Chapter 34
How many are weakened for the journey of life by self-indulgence, by dissipation, by "life-sappers"; how many are crippled by disease, by a weak const.i.tution, by impaired eyesight or hearing?
When the prizes of life shall be finally awarded, the distance we have run, the weights we have carried, the handicaps, will all be taken into account. Not the distance we have run, but the obstacles we have overcome, the disadvantages under which we have made the race, will decide the prizes. The poor wretch who has plodded along against unknown temptations, the poor woman who has buried her sorrows in her silent heart and sewed her weary way through life, those who have suffered abuse in silence, and who have been unrecognized or despised by their fellow-runners, will often receive the greater prize.
"The wise and active conquer difficulties, By daring to attempt them; sloth and folly s.h.i.+ver and sink at sight of toil and hazard, And make the impossibility they fear."
"I can't, it is impossible," said a foiled lieutenant, to Alexander.
"Begone," shouted the conquering Macedonian, "there is nothing impossible to him who will try."
Were I called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out in life with high hopes, I should say unhesitatingly, they lacked will-power. They could not half will.
What is a man without a will? He is like an engine without steam, a mere sport of chance, to be tossed about hither and thither, always at the mercy of those who have wills. I should call the strength of will the test of a young man's possibilities. Can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? It is the iron grip that takes the strong hold on life. What chance is there in this crowding, pus.h.i.+ng, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? "The truest wisdom," said Napoleon, "is a resolute determination." An iron will without principle might produce a Napoleon; but with character it would make a Wellington or a Grant, untarnished by ambition or avarice.
"The undivided will 'T is that compels the elements and wrings A human music from the indifferent air."
CHAPTER XXVI
SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES
Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.--BEECHER.
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.--WAs.h.i.+NGTON IRVING.
"I have here three teams that I want to get over to Staten Island,"
said a boy of twelve one day in 1806 to the innkeeper at South Amboy, N. J. "If you will put us across, I'll leave with you one of my horses in p.a.w.n, and if I don't send you back six dollars within forty-eight hours you may keep the horse."
The innkeeper asked the reason for this novel proposition, and learned that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel stranded near Sandy Hook, and take it to New York in lighters. The boy had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. The work accomplished, he had started with only six dollars to travel a long distance home over the Jersey sands, and reached South Amboy penniless. "I'll do it," said the innkeeper, as he looked into the bright honest eyes of the boy. The horse was soon redeemed.
"My son," said this same boy's mother, on the first of May, 1810, when he asked her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat, having imbibed a strong liking for the sea; "on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be sixteen years old. If, by that time, you will plow, harrow, and plant with corn the eight-acre lot, I will advance you the money." The field was rough and stony, but the work was done in time, and well done. From this small beginning Cornelius Vanderbilt laid the foundation of a colossal fortune.
In 1818 Vanderbilt owned two or three of the finest coasting schooners in New York harbor, and had a capital of nine thousand dollars. Seeing that steam-vessels would soon win supremacy over those carrying sails only, he gave up his fine business to become the captain of a steamboat at one thousand dollars a year. For twelve years he ran between New York City and New Brunswick, N. J. In 1829 he began business as a steamboat owner, in the face of opposition so bitter that he lost his last dollar. But the tide turned, and he prospered so rapidly that he at length owned over a hundred steamboats. He early identified himself with the growing railroad interests of the country, and became the richest man of his day in America.
Barnum began the race of business life barefoot, for at the age of fifteen he was obliged to buy on credit the shoes he wore at his father's funeral. He was a remarkable example of success under difficulties. There was no keeping him down; no opposition daunted him.
"Eloquence must have been born with you," said a friend to J. P.
Curran. "Indeed, my dear sir, it was not," replied the orator; "it was born some three and twenty years and some months after me." Speaking of his first attempt at a debating club, he said: "I stood up, trembling through every fiber; but remembering that in this I was but imitating Tully, I took courage and had actually proceeded almost as far as 'Mr. Chairman,' when, to my astonishment and terror, I perceived that every eye was turned on me. There were only six or seven present, and the room could not have contained as many more; yet was it, to my panic-stricken imagination, as if I were the central object in nature, and a.s.sembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expectation.
