“Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.”
Our
poor boys and girls have written many of our greatest books, and have
filled the highest places as teachers and journalists. Ask almost any
great man in our large cities where he was born, and he will tell you
it was on a farm or in a small country village. Nearly all of the
great capitalists of the city came from the country.
Isaac Rich, the founder of Boston University, left Cape Cod for Boston
to make his way with a capital of only four dollars. Like Horace
Greeley, he could find no opening for a boy; but what of that? He made
an opening. He found a board, and made it into an oyster stand on the
street corner. He borrowed a wheelbarrow, and went three miles to an
oyster smack, bought three bushels of oysters, and wheeled them to his
stand. Soon his little savings amounted to $130, and then he bought a
horse and cart.
Self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world.
How many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because
they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good
luck to give them a lift! But success is the child of drudgery and
perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is
yours. Where is the boy to-day who has less chance to rise in the
world than Elihu Burritt, apprenticed to a blacksmith, in whose shop he
had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light?
Yet, he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals,
carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and
studying at night and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in
the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. While the rich
boy and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes
open, young Burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it. At
thirty years of age he was master of every important language in Europe
and was studying those of Asia. What chance had such a boy for
distinction?
Probably not a single youth will read this book who has not a better
opportunity for success. Yet he had a thirst for knowledge and a
desire for self-improvement, which overcame every obstacle in his
pathway.
If the youth of America who are struggling against cruel circumstances
to do something and be somebody in the world could only understand that
ninety per cent.
“The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.”
In other words, we all know that the best men do not
always get the best places: circumstances do have a great deal to do
with our position, our salaries, and our station in life.
Many young men who are nature's noblemen, who are natural leaders, are
working under superintendents, foremen, and managers infinitely their
inferiors, but whom circumstances have placed above them and will keep
there, unless some emergency makes merit indispensable. No, the race
is not always to the swift.
Every one knows that there is not always a way where there is a will,
that labor does not always conquer all things; that there are things
impossible even to him that wills, however strongly; that one cannot
always make anything of himself he chooses; that there are limitations
in our very natures which no amount of will-power or industry can
overcome; that no amount of sun-staring can ever make an eagle out of a
crow.
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.
The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most
possible out of the stuff that has been given to him. This is success,
and there is no other.
While it is true that our circumstances or environments do affect us,
in most things they do not prevent our growth. The corn that is now
ripe, whence comes it, and what is it? Is it not large or small,
stunted wild maize or well-developed ears, according to the conditions
under which it has grown? Yet its environments cannot make wheat of
it. Nor can our circumstances alter our nature. It is part of our
nature, and wholly within our power, greatly to change and to take
advantage of our circumstances, so that, unlike the corn, we can rise
much superior to our natural surroundings simply because we can thus
vary and improve the surroundings. In other words, man can usually
build the very road on which he is to run his race.
It is not a question of what some one else can do or become, which
every youth should ask himself, but what can I do? How can I develop
myself into the grandest possible manhood?
So far, then, from the power of circumstances being a hindrance to men
in trying to build for themselves an imperial highway to fortune, these
circumstances constitute the very quarry out of which they are to get
paving-stones for the road.
“The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who though he has millions is covetous.”
So scrupulous had this Natick cobbler been not to make
his exalted position a means of worldly gain, that when he came to be
inaugurated as Vice-President of the country, he was obliged to borrow
of his fellow-senator, Charles Sumner, one hundred dollars to meet the
necessary expenses of the occasion.
Mozart, the great composer of the "Requiem," left barely enough money
to bury him, but he has made the world richer.
A rich mind and noble spirit will cast over the humblest home a
radiance of beauty which the upholsterer and decorator can never
approach. Who would not prefer to be a millionaire of character, of
contentment, rather than possess nothing but the vulgar coins of a
Croesus? Whoever uplifts civilization, though he die penniless, is
rich, and future generations will erect his monument.
An Asiatic traveler tells us that one day he found the bodies of two
men laid upon the desert sand beside the carcass of a camel. They had
evidently died from thirst, and yet around the waist of each was a
large store of jewels of different kinds, which they had doubtless been
crossing the desert to sell in the markets of Persia.
