to
+fall, and quickly buried mother and child. The hot water afterward
+changed into a mould; the ashes and the sun baked the fatal clay to such
+a degree of hardness that it has endured to the present day. A short
+time ago the spot where mother and child lay was found, liquid
+plaster-of-Paris was poured into the mould formed by the bodies, and
+then the mould was broken up, leaving the plaster-cast whole. Thus one
+touching incident in the terrible tragedy of eighteen centuries ago has
+been preserved for the admiration and respect of posterity. _The arms
+and legs of the child showed a contraction and emaciation which could
+only result from illness._ Of the mother only the right arm was
+preserved; she fell upon the ashes, and the remaining portion of her
+body was consumed. _But the right hand still clasped the legs of the
+child_; on her arm were two gold bracelets, and on her fingers were two
+gold rings--one set with an emerald, the other with a cut amethyst. This
+touching illustration of _a mother's love_ now rests in the museum of
+the celebrated city.
+
+"I was sitting with Grant once," says General Fisk, "when a
+major-general entered, dressed in the uniform of his rank, who said:
+'Boys, I have a good story to tell you. I believe there are no ladies
+present.' Grant said, 'No, but there are gentlemen present.'"
+
+Mr. George W. Childs, in referring to this trait, said:
+
+"Another great trait of his character was his purity in every way. I
+never heard him express or make an indelicate allusion in any way or
+shape. There is nothing I ever heard that man say that could not be
+repeated in the presence of women."
+
+The writer has heard of several incidents illustrating his answer to
+impure stories. On one occasion, when Grant formed one of a dinner-party
+of American gentlemen in a foreign city, conversation drifted into
+references to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said,
+"Gentlemen, please excuse me; I will retire."
+
+When Attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde
+before the gates of Rome in 452, Pope Leo alone of all the people dared
+go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. A single magistrate followed
+him. The Huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man,
+and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that he
+agreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him.
+
+Wellington said that Napoleon's presence in the French army was
+equivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers, and Richter said of
+the invincible Luther, "His words were half battles."
+
+"I know no great men," says Voltaire, "except those who have rendered
+great services to the human race." Men are measured by what they do;
+not by what they seem or possess.
+
+Francis Horner, of England, was a man of whom Sydney Smith said, that
+"the ten commandments were stamped upon his forehead." The valuable and
+peculiar light in which Horner's history is calculated to inspire every
+right-minded youth is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight,
+possessed of greater influence than any other private man, and admired,
+beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless and the base.
+No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member.
+How was this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant.
+By wealth? Neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluous
+sixpence. By office? He held but one; and that for only a few years, of
+no influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were not
+splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition was
+to be right. By eloquence? He spoke in calm, good taste, without any of
+the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination of
+manner? His was only correct and agreeable. By what was it, then? Merely
+by sense, industry, good principles and a good heart, qualities which no
+well constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force
+of his character that raised him; and this character was not impressed
+on him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by
+himself. There were many in the House of Commons of far greater ability
+and eloquence. But no one surpassed him in the combination of an
+adequate portion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to show what
+moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and
+goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the
+competition and jealousies of public life.
+
+A hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were rich
+or poor, a peer or a peasant? But what difference may it not make
+whether you did what was right or what was wrong?
+
+At a large dinner-party given by Lord Stratford after the Crimean War,
+it was proposed that every one should write on a slip of paper the name
+which appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. When the
+papers were opened everyone of them contained the name of Florence
+Nightingale.
+
+Professor Blackie, of the University of Edinburgh, said to a class of
+young men: "Money is not needful; power is not needful; liberty is not
+needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone
+is that which can truly save us, and if we are not saved in this sense,
+we certainly must be damned." It has been said that "when poverty is
+your inheritance, virtue must be your capital."
+
+"Hence it was," said Franklin, speaking of the influence of his known
+integrity of character, "that I had so much weight with my
+fellow-citizens. I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to
+much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and
+yet I generally carried my point."
+
+When a man's character is gone, all is gone. All peace of mind, all
+complacency in himself is fled forever. He despises himself. He is
+despised by his fellow-men. Within is shame and remorse; without neglect
+and reproach. He is of necessity a miserable and useless man; he is so
+even though he be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously
+every day. It is better to be poor; it is better to be reduced to
+beggary; it is better to be cast into prison, or condemned to perpetual
+slavery, than to be destitute of a good name or endure the pains and the
+evils of a conscious worthlessness of character.
+
+The time is soon coming when, by the common consent of mankind, it will
+be esteemed more honorable to have been John Pounds, putting new and
+beautiful souls into the ragged children of the neighborhood while he
+mended his father's shoes, than to have sat upon the British throne. The
+time now is when, if Queen Victoria, in one of her magnificent
+progresses through her realms, were to meet that more than American
+queen, Miss Dix, in her "circumnavigation of charity" among the insane,
+the former should kneel and kiss the hand of the latter; and the ruler
+over more than a hundred millions of people should pay homage to the
+angel whom God has sent to the maniac.
+
+"At your age," said to a youth an old man who had honorably held many
+positions of trust and responsibility, "both position and wealth appear
+enduring things; but at mine a man sees that nothing lasts but
+character."
+
+Several eminent clergymen were discussing the qualities of self-made
+men. They each admitted that they belonged to that class, except a
+certain bishop, who remained silent, and was intensely absorbed in the
+repast. The host was determined to draw him out, and so, addressing him,
+said: "All at this table are self-made men, unless the bishop is an
+exception." The bishop promptly replied, "I am not made yet," and the
+reply contained a profound truth. So long as life lasts, with its
+discipline of joy or sorrow, its opportunities for good or evil, so long
+our characters are being shaped and fixed.
+
+Milton said: "He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life
+an heroic poem." We are responsible for our thoughts, and unless we
+could command them, mental and moral excellence would be impossible.
+
+Charles Kingsley has well said: "Let any one set his heart to do what is
+right and nothing else, and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped
+with all that goes to make up the heroic expression, with noble
+indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows, perhaps
+even with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns."
+
+Said James Martineau: "God insists on having a concurrence between our
+practice and our thoughts. If we proceed to make a contradiction between
+them, He forthwith begins to abolish it, and if the will will not rise
+to the reason, the reason must be degraded to the will."
+
+"When I say, in conducting your understanding," says Sidney Smith, "love
+knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval
+with life--what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of
+conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the
+blind fortune which has made you so, and make them call it justice; love
+that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and
+make the proudest feel that it is unjust to laugh at the meanness of
+your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never
+quit you--which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the
+boundless regions of conception as an asylum against the cruelty, the
+injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world--that which
+will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in
+an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and
+of fraud?"
+
+The Arabs express this by a parable that incarnates, as is their wont,
+the Word in the recital. King Nimrod, say they, one day summoned his
+three sons into his presence. He ordered to be set before them three
+urns under seal. One of the urns was of gold, another of amber, and the
+third of clay. The king bade the eldest of his sons choose among the
+urns that which appeared to him to contain the treasure of greatest
+price. The eldest chose the vase of gold, on which was written the word
+"Empire." He opened it and found it full of blood. The second chose the
+amber vase whereon was written the word "Glory." He opened it and found
+it contained the ashes of the great men who had made a sensation in the
+world. The third son took the only remaining vase, the one of clay; he
+found it quite empty, but on the bottom the potter had written the word
+"God." "Which of these vases weighs the most?" asked the king of the
+courtiers. The men of ambition replied it was the vase of gold; the
+poets and conquerors, the amber one; the sages that it was the empty
+vase, because a single letter of the name God weighs more than the
+entire globe. We are of the opinion of the sages. We believe the
+greatest things are great but in the proportion of divinity they
+contain.
+
+"Although genius always commands admiration," says Smiles, "character
+most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, the
+latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in
+life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect,
+as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired,
+the latter are followed.
+
+"Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the
+highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about
+it; but the common lot of men is not heroic. And though the abiding
+sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally
+sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day
+existence. The most influential of all the virtues are those which are
+the most in request for daily use. They wear the best and last the
+longest. We can always better understand and appreciate a man's real
+character by the manner in which he conducts himself toward those who
+are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the
+seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public
+exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman.
+Intellectual culture has no necessary relation to purity or excellence
+of character.
+
+"On the contrary, a condition of comparative poverty is compatible with
+character in its highest form. A man may possess only his industry, his
+frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true
+manhood.
