BOYS WITH NO CHANCE
In the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and
strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.--J. G. HOLLAND.
Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us,
but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft,
luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.--OUIDA.
Poverty is the sixth sense.--GERMAN PROVERB.
It is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often
a blessing. Surmounted difficulties not only teach, but hearten us in
our future struggles.--SHARPE.
There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day, using that
term in its broadest sense, are men who began life as poor boys.--SETH
LOW.
'Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder!
SHAKESPEARE.
"I am a child of the court," said a pretty little girl at a children's
party in Denmark; "_my_ father is Groom of the Chambers, which is a
very high office. And those whose names end with 'sen,'" she added,
"can never be anything at all. We must put our arms akimbo, and make
the elbows quite pointed, so as to keep these 'sen' people at a great
distance."
"But my papa can buy a hundred dollars' worth of bonbons, and give them
away to children," angrily exclaimed the daughter of the rich merchant
Peter_sen_. "Can your papa do that?"
"Yes," chimed in the daughter of an editor, "my papa can put your papa
and everybody's papa into the newspaper. All sorts of people are
afraid of him, my papa says, for he can do as he likes with the paper."
"Oh, if I could be one of them!" thought a little boy peeping through
the crack of the door, by permission of the cook for whom he had been
turning the spit. But no, _his_ parents had not even a penny to spare,
and his name ended in "sen."
Years afterwards when the children of the party had become men and
women, some of them went to see a splendid house, filled with all kinds
of beautiful and valuable objects. There they met the owner, once the
very boy who thought it so great a privilege to peep at them through a
crack in the door as they played. He had become the great sculptor
Thorwald_sen_.
This sketch is adapted from a story by a poor Danish cobbler's son,
another whose name did not keep him from becoming famous,--Hans
Christian Ander_sen_.
"There is no fear of my starving, father," said the deaf boy, Kitto,
begging to be taken from the poorhouse and allowed to struggle for an
education; "we are in the midst of plenty, and I know how to prevent
hunger. The Hottentots subsist a long time on nothing but a little
gum; they also, when hungry, tie a ligature around their bodies.
Cannot I do so, too? The hedges furnish blackberries and nuts, and the
fields, turnips; a hayrick will make an excellent bed."
The poor deaf boy with a drunken father, who was thought capable of
nothing better than making shoes as a pauper, became one of the
greatest Biblical scholars in the world. His first book was written in
the workhouse.
Creon was a Greek slave, as a writer tells the story in Kate Field's
"Washington," but he was also a slave of the Genius of Art. Beauty was
his god, and he worshiped it with rapt adoration. It was after the
repulse of the great Persian invader, and a law was in force that under
penalty of death no one should espouse art except freemen. When the
law was enacted he was engaged upon a group for which he hoped some day
to receive the commendation of Phidias, the greatest sculptor living,
and even the praise of Pericles.
What was to be done? Into the marble block before him Creon had put
his head, his heart, his soul, his life. On his knees, from day to
day, he had prayed for fresh inspiration, new skill. He believed,
gratefully and proudly, that Apollo, answering his prayers, had
directed his hand and had breathed into the figures the life that
seemed to animate them; but now,--now, all the gods seemed to have
deserted him.
Cleone, his devoted sister, felt the blow as deeply as her brother. "O
Aphrodite!" she prayed, "immortal Aphrodite, high enthroned child of
Zeus, my queen, my goddess, my patron, at whose shrine I have daily
laid my offerings, to be now my friend, the friend of my brother!"
Then to her brother she said: "O Creon, go to the cellar beneath our
house. It is dark, but I will furnish light and food. Continue your
work; the gods will befriend us."
To the cellar Creon went, and guarded and attended by his sister, day
and night, he proceeded with his glorious but dangerous task.
About this time all Greece was invited to Athens to behold an exhibit
of works of art. The display took place in the Agora. Pericles
presided. At his side was Aspasia. Phidias, Socrates, Sophocles, and
other renowned men stood near him.
The works of the great masters were there. But one group, far more
beautiful than the rest,--a group that Apollo himself must have
chiseled,--challenged universal attention, exciting at the same time no
little envy among rival artists.
"Who is the sculptor of this group?" None could tell. Heralds
repeated the question, but there was no answer. "A mystery, then! Can
it be the work of a slave?" Amid great commotion a beautiful maiden
with disarranged dress, disheveled hair, a determined expression in her
eyes, and with closed lips, was dragged into the Agora. "This woman,"
cried the officers, "this woman knows the sculptor; we are sure of it;
but she will not tell his name."
Cleone was questioned, but was silent. She was informed of the penalty
of her conduct, but her lips remained closed. "Then," said Pericles,
"the law is imperative, and I am the minister of the law. Take the
maid to the dungeon."