I became dismayed and dumb. My friends cried, 'Hear him!' but there was nothing to hear." He was nicknamed "Orator Mum," and well did he deserve the t.i.tle until he ventured to stare in astonishment at a speaker who was "culminating chronology by the most preposterous anachronisms." "I doubt not," said the annoyed speaker, "that 'Orator Mum' possesses wonderful talents for eloquence, but I would recommend him to show it in future by some more popular method than his silence."
Stung by the taunt, Curran rose and gave the man a "piece of his mind,"
speaking fluently in his anger. Encouraged by this success, he took great pains to become a good speaker. He corrected his habit of stuttering by reading favorite pa.s.sages aloud every day
Bunyan wrote his "Pilgrim's Progress" on the untwisted papers which were used to cork the bottles of milk brought for his meals. Gifford wrote his first copy of a mathematical work, when a cobbler's apprentice, on small sc.r.a.ps of leather; and Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on his plow handle.
David Livingstone at ten years of age was put into a cotton factory near Glasgow. Out of his first week's wages he bought a Latin grammar, and studied in the night schools for years. He would sit up and study till midnight unless his mother drove him to bed, notwithstanding he had to be at the factory at six in the morning. He mastered Vergil and Horace in this way, and read extensively, besides studying botany. So eager for knowledge was he, that he would place his book before him on the spinning-jenny, and amid the deafening roar of machinery would pore over its pages.
"All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder," says Johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with ca.n.a.ls. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickax, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings."
Great men never wait for opportunities; they make them. Nor do they wait for facilities or favoring circ.u.mstances; they seize upon whatever is at hand, work out their problem, and master the situation. A young man determined and willing will find a way or make one. A Franklin does not require elaborate apparatus; he can bring electricity from the clouds with a common kite.
Great men have found no royal road to their triumph. It is always the old route, by way of industry and perseverance.
The farmer boy, Elihu B. Washburn, taught school at ten dollars per month, and early learned the lesson that it takes one hundred cents to make a dollar. In after years he fought "steals" in Congress, until he was called the "Watchdog of the Treasury."
When Elias Howe, hara.s.sed by want and woe, was in London completing his first sewing-machine, he had frequently to borrow money to live on. He bought beans and cooked them himself. He also borrowed money to send his wife back to America. He sold his first machine for five pounds, although it was worth fifty, and then he p.a.w.ned his letters patent to pay his expenses home.
The boy Arkwright begins barbering in a cellar, but dies worth a million and a half. The world treated his novelties just as it treats everybody's novelties--made infinite objection, mustered all the impediments, but he snapped his fingers at their objections, and lived to become honored and wealthy.
There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its way to public recognition in the face of detraction, calumny, and persecution.
Nearly every great discovery or invention that has blessed mankind has had to fight its way to recognition, even against the opposition of the most progressive men.
William H. Prescott was a remarkable example of what a boy with "no chance" can do. While at college, he lost one eye by a hard piece of bread thrown during a "biscuit battle," and the other eye became almost useless. But the boy would not lead a useless life. He set his heart upon being a historian, and turned all his energies in that direction.
By the aid of others' eyes, he spent ten years studying before he even decided upon a particular theme for his first book. Then he spent ten years more, poring over old archives and ma.n.u.scripts, before he published his "Ferdinand and Isabella." What a lesson in his life for young men! What a rebuke to those who have thrown away their opportunities and wasted their lives!
"Galileo with an opera-gla.s.s," said Emerson, "discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since with the great telescopes. Columbus found the new world in an undecked boat."
Surroundings which men call unfavorable can not prevent the unfolding of your powers. From among the rock-ribbed hills of New Hamps.h.i.+re sprang the greatest of American orators and statesmen, Daniel Webster.
From the crowded ranks of toil, and homes to which luxury is a stranger, have often come the leaders and benefactors of our race.
Where shall we find an ill.u.s.tration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career, and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern times? Born as lowly as the Son of G.o.d, in a hovel; of what real parentage we know not; reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and visions; with scarcely a natural grace; singularly awkward, ungainly even among the uncouth about him: it was reserved for this remarkable character, late in life, to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. The great leaders of his party were made to stand aside; the most experienced and accomplished men of the day, men like Seward, and Chase, and Sumner, statesmen famous and trained, were sent to the rear, while this strange figure was brought by unseen hands to the front, and given the reins of power.
_There is no open door to the temple of success_. Everyone who enters makes his own door, which closes behind him to all others, not even permitting his own children to pa.s.s.
