SELF-HELP
I learned that no man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to
help any other man.--PESTALOZZI.
What I am I have made myself.--HUMPHRY DAVY.
Be sure, my son, and remember that the best men always make
themselves.--PATRICK HENRY.
Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
BYRON.
Who waits to have his task marked out,
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.
LOWELL.
"Colonel Crockett makes room for himself!" exclaimed a backwoods
congressman in answer to the exclamation of the White House usher to
"Make room for Colonel Crockett!" This remarkable man was not afraid
to oppose the head of a great nation. He preferred being right to
being president. Though rough, uncultured, and uncouth, Crockett was a
man of great courage and determination.
"Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify," said James A. Garfield;
"but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young
man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for
himself. In all my acquaintance I have never known a man to be drowned
who was worth the saving."
Garfield was the youngest member of the House of Representatives when
he entered, but he had not been in his seat sixty days before his
ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front
with the confidence of one who belonged there. He succeeded because
all the world in concert could not have kept him in the background, and
because when once in the front he played his part with an intrepidity
and a commanding ease that were but the outward evidences of the
immense reserves of energy on which it was in his power to draw.
"Take the place and attitude which belong to you," says Emerson, "and
all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man with
profound unconcern to set his own rate."
"A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources
virtually has them," says Livy.
Richard Arkwright, the thirteenth child, in a hovel, with no education,
no chance, gave his spinning model to the world, and put a scepter in
England's right hand such as the queen never wielded.
Solario, a wandering gypsy tinker, fell deeply in love with the
daughter of the painter Coll' Antonio del Fiore, but was told that no
one but a painter as good as the father should wed the maiden. "Will
you give me ten years to learn to paint, and so entitle myself to the
hand of your daughter?" Consent was given, Coll' Antonio thinking that
he would never be troubled further by the gypsy.
About the time that the ten years were to end the king's sister showed
Coll' Antonio a Madonna and Child, which the painter extolled in terms
of the highest praise. Judge of his surprise on learning that Solario
was the artist. His great determination gained him his bride.
Louis Philippe said he was the only sovereign in Europe fit to govern,
for he could black his own boots.
When asked to name his family coat-of-arms, a self-made President of
the United States replied, "A pair of shirtsleeves."
It is not the men who have inherited most, except it be in nobility of
soul and purpose, who have risen highest; but rather the men with no
"start" who have won fortunes, and have made adverse circumstances a
spur to goad them up the steep mount, where
"Fame's proud temple shines afar."
To such men, every possible goal is accessible, and honest ambition has
no height that genius or talent may tread, which has not felt the
impress of their feet.
You may leave your millions to your son, but have you really given him
anything? You can not transfer the discipline, the experience, the
power, which the acquisition has given you; you can not transfer the
delight of achieving, the joy felt only in growth, the pride of
acquisition, the character which trained habits of accuracy, method,
promptness, patience, dispatch, honesty of dealing, politeness of
manner have developed. You cannot transfer the skill, sagacity,
prudence, foresight, which lie concealed in your wealth. It meant a
great deal for you, but means nothing to your heir. In climbing to
your fortune, you developed the muscle, stamina, and strength which
enabled you to maintain your lofty position, to keep your millions
intact. You had the power which comes only from experience, and which
alone enables you to stand firm on your dizzy height. Your fortune was
experience to you, joy, growth, discipline, and character; to him it
will be a temptation, an anxiety, which will probably dwarf him. It
was wings to you, it will be a dead weight to him; to you it was
education and expansion of your highest powers; to him it may mean
inaction, lethargy, indolence, weakness, ignorance. You have taken the
priceless spur--necessity--away from him, the spur which has goaded man
to nearly all the great achievements in the history of the world.