As he spoke a youth with flowing hair, emaciated, but with black eyes
that beamed with the flashing light of genius, rushed forward, and
flinging himself before him exclaimed: "O Pericles, forgive and save
the maid! She is my sister. I am the culprit. The group is the work
of my hands, the hands of a slave."
The indignant crowd interrupted him and cried, "To the dungeon, to the
dungeon with the slave." "As I live, no!" said Pericles, rising.
"Behold that group! Apollo decides by it that there is something
higher in Greece than an unjust law. The highest purpose of law should
be the development of the beautiful. If Athens lives in the memory and
affections of men, it is her devotion to art that will immortalize her.
Not to the dungeon, but to my side bring the youth."
And there, in the presence of the assembled multitude, Aspasia placed
the crown of olives, which she held in her hands, on the brow of Creon;
and at the same time, amid universal plaudits, she tenderly kissed
Creon's affectionate and devoted sister.
The Athenians erected a statue to Aesop, who was born a slave, that men
might know that the way to honor is open to all. In Greece, wealth and
immortality were the sure reward of the man who could distinguish
himself in art, literature, or war. No other country ever did so much
to encourage and inspire struggling merit.
"I was born in poverty," said Vice-President Henry Wilson. "Want sat
by my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has
none to give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served an
apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each
year, and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and
six sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum
of one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was
born till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel
weary miles and ask my fellow men to give me leave to toil. . . . In
the first month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the
woods, drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before
daylight and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent
sum of six dollars for the month's work! Each of these dollars looked
as large to me as the moon looks to-night."
Mr. Wilson determined never to lose an opportunity for self-culture or
self-advancement. Few men knew so well the value of spare moments.
_He seized them as though they were gold_ and would not let one pass
until he had wrung from it every possibility. He managed to read a
thousand good books before he was twenty-one--what a lesson for boys on
a farm! When he left the farm he started on foot for Natick, Mass.,
over one hundred miles distant, to learn the cobbler's trade. He went
through Boston that he might see Bunker Hill monument and other
historical landmarks. The whole trip cost him but one dollar and six
cents. In a year he was the head of a debating club at Natick. Before
eight years had passed, he made his great speech against slavery, in
the Massachusetts Legislature. Twelve years later he stood shoulder to
shoulder with the polished Sumner in Congress. With him, _every
occasion was a great occasion_. He ground every circumstance of his
life into material for success.
"Don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me
give you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." Horace
Greeley looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed
how seedy they were, and replied: "You see Mr. Sterrett, my father is
on a new place, and I want to help him all I can." He had spent but
six dollars for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive
one hundred and thirty-five from Judge J. M. Sterret of the Erie
"Gazette" for substitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and
gave the rest to his father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to
Western Pennsylvania, and for whom he had camped out many a night to
guard the sheep from wolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, although
tall and gawky, with tow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice,
he resolved to seek his fortune in New York City. Slinging his bundle
of clothes on a stick over his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through
the woods to Buffalo, rode on a canal boat to Albany, descended the
Hudson in a barge, and reached New York, just as the sun was rising,
August 18, 1831.
He found board over a saloon at two dollars and a half a week. His
journey of six hundred miles had cost him but five dollars. For days
Horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores of buildings
and asking if they wanted "a hand"; but "no" was the invariable reply.
His quaint appearance led many to think he was an escaped apprentice.
One Sunday at his boarding-place he heard that printers were wanted at
"West's Printing-office." He was at the door at five o'clock Monday
morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven. The latter had no
idea that a country greenhorn could set type for the Polyglot Testament
on which help was needed, but said: "Fix up a case for him and we'll
see if he _can_ do anything." When the proprietor came in, he objected
to the new-comer and told the foreman to let him go when his first
day's work was done. That night Horace showed a proof of the largest
and most correct day's work that had then been done.
In ten years he was a partner in a small printing-office. He founded
the "New Yorker," the best weekly paper in the United States, but it
was not profitable. When Harrison was nominated for President in 1840,
Greeley started "The Log-Cabin," which reached the then fabulous
circulation of ninety thousand. But on this paper at a penny per copy
he made no money. His next venture was "The New York Tribune," price
one cent. To start it he borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five
thousand copies of the first number. It was difficult to give them all
away. He began with six hundred subscribers, and increased the list to
eleven thousand in six weeks. The demand for the "Tribune" grew faster
than new machinery could be obtained to print it. It was a paper whose
editor, whatever his mistakes, always tried to be right.