+
+"Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions. It is an
+estate in the general good-will and respect of men; and they who invest
+in it--though they may not become rich in this world's goods--will find
+their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won. Without
+principles, a man is like a ship without rudder or compass, left to
+drift hither and thither with every wind that blows."
+
+What a contrast is afforded by the lives of Bacon and More. Bacon sought
+office with as much desire as More avoided it; Bacon used as much
+solicitation to obtain it as More endured to accept it, and each, when
+in it, was equally true to his character. More was simple, as Bacon was
+ostentatious. More was as incorruptible as Bacon was venal. More spent
+his private fortune in office, and Bacon spent the wages of corruption
+there. Both left office poor in worldly goods; but while More was rich
+in honor and good deeds, Bacon was poor in everything; poor in the
+mammon for which he bartered his integrity; poor in the gawd for which
+he sacrificed his peace; poor in the presence of the worthless; covered
+with shame in the midst of the people; trusting his fame to posterity,
+of which posterity is only able to say, that the wisest of men was
+adviser to the silliest of kings, yet that such a king had a sort of
+majesty when morally compared with the official director of his
+conscience. Both More and Bacon served each a great purpose for the
+world. More illustrated the beauty of holiness; Bacon expounded the
+infinitude of science. Bacon became the prophet of intellect; More, the
+martyr of conscience. The one pours over our understandings the light of
+knowledge; but the other inflames our hearts with the love of virtue.
+
+All have read of the proud Egyptian king who ordered a colossal
+staircase built in his new palace, and was chagrined to find that he
+required a ladder to climb from one step to the next. A king's legs are
+as short as those of a beggar. So, too, a prince's ability to enjoy the
+pleasures of life is no greater than that of a pauper.
+
+"All that is valuable in this world is to be had for nothing. Genius,
+beauty, health, piety, love, are not bought and sold. The richest man on
+earth would vainly offer a fortune to be qualified to write a verse like
+Milton, or to compose a melody like Mozart. You may summon all the
+physicians, but they cannot procure for you the sweet, healthful sleep
+which the tired laborer gets without price. Let no man, then, call
+himself a proprietor. He owns but the breath as it traverses his lips
+and the idea as it flits across his mind; and of that breath he may be
+deprived by the sting of a bee, and that idea, perhaps, truly belongs to
+another."
+
+     "We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths:
+     In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
+     We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
+     Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best;
+     And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+MORAL SUNSHINE.
+
+     I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise
+     very well.
+     --SIDNEY SMITH.
+
+     The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.
+     --WHIPPLE.
+
+     This one sits shivering in fortune's smile,
+     Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath;
+     This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while
+     Laughs in the teeth of death.
+     --T. B. ALDRICH.
+
+     There is no real life but cheerful life.
+     --ADDISON.
+
+     Next to the virtue, the fun in this world is what we can least
+     spare.
+     --AGNES STRICKLAND.
+
+     Joy in one's work is the consummate tool.
+     --PHILLIPS BROOKS.
+
+     Joy is the mainspring in the whole
+       Of endless Natures calm rotation.
+     Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll
+       In the great timepiece of Creation.
+     --SCHILLER.
+
+
+"He is as stiff as a poker," said a friend of a man who could never be
+coaxed or tempted to smile. "Stiff as a poker," exclaimed another, "why
+he would set an example to a poker."
+
+Even Christians are not celebrated for entering into the _joy_ of their
+Lord.
+
+We are told that "Pascal would not permit himself to be conscious of
+the relish of his food; he prohibited all seasonings and spices, however
+much he might wish for and need them; and he actually died because he
+forced his diseased stomach to receive at each meal a certain amount of
+aliment, neither more nor less, whatever might be his appetite at the
+time, or his utter want of appetite. He wore a girdle armed with iron
+spikes, which he was accustomed to drive in upon his body (his fleshless
+ribs) as often as he thought himself in need of such admonition. He was
+annoyed and offended if any in his hearing might chance to say that they
+had just seen a beautiful woman. He rebuked a mother who permitted her
+own children to give her their kisses. Toward a loving sister, who
+devoted herself to his comfort, he assumed an artificial harshness of
+manner for the _express purpose_, as he acknowledged, of revolting her
+sisterly affection."
+
+And all this sprung from the simple principle that earthly enjoyment was
+inconsistent with religion.
+
+We should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind,
+as we would against a temptation to crime. A depressed mind prevents the
+free action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. It stops
+the secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the blood
+in the brain, and deranges the entire functions of the body. Scrofula
+and consumption often follow protracted depressions of mind. That "fatal
+murmur" which is heard in the upper lobes of the lungs in the first
+stages of consumption, often follows depressed spirits after some great
+misfortune or sorrow. Victims of suicide are almost always in a
+depressed state from exhausted vitality, loss of nervous energy,
+dyspepsia, worry, anxiety, trouble, or grief.
+
+"Mirth is God's medicine," says a wise writer; "everybody ought to bathe
+in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety--all the rust of life, ought to be
+scoured off by the oil of mirth." It is better than emery. Every man
+ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon
+without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every
+pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with
+springs, in which one can ride over the roughest roads and scarcely feel
+anything but a pleasant rocking motion.
+
+"I have told you," said Southey, "of the Spaniard who always put on
+spectacles when about to eat cherries, in order that the fruit might
+look larger and more tempting. In like manner I make the most of my
+enjoyments; and though I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles, I
+pack them in as small a compass as I can for myself, and never let them
+annoy others." We all know the power of good cheer to magnify
+everything.
+
+Travelers are told by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold and
+desolation of almost perpetual winter, that "Iceland is the best land
+the sun shines upon."
+
+"You are on the shady side of seventy, I expect?" was asked of an old
+man. "No," was the reply, "I am on the sunny side; for I am on the side
+nearest to glory."
+
+A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his
+mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much
+misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in
+every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly
+joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full
+of careering and rejoicing insects; that everywhere the good outbalances
+the bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm.
+
+"Bishop Fenelon is a delicious man," said Lord Peterborough; "I had to
+run away from him to prevent his making me a Christian."
+
+Hume, the historian, never said anything truer than--"To be happy, the
+person must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity
+to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty."
+
+Dr. Johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom of
+looking on the bright side of every event was better than having a
+thousand pounds a year income. But Hume rated the value in dollars and
+cents of cheerfulness still higher. He said he would rather have a
+cheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side of
+things than to be master of an estate with 10,000 pounds a year.
+
+"We have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that of
+being pleasant."
+
+"If a word or two will render a man happy," said a Frenchman, "he must
+be a wretch indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting another
+man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what
+the other gains."
+
+The sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one who
+will be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, one
+who will of all things meet life's experiences with a sweet temper. It
+is impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother or
+sister, as its presiding genius. And it is a rule, with exceptions, that
+good appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. If, with these
+advantages, a girl or woman, boy or man, is still snappish or surly, why
+it must be due to her or his total depravity.
+
+Some things she should not do; she shouldn't dose herself, or study up
+her case, or plunge suddenly into vigorous exercise. Moderation is a
+safe rule to begin with, and, indeed, to keep on with--moderation in
+study, in work, in exercise, in everything except fresh air, good,
+simple food, and sleep. Few people have too much of these. The average
+girl at home can find no more sanitary gymnastics than in doing part of
+the lighter housework. This sort of exercise has object, and interest,
+and use, which raises it above mere drill. Add to this a merry romp with
+younger brothers and sisters, a brisk daily walk, the use for a few
+moments twice a day of dumb bells in a cool, airy room, and it is safe
+to predict a steady advance toward that ideal state of being in which we
+forget our bodies and just enjoy ourselves.
+
+"It is not work that kills men," says Beecher; "it is worry. Work is
+healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is
+rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but
+friction."
+
+Helen Hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by
+everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations
+of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, as
+speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do
+not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, and
+we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets--that is, makes
+more or less complaint of something or other, which probably every one
+in the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which most
+probably nobody can help. Why say anything about it? It is cold, it is
+hot, it is wet, it is dry, somebody has broken an appointment,
+ill-cooked a meal; stupidity or bad faith somewhere has resulted in
+discomfort. There are plenty of things to fret about. It is simply
+astonishing, how much annoyance and discomfort may be found in the
+course of every-day living, even of the simplest, if one only keeps a
+sharp eye out on that side of things. Some people seem to be always
+hunting for deformities, discords and shadows, instead of beauty,
+harmony and light. We are born to trouble, as sparks fly upward. But
+even to the sparks flying upward, in the blackest of smoke, there is a
+blue sky above, and the less time they waste on the road, the sooner
+they will reach it. Fretting is all time wasted on the road.