The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is
poorer. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who
though he have millions is covetous. There are riches of intellect,
and no man with an intellectual taste can be called poor. He is rich
as well as brave who can face compulsory poverty and misfortune with
cheerfulness and courage.
We can so educate the will power that it will focus the thoughts upon
the bright side of things, and upon objects which elevate the soul,
thus forming a habit of happiness and goodness which will make us rich.
The habit of making the best of everything and of always looking on the
bright side is a fortune in itself.
He is rich who values a good name above gold. Among the ancient Greeks
and Romans honor was more sought after than wealth. Rome was imperial
Rome no more when the imperial purple became an article of traffic.
Diogenes was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. His purchaser
released him, giving him charge of his household and of the education
of his children. Diogenes despised wealth and affectation, and lived
in a tub. "Do you want anything?" asked Alexander the Great, greatly
impressed by the abounding cheerfulness of the philosopher under such
circumstances.
“Every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage...true success follows every right step.”
The author teaches that
there are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who
has the grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf; that
the barriers are not yet erected which declare to aspiring talent,
"Thus far and no farther"; that the most forbidding circumstances
cannot repress a longing for knowledge, a yearning for growth; that
poverty, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been
able to bar the progress of men with grit; that poverty has rocked the
cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbarism, and
have led the world up from savagery to the Gladstones, the Lincolns,
and the Grants.
The book shows that it is the man with one unwavering aim who cuts his
way through opposition and forges to the front; that in this electric
age, where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must
hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumbling-blocks and
defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and
victories to the strong and determined. The author teaches that every
germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage, and
that true success follows every right step. He has tried to touch the
higher springs of the youth's aspiration; to lead him to high ideals;
to teach him that there is something nobler in an occupation than
merely living-getting or money-getting; that a man may make millions
and be a failure still; to caution youth not to allow the maxims of a
low prudence, dinned daily into his ears in this money-getting age, to
repress the longings for a higher life; that the hand can never safely
reach higher than does the heart.
The author's aim has been largely through concrete illustrations which
have pith, point, and purpose, to be more suggestive than dogmatic, in
a style more practical than elegant, more helpful than ornate, more
pertinent than novel.
The author wishes to acknowledge valuable assistance from Mr. Arthur W.
Brown, of W. Kingston, R. I.
O. S. M.
43 BOWDOIN ST., BOSTON, MASS.
December 2, 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. WANTED--A MAN
God after a _man_. Wealth is nothing, fame is nothing.
“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”
Wishing without a corresponding effort to realize
degenerates the mind, destroys initiative.
How many people deceive themselves into thinking that if they keep
aspiring, if they keep longing to carry out their ideals, to reach
their ambition, they will, without any other effort, actually realize
their dreams! They do not seem to know that there is such a thing as
aspiring too much, as forming the dreaming habit to one’s injury.
Our visions are the plans of the possible life structure; but they will
end merely in plans if we do not persistently follow them up with a
vigorous effort to make them real; just as the architect’s plans will
end in his drawings if they are not followed up and made real by the
builder.
Three things we must do to make our dreams come true. _Visualize our
desire._ _Concentrate on our vision._ _Work to bring it into the
actual._ The implements necessary for this are inside of us, not
outside. No matter what the accidents of birth or fortune, there is
only one force by which we can fashion our life material--mind.
All men who have achieved great things have been dreamers, and what
they have accomplished has been just in proportion to the vividness,
the energy and persistency with which they visualized their ideals;
held to their dreams and struggled to make them come true.
“The crying evil of the young man who enters the business world to-day
is the lack of application, preparation, thoroughness, with ambition
but without the willingness to struggle to gain his desired end,” says
Theodore N. Vail.
It is one thing to have the ability and the desire to do something
distinctive, something individual, but doing it is a very different
thing. There is a tremendous amount of unproductive ability in the
great failure army to-day. Why didn’t the men who have it make
something of themselves? Many of those men could be prosperous,
successful men of standing in their community, instead of mendicants in
a bread line. They had the opportunity to make good. Why didn’t they?
It is a good thing to ask ourselves every now and then whether we are
making good; whether we are making the most of our opportunities;
whether we are going up or down.