James Gordon Bennett had made a failure of his "New York Courier" in
1825, of the "Globe" in 1832, and of the "Pennsylvanian" a little
later, and was only known as a clever writer for the press, who had
saved a few hundred dollars by hard labor and strict economy for
fourteen years. In 1835 he asked Horace Greeley to join him in
starting a new daily paper, the "New York Herald." Greeley declined,
but recommended two young printers, who formed partnership with
Bennett, and the "Herald" was started on May 6, 1835, with a cash
capital to pay expenses for _ten days_. Bennet hired a small cellar in
Wall Street, furnished it with a chair and a desk composed of a plank
supported by two barrels; and there, doing all the work except the
printing, began the work of making a really great daily newspaper, a
thing then unknown in America, as all its predecessors were party
organs. Steadily the young man struggled towards his ideal, giving the
news, fresh and crisp, from an ever-widening area, until his paper was
famous for giving the current history of the world as fully and quickly
as any competitor, and often much more thoroughly and far more
promptly. Neither labor nor expense was spared in obtaining prompt and
reliable information on every topic of general interest. It was an
up-hill job, but its completion was finally marked by the opening at
the corner of Broadway and Ann Street of the most complete newspaper
establishment then known.
One of the first things to attract the attention on entering George W.
Childs' private office in Philadelphia was this motto, which was the
key-note of the success of a boy who started with "no chance": "Nihil
sine labore." It was his early ambition to own the "Philadelphia
Ledger" and the great building in which it was published; but how could
a poor boy working for $2.00 a week ever hope to own such a great
paper? However, he had great determination and indomitable energy; and
as soon as he had saved a few hundred dollars as a clerk in a
bookstore, he began business as a publisher. He made "great hits" in
some of the works he published, such as "Kane's Arctic Expedition." He
had a keen sense of what would please the public, and there seemed no
end to his industry.
In spite of the fact that the "Ledger" was losing money every day, his
friends could not dissuade him from buying it, and in 1864 the dreams
of his boyhood found fulfilment. He doubled the subscription price,
lowered the advertising rates, to the astonishment of everybody, and
the paper entered upon a career of remarkable prosperity, the profits
sometimes amounting to over four hundred thousand dollars a year. He
always refused to lower the wages of his employees even when every
other establishment in Philadelphia was doing so.
At a banquet in Lyons, nearly a century and a half ago, a discussion
arose in regard to the meaning of a painting representing some scene in
the mythology or history of Greece. Seeing that the discussion was
growing warm, the host turned to one of the waiters and asked him to
explain the picture. Greatly to the surprise of the company, the
servant gave a clear concise account of the whole subject, so plain and
convincing that it at once settled the dispute.
"In what school have you studied, Monsieur?" asked one of the guests,
addressing the waiter with great respect. "I have studied in many
schools, Monseigneur," replied the young servant: "but the school in
which I studied longest and learned most is the school of adversity."
Well had he profited by poverty's lessons; for, although then but a
poor waiter, all Europe soon rang with the fame of the writings of the
greatest genius of his age and country, Jean Jacques Rousseau.
The smooth sand beach of Lake Erie constituted the foolscap on which,
for want of other material, P. R. Spencer, a barefoot boy with no
chance, perfected the essential principles of the Spencerian system of
penmanship, the most beautiful exposition of graphic art.
For eight years William Cobbett had followed the plow, when he ran away
to London, copied law papers for eight or nine months, and then
enlisted in an infantry regiment. During his first year of soldier
life he subscribed to a circulating library at Chatham, read every book
in it, and began to study.
"I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence
a day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to
study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit of board lying on my lap
was my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like a year
of my life. I had no money to purchase candles or oil; in winter it
was rarely that I could get any evening light but that of the fire, and
only my turn, even, of that. To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was
compelled to forego some portion of my food, though in a state of half
starvation. I had no moment of time that I could call my own, and I
had to read and write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling,
and bawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men,
and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think
not lightly of the _farthing_ I had to give, now and then, for pen,
ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. I was as
tall as I am now, and I had great health and great exercise. The whole
of the money not expended for us at market was _twopence a week_ for
each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon one occasion I had,
after all absolutely necessary expenses, made shift to have a
half-penny in reserve, which I had destined for the purpose of a red
herring in the morning, but so hungry as to be hardly able to endure
life, when I pulled off my clothes at night, I found that I had lost my
half-penny. I buried my head in the miserable sheet and rug, and cried
like a child."
But Cobbett made even his poverty and hard circumstances serve his
all-absorbing passion for knowledge and success. "If I," said he,
"under such circumstances could encounter and overcome this task, is
there, can there be in the whole world, a youth to find any excuse for
its non-performance?"
Humphrey Davy had but a slender chance to acquire great scientific
knowledge, yet he had true mettle in him, and he made even old pans,
kettles, and bottles contribute to his success, as he experimented and
studied in the attic of the apothecary-store where he worked.
"Many a farmer's son," says Thurlow Weed, "has found the best
opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure while
tending 'sap-bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At
night you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap
having been gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we
would always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine,' by the light of which,
blazing bright before the sugar-house, I passed many a delightful night
in reading. I remember in this way to have a history of the French
Revolution, and to have obtained a better and more enduring knowledge
of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national
tragedy than I have received from all subsequent reading. I remember,
also, how happy I was in being able to borrow the books of a Mr. Keyes,
after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled in
remnants of rag carpet."