+
+About two things we should never fret, that which we cannot help, and
+that which we can help. Better find one of your own faults than ten of
+your neighbor's.
+
+It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week
+and next year, that whiten our heads and wrinkle our faces.
+
+"Every man we meet looks as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with
+plenty of it on hand," said a French lady driving in New York.
+
+The pendulum of a certain clock began to calculate how often it would
+have to swing backward and forward in the week and in the month to come;
+then looking further into the future, it made a calculation for a year,
+etc. The pendulum got frightened and stopped. Do one day's work at a
+time. Do not worry about the trouble of to-morrow. Most of the trouble
+in life is borrowed trouble, which never actually comes.
+
+"As all healthy action, physical, intellectual and moral, depends
+primarily on cheerfulness," says E. P. Whipple, "and as every duty,
+whether it be to follow a plow or to die at the stake, should be done in
+a cheerful spirit, the exploration of the sources and conditions of this
+most vigorous, exhilarating and creative of the virtues may be as useful
+as the exposition of any topic of science or system of prudential art."
+
+Christ, the great teacher, did not shut Himself up with monks, away from
+temptation of the great world outside. He taught no long-faced, gloomy
+theology. He taught the gospel of gladness and good cheer. His doctrines
+are touched with the sunlight, and flavored with the flowers of the
+fields. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and happy,
+romping children are in them. True piety is cheerful as the day.
+
+Cranmer cheers his brother martyrs, and Latimer walks with a face
+shining with cheerfulness to the stake, upholds his fellow's spirits,
+and seasons all his sermons with pleasant anecdotes.
+
+"Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches," said Emerson,
+"and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of
+wisdom."
+
+In answer to the question, "How shall we overcome temptation," a noted
+writer said, "Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the
+second, and cheerfulness is the third." A habit of cheerfulness,
+enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a
+fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of
+active life. He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happy
+side of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in the
+flowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a great
+advantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. His
+habitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner
+with grace.
+
+We often forget that the priceless charm which will secure to us all
+these desirable gifts is within our reach. It is the charm of a sunny
+temper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold,
+more to be desired than fine rubies. It is an aroma, whose fragrance
+fills the air with the odors of Paradise.
+
+"It is from these enthusiastic fellows," says an admirer, "that you
+hear--what they fully believe, bless them!--that all countries are
+beautiful, all dinners grand, all pictures superb, all mountains high,
+all women beautiful. When such a one has come back from his country
+trip, after a hard year's work, he has always found the cosiest of
+nooks, the cheapest houses, the best of landladies, the finest views,
+and the best dinners. But with the other the case is indeed altered. He
+has always been robbed; he has positively seen nothing; his landlady was
+a harpy, his bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was so tough that he
+could not get his teeth through it."
+
+"He goes on to talk of the sun in his glory," says Izaak Walton, "the
+fields, the meadows, the streams which they have seen, the birds which
+they have heard; he asks what would the blind and deaf give to see and
+hear what they have seen."
+
+Of Lord Holland's sunshiny face, Rogers said: "He always comes to
+breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen."
+
+But oh, for the glorious spectacles worn by the good-natured man!--oh,
+for those wondrous glasses, finer than the Claude Lorraine glass, which
+throw a sunlit view over everything, and make the heart glad with little
+things, and thankful for small mercies! Such glasses had honest Izaak
+Walton, who, coming in from a fishing expedition on the river Lea, burst
+out into such grateful little talks as this: "Let us, as we walk home
+under the cool shade of this honeysuckle hedge, mention some of the
+thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met. And that
+our present happiness may appear the greater, and we more thankful for
+it, I beg you to consider with me, how many do at this very time lie
+under the torment of the gout or the toothache, and this we have been
+free from; and let me tell you, that every misery I miss is a new
+blessing."
+
+The hypochondriac who nurses his spleen never looks forward cheerfully,
+but lounges in his invalid chair, and croaks like a raven, foreboding
+woe. "Ah," says he, "you will never succeed; these things always fail."
+
+The Thug of India, whose prayer is a homicide, and whose offering is the
+body of a victim, is melancholy.
+
+The Fijiian, waiting to smash the skull of a victim, and to prepare a
+bakola for his gods, is gloomy as fear and death.
+
+The melancholy of the Eastern Jews after their black fast, and the
+ill-temper of monks and nuns after their Fridays and Wednesdays, is very
+observable; it is the recompense which a proud nature takes out of the
+world for its selfish sacrifice. Melancholia is the black bile which the
+Greeks presumed overran and pervaded the bodies of such persons; and
+fasting does undoubtedly produce this.
+
+"I once talked with a Rosicrucian about the Great Secret," said Addison.
+"He talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and converted
+everything that was near it to the highest perfection. 'It gives lustre
+to the sun,' said he, 'and water to the diamond. It irradiates every
+metal, and enriches lead with the property of gold. It brightens smoke
+into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. A single ray
+dissipates pain and care from the person on whom it falls.' Then I found
+his great secret was Content."
+
+     My crown is in my heart, not on my head:
+     Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
+     Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:
+     A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+     Yet, with a heart that's ever kind,
+       A gentle spirit gay,
+     You've spring perennial in your mind,
+       And round you make a May.
+     --THACKERAY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+HOLD UP YOUR HEAD.
+
+     Thoroughly to believe in one's own self, so one's self were
+     thorough, were to do great things.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     If there be a faith that can remove mountains, it is faith in
+     one's own power.
+     --MARIE EBNER-ESCHENBACH.
+
+     Let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest,
+     the greatest quality of true manliness.
+     --KOSSUTH.
+
+     It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. * * * Trust
+     thyself; every breast vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
+     place that divine Providence has found for you, the society of
+     your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have
+     always done so. * * * Nothing is at last sacred but the
+     integrity of our own mind.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+     This above all,--to thine own self be true;
+     And it must follow, as the night the day,
+     Thou canst not then be false to any man.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+"Yes," said a half-drunken man in a cellar to a parish visitor, a young
+girl, "I am a tough and a drunkard, and am just out of jail, and my wife
+is starving; but that doesn't give you the right to come into my house
+without knocking to ask questions."
+
+Another zealous girl declared in a reform club in New York City that she
+always went to visit the poor in her carriage, with the crest on the
+door and liveried servants. "It gives me authority," she said. "They
+listen to my words with more respect."
+
+The Fraeulein Barbara, who founded the home for degraded and drunken
+sailors in London, used other means to gain influence over them. "I
+too," she would say, taking the poor applicant by the hand when he came
+to her door, "I, too, as well as you, am one of those for whom Christ
+died. We are brother and sister, and will help each other."
+
+An English artist, engaged in painting a scene in the London slums,
+applied to the Board of Guardians of the poor in Chelsea for leave to
+sketch into it, as types of want and wretchedness, certain picturesque
+paupers then in the almshouse. The board refused permission on the
+ground that "a man does not cease to have self-respect and rights
+because he is a pauper, and that his misfortunes should not be paraded
+before the world."
+
+The incident helps to throw light on the vexed problem of the
+intercourse of the rich with the poor. Kind but thoughtless people, who
+take up the work of "slumming," intent upon elevating and reforming the
+needy classes, are apt to forget that these unfortunates have
+self-respect and rights and sensitive feelings.
+
+"But I am not derided," said Diogenes, when some one told him he was
+derided. "Only those are ridiculed who feel the ridicule and are
+discomposed by it."
+
+Dr. Franklin used to say that if a man makes a sheep of himself the
+wolves will eat him. Not less true is it that if a man is supposed to be
+a sheep, wolves will very likely try to eat him.
+
+"O God, assist our side," prayed the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, a general
+in the Prussian service, before going into battle. "At least, avoid
+assisting the enemy, and leave the result to me."
+
+"If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is," said Schelling,
+"he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoretical
+respect for himself, and a practical will soon follow." A person under
+the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.
+"Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men," said
+Kossuth; "but let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the
+rest, the greatest quality of true manliness." Froude wrote: "A tree
+must be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. A man
+must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be
+independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any
+superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be
+built."
