"How can I ever succeed in becoming great and rich? It is impossible.
I am only a poor boy!"
That is what a lad said to me. I was able to restore him to greater
hopefulness by saying:
"Nothing is impossible if you make up your mind to do it. Many a great
man who is alive to-day began as a poor boy like yourself, with no
help besides his own wits and pluck."
Then I told him about Sir William Arrol. At nine years of age he went
to work as a "piecer" in a cotton factory. A few years later he became
apprenticed to a blacksmith. He worked hard and well, and was very
steady, so that at the age of twenty-three he found himself foreman in
Messrs. Laidlaw's boiler works in Glasgow. Like a Scout, he was
thrifty, and in five years of this employment he saved up 85 Pounds of his
wages, and with this sum he started a business of his own.
At first he made boilers and girders, and then, as his business grew
bigger, he took up bridge-building.
Steadily he worked at this, being at all times anxious to show good
solid work, without any scamping.
To start with he had met with disappointments and failures, but he
would not give in to then; when things looked their worst he kept a
smiling face and _stuck to it_.
And in the end he came out successful, as every man does who is
patient and sticks it out. He got a name for steady, persevering work,
and for giving full value for any money paid to him.
For these reasons he obtained good contracts for building bridges, and
soon enlarged his business into a very big one.
Among others, the great Tay bridge and the bridge over the Forth in
Scotland are his work.
He died a rich and highly respected man, but in the height of his
power he never forgot that he began as a poor boy, and he always did
what he could to help other poor boys to win their way to success.
He used, however, to say that success depended mainly on the boy
himself. If a boy were determined to get on, and knew a handicraft or
two, he would probably succeed, but if he merely dabbled in one thing
and then another, and wasted his time in amusements, and could not
stick it out when luck seemed against, him, that boy would be a
failure, and would probably go on being a failure all his life.
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