"May I have a holiday to-morrow, father?" asked Theodore Parker one
August afternoon. The poor Lexington millwright looked in surprise at
his youngest son, for it was a busy time, but he saw from the boy's
earnest face that he had no ordinary object in view, and granted the
request. Theodore rose very early the next morning, walked through the
dust ten miles to Harvard College, and presented himself for a
candidate for admission. He had been unable to attend school regularly
since he was eight years old, but he had managed to go three months
each winter, and had reviewed his lessons again and again as he
followed the plow or worked at other tasks. All his odd moments had
been hoarded, too, for reading useful books, which he borrowed. One
book he could not borrow, but he felt that he must have it; so on
summer mornings he rose long before the sun and picked bushel after
bushel of berries, which he sent to Boston, and so got the money to buy
that coveted Latin dictionary.
"Well done, my boy!" said the millwright, when his son came home late
at night and told of his successful examination; "but, Theodore, I
cannot afford to keep you there!" "True, father," said Theodore, "I am
not going to stay there; I shall study at home, at odd times, and thus
prepare myself for a final examination, which will give me a diploma."
He did this; and, by teaching school as he grew older, got money to
study for two years at Harvard, where he was graduated with honor.
Years after, when, as the trusted friend and adviser of Seward, Chase,
Sumner, Garrison, Horace Mann, and Wendell Phillips, his influence for
good was felt in the hearts of all his countrymen, it was a pleasure
for him to recall his early struggles and triumphs among the rocks and
bushes of Lexington.
"The proudest moment of my life," said Elihu Burritt, "was when I had
first gained the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of Homer's
Iliad." Elihu Burritt's father died when he was sixteen, and Elihu was
apprenticed to a blacksmith in his native village of New Britain, Conn.
He had to work at the forge for ten or twelve hours a day; but while
blowing the bellows, he would solve mentally difficult problems in
arithmetic. In a diary kept at Worcester, whither he went some ten
years later to enjoy its library privileges, are such entries as
these,--"Monday, June 18, headache, 40 pages Cuvier's 'Theory of the
Earth,' 64 pages French, 11 hours' forging. Tuesday, June 19, 60 lines
Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10 lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of
stars, 10 hours' forging. Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines
Syriac, 11 hours' forging." He mastered 18 languages and 32 dialects.
He became eminent as the "Learned Blacksmith," and for his noble work
in the service of humanity. Edward Everett said of the manner in which
this boy with no chance acquired great learning: "It is enough to make
one who has good opportunities for education hang his head in shame."
The barefoot Christine Nilsson in remote Sweden had little chance, but
she won the admiration of the world for her wondrous power of song,
combined with rare womanly grace.
"Let me say in regard to your adverse worldly circumstances," says Dr.
Talmage to young men, "that you are on a level now with those who are
finally to succeed. Mark my words, and think of it thirty years from
now. You will find that those who are then the millionaires of this
country, who are the orators of the country, who are the poets of the
country, who are the strong merchants of the country, who are the great
philanthropists of the country,--mightiest in the church and
state,--are now on a level with you, not an inch above you, and in
straightened circumstances.
"No outfit, no capital to start with? Young man, go down to the
library and get some books, and read of what wonderful mechanism God
gave you in your hand, in your foot, in your eye, in your ear, and then
ask some doctor to take you into the dissecting-room and illustrate to
you what you have read about, and never again commit the blasphemy of
saying you have no capital to start with. _Equipped_? _Why, the
poorest young man is equipped as only the God of the whole universe
could afford to equip him_."
A newsboy is not a very promising candidate for success or honors in
any line of life. A young man can't set out in life with much less
chance than when he starts his "daily" for a living. Yet the man who
more than any other is responsible for the industrial regeneration of
this continent started in life as a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway.
Thomas Alva Edison was then about fifteen years of age. He had already
begun to dabble in chemistry, and had fitted up a small itinerant
laboratory. One day, as he was performing some occult experiment, the
train rounded a curve, and the bottle of sulphuric acid broke. There
followed a series of unearthly odors and unnatural complications. The
conductor, who had suffered long and patiently, promptly ejected the
youthful devotee, and in the process of the scientist's expulsion added
a resounding box upon the ear.
Edison passed through one dramatic situation after another--always
mastering it--until he attained at an early age the scientific throne
of the world. When recently asked the secret of his success, he said
he had always been a total abstainer and singularly moderate in
everything but work.
Daniel Manning who was President Cleveland's first campaign manager and
afterwards Secretary of the Treasury, started out as a newsboy with
apparently the world against him. So did Thurlow Weed; so did David B.