+
+"I think he is a most extraordinary man," said John J. Ingalls,
+speaking of Grover Cleveland. "While the Senate was in session to induct
+Hendricks into office, I had an opportunity to study Cleveland, as he
+sat there like a sphinx. He occupied a seat immediately in front of the
+vice-president's stand, and from where I sat, I had an unobstructed view
+of him.
+
+"I wanted to fathom, if possible, what manner of a man it was who had
+defeated us and taken the patronage of the government over to the
+democracy. We had a new master, so to speak, and a democrat at that, and
+I looked him over with a good deal of curiosity.
+
+"There sat a man, the president of the United States, beginning his rule
+over the destinies of sixty millions of people, who less than three
+years before was an obscure lawyer, scarcely known outside of Erie
+County, shut up in a dingy office over a livery stable. He had been
+mayor of the city of Buffalo at a time when a crisis in its affairs
+demanded a courageous head and a firm hand and he supplied them. The
+little prestige thus gained made him the democratic nominee for
+governor, and at a time (his luck still following him) when the
+Republican party of the State was rent with dissensions. He was elected,
+and (still more luck) by the unprecedented and unheard of majority of
+nearly 200,000 votes. Two years later his party nominated him for
+president and he was elected.
+
+"There sat this man before me, wholly undisturbed by the pageantry of
+the occasion, calmly waiting to perform his part in the drama, just as
+an actor awaits his cue to appear on a stage. It was his first visit to
+Washington. He had never before seen the Capitol and knew absolutely
+nothing of the machinery of government. All was a mystery to him, but a
+stranger not understanding the circumstances would have imagined that
+the proceedings going on before him were a part of his daily life.
+
+"The man positively did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle
+during the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betray
+the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thought
+of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he
+struck me as a remarkable illustration of the possibilities of American
+citizenship.
+
+"But the most marvelous exhibition of the man's nerve and of the
+absolute confidence he has in himself was yet to come. After the
+proceedings in the Senate chamber Cleveland was conducted to the east
+end of the Capitol to take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural
+address. He wore a close buttoned Prince Albert coat, and between the
+buttons he thrust his right hand, while his left he carried behind him.
+In this position he stood until the applause which greeted him had
+subsided, when he began his address.
+
+"I looked for him to produce a manuscript, but he did not, and as he
+progressed in clear and distinct tones, without hesitation, I was
+amazed. With sixty millions of people, yes, with the entire civilized
+world looking on, this man had the courage to deliver an inaugural
+address making him President of the United States as coolly and as
+unconcernedly as if he were addressing a ward meeting. It was the most
+remarkable spectacle this or any other country has ever beheld."
+
+Believe in yourself; you may succeed when others do not believe in you,
+but never when you do not believe in yourself.
+
+"Ah! John Hunter, still hard at work!" exclaimed a physician on finding
+the old anatomist at the dissecting table. "Yes, doctor, and you'll find
+it difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am gone."
+
+"Heaven takes a hundred years to form a great genius for the
+regeneration of an empire and afterward rests a hundred years," said
+Kaunitz, who had administered the affairs of his country with great
+success for half a century. "This makes me tremble for the Austrian
+monarchy after my death."
+
+"Isn't it beautiful that I can sing so?" asked Jenny Lind, naively, of a
+friend.
+
+"My Lord," said William Pitt in 1757 to the Duke of Devonshire, "I am
+sure that I can save this country and that nobody else can." He did
+save it.
+
+What seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strong
+expression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men have
+usually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of his
+place in history and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his own
+fame. Kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read his
+books or not. "I may well wait a century for a reader since God has
+waited six thousand years for an observer like myself." "Fear not," said
+Julius Caesar to his pilot frightened in a storm, "thou bearest Caesar and
+his good fortunes."
+
+When the Directory at Paris found that Napoleon had become in one month
+the most famous man in Europe they determined to check his career, and
+appointed Kellerman his associate in command. Napoleon promptly, but
+respectfully, tendered his resignation, saying, "One bad general is
+better than two good ones; war, like government, is mainly decided by
+tact." This decision immediately brought the Directory to terms.
+
+Emperor Francis was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descent
+of his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the account
+published, remarking, "I had rather be the descendant of an honest man
+than of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence with
+myself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolph
+of Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates from the battle of
+Montenotte."
+
+When Napoleon was informed that the British Government had decreed that
+he should be recognized only as general, he said, "They cannot prevent
+me from being myself."
+
+An Englishman asked Napoleon at Elba who was the greatest general of the
+age, adding, "I think Wellington." To which the Emperor replied, "He has
+not yet measured himself against me."
+
+"Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market,"
+said Washington Irving; "but it must not cower at home and expect to be
+sought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of
+forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over
+with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that
+valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a
+mere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more useful than a
+sleeping lion."
+
+"Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears."
+
+"You may deceive all the people some of the time," said Lincoln, "some
+of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time." We
+cannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our
+own respect is to deserve it. What would you think of a man who would
+neglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect?
+
+"Self-reliance is a grand element of character," says Michael Reynolds.
+"It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with
+men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's
+memory."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+BOOKS AND SUCCESS.
+
+     Ignorance is the curse of God,
+     Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
+     --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+     Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the
+     other perpetual.
+     --SOCRATES.
+
+     If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it
+     away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best
+     interest.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange
+     for the treasures of India.
+     --GIBBON.
+
+     If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down
+     at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I
+     would spurn them all.
+     --FENELON.
+
+                            Who of us can tell
+     What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
+     The art that fixes into form the thought,--
+     Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
+     Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
+     --BULWER.
+
+     When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes
+     into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the
+     unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that
+     true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
+     --WASHINGTON IRVING.
+
+
+"Do you want to know," asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to you
+in this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a
+boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were my
+delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at
+last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to
+me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I
+seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I took
+to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was
+doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature.
+There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I had
+to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * From the days when we
+used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a
+devouring hunger to read books. It made small matter what they were, so
+they were books. Half a volume of an old encyclopaedia came along--the
+first I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot even
+guess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Society
+with the greatest delight.
+
+"There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it is
+in reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin
+to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are
+of a wholesome nature. And I remember this because it touches this
+beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of
+1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; and
+sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: 'I notice thou's
+fond of reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was Irving's
+'Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'as
+them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old days of
+Crusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into
+my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him,
+thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I
+was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with the
+wind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger to
+read never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the
+fire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one
+place to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The world
+centred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to come
+out of it; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being a
+minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that I
+should be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a passion
+like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming,
+mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world,
+and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. There were two
+or three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave the
+roughs a wide berth. The books did their work, too, about that drink,
+and fought the devil with a finer fire."
+
+"In education," says Herbert Spencer, "the process of self-development
+should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to
+make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They
+should be _told_ as little as possible, and induced to _discover_ as
+much as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction;
+and that to achieve the best results each mind must progress somewhat
+after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success of
+self-made men."
+
+"My books," said Thomas Hood, "kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the
+tavern, and the saloon. The associate of Pope and Addison, the mind
+accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of Shakespeare and
+Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company or slaves."
+
+"When I get a little money," said Erasmus, "I buy books, and if any is
+left, I buy food and clothes."
+
+"Hundreds of books read once," says Robertson, "have passed as
+completely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the discipline
+of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book which
+is worth the trouble fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides,
+enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit."
+
+"This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you," says Trollope, "is
+your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures
+that God has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be more
+ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in
+which there is no alloy."
+
+The Bible was begun in the desert in Arabia ages before Homer sang and
+flourished in Asia Minor. Millions of books have since gone into
+oblivion. Empires have risen and fallen. Revolutions have swept over and
+changed the earth. It has always been subject to criticism and obloquy.
+Mighty men have sought its overthrow. Works of Greek poets who catered
+to men's depraved tastes have, in spite of everything, perished. The
+Bible is a book of religion; and can be tried by no other standard.
+
+"Read Plutarch," said Emerson, "and the world is a proud place peopled
+with men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-gods standing around
+us who will not let us sleep."
+
+"There is no business, no avocation whatever," says Wyttenbach, "which
+will not permit a man, who has an inclination, to give a little time,
+every day, to the studies of his youth."
+
+"All the sport in the park," said Lady Jane Grey, "is but a shadow of
+that pleasure I find in Plato."
+
+"In the lap of Eternity," said Heinsius, "among so many divine souls, I
+take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity
+all the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness."
