Mr. Edmund Driggs, of Brooklyn, gives a motto that came into
his life like an influence, and greatly helped him toward
success. At the age of fifteen he left home to engage with an
older brother in the freighting business on the Hudson River.
The first duty he performed on the vessel was to go aloft to
reef the pennant-halyards through the truck of the topmast,
which was forty feet above the top of the mainmast, without any
rigging attached thereto. When the sailing-master had arranged
the halyards over his shoulder, with a running bowline under
his right arm, he ordered him aloft. The new sailor looked at
the sailing-master and then aloft, and then asked the question,
“Did anybody ever do that?” “Yes, you fool,” was the answer. “Do
you suppose that I would order you to do a thing that was never
done before?” The young sailor replied, “If anybody ever did
it, I can do it.” He did it. That maxim has been his watchword
through life. Tho he is now over seventy years of age, he is
still engaged in active business life, and whatever enterprise
he undertakes the watchword still is, “If anybody ever did it, I
can do it.” (Text.)--WILBUR F. CRAFTS, “Successful Men
of To-day.”
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