You thought it a kindness to deprive yourself in order that your son
might begin where you left off. You thought to spare him the drudgery,
the hardships, the deprivations, the lack of opportunities, the meager
education, which you had on the old farm. But you have put a crutch
into his hand instead of a staff; you have taken away from him the
incentive to self-development, to self-elevation, to self-discipline
and self-help, without which no real success, no real happiness, no
great character is ever possible. His enthusiasm will evaporate, his
energy will be dissipated, his ambition, not being stimulated by the
struggle for self-elevation, will gradually die away. If you do
everything for your son and fight his battles for him, you will have a
weakling on your hands at twenty-one.
"My life is a wreck," said the dying Cyrus W. Field, "my fortune gone,
my home dishonored. Oh, I was so unkind to Edward when I thought I was
being kind. If I had only had firmness enough to compel my boys to
earn their living, then they would have known the meaning of money."
His table was covered with medals and certificates of honor from many
nations, in recognition of his great work for civilization in mooring
two continents side by side in thought, of the fame he had won and
could never lose. But grief shook the sands of life as he thought only
of the son who had brought disgrace upon a name before unsullied; the
wounds were sharper than those of a serpent's tooth.
During the great financial crisis of 1857 Maria Mitchell, who was
visiting England, asked an English lady what became of daughters when
no property was left them. "They live on their brothers," was the
reply. "But what becomes of the American daughters," asked the English
lady, "when there is no money left?" "They earn it," was Miss
Mitchell's reply.
Men who have been bolstered up all their lives are seldom good for
anything in a crisis. When misfortune comes, they look around for
somebody to lean upon. It the prop is not there, down they go. Once
down, they are as helpless as capsized turtles, or unhorsed men in
armor. Many a frontier boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations
simply because all props were early knocked out from under him and he
was obliged to stand upon his own feet.
"A man's best friends are his ten fingers," said Robert Collyer, who
brought his wife to America in the steerage.
There is no manhood mill which takes in boys and turns out men. What
you call "no chance" may be your only chance. Don't wait for your
place to be made for you; make it yourself. Don't wait for somebody to
give you a lift; lift yourself. Henry Ward Beecher did not wait for a
call to a big church with a large salary. He accepted the first
pastorate offered him, in a little town near Cincinnati. He became
literally the light of the church, for he trimmed the lamps, kindled
the fires, swept the rooms, and rang the bell. His salary was only
about $200 a year,--but he knew that a fine church and great salary can
not make a great man. It was work and opportunity that he wanted. He
felt that if there were anything in him work would bring it out.
When Beethoven was examining the work of Moscheles, he found written at
the end, "Finis, with God's help." He wrote under it, "Man, help
yourself."
A young man stood listlessly watching some anglers on a bridge. He was
poor and dejected. At length, approaching a basket filled with fish,
he sighed, "If now I had these I would be happy. I could sell them and
buy food and lodgings." "I will give you just as many and just as
good," said the owner, who chanced to overhear his words, "if you will
do me a trifling favor." "And what is that?" asked the other. "Only
to tend this line till I come back; I wish to go on a short errand."
The proposal was gladly accepted. The old man was gone so long that
the young man began to get impatient. Meanwhile the fish snapped
greedily at the hook, and he lost all his depression in the excitement
of pulling them in. When the owner returned he had caught a large
number. Counting out from them as many as were in the basket, and
presenting them to the youth, the old fisherman said, "I fulfil my
promise from the fish you have caught, to teach you whenever you see
others earning what you need to waste no time in foolish wishing, but
cast a line for yourself."
A white squall caught a party of tourists on a lake in Scotland, and
threatened to capsize the boat. When it seemed that the crisis had
really come, the largest and strongest man in the party, in a state of
intense fear, said, "Let us pray." "No, no, my man," shouted the bluff
old boatman; "_let the little man pray. You take an oar._"
The grandest fortunes ever accumulated or possessed on earth were and
are the fruit of endeavor that had no capital to begin with save
energy, intellect, and the will. From Croesus down to Rockefeller the
story is the same, not only in the getting of wealth, but also in the
acquirement of eminence; those men have won most who relied most upon
themselves.