+
+"Death itself divides not the wise," says Bulwer. "Thou meetest Plato
+when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo. May Homer live with all men
+forever!"
+
+"When a man reads," says President Porter, "he should put himself into
+the most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energies
+of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused
+by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition or
+review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or
+neglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief or full notes,
+in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from
+the drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book."
+
+"Reading is to the mind," says Addison, "what exercise is to the body.
+As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the
+other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished
+and confirmed."
+
+"There is a world of science necessary in choosing books," said Bulwer.
+"I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last
+light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose draught for the
+plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am
+told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was
+new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about."
+
+"When I served when a young man in India," said a distinguished English
+soldier and diplomatist; "when it was the turning point in my life; when
+it was a mere chance whether I should become a mere card-playing,
+hooka-smoking lounger, I was fortunately quartered for two years in the
+neighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me."
+
+"Books," says E. P. Whipple, "are lighthouses erected in the great sea
+of time."
+
+"As a rule," said Benjamin Disraeli, "the most successful man in life is
+the man who has the best information."
+
+"You get into society, in the widest sense," says Geikie, "in a great
+library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not
+dreading repulses. From that great crowd you can choose what companions
+you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride,
+but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility.
+You may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority;
+for books are perfectly well-bred, and hurt no one's feelings by any
+discriminations." Sir William Waller observed, "In my study, I am sure
+to converse with none but wise men, but abroad it is impossible for me
+to avoid the society of fools." "It is the glorious prerogative of the
+empire of knowledge," says Webster, "that what it gains it never loses.
+On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its
+ends become means, all its attainments help to new conquests."
+
+"At this hour, five hundred years since their creation," says De
+Quincey, "the tales of Chaucer, never equaled on this earth for their
+tenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many
+in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the
+modernization of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, one
+thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the pagan tales of
+Ovid, never equaled on this earth for the gayety of their movement and
+the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom."
+
+"There is no Past so long as Books shall live," says Lytton.
+
+"No wonder Cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so he
+might live and die among his books," says Geikie. "No wonder Petrarch
+was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. It
+seems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitz
+should have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at his
+desk. Buckle's last words, 'My poor book!' tell a passion that forgot
+death; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tear stole down
+the manly cheeks of Scott as they wheeled him into his library, when he
+had come back to Abbotsford to die. Southey, white-haired, a living
+shadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer open
+or read, is altogether pathetic."
+
+"No entertainment is so cheap as reading," says Mary Wortley Montagu;
+"nor any pleasure so lasting." Good books elevate the character, purify
+the taste, _take the attractiveness out of low pleasures_, and lift us
+upon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be mean
+directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of a
+man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his
+reading; but it will not be about his reading.
+
+Perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of his
+poverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearer
+forget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, the
+downtrodden his degradation, as books. They are friends to the lonely,
+companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless,
+good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. They bring
+light into darkness, and sunshine into shadow.
+
+"Twenty-five years ago, when I was a boy," said Rev. J. A. James, "a
+school-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for only
+fifteen minutes. At the end of that time it was returned to him, but
+that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have asked God on
+my knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but I believe that I
+shall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage I received
+during those fifteen minutes."
+
+Did Homer and Plato and Socrates and Virgil ever dream that their words
+would echo through the ages, and aid in shaping men's lives in the
+nineteenth century? They were mere infants when on earth in comparison
+with the mighty influence and power they now yield. Every life on the
+American continent has in some degree been influenced by them. Christ,
+when on earth, never exerted one millionth part of the influence He
+wields to-day. While He reigns supreme in few human hearts, He touches
+all more or less, the atheist as well as the saint. On the other hand
+who shall say how many crimes were committed the past year by wicked men
+buried long ago? Their books, their pictures, their terrible examples,
+live in all they reach, and incite to evil deeds. How important, then,
+is the selection of books which are to become a part of your being.
+
+Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may
+be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away
+our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but
+he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds.
+
+"Good books and the wild woods are two things with which man can never
+become too familiar," says George W. Cable. "The friendship of trees is
+a sort of self-love and is very wholesome. All inanimate nature is but a
+mirror, and it is greater far to have the sense of beauty than it is to
+be only its insensible depository.
+
+"The books that inspire imagination, whether in truth or fiction; that
+elevate the thoughts, are the right kind to read. Our emotions are
+simply the vibrations of our soul.
+
+"The moment fiction becomes mendacious it is bad, for it induces us to
+believe a lie. Fiction purely as fiction must be innocent and beautiful,
+and its beauty must be more than skin deep. Every field of art is a
+playground and we are extra pleased when the artist makes that field a
+gymnasium also."
+
+Cotton Mather's "Essay to do Good" read by the boy Franklin influenced
+the latter's whole life. He advised everybody to read with a pen in hand
+and to make notes of all they read.
+
+James T. Fields visited Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail.
+Pomeroy told him he had been a great reader of "blood and thunder"
+stories; that he had read sixty dime novels about scalping and other
+bloody performances; and he thought there was no doubt that these books
+had put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderous
+acts.
+
+Many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life under the
+influence of Marryat's novels. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon," read at the
+age of seven years, sent one boy whom I knew to the army before he was
+fourteen. Many a man has committed crime from the leavening, multiplying
+influence of a bad book read when a boy. The chaplain of Newgate prison
+in London, in one of his annual reports to the Lord Mayor, referring to
+many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, said
+that he discovered that "all these boys, without exception, had been in
+the habit of reading those cheap periodicals" which were published for
+the alleged amusement of youth of both sexes. There is not a police
+court or a prison in this country where similar cases could not be
+found. One can hardly measure the moral ruin that has been caused in
+this generation by the influence of bad books.
+
+In the parlor window of the old mossy vicarage where Coleridge spent his
+dreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of Oriental
+fancy, the "Arabian Nights," and he has told us with what mingled desire
+and apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until the
+morning sunshine had touched and illuminated it, when, seizing it
+hastily, he would carry it off in triumph to some leafy nook in the
+vicarage garden, and plunge delightedly into its maze of marvels and
+enchantments.
+
+Beecher said that Ruskin's works taught him the secret of seeing, and
+that no man could ever again be quite the same man or look at the world
+in the same way after reading him. Samuel Drew said, "Locke's 'Essay on
+the Understanding' awakened me from stupor, and induced me to form a
+resolution to abandon the groveling views I had been accustomed to
+maintain." An English tanner, whose leather gained a great reputation,
+said he should not have made it so good if he had not read Carlyle. The
+lives of Washington and Henry Clay, which Lincoln borrowed from
+neighbors in the wilderness, and devoured by the light of the cabin
+fire, inspired his life. In his early manhood he read Paine's "Age of
+Reason," and Volney's "Ruins," which so influenced his mind that he
+wrote an essay to prove the unreliability of the Bible. These two books
+nearly unbalanced his moral character. But, fortunately, the books which
+fell into his hands in after years corrected this evil influence. The
+trend of many a life for good or ill, for success or failure, has been
+determined by a single book. The books which we read early in life are
+those which influence us most. When Garfield was working for a neighbor
+he read "Sinbad the Sailor" and the "Pirate's Own Book." These books
+revealed a new world to him, and his mother with difficulty kept him
+from going to sea. He was fascinated with the sea life which these books
+pictured to his young imagination. The "Voyages of Captain Cook" led
+William Carey to go on a mission to the heathen. "The Imitation of
+Christ" and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying" determined the character of
+John Wesley. "Shakespeare and the Bible," said John Sharp, "made me
+Archbishop of York." The "Vicar of Wakefield" awakened the poetical
+genius in Goethe.
+
+"I have been the bosom friend of Leander and Romeo," said Lowell. "I
+seem to go behind Shakespeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand.
+Sometimes, in my sorrow, a line from Spenser steals in upon my memory as
+if by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast from
+the distant trump of a knight pricking toward the court of Faerie, and I
+am straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshine
+of a previous and long-agone experience."
+
+"Who gets more enjoyment out of eating," asks Amos R. Wells, "the
+pampered millionaire, whose tongue is the wearied host of myriads of
+sugary, creamy, spicy guests, or the little daughter of the laborer,
+trotting about all the morning with helpful steps, who has come a long
+two miles with her father's dinner to eat it with him from a tin pail?