Hill. New York seems to have been prolific in enterprising newsboys.
What nonsense for two uneducated and unknown youths who met in a cheap
boarding-house in Boston to array themselves against an institution
whose roots were embedded in the very constitution of our country, and
which was upheld by scholars, statesmen, churches, wealth, and
aristocracy, without distinction of creed or politics! What chance had
they against the prejudices and sentiment of a nation? But these young
men were fired by a lofty purpose, and they were thoroughly in earnest.
One of them, Benjamin Lundy, had already started in Ohio a paper called
"The Genius of Universal Liberty," and had carried the entire edition
home on his back from the printing-office, twenty miles, every month.
He had walked four hundred miles on his way to Tennessee to increase
his subscription list. He was no ordinary young man.
With William Lloyd Garrison, he started to prosecute his work more
earnestly in Baltimore. The sight of the slave-pens along the
principal streets; of vessel-loads of unfortunates torn from home and
family and sent to Southern ports; the heartrending scenes at the
auction blocks, made an impression on Garrison never to be forgotten;
and the young man whose mother was too poor to send him to school,
although she early taught him to hate oppression, resolved to devote
his life to secure the freedom of these poor wretches.
In the first issue of his paper, Garrison urged an immediate
emancipation, and called down upon his head the wrath of the entire
community. He was arrested and sent to jail. John G. Whittier, a
noble friend in the North, was so touched at the news that, being too
poor to furnish the money himself, he wrote to Henry Clay, begging him
to release Garrison by paying the fine. After forty-nine days of
imprisonment he was set free. Wendell Phillips said of him, "He was
imprisoned for his opinion when he was twenty-four. He had confronted
a nation in the bloom of his youth."
In Boston, with no money, friends, or influence, in a little upstairs
room, Garrison started the "Liberator." Read the declaration of this
poor young man with "no chance," in the very first issue: "I will be as
harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest. I will
not equivocate, I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch,
and I will be heard." What audacity for a young man, with the world
against him!
Hon. Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, wrote to Otis, mayor of
Boston, that some one had sent him a copy of the "Liberator," and asked
him to ascertain the name of the publisher. Otis replied that he had
found a poor young man printing "this insignificant sheet in an obscure
hole, his only auxiliary a negro boy, his supporters a few persons of
all colors and little influence."
But this poor young man, eating, sleeping, and printing in this
"obscure hole," had set the world to thinking, and must be suppressed.
The Vigilance Association of South Carolina offered a reward of fifteen
hundred dollars for the arrest and prosecution of any one detected
circulating the "Liberator." The Governors of one or two States set a
price on the editor's head. The legislature of Georgia offered a
reward of five thousand dollars for his arrest and conviction.
Garrison and his coadjutors were denounced everywhere. A clergyman
named Lovejoy was killed by a mob in Illinois for espousing the cause,
while defending his printing-press, and in the old "Cradle of American
Liberty" the wealth, power, and culture of Massachusetts arrayed itself
against the "Abolitionists" so outrageously, that a mere spectator, a
young lawyer of great promise, asked to be lifted upon the high
platform, and replied in such a speech as was never before heard in
Faneuil Hall. "When I heard the gentleman lay down the principles
which place the murderers of Lovejoy at Alton side by side with Otis
and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams," said Wendell Phillips, pointing to
their portraits on the walls. "I thought those pictured lips would
have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer
of the dead. For the sentiments that he has uttered, on soil
consecrated by the prayers of the Puritans and the blood of patriots.
the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up."
The whole nation was wrought to fever heat.
Between the Northern pioneers and Southern chivalry the struggle was
long and fierce, even in far California. The drama culminated in the
shock of civil war. When the war was ended, and, after thirty-five
years of untiring, heroic conflict, Garrison was invited as the
nation's guest, by President Lincoln, to see the stars and stripes
unfurled once more above Fort Sumter, an emancipated slave delivered
the address of welcome, and his two daughters, no longer chattels in
appreciation presented Garrison with a beautiful wreath of flowers.
About this time Richard Cobden, another powerful friend of the
oppressed, died in London.
His father had died leaving nine children almost penniless. The boy
earned his living by watching a neighbor's sheep, but had no chance to
attend school until he was ten years old. He was sent to a
boarding-school, where he was abused, half starved, and allowed to
write home only once in three months. At fifteen he entered his
uncle's store in London as a clerk. He learned French by rising early
and studying while his companions slept. He was soon sent out in a gig
as a commercial traveler.
He called upon John Bright to enlist his aid in fighting the terrible
"Corn-Laws" which were taking bread from the poor and giving it to the
rich. He found Mr. Bright in great grief, for his wife was lying dead
in the house.
"There are thousands of homes in England at this moment," said Richard
Cobden, "where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. Now,
when the first paroxysm of grief is passed, I would advise you to come
with me, and we will never rest until the Corn-Laws are repealed."