Not in the brilliant salon, not in the tapestried library, not in ease and competence, is genius born and nurtured; but often in adversity and dest.i.tution, amidst the hara.s.sing cares of a straitened household, in bare and fireless garrets. Amid scenes unpropitious, repulsive, wretched, have men labored, studied, and trained themselves, until they have at last emanated from the gloom of that obscurity the s.h.i.+ning lights of their times; have become the companions of kings, the guides and teachers of their kind, and exercised an influence upon the thought of the world amounting to a species of intellectual legislation.
"What does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?" Schiller produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to torture. Handel was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. Mozart composed his great operas, and last of all his "Requiem," when oppressed by debt and struggling with a fatal disease. Beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness.
Perhaps no one ever battled harder to overcome obstacles which would have disheartened most men than Demosthenes. He had such a weak voice, and such an impediment in his speech, and was so short of breath, that he could scarcely get through a single sentence without stopping to rest. All his first attempts were nearly drowned by the hisses, jeers, and scoffs of his audiences. His first effort that met with success was against his guardian, who had defrauded him, and whom he compelled to refund a part of his fortune. He was so discouraged by his defeats that he determined to give up forever all attempts at oratory. One of his auditors, however, believed the young man had something in him, and encouraged him to persevere. He accordingly appeared again in public, but was hissed down as before. As he withdrew, hanging his head in great confusion, a noted actor, Satyrus, encouraged him still further to try to overcome his impediment. He stammered so much that he could not p.r.o.nounce some of the letters at all, and his breath would give out before he could get through a sentence. Finally, he determined to be an orator at any cost. He went to the seash.o.r.e and practised amid the roar of the breakers with small pebbles in his mouth, in order to overcome his stammering, and at the same time accustom himself to the hisses and tumults of his audience. He overcame his short breath by practising while running up steep and difficult places on the sh.o.r.e.
His awkward gestures were also corrected by long and determined drill before a mirror.
Columbus was dismissed as a fool from court after court, but he pushed his suit against an incredulous and ridiculing world. Rebuffed by kings, scorned by queens, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the overmastering purpose which dominated his soul. The words "New World"
were graven upon his heart; and reputation, ease, pleasure, position, life itself if need be, must be sacrificed. Threats, ridicule, ostracism, storms, leaky vessels, mutiny of sailors, could not shake his mighty purpose.
You can not keep a determined man from success. Place stumbling-blocks in his way and he takes them for stepping-stones, and on them will climb to greatness. Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. Cripple him, and he writes the Waverley Novels.
All that is great and n.o.ble and true in the history of the world is the result of infinite painstaking, perpetual plodding, of common every-day industry.
Roger Bacon, one of the profoundest thinkers the world has produced, was terribly persecuted for his studies in natural philosophy, yet he persevered and won success. He was accused of dealing in magic, his books were burned in public, and he was kept in prison for ten years.
Even our own revered Was.h.i.+ngton was mobbed in the streets because he would not pander to the clamor of the people and reject the treaty which Mr. Jay had arranged with Great Britain. But he remained firm, and the people adopted his opinion. The Duke of Wellington was mobbed in the streets of London and his windows were broken while his wife lay dead in the house; but the "Iron Duke" never faltered in his course, or swerved a hair's breadth from his purpose.
William Phipps, when a young man, heard some sailors on the street, in Boston, talking about a Spanish s.h.i.+p wrecked off the Bahama Islands, which was supposed to have money on board. Young Phipps determined to find it. He set out at once, and, after many hards.h.i.+ps, discovered the lost treasure. He then heard of another s.h.i.+p, which had been wrecked off Port De La Plata many years before. He set sail for England and importuned Charles II for aid. To his delight the king fitted up the s.h.i.+p _Rose Algier_ for him. He searched and searched for a long time in vain, and at length had to return to England to repair his vessel.
James II was then on the throne, and Phipps had to wait for four years before he could raise money to return. His crew mutinied and threatened to throw him overboard, but he turned the s.h.i.+p's guns on them. One day an Indian diver went down for a curious sea plant and saw several cannon lying on the bottom. They proved to belong to the wreck. He had nothing but dim traditions to guide him, but he returned to England with $1,500,000.
A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to win success in spite of every barrier, is the price of all great achievements.
The man who has not fought his way up to his own loaf, and does not bear the scar of desperate conflict, does not know the highest meaning of success.