+And who gets the more pleasure out of reading, the satiated
+fiction-glutton, her brain crammed with disordered fragments of
+countless scenes of adventure, love and tragedy, impatient of the same
+old situations, the familiar characters, the stale plots--she or the
+girl who is fired with a love for history, say, who wants to know all
+about the grand old, queer old Socrates, and then about his friends, and
+then about the times in which he lived, and then about the way in which
+they all lived, then about the Socratic legacy to the ages? Why, will
+that girl ever be done with the feast? Can you not see, looking down on
+her joy with a blessing, the very Lord of the banquet, who has ordered
+all history and ordained that the truth He fashions shall be stranger
+always than the fiction man contrives? Take the word of a man who has
+made full trial of both. Solid reading is as much more interesting and
+attractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more recreative
+than frivolous living."
+
+"I solemnly declare," said Sidney Smith, "that but for the love of
+knowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher
+as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; for
+the fire of our minds is like the fires which the Persians burn in the
+mountains, it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be
+quenched! Upon something it must act and feed--upon the pure spirit of
+knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. Therefore, when
+I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great
+love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life--what do I say
+but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that
+which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which
+has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you
+are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest
+feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that
+which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you--which will open
+to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of
+conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the
+pain that may be your lot in the world--that which will make your
+motives habitually great and honorable, _and light up in an instant a
+thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud_?"
+
+Do I feel like hearing an eloquent sermon? Spurgeon and Beecher,
+Whitefield, Hall, Collyer, Phillips Brooks, Canon Farrar, Dr. Parker,
+Talmage, are all standing on my bookcase, waiting to give me their
+greatest efforts at a moment's notice. Do I feel indisposed, and need a
+little recreation? This afternoon I will take a trip across the
+Atlantic, flying against the wind and over breakers without fear of
+seasickness on the ocean greyhounds. I will inspect the world renowned
+Liverpool docks; take a run up to Hawarden, call on Mr. Gladstone; fly
+over to London, take a run through the British Museum and see the
+wonderful collection from all nations; go through the National Art
+Gallery, through the Houses of Parliament, visit Windsor Castle and
+Buckingham Palace, call upon Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales; take a
+run through the lake region and call upon the great writers, visit
+Oxford and Cambridge; cross the English Channel, stop at Rouen, where
+Joan of Arc was burned to death by the English, take a flying trip to
+Paris, visit the tomb of Napoleon, the Louvre Gallery; take a peep at
+one of the greatest pieces of sculpture in existence, the Venus de Milo
+(which a rich and ignorant person offered to buy if they would give him
+a fresh one), take a glance at some of the greatest paintings in
+existence along the miles of galleries; take a peep into the Grand Opera
+House, the grandest in the world (to make room for which 427 buildings
+were demolished), promenade through the Champs de Elysee, pass under the
+triumphal arch of Napoleon, take a run out to Versailles and inspect the
+famous palace of Louis XIV., upon which he spent perhaps $100,000,000.
+
+Do I desire to hear eloquent speeches? Through my books I can enter the
+Parliament and listen to the thrilling oratory of Disraeli, of
+Gladstone, of Bright, of O'Connor; they will admit me to the floor of
+the Senate, where I can hear the matchless oratory of a Webster, of a
+Clay, of a Calhoun, of a Sumner, of Everett, of Wilson. They will pass
+me into the Roman Forum, where I can hear Cicero, or to the rostrums of
+Greece, where I may listen spell-bound to the magic oratory of a
+Demosthenes.
+
+"No matter how poor I am," says Channing; "no matter though the
+prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the
+sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if
+Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, and
+Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
+the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical
+wisdom,--I shall not pine for the want of intellectual companionship,
+and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called
+the best society in the place where I live."
+
+"With the dead there is no rivalry," says Macaulay. "In the dead there
+is no change. Plato is never sullen; Cervantes is never petulant;
+Demosthenes never comes unseasonably; Dante never stays too long; no
+difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero; no heresy can
+excite the horror of Bossuet."
+
+"Heed not the idle assertion that literary pursuits will disqualify you
+for the active business of life," says Alexander H. Everett. "Reject it
+as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by
+experience."
+
+The habit of reading may become morbid. There is a novel-reading
+disease. There are people who are almost as much tied to their novels as
+an intemperate man is tied to his bottle. The more of these novels they
+read, the weaker their minds become. They remember nothing; they read
+for the stimulus; their reasoning powers become weaker and weaker, their
+memory more treacherous. The mind is ruined for healthy intellectual
+food. They have no taste for history or biography, or anything but
+cheap, trashy, sensational novels.
+
+The passive reception of other men's thoughts is not education. Beware
+of intellectual dram drinking and intellectual dissipation. It is
+emasculating. Beware of the book which does not make you determined to
+go and do something and be something in the world.
+
+The great difference between the American graduate and the graduates
+from the English universities is that the latter have not read many
+books superficially, but a few books well. The American graduate has a
+smattering of many books, but has not become master of any. The same is
+largely true of readers in general; they want to know a little of
+everything. They want to read all the latest publications, good, bad and
+indifferent, if it is only new. As a rule our people want light reading,
+"something to read" that will take up the attention, kill time on the
+railroad or at home. As a rule English people read more substantial
+books, older books, books which have established their right to exist.
+They are not so eager for "recent publications."
+
+Joseph Cook advises youth to always make notes of their reading. Mr.
+Cook uses the margins of his books for his notes, and marks all of his
+own books very freely, so that every volume in his library becomes a
+notebook. He advises all young men and young women to keep commonplace
+books. We cannot too heartily recommend this habit of taking notes. It
+is a great aid to memory, and it helps wonderfully to locate or to find
+for future use what we have read. It helps to assimilate and make our
+own whatever we read. The habit of taking notes of lectures and sermons
+is an excellent one. One of the greatest aids to education is the habit
+of writing out an analysis or a skeleton of a book or article after we
+have read it; also of a sermon or a lecture. This habit has made many a
+strong, vigorous thinker and writer. In this connection we cannot too
+strongly recommend the habit of saving clippings from our readings
+wherever possible of everything which would be likely to assist us in
+the future. These scrap-books, indexed, often become of untold
+advantage, especially if in the line of our work. Much of what we call
+genius in great men comes from these note-books and scrap-books.
+
+How many poor boys and girls who thought they had "no chance" in life
+have been started upon noble careers by the grand books of Smiles, Todd,
+Mathews, Munger, Whipple, Geikie, Thayer, and others.
+
+You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of
+any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get
+from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true that
+the facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from the
+stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the
+axe. Bacon says: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
+and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be
+read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few
+to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a
+full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and,
+therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he
+confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he
+had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories
+make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy
+deep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+RICHES WITHOUT WINGS.
+
+     Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.
+     --EPH. iv. I.
+
+     Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an
+     uncovetous spirit.
+     --SELDEN.
+
+     Less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is to
+     possess it.
+     --REYNOLDS.
+
+     Rich, from the very want of wealth,
+     In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.
+     --GRAY.
+
+     Money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its
+     nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he
+     wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.
+     --FRANKLIN.
+
+     There are treasures laid up in the heart, treasures of charity,
+     piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes
+     with him beyond death, when he leaves this world.
+     --BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES.
+
+     "It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better
+     than rubies, and all things that may be desired are not to be
+     compared to it."
+
+     "Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful,
+     unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless,
+     selfish life."
+
+     I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to
+     feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel
+     that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be
+     bought--neither by comfort, neither by pride,--and although I
+     be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is
+     the poor man beside me.
+     --EMERSON.
+
+
+"I don't want such things," said Epictetus to the rich Roman orator who
+was making light of his contempt for money-wealth; "and besides," said
+the stoic, "you are poorer than I am, after all. You have silver
+vessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. My mind to me a
+kingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation in
+lieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you;
+mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied."
+
+"Lord, how many things are in the world of which Diogenes hath no need!"
+exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at
+a country fair.
+
+"One would think," said Boswell, "that the proprietor of all this
+(Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsfield) must be happy." "Nay, sir,"
+said Johnson, "all this excludes but one evil, poverty."
+
+"What property has he left behind him?" people ask when a man dies; but
+the angel who receives him asks, "What good deeds hast thou sent before
+thee?"
+
+"What is the best thing to possess?" asked an ancient philosopher of his
+pupils. One answered, "Nothing is better than a good eye,"--a figurative
+expression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another said, "A
+good companion is the best thing in the world;" a third chose a good
+neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazar said: "A good heart
+is better than them all." "True," said the master; "thou hast
+comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath
+a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and
+will easily see what is fit to be done by him."
