SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES
Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having which
come as the result of hard fighting.--BEECHER.
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise
above them.--WASHINGTON IRVING.
"I have here three teams that I want to get over to Staten Island,"
said a boy of twelve one day in 1806 to the innkeeper at South Amboy,
N. J. "If you will put us across, I'll leave with you one of my horses
in pawn, and if I don't send you back six dollars within forty-eight
hours you may keep the horse."
The innkeeper asked the reason for this novel proposition, and learned
that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel
stranded near Sandy Hook, and take it to New York in lighters. The boy
had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry
the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. The work accomplished,
he had started with only six dollars to travel a long distance home
over the Jersey sands, and reached South Amboy penniless. "I'll do
it," said the innkeeper, as he looked into the bright honest eyes of
the boy. The horse was soon redeemed.
"My son," said this same boy's mother, on the first of May, 1810, when
he asked her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat, having
imbibed a strong liking for the sea; "on the twenty-seventh of this
month you will be sixteen years old. If, by that time, you will plow,
harrow, and plant with corn the eight-acre lot, I will advance you the
money." The field was rough and stony, but the work was done in time,
and well done. From this small beginning Cornelius Vanderbilt laid the
foundation of a colossal fortune.
In 1818 Vanderbilt owned two or three of the finest coasting schooners
in New York harbor, and had a capital of nine thousand dollars. Seeing
that steam-vessels would soon win supremacy over those carrying sails
only, he gave up his fine business to become the captain of a steamboat
at one thousand dollars a year. For twelve years he ran between New
York City and New Brunswick, N. J. In 1829 he began business as a
steamboat owner, in the face of opposition so bitter that he lost his
last dollar. But the tide turned, and he prospered so rapidly that he
at length owned over a hundred steamboats. He early identified himself
with the growing railroad interests of the country, and became the
richest man of his day in America.
Barnum began the race of business life barefoot, for at the age of
fifteen he was obliged to buy on credit the shoes he wore at his
father's funeral. He was a remarkable example of success under
difficulties. There was no keeping him down; no opposition daunted him.
"Eloquence must have been born with you," said a friend to J. P.
Curran. "Indeed, my dear sir, it was not," replied the orator; "it was
born some three and twenty years and some months after me." Speaking
of his first attempt at a debating club, he said: "I stood up,
trembling through every fiber; but remembering that in this I was but
imitating Tully, I took courage and had actually proceeded almost as
far as 'Mr. Chairman,' when, to my astonishment and terror, I perceived
that every eye was turned on me. There were only six or seven present,
and the room could not have contained as many more; yet was it, to my
panic-stricken imagination, as if I were the central object in nature,
and assembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expectation.
I became dismayed and dumb. My friends cried, 'Hear him!' but there
was nothing to hear." He was nicknamed "Orator Mum," and well did he
deserve the title until he ventured to stare in astonishment at a
speaker who was "culminating chronology by the most preposterous
anachronisms." "I doubt not," said the annoyed speaker, "that 'Orator
Mum' possesses wonderful talents for eloquence, but I would recommend
him to show it in future by some more popular method than his silence."
Stung by the taunt, Curran rose and gave the man a "piece of his mind,"
speaking fluently in his anger. Encouraged by this success, he took
great pains to become a good speaker. He corrected his habit of
stuttering by reading favorite passages aloud every day slowly and
distinctly, and spoke at every opportunity.
Bunyan wrote his "Pilgrim's Progress" on the untwisted papers which
were used to cork the bottles of milk brought for his meals. Gifford
wrote his first copy of a mathematical work, when a cobbler's
apprentice, on small scraps of leather; and Rittenhouse, the
astronomer, first calculated eclipses on his plow handle.
David Livingstone at ten years of age was put into a cotton factory
near Glasgow. Out of his first week's wages he bought a Latin grammar,
and studied in the night schools for years. He would sit up and study
till midnight unless his mother drove him to bed, notwithstanding he
had to be at the factory at six in the morning. He mastered Vergil and
Horace in this way, and read extensively, besides studying botany. So
eager for knowledge was he, that he would place his book before him on
the spinning-jenny, and amid the deafening roar of machinery would pore
over its pages.
