The tissue of the life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of destiny
We reap as we have sown.
—WHITTIER.
No man is born into this world whose work is not born with him.—LOWELL.
If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a
better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the
woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.—EMERSON.
Character is power—is influence; it makes friends, creates funds, draws
patronage and support, and opens a sure and easy way to wealth, honor
and happiness.—J. HAWES.
To be thrown upon one’s own resources is to be cast into the very lap
of fortune.—FRANKLIN.
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.
Heaven never helps the man who will not act.—SOPHOCLES.
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well,
and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.—LONGFELLOW.
The longer I live, the more deeply am I convinced that that which
makes the difference between one man and another—between the weak
and powerful, the great and insignificant, is energy—invincible
determination—a purpose once formed, and then death or victory.—FOWELL
BUXTON.
In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know
what is in thee. But what is thy duty? The demand of the hour.—GOETHE.
A strong, defiant purpose is many-handed, and lays hold of whatever is
near that can serve it; it has a magnetic power that draws to itself
whatever is kindred.—T. T. MUNGER.
I
Hard Work: the Secret of a Great Inventor’s Genius.
TO discover the opinion of Thomas A. Edison concerning what makes and
constitutes success in life is an easy matter, if one can only discover
Mr. Edison. I camped three weeks in the vicinity of Orange, N. J.,
awaiting the opportunity to come upon the great inventor and voice my
questions. It seemed a rather hopeless and discouraging affair until
he was really before me; but, truth to say, he is one of the most
accessible of men, and only reluctantly allows himself to be hedged
in by the pressure of endless affairs. “Mr. Edison is always glad to
see any visitor,” said a gentleman who is constantly with him, “except
when he is hot on the trail of something he has been working for, and
then it is as much as a man’s head is worth to come in on him.” He
certainly was not hot on the trail of anything on the morning when,
for seemingly the tenth time, I rang at the gate in the fence which
surrounds the laboratory on Valley Road, Orange. A young man appeared,
who conducted me up the walk to the elegant office and library of the
great laboratory. It is a place, this library, not to be passed through
without thought, for with a further store of volumes in his home, it
contains one of the most costly and well-equipped scientific libraries
in the world; the collection of writings on patent laws and patents,
for instance, is absolutely exhaustive. It gives, at a glance, an idea
of the breadth of the thought and sympathy of this man who grew up with
scarcely a common school education.
On the second floor, in one of the offices of the machine-shop, I was
asked to wait, while a grimy youth disappeared with my card, which he
said he would “slip under the door of Mr. Edison’s office.” “Curious,”
I thought; “what a lord this man must be if they dare not even knock at
his door!”
Thinking of this and gazing out of the window, I waited until a working
man, who had entered softly, came up beside me. He looked with a sort
of “Well, what is it?” in his eyes, and quickly it began to come to me
that the man in the sooty, oil-stained clothes was Edison himself. The
working garb seemed rather incongruous, but there was no mistaking the
broad forehead, with its shock of blackish hair streaked with gray. The
gray eyes, too, were revelations in the way of alert comprehensiveness.
“Oh!” was all I could get out at the time.
“Want to see me?” he said, smiling in the most youthful and genial way.
“Why,—yes, certainly, to be sure,” I stammered.
He looked at me blankly.
“You’ll have to talk louder,” said an assistant who worked in another
portion of the room; “he don’t hear well.”