+
+"My kingdom for a horse," said Richard III. of England amid the press of
+Bosworth Field. "My kingdom for a moment," said Queen Elizabeth on her
+death-bed. And millions of others, when they have felt earth, its riches
+and power slipping from their grasp, have shown plainly that deep down
+in their hearts they value such things at naught when really compared
+with the blessed light of life, the stars and flowers, the companionship
+of friends, and far above all else, the opportunity of growth and
+development here and of preparation for future life.
+
+Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark wrote on the window of her prison,
+with her diamond ring: "Oh, keep me innocent; make others great."
+
+"These are my jewels," said Cornelia to the Campanian lady who asked to
+see her gems; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning from
+school. The reply was worthy the daughter of Scipio Africanus and wife
+of Tiberius Gracchus. The most valuable production of any country is its
+crop of men.
+
+"I will take away thy treasures," said a tyrant to a philosopher. "Nay,
+that thou canst not," was the retort; "for, in the first place, I have
+none that thou knowest of. My treasure is in heaven, and my heart is
+there."
+
+Some people are born happy. No matter what their circumstances are they
+are joyous, content and satisfied with everything. They carry a
+perpetual holiday in their eye and see joy and beauty everywhere. When
+we meet them they impress us as just having met with some good luck, or
+that they have some good news to tell you. Like the bees that extract
+honey from every flower, they have a happy alchemy which transmutes even
+gloom into sunshine. In the sick room they are better than the physician
+and more potent than drugs. All doors open to these people. They are
+welcome everywhere.
+
+We make our own worlds and people them, while memory, the scribe,
+faithfully registers the account of each as we pass the milestones
+dotting the way. Are we not, then, responsible for the inhabitants of
+our little worlds? We should fill them with the true, the beautiful and
+the good, since we are endowed with the faculty of creating.
+
+"Genius," says Whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty of
+acquiring poverty." It is the men of talent who make money out of the
+work of the men of genius. Somebody has truly said, that the greatest
+works have brought the least benefit to their authors. They were beyond
+the reach of appreciation before appreciation came.
+
+There is an Eastern legend of a powerful genius, who promised a
+beautiful maiden a gift of rare value if she would pass through a field
+of corn and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither and
+thither, select the largest and ripest ear,--the value of the gift to be
+in proportion to the size and perfection of the ear she should choose.
+She passed through the field, seeing a great many well worth gathering,
+but always hoping to find a larger and more perfect one, she passed them
+all by, when, coming to a part of the field where the stalks grew more
+stunted, she disdained to take one from these, and so came through to
+the other side without having selected any.
+
+A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not the
+highest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not truly
+successful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul into
+dollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart.
+He strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobler
+aspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe
+of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one
+of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest
+souls that ever went out of it.
+
+Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his
+fellow lawyers called him "perversely honest." Nothing could induce him
+to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after
+learning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable time
+to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred
+dollars, he returned the money, saying: "Madam, you have not a peg to
+hang your case on." "But you have earned that money," said the lady.
+"No, no," replied Lincoln, "that would not be right. I can't take pay
+for doing my duty."
+
+Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he
+had no time to make money. Charles Sumner, when a senator, declined to
+lecture at any price, saying that his time belonged to Massachusetts and
+the nation. Spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in America at one
+thousand dollars a night, because he said he could do better: he could
+stay in London and try to save fifty souls. All honor to the comparative
+few in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendencies
+of our age, still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope of
+rewards other than gold or popular favor. These are our truly great men
+and women. They labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zeal
+because they give time and thought to higher things.
+
+King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched might
+be turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy.
+His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, the
+flowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, were
+all changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might be
+taken from him. He had learned that many other things are intrinsically
+far more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth.
+
+The "beggarly Homer, who strolled, God knows when, in the infancy and
+barbarism of the world," was richer far than Croesus and added more
+wealth to the world than the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts and Goulds.
+
+An Arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in the
+desert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bag
+full of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope. "I shall never
+forget," said he, "the relish and delight that I felt on supposing it to
+be dried wheat, nor the bitterness and despair I suffered on discovering
+that the bag contained pearls."
+
+It is an interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author,
+or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has
+more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in
+the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign
+influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely
+intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world
+means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success
+in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society.
+Character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible mark
+determines the only true value of all people and all their work. Dr.
+Hunter said: "No man was ever a great man who wanted to be one." Artists
+cannot help putting themselves and their own characters into their
+works. The vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. The gross, the
+bizarre, the sensitive, the delicate, all come out on the canvas and
+tell the story of his life.
+
+Who would not choose to be a millionaire of deeds with a Lincoln, a
+Grant, a Florence Nightingale, a Childs; a millionaire of ideas with
+Emerson, with Lowell, with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth; a millionaire
+of statesmanship with a Gladstone, a Bright, a Sumner, a Washington?
+
+Some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial
+temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a
+shipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, and
+friends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some
+so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. Some
+are rich in integrity and character.
+
+"Who is the richest of men?" asked Socrates. "He who is content with the
+least, for contentment is nature's riches."
+
+"Do you know, sir," said a devotee of Mammon to John Bright, "that I am
+worth a million sterling?" "Yes," said the irritated but calm-spirited
+respondent, "I do; and I know that it is all you are worth."
+
+A bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his noble wife,
+"My dear, I am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of the
+sheriff." After a few moments of silence the wife looked into his face
+and asked, "Will the sheriff sell you?" "Oh, no." "Will the sheriff sell
+me?" "Oh, no." "Then do not say we have lost everything. All that is
+most valuable remains to us--manhood, womanhood, childhood. We have lost
+but the results of our skill and industry. We can make another fortune
+if our hearts and hands are left us."
+
+"We say a man is 'made'," said Beecher. "What do we mean? That he has
+got the control of his lower instincts, so that they are only fuel to
+his higher feelings, giving force to his nature? That his affections
+are like vines, sending out on all sides blossoms and clustering fruits?
+That his tastes are so cultivated that all beautiful things speak to
+him, and bring him their delights? That his understanding is opened, so
+that he walks through every hall of knowledge, and gathers its
+treasures? That his moral feelings are so developed and quickened that
+he holds sweet commerce with Heaven? O, no--none of these things. He is
+cold and dead in heart, and mind, and soul. Only his passions are alive;
+but--he is worth five hundred thousand dollars!
+
+"And we say a man is 'ruined.' Are his wife and children dead? O, no.
+Have they had a quarrel, and are they separated from him? O, no. Has he
+lost his reputation through crime? No. Is his reason gone? O, no; it is
+as sound as ever. Is he struck through with disease? No. He has lost his
+property, and he is ruined. The _man_ ruined! When shall we learn that
+'a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
+possesseth?'"
+
+"How is it possible," asks an ancient philosopher, "that a man who has
+nothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a
+slave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has
+sent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me who am
+without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave;
+I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no praetorium, but
+only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am I
+not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any
+of you see me failing in the object of my desire? or even falling into
+that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse
+any man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance?"
+
+"You are a plebeian," said a patrician to Cicero. "I am a plebeian,"
+replied the great Roman orator; "the nobility of my family begins with
+me, that of yours will end with you." No man deserves to be crowned with
+honor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drink
+and accumulate money is surely not successful. The world is no better
+for his living in it. He never wiped a tear from a sad face, never
+kindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. There is no flesh in his heart; he
+worships no god but gold.
+
+Why should I scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portion
+of this earth? This is my world now; why should I envy others its mere
+legal possession? It belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. I need not
+envy the so-called owners of estates in Boston and New York. They are
+merely taking care of my property and keeping it in excellent condition
+for me. For a few pennies for railroad fare whenever I wish I can see
+and possess the best of it all. It has cost me no effort, it gives me no
+care; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns,
+the finer sculptures and paintings within, are always ready for me
+whenever I feel a desire to look upon them. I do not wish to carry them
+home with me, for I could not give them half the care they now receive;
+besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and I should be
+worrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. I have much of the
+wealth of the world now. It is all prepared for me without any pains on
+my part. All around me are working hard to get things that will please
+me, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. The little I
+pay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less than
+it would cost to care for the least of all I use. Life and landscape are
+mine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. What
+more do I want? All the ages have been working for me; all mankind are
+my servants. I am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy task
+in this land of opportunity.
