When the famous Sioux Indian, Charles A. Eastman, was a boy, his father,
who had learned the joys of civilized life, urged his son to secure an
education. "I am glad that my son is brave and strong," he said to him.
"I have come to start you on the White Man's way. I want you to grow to
be a good man."
Then he urged his son, Ohiyesa, as he was called, to put on the
civilized clothes he had brought with him. The boy rebelled at first; he
had been accustomed to hate white men and everything that belonged to
them. But when he reflected that they had done him no harm, after all,
he decided to try on the curious garments.
Together father and son traveled toward the haunts of the white man. As
they traveled Ohiyesa listened to tales of the wonderful inventions he
would see. He was especially eager to look on a railroad train.
But even after he had gone with his father, he was reluctant to enter on
his long training, until his father suggested that he make believe he
was starting on a long war-path, from which there could be no honorable
return until his course was completed. Entering into the spirit of the
proposal, the Indian lad began his schooling at Flandreau Indian Agency,
and persisted for twelve long years. After graduating from college he
devoted himself to his people, and in many years since has accomplished
wonders for them, teaching them the patience he had himself learned, and
enabling them to understand that such patience and persistence always
brings its reward.
The experience of Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, was
different, yet, after all, it was much the same. As a boy he had little
education. But soon after he went to work he made up his mind to supply
the lack. The record of how he did this is one of the most remarkable
instances of courageous patience on record.
The long office hours at his place of employment, from six in the
morning until six at night, made study difficult, but he showed
conclusively that where there is a will there is a way, and that he had
the will. He was accustomed to leave his bed at four, that he might
study two hours before the beginning of the day's work. Two hours in the
evening also were set apart for study. Sometimes it happened that work
at the factory was light, and the young clerk was excused for the
morning. Instead of taking the time for sport, it was his habit to take
a book with him into the fields or under the trees.
Thomas Allen Reid, in his biography of Pitman says: "One of the books
which he made his companion in morning walks into the country was
Lennie's Grammar. The conjugation of verbs, list of irregular verbs,
adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, and the thirty-six rules of
syntax, he committed to memory so that he could repeat them in order.
The study of the books gave him a transparent English style."
His father was a subscriber to the local library. "I went regularly to
the library for fresh supplies of books," Isaac said, in 1863, "and thus
read most of the English classics. I think I was quite as familiar with
Addison, and Sir Roger, and Will Honeycomb, and all the Club, as I was
with my own brothers and sisters ... and when reading The Spectator at
that early age, I wished that I might be able to do something in
letters."
Before he left school he formed the habit of copying choice pieces of
poetry and prose into a little book which he kept in his pocket. These
bits he would commit to memory when he had leisure. A later pocket
companion contained a neatly written copy of Valpey's Greek Grammar, as
far as the syntax, which he committed to memory. In his morning walks in
1832 he committed to memory the first fourteen chapters of Proverbs. He
would not undertake a fresh chapter until he had repeated the preceding
one without hesitation.
As most of his knowledge of words was gained from books, he had
difficulty in pronunciation. "His method of overcoming the deficiency
was ingenious," his biographer wrote. "Again and again he read 'Paradise
Lost.' Careful attention to the meter enabled him to correct his faulty
pronunciation of many words. Words not found in the poem he discovered
in the dictionary. With unusual courage he decided to read through
Walker's Dictionary, fixing his mind on words new to him and on the
spelling and pronunciation of familiar terms. On the pages of one of his
pocket-books he copied all words he had been in the habit of
mispronouncing. Although there were more than two thousand of these
words, the plan was carried out before he was seventeen."
The labor of writing out so many extracts from books led him to study
the imperfect system of shorthand then current, and to develop the
system that was to bear his name.
So many young people feel that they "simply cannot abide" the long
process of getting an education; they give up when they are only a part
of the way to the goal. But for most of them the day of bitter regret
will come when they will wish that they had been more like Eastman or
Pitman in their determination to be patient and persistent, to allow
nothing to stand in the way of their purpose to fit themselves in the
best possible manner for the serious business of life.