Cobden could no longer see the poor man's bread stopped at the
Custom-House and taxed for the benefit of the landlord and farmer, and
he threw his whole soul into this great reform. "This is not a party
question," said he, "for men of all parties are united upon it. It is
a pantry question,--a question between the working millions and the
aristocracy." They formed the "Anti-Corn-Law League," which, aided by
the Irish famine,--for it was hunger that at last ate through those
stone walls of protection,--secured the repeal of the law in 1846. Mr.
Bright said: "There is not in Great Britain a poor man's home that has
not a bigger, better, and cheaper loaf through Richard Cobden's labors."
John Bright himself was the son of a poor working man, and in those
days the doors of the higher schools were closed to such as he; but the
great Quaker heart of this resolute youth was touched with pity for the
millions of England's and Ireland's poor, starving under the Corn-Laws.
During the frightful famine, which cut off two millions of Ireland's
population in a year, John Bright was more powerful than all the
nobility of England. The whole aristocracy trembled before his
invincible logic, his mighty eloquence, and his commanding character.
Except possibly Cobden, no other man did so much to give the laborer a
shorter day, a cheaper loaf, an added shilling.
Over a stable in London lived a poor boy named Michael Faraday, who
carried newspapers about the streets to loan to customers for a penny
apiece. He was apprenticed for seven years to a bookbinder and
bookseller. When binding the Encyclopaedia Britannica, his eyes caught
the article on electricity, and he could not rest until he had read it.
He procured a glass vial, an old pan, and a few simple articles, and
began to experiment. A customer became interested in the boy, and took
him to hear Sir Humphry Davy lecture on chemistry. He summoned courage
to write the great scientist and sent the notes he had taken of his
lecture. One night, not long after, just as Michael was about to
retire, Sir Humphry Davy's carriage stopped at his humble lodging, and
a servant handed him a written invitation to call upon the great
lecturer the next morning. Michael could scarcely trust his eyes as he
read the note. In the morning he called as requested, and was engaged
to clean instruments and take them to and from the lecture-room. He
watched eagerly every movement of Davy, as with a glass mask over his
face, he developed his safety-lamp and experimented with dangerous
explosives. Michael studied and experimented, too, and it was not long
before this poor boy with no chance was invited to lecture before the
great philosophical society.
He was appointed professor at the Royal Academy of Woolwich, and became
the wonder of the age in science. Tyndall said of him, "He is the
greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." When Sir
Humphry Davy was asked what was his greatest discovery, he replied
"Michael Faraday."
"What has been done can be done again," said the boy with no chance,
Disraeli, who become Lord Beaconsfield, England's great Prime Minister.
"I am not a slave, I am not a captive, and by energy I can overcome
greater obstacles." Jewish blood flowed in his veins and everything
seemed against him, but he remembered the example of Joseph, who became
Prime Minister of Egypt four thousand years before, and that of Daniel,
who was Prime Minister to the greatest despot of the world five
centuries before the birth of Christ. He pushed his way up through the
lower classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper
classes, until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of
political and social power. Rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down
in the House of Commons, he simply said, "The time will come when you
will hear me." The time did come, and the boy with no chance but a
determined will swayed the scepter of England for a quarter of a
century.
Henry Clay, the "mill-boy of the slashes," was one of seven children of
a widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, where
he was drilled only in the "three R's." But he used every spare moment
to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among
self-made men. The boy who had learned to speak in a barn, with only a
cow and a horse for an audience, became one of the greatest of American
orators and statesmen.
See Kepler struggling with poverty and hardship, his books burned in
public by order of the state, his library locked up by the Jesuits, and
himself exiled by public clamor. For seventeen years he works calmly
upon the demonstration of the great principles that planets revolve in
ellipses, with the sun at one focus; that a line connecting the center
of the earth with the center of the sun passes over equal spaces in
equal times, and that the squares of the times of revolution of the
planets above the sun are proportioned to the cubes by their mean
distances from the sun. This boy with no chance became one of the
world's greatest astronomers.
"When I found that I was black," said Alexandre Dumas, "I resolved to
live as if I were white, and so force men to look below my skin."
How slender seemed the chance of James Sharples, the celebrated
blacksmith artist of England! He was very poor, but he often rose at
three o'clock to copy books he could not buy. He would walk eighteen
miles to Manchester and back after a hard day's work to buy a
shilling's worth of artist's materials. He would ask for the heaviest
work in the blacksmith shop, because it took a longer time to heat at
the forge, and he could thus have many spare minutes to study the
precious book, which he propped up against the chimney. He was a great
miser of spare moments and used every one as though he might never see
another. He devoted his leisure hours for five years to that wonderful
production, "The Forge," copies of which are to be seen in many a home.