+
+There is scarcely an idea more infectious or potent than the love of
+money. It is a yellow fever, decimating its votaries and ruining more
+families in the land, than all the plagues or diseases put together.
+Instances of its malevolent power occur to every reader. Almost every
+square foot of land of our continent during the early buccaneer period
+(some call it the march of civilization), has been ensanguined through
+the madness for treasure. Read the pages of our historian Prescott, and
+you will see that the whole anti-Puritan history of America resolves
+itself into an awful slaughter for gold. Discoveries were only side
+issues.
+
+Speak, history, who are life's victors? Unroll thy long scroll and say,
+have they won who first reached the goal, heedless of a brother's
+rights? And has he lost in life's great race who stopped "to raise a
+fallen child, and place him on his feet again," or to give a fainting
+comrade care; or to guide or assist a feeble woman? Has he lost who
+halts before the throne when duty calls, or sorrow, or distress? Is
+there no one to sing the paean of the conquered who fell in the battle of
+life? of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife? of
+the low and humble, the weary and broken-hearted, who strove and who
+failed, in the eyes of men, but who did their duty as God gave them to
+see it?
+
+"We have yet no man who has leaned _entirely_ on his character, and
+eaten angel's food," said Emerson; "who, trusting to his sentiments,
+found life made of miracles; who, working for _universal aims_, found
+himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew
+not how, and yet it was done by his own hands."
+
+At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the
+common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious
+subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap
+literature. He believed that a paper might be instructive and not be
+dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the "Penny Magazine," which
+acquired a circulation of two hundred thousand the first year. Knight
+projected the "Penny Cyclopedia," the "Library of Entertaining
+Knowledge," "Half-Hours with the Best Authors," and other useful works
+at a low price. His whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating
+the common people by cheap, yet wholesome publications. He died in
+poverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over his
+ashes.
+
+How many rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of
+luxury, that are only glittering caverns of selfishness and discontent!
+"Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred
+therewith."
+
+"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger,"
+says Beecher. "It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or
+poor according to what he _is_, not according to what he _has_."
+
+If our thoughts are great and noble, no mean surroundings can make us
+miserable. It is the mind that makes the body rich.
+
+     Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
+     'Tis only noble to be good.
+     Kind hearts are more than coronets,
+     And simple faith than Norman blood.
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+     Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
+     In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
+     Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
+     --LOWELL.
+
+
+
+
+PUSHING TO THE FRONT
+
+     OR, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES, by ORISON SWETT MARDEN. A book
+     of inspiration and help to the youth of America who long to be
+     somebody and to do something in the world, many of whom, hedged
+     in as it were by iron walls of circumstances feel that they
+     have "no chance in life." ==> Passed through _a dozen editions
+     its first year_. It is used _in Boston and other public
+     schools_, and has been republished and heartily received in
+     foreign countries.
+
+=With 24 fine full-page portraits. Crown 8vo., $1.50.=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A modern wonder. It should be in the hands of every American
+     youth.
+     --_Bishop Newman_.
+
+     It is the most stimulating and suggestive book for young men I
+     ever read.
+     --_Mrs. Mary A. Livermore_.
+
+     Best book of the kind ever written.
+     --_Golden Rule_.
+
+     There is an uplift on every page, and wisdom in every
+     paragraph.
+     --_Epworth Herald_.
+
+     I have read with unusual interest your book "Pushing to the
+     Front." It cannot but be an inspiration to every boy or girl
+     who reads it.
+     --_Wm. McKinley_.
+
+     A most interesting and valuable book to the youth of America.
+     --_Senator Henry Cabot Lodge_.
+
+     An admirable book, a timely contribution of advice and
+     inspiration to youth.
+     --_Chauncey M. Depew_.
+
+     The author has done a most valuable service to the young life
+     of the country.
+     --_Bishop J. H. Vincent_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sold by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by
+
+     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.,
+     NEW YORK and BOSTON.
+
+
+
+
+A New, Handsomely Illustrated Magazine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SUCCESS
+
+EDITED BY
+
+ORISON SWETT MARDEN.
+
+_Author of "Pushing to the Front, or Success Under Difficulties;"
+"Architects of Fate," etc._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The key note of the magazine will be to inspire, encourage and stimulate
+to higher purposes all who are anxious to add to their knowledge and
+culture, and to make the most of themselves and their opportunities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FEATURES.
+
+The following departments and subjects will be given especial attention:
+The Progress of the World, Self-Culture, Civics, "What Career?" Health,
+Science and Invention, Literature, Correspondence, Editorial Talks,
+Stories of Great Lives, Healthful Sports, Poetry, Short Historical
+Stories, Opportunities for Girls, The Young Man in Business, Problems,
+Incidents and Anecdotes, Miscellaneous Reading.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PARTIAL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.
+
+     Charles Dudley Warner.
+     Edna Dean Proctor.
+     George W. Cable.
+     Thos. Wentworth Higginson.
+     Oliver Optic.
+     Hezekiah Butterworth.
+     Bishop John P. Newman.
+     Frank H. Vincent.
+     Dr. Booker T. Washington.
+     Abby Morton Diaz.
+     John Ritchie, Jr.
+     Marie A. Molineux.
+     Rev. Dr. David Gregg.
+     Rev. Dr. J. L. Withrow.
+     Dr. A. H. Campbell.
+     Henry Wood.
+     Mary A. Livermore.
+     Bishop J. H. Vincent.
+     Rev. Edward Everett Hale.
+     John Wanamaker.
+     William M. Thayer.
+     Harriet Prescott Spofford.
+     Justice John M. Harlan.
+     Rev. Dr. R. S. McArthur.
+     Mrs. Sarah White Lee.
+     A. E. Winship.
+     Helen M. Winslow.
+     Frank H. Vizetelly.
+     Rev. Dr. Alexander McKenzie.
+     Dr. Ellen A. Wallace.
+     A.D. Mayo.
+     Cyrus C. Adams.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+=Subscription, $1.00 per year.=
+
+==> =_Send in your name for descriptive prospectus, illustrated premium
+list, and free sample copy._=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SUCCESS PUBLISHING CO.,
+
+BOSTON, MASS.
+
+
+
+
+ARCHITECTS OF FATE
+
+     OR, STEPS TO SUCCESS AND POWER, by ORISON SWETT MARDEN. A book
+     of inspiration to character-building, self-culture, to a full
+     and rich manhood and womanhood, by most invigorating examples
+     of noble achievement. It is characterized by the same
+     remarkable qualities as its companion volume "Pushing to the
+     Front."
+
+=With 32 fine full-page portraits. Crown 8vo., 486 pages, $1.50.=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Architects of Fate," like "Pushing to the Front," is a
+     remarkable book, and of immense value in the training of youth.
+     There is inspiration, encouragement and helpfulness on every
+     page.
+     --_Edward Everett Hale._
+
+     There are enough brilliant sayings and lively anecdotes in this
+     book to supply an after-dinner speaker or conversationalist for
+     a lifetime. It is wise, witty, inspiring.
+     --_Woman's Journal._
+
+     It will be a missionary of the highest type wherever it goes.
+     --_New York Times._
+
+     Artistic, logical, stimulating mentally and morally.
+     --_Rev. Dr. Lorimer._
+
+     It teaches the lofty aim, the high resolve, the fixed purpose,
+     the pure ideal.
+     --_Phila. Public Ledger._
+
+     An ideal book for youth.
+     --_N. Y. Herald._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sold by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by
+
+     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.,
+     NEW YORK and BOSTON.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's List of Corrections
+
+     Location
+              Original
+                       Correction
+
+     CHAPTER VII.
+              Diction-tionary [_at line break_]
+                       Dictionary
+
+     CHAPTER XI.
+              more of less
+                       more or less
+
+     CHAPTER XV.
+              battle of life,
+                       battle of life.
+
+     CHAPTER XVI.
+              philsopher
+                       philosopher
+
+     CHAPTER XIX.
+              impossbile
+                       impossible
+
+     CHAPTER XX.
+              notoble
+                       notable
+
+     CHAPTER XXI.
+              conquerers
+                       conquerors
+
+     SUCCESS [_advertisement_]
+              Dr. Brooker T. Washington.
+                       Dr. Booker T. Washington.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed, by Orison Swett Marden
+
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