"All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and
wonder," says Johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of
perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that
distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the
effect of a single stroke of the pickax, or of one impression of the
spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed
by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations,
incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and
mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of
human beings."
Great men never wait for opportunities; they make them. Nor do they
wait for facilities or favoring circumstances; they seize upon whatever
is at hand, work out their problem, and master the situation. A young
man determined and willing will find a way or make one. A Franklin
does not require elaborate apparatus; he can bring electricity from the
clouds with a common kite.
Great men have found no royal road to their triumph. It is always the
old route, by way of industry and perseverance.
The farmer boy, Elihu B. Washburn, taught school at ten dollars per
month, and early learned the lesson that it takes one hundred cents to
make a dollar. In after years he fought "steals" in Congress, until he
was called the "Watchdog of the Treasury."
When Elias Howe, harassed by want and woe, was in London completing his
first sewing-machine, he had frequently to borrow money to live on. He
bought beans and cooked them himself. He also borrowed money to send
his wife back to America. He sold his first machine for five pounds,
although it was worth fifty, and then he pawned his letters patent to
pay his expenses home.
The boy Arkwright begins barbering in a cellar, but dies worth a
million and a half. The world treated his novelties just as it treats
everybody's novelties--made infinite objection, mustered all the
impediments, but he snapped his fingers at their objections, and lived
to become honored and wealthy.
There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its
way to public recognition in the face of detraction, calumny, and
persecution.
Nearly every great discovery or invention that has blessed mankind has
had to fight its way to recognition, even against the opposition of the
most progressive men.
William H. Prescott was a remarkable example of what a boy with "no
chance" can do. While at college, he lost one eye by a hard piece of
bread thrown during a "biscuit battle," and the other eye became almost
useless. But the boy would not lead a useless life. He set his heart
upon being a historian, and turned all his energies in that direction.
By the aid of others' eyes, he spent ten years studying before he even
decided upon a particular theme for his first book. Then he spent ten
years more, poring over old archives and manuscripts, before he
published his "Ferdinand and Isabella." What a lesson in his life for
young men! What a rebuke to those who have thrown away their
opportunities and wasted their lives!
"Galileo with an opera-glass," said Emerson, "discovered a more
splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since with the
great telescopes. Columbus found the new world in an undecked boat."
Surroundings which men call unfavorable can not prevent the unfolding
of your powers. From among the rock-ribbed hills of New Hampshire
sprang the greatest of American orators and statesmen, Daniel Webster.
From the crowded ranks of toil, and homes to which luxury is a
stranger, have often come the leaders and benefactors of our race.
Where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in Abraham
Lincoln, whose life, career, and death might be chanted by a Greek
chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial
theme of modern times? Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; of
what real parentage we know not; reared in penury, squalor, with no
gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood vexed by weird
dreams and visions; with scarcely a natural grace; singularly awkward,
ungainly even among the uncouth about him: it was reserved for this
remarkable character, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity,
raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the
destiny of a nation. The great leaders of his party were made to stand
aside; the most experienced and accomplished men of the day, men like
Seward, and Chase, and Sumner, statesmen famous and trained, were sent
to the rear, while this strange figure was brought by unseen hands to
the front, and given the reins of power.
_There is no open door to the temple of success_. Everyone who enters
makes his own door, which closes behind him to all others, not even
permitting his own children to pass.
Not in the brilliant salon, not in the tapestried library, not in ease
and competence, is genius born and nurtured; but often in adversity and
destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a straitened household, in
bare and fireless garrets. Amid scenes unpropitious, repulsive,
wretched, have men labored, studied, and trained themselves, until they
have at last emanated from the gloom of that obscurity the shining
lights of their times; have become the companions of kings, the guides
and teachers of their kind, and exercised an influence upon the thought
of the world amounting to a species of intellectual legislation.
"What does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?" Schiller
produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering
almost amounting to torture. Handel was never greater than when,
warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress
and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made
his name immortal in music. Mozart composed his great operas, and last
of all his "Requiem," when oppressed by debt and struggling with a
fatal disease. Beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy
sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness.