What chance had Galileo to win renown in physics or astronomy, when his
parents compelled him to go to a medical school? Yet while Venice
slept, he stood in the tower of St. Mark's Cathedral and discovered the
satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, through a telescope made
with his own hands. When compelled on bended knee to publicly renounce
his heretical doctrine that the earth moves around the sun, all the
terrors of the Inquisition could not keep this feeble man of threescore
years and ten from muttering to himself, "Yet it does move." When
thrown into prison, so great was his eagerness for scientific research
that he proved by a straws in his cell that a hollow tube is relatively
much stronger than a solid rod of the same size. Even when totally
blind, he kept constantly at work.
Imagine the surprise of the Royal Society of England when the poor
unknown Herschel sent in the report of his discovery of the star
Georgium Sidus, its orbit and rate of motion; and of the rings and
satellites of Saturn. The boy with no chance, who had played the oboe
for his meals, had with his own hands made the telescope through which
he discovered facts unknown to the best-equipped astronomers of his
day. He had ground two hundred specula before he could get one perfect.
George Stephenson was one of eight children whose parents were so poor
that all lived in a single room. George had to watch cows for a
neighbor, but he managed to get time to make engines of clay, with
hemlock sticks for pipes. At seventeen he had charge of an engine,
with his father for fireman. He could neither read nor write, but the
engine was his teacher, and he a faithful student. While the other
hands were playing games or loafing in liquor shops during the
holidays, George was taking his machine to pieces, cleaning it,
studying it, and making experiments in engines. When he had become
famous as a great inventor of improvements in engines, those who had
loafed and played called him lucky.
Without a charm of face or figure, Charlotte Cushman resolved to place
herself in the front rank as an actress, even in such characters as
Rosalind and Queen Katherine. The star actress was unable to perform,
and Miss Cushman, her understudy, took her place. That night she held
her audience with such grasp of intellect and iron will that it forgot
the absence of mere dimpled feminine grace. Although poor, friendless,
and unknown before, when the curtain fell upon her first performance at
the London theater, her reputation was made. In after years, when
physicians told her she had a terrible, incurable disease, she flinched
not a particle, but quietly said, "I have learned to live with my
trouble."
A poor colored woman in a log-cabin in the South had three boys, but
could afford only one pair of trousers for the three. She was so
anxious to give them an education that she sent them to school by
turns. The teacher, a Northern girl, noticed that each boy came to
school only one day out of three, and that all wore the same
pantaloons. The poor mother educated her boys as best she could. One
became a professor in a Southern college, another a physician, and the
third a clergyman. What a lesson for boys who plead "no chance" as an
excuse for wasted lives!
Sam Cunard, the whittling Scotch lad of Glasgow, wrought many odd
inventions with brain and jack-knife, but they brought neither honor
nor profit until he was consulted by Burns & McIvor, who wished to
increase their facilities for carrying foreign mails. The model of a
steamship which Sam whittled out for them was carefully copied for the
first vessel of the great Cunard Line, and became the standard type for
all the magnificent ships since constructed by the firm.
The new Testament and the speller were Cornelius Vanderbilt's only
books at school, but he learned to read, write, and cipher a little.
He wished to buy a boat, but had no money. To discourage him from
following the sea, his mother told him if he would plow, harrow, and
plant with corn, before the twenty-seventh day of the month, ten acres
of rough, hard, stony land, the worst on his father's farm, she would
lend him the amount he wished. Before the appointed time the work was
done, and well done. On his seventeenth birthday he bought the boat,
but on his way home it struck a sunken wreck and sank just as he
reached shallow water.
But Cornelius Vanderbilt was not the boy to give up. He at once began
again, and in three years saved three thousand dollars. He often
worked all night, and soon had far the largest patronage of any boatman
in the harbor. During the War of 1812 he was awarded the Government
contract to carry provisions to the military stations near the
metropolis. He fulfilled his contract by night so that he might run
his ferry-boat between New York and Brooklyn by day.
The boy who gave his parents all his day earnings and had half of what
he got at night, was worth thirty thousand dollars at thirty-five, and
when he died, at an advanced age, he left to his thirteen children one
of the largest fortunes in America.
Lord Eldon might well have pleaded "no chance" when a boy, for he was
too poor to go to school or even to buy books. But no; he had grit and
determination, and was bound to make his way in the world. He rose at
four o'clock in the morning and copied law books which he borrowed, the
voluminous "Coke upon Littleton" among others. He was so eager to
study that sometimes he would keep it up until his brain refused to
work, when he would tie a wet towel about his head to enable him to
keep awake and to study. His first year's practice brought him but
nine shillings, yet he was bound not to give up.
When Eldon was leaving the chamber the Solicitor tapped him on the
shoulder and said, "Young man, your bread and butter's cut for life."
The boy with "no chance" became Lord Chancellor of England, and one of
the greatest lawyers of his age.