“You have not found your place until all your faculties are roused, and your whole nature consents and approves of the work you are doing.”
Goethe wrote tragedies
at twelve, and Grotius published an able philosophical work before he
was fifteen. Pope "lisped in numbers." Chatterton wrote good poems at
eleven, and Cowley published a volume of poetry in his sixteenth year.
Thomas Lawrence and Benjamin West drew likenesses almost as soon as
they could walk. Liszt played in public at twelve. Canova made models
in clay while a mere child. Bacon exposed the defects of Aristotle's
philosophy when but sixteen. Napoleon was at the head of armies when
throwing snowballs at Brienne.
All these showed their bent while young, and followed it in active
life. But precocity is not common, and, except in rare cases, we must
discover the bias in our natures, and not wait for the proclivity to
make itself manifest. When found, it is worth more to us than a vein
of gold.
"_I_ do not forbid you to preach," said a Bishop to a young clergyman,
"but nature does."
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."
You have not found your place until all your faculties are roused, and
your whole nature consents and approves of the work you are doing; not
until you are so enthusiastic in it that you take it to bed with you.
You may be forced to drudge at uncongenial toil for a time, but
emancipate yourself as soon as possible. Carey, the "Consecrated
Cobbler," before he went as a missionary said: "My business is to
preach the gospel. I cobble shoes to pay expenses."
If your vocation be only a humble one, elevate it with more manhood
than others put into it. Put into it brains and heart and energy and
economy. Broaden it by originality of methods. Extend it by
enterprise and industry. Study it as you would a profession. Learn
everything that is to be known about it. Concentrate your faculties
upon it, for the greatest achievements are reserved for the man of
single aim, in whom no rival powers divide the empire of the soul.
_Better adorn your own than seek another's place_.
Go to the bottom of your business if you would climb to the top.
Nothing is small which concerns your business. Master every detail.
This was the secret of A.
The greatest thing a man can do in this world, is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.
In other words, we all know that the best men do not
always get the best places: circumstances do have a great deal to do
with our position, our salaries, and our station in life.
Many young men who are nature's noblemen, who are natural leaders, are
working under superintendents, foremen, and managers infinitely their
inferiors, but whom circumstances have placed above them and will keep
there, unless some emergency makes merit indispensable. No, the race
is not always to the swift.
Every one knows that there is not always a way where there is a will,
that labor does not always conquer all things; that there are things
impossible even to him that wills, however strongly; that one cannot
always make anything of himself he chooses; that there are limitations
in our very natures which no amount of will-power or industry can
overcome; that no amount of sun-staring can ever make an eagle out of a
crow.
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.
The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most
possible out of the stuff that has been given to him. This is success,
and there is no other.
While it is true that our circumstances or environments do affect us,
in most things they do not prevent our growth. The corn that is now
ripe, whence comes it, and what is it? Is it not large or small,
stunted wild maize or well-developed ears, according to the conditions
under which it has grown? Yet its environments cannot make wheat of
it. Nor can our circumstances alter our nature. It is part of our
nature, and wholly within our power, greatly to change and to take
advantage of our circumstances, so that, unlike the corn, we can rise
much superior to our natural surroundings simply because we can thus
vary and improve the surroundings. In other words, man can usually
build the very road on which he is to run his race.
It is not a question of what some one else can do or become, which
every youth should ask himself, but what can I do? How can I develop
myself into the grandest possible manhood?
So far, then, from the power of circumstances being a hindrance to men
in trying to build for themselves an imperial highway to fortune, these
circumstances constitute the very quarry out of which they are to get
paving-stones for the road.
“The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do”
“There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us”
“No man fails who does his best.”
“No man is beaten until his hope is annihilated, his confidence gone. As long as a man faces life hopefully, confidently, triumphantly, he is not a failure; he is not beaten until he turns his back on life.”
“There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.”
“The golden rule for every business man is this: Put yourself in your customers place.”
“There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King.”
“You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.”
“Resolve that whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it.”
“The quality of your work, in the long run, is the deciding factor on how much your services are valued by the world.”
“Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.”
“No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.”
“Opportunities? They are all around us. There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.”