Perhaps no one ever battled harder to overcome obstacles which would
have disheartened most men than Demosthenes. He had such a weak voice,
and such an impediment in his speech, and was so short of breath, that
he could scarcely get through a single sentence without stopping to
rest. All his first attempts were nearly drowned by the hisses, jeers,
and scoffs of his audiences. His first effort that met with success
was against his guardian, who had defrauded him, and whom he compelled
to refund a part of his fortune. He was so discouraged by his defeats
that he determined to give up forever all attempts at oratory. One of
his auditors, however, believed the young man had something in him, and
encouraged him to persevere. He accordingly appeared again in public,
but was hissed down as before. As he withdrew, hanging his head in
great confusion, a noted actor, Satyrus, encouraged him still further
to try to overcome his impediment. He stammered so much that he could
not pronounce some of the letters at all, and his breath would give out
before he could get through a sentence. Finally, he determined to be
an orator at any cost. He went to the seashore and practised amid the
roar of the breakers with small pebbles in his mouth, in order to
overcome his stammering, and at the same time accustom himself to the
hisses and tumults of his audience. He overcame his short breath by
practising while running up steep and difficult places on the shore.
His awkward gestures were also corrected by long and determined drill
before a mirror.
Columbus was dismissed as a fool from court after court, but he pushed
his suit against an incredulous and ridiculing world. Rebuffed by
kings, scorned by queens, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the
overmastering purpose which dominated his soul. The words "New World"
were graven upon his heart; and reputation, ease, pleasure, position,
life itself if need be, must be sacrificed. Threats, ridicule,
ostracism, storms, leaky vessels, mutiny of sailors, could not shake
his mighty purpose.
You can not keep a determined man from success. Place stumbling-blocks
in his way and he takes them for stepping-stones, and on them will
climb to greatness. Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his
poverty to urge him on. Cripple him, and he writes the Waverley Novels.
All that is great and noble and true in the history of the world is the
result of infinite painstaking, perpetual plodding, of common every-day
industry.
Roger Bacon, one of the profoundest thinkers the world has produced,
was terribly persecuted for his studies in natural philosophy, yet he
persevered and won success. He was accused of dealing in magic, his
books were burned in public, and he was kept in prison for ten years.
Even our own revered Washington was mobbed in the streets because he
would not pander to the clamor of the people and reject the treaty
which Mr. Jay had arranged with Great Britain. But he remained firm,
and the people adopted his opinion. The Duke of Wellington was mobbed
in the streets of London and his windows were broken while his wife lay
dead in the house; but the "Iron Duke" never faltered in his course, or
swerved a hair's breadth from his purpose.
William Phipps, when a young man, heard some sailors on the street, in
Boston, talking about a Spanish ship wrecked off the Bahama Islands,
which was supposed to have money on board. Young Phipps determined to
find it. He set out at once, and, after many hardships, discovered the
lost treasure. He then heard of another ship, which had been wrecked
off Port De La Plata many years before. He set sail for England and
importuned Charles II for aid. To his delight the king fitted up the
ship _Rose Algier_ for him. He searched and searched for a long time
in vain, and at length had to return to England to repair his vessel.
James II was then on the throne, and Phipps had to wait for four years
before he could raise money to return. His crew mutinied and
threatened to throw him overboard, but he turned the ship's guns on
them. One day an Indian diver went down for a curious sea plant and
saw several cannon lying on the bottom. They proved to belong to the
wreck. He had nothing but dim traditions to guide him, but he returned
to England with $1,500,000.
A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to win success in spite of
every barrier, is the price of all great achievements.
The man who has not fought his way up to his own loaf, and does not
bear the scar of desperate conflict, does not know the highest meaning
of success.
The money acquired by those who have thus struggled upward to success
is not their only, or indeed their chief reward. When, after years of
toil, of opposition, of ridicule, of repeated failure, Cyrus W. Field
placed his hand upon the telegraph instrument ticking a message under
the sea, think you that the electric thrill passed no further than the
tips of his fingers? When Thomas A. Edison demonstrated that the
electric light had at last been developed into a commercial success, do
you suppose those bright rays failed to illuminate the inmost recesses
of his soul?