Stephen Girard had "no chance." He left his home in France when ten
years old, and came to America as a cabin boy. His great ambition was
to get on and succeed at any cost. There was no work, however hard and
disagreeable, that he would not undertake. Midas like, he turned to
gold everything he touched, and became one of the wealthiest merchants
of Philadelphia. His abnormal love of money cannot be commended, but
his thoroughness in all he did, his public spirit at times of national
need, and willingness to risk his life to save strangers sick with the
deadly yellow fever, are traits of character well worthy of imitation.
John Wanamaker walked four miles to Philadelphia every day, and worked
in a bookstore for one dollar and twenty-five cents a week. He next
worked in a clothing store at an advance of twenty-five cents a week.
From this he went up and up until he became one of the greatest living
merchants. He was appointed Postmaster-General by President Harrison
in 1889, and in that capacity showed great executive ability.
Prejudice against her race and sex did not deter the colored girl,
Edmonia Lewis, from struggling upward to honor and fame as a sculptor.
Fred Douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not
own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his
master's debts. To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy,
he had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if
he would become President of the United States. He saw his mother but
two or three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve
miles to be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at
dawn. He had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules
of the plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. But
somehow, unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from
scraps of paper and patent medicine almanacs, and then no limits could
be placed to his career. He put to shame thousands of white boys. He
fled from slavery at twenty-one, went North, and worked as a stevedore
in New York and New Bedford. At Nantucket he was given an opportunity
to speak at an anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an
impression that he was made agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of
Massachusetts. While traveling from place to place to lecture, he
would study with all his might. He was sent to Europe to lecture, and
won the friendship of several Englishmen, who gave him $750, with which
he purchased his freedom. He edited a paper in Rochester, N. Y., and
afterwards conducted the "New Era" in Washington. For several years he
was Marshal of the District of Columbia.
Henry E. Dixey, the well-known actor, began his career upon the stage
in the humble part of the hind legs of a cow.
P. T. Barnum rode a horse for ten cents a day.
It was a boy born in a log-cabin, without schooling, or books, or
teacher, or ordinary opportunities, who won the admiration of mankind
by his homely practical wisdom while President during our Civil War,
and who emancipated four million slaves.
Behold this long, lank, awkward youth, felling trees on the little
claim, building his homely log-cabin, without floor or windows,
teaching himself arithmetic and grammar in the evening by the light of
the fireplace. In his eagerness to know the contents of Blackstone's
Commentaries, he walked forty-four miles to procure the precious
volumes, and read one hundred pages while returning. Abraham Lincoln
inherited no opportunities, and acquired nothing by luck. His good
fortune consisted simply of untiring perseverance and a right heart.
In another log-cabin, in the backwoods of Ohio, a poor widow is holding
a boy eighteen months old, and wondering if she will be able to keep
the wolf from her little ones. The boy grows, and in a few years we
find him chopping wood and tilling the little clearing in the forest,
to help his mother. Every spare hour is spent in studying the books he
has borrowed, but cannot buy. At sixteen he gladly accepts a chance to
drive mules on a canal towpath. Soon he applies for a chance to sweep
floors and ring the bell of an academy, to pay his way while studying
there.
His first term at Geauga Seminary cost him but seventeen dollars. When
he returned the next term he had but a sixpence in his pocket, and this
he put into the contribution box at church the next day. He engaged
board, washing, fuel, and light of a carpenter at one dollar and six
cents a week, with the privilege of working at night and on Saturdays
all the time he could spare. He had arrived on a Saturday and planed
fifty-one boards that day, for which he received one dollar and two
cents. When the term closed, he had paid all expenses and had three
dollars over. The following winter he taught school at twelve dollars
a month and "board around." In the spring he had forty-eight dollars,
and when he returned to school he boarded himself at an expense of
thirty-one cents a week.
Soon we find him in Williams College, where in two years he is
graduated with honors. He reaches the State Senate at twenty-six and
Congress at thirty-three. Twenty-seven years from the time he applied
for a chance to ring the bell at Hiram College, James A. Garfield
became President of the United States. The inspiration of such an
example is worth more to the young men of America than all the wealth
of the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and the Goulds.
Among the world's greatest heroes and benefactors are many others whose
cradles were rocked by want in lowly cottages, and who buffeted the
billows of fate without dependence, save upon the mercy of God and
their own energies.
"The little gray cabin appears to be the birthplace of all your great
men," said an English author who had been looking over a book of
biographies of eminent Americans.
With five chances on each hand and one unwavering aim, no boy, however
poor, need despair. There is bread and success for every youth under
the American flag who has energy and ability to seize his opportunity.
It matters not whether the boy is born in a log-cabin or in a mansion;
if he is dominated by a resolute purpose and upholds himself, neither
men nor demons can keep him down.