"The male inhabitants in the Township of Loaferdom, in the County of
Hatework," says a printer's squib, "found themselves laboring under
great inconvenience for want of an easily traveled road between Poverty
and Independence. They therefore petitioned the Powers that be to levy
a tax upon the property of the entire county for the purpose of laying
out a macadamized highway, broad and smooth, and all the way down hill
to the latter place."
"Every one is the artificer of his own fortune," says Sallust.
Man is not merely the architect of his own fate, but he must lay the
bricks himself. Bayard Taylor, at twenty-three, wrote: "I will become
the sculptor of my own mind's statue." His biography shows how often
the chisel and hammer were in his hands to shape himself into his ideal.
Labor is the only legal tender in the world to true success. The gods
sell everything for that, nothing without it. You will never find
success "marked down." The door to the temple of success is never left
open. Every one who enters makes his own door, which closes behind him
to all others.
Circumstances have rarely favored great men. They have fought their
way to triumph over the road of difficulty and through all sorts of
opposition. A lowly beginning and a humble origin are no bar to a
great career. The farmer's boys fill many of the greatest places in
legislatures, in business, at the bar, in pulpits, in Congress, to-day.
Boys of lowly origin have made many of the greatest discoveries, are
presidents of our banks, of our colleges, of our universities. Our
poor boys and girls have written many of our greatest books, and have
filled the highest places as teachers and journalists. Ask almost any
great man in our large cities where he was born, and he will tell you
it was on a farm or in a small country village. Nearly all of the
great capitalists of the city came from the country.
Isaac Rich, the founder of Boston University, left Cape Cod for Boston
to make his way with a capital of only four dollars. Like Horace
Greeley, he could find no opening for a boy; but what of that? He made
an opening. He found a board, and made it into an oyster stand on the
street corner. He borrowed a wheelbarrow, and went three miles to an
oyster smack, bought three bushels of oysters, and wheeled them to his
stand. Soon his little savings amounted to $130, and then he bought a
horse and cart.
Self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world.
How many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because
they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good
luck to give them a lift! But success is the child of drudgery and
perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is
yours. Where is the boy to-day who has less chance to rise in the
world than Elihu Burritt, apprenticed to a blacksmith, in whose shop he
had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light?
Yet, he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals,
carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and
studying at night and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in
the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. While the rich
boy and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes
open, young Burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it. At
thirty years of age he was master of every important language in Europe
and was studying those of Asia. What chance had such a boy for
distinction?
Probably not a single youth will read this book who has not a better
opportunity for success. Yet he had a thirst for knowledge and a
desire for self-improvement, which overcame every obstacle in his
pathway.
If the youth of America who are struggling against cruel circumstances
to do something and be somebody in the world could only understand that
ninety per cent. of what is called genius is merely the result of
persistent, determined industry, in most cases of down-right hard work,
that it is the slavery to a single idea which has given to many a
mediocre talent the reputation of being a genius, they would be
inspired with new hope. It is interesting to note that the men who
talk most about genius are the men who like to work the least. The
lazier the man, the more he will have to say about great things being
done by genius.
The greatest geniuses have been the greatest workers. Sheridan was
considered a genius, but it was found that the "brilliants" and
"off-hand sayings" with which he used to dazzle the House of Commons
were elaborated, polished and repolished, and put down in his
memorandum book ready for any emergency.
Genius has been well defined as the infinite capacity for taking pains.
If men who have done great things could only reveal to the struggling
youth of to-day how much of their reputations was due to downright hard
digging and plodding, what an uplift of inspiration and encouragement
they would give! How often I have wished that the discouraged,
struggling youth could know of the heartaches, the headaches, the
nerve-aches, the disheartening trials, the discouraged hours, the fears
and despair involved in works which have gained the admiration of the
world, but which have taxed the utmost powers of their authors. You
can read in a few minutes or a few hours a poem or a book with only
pleasure and delight, but the days and months of weary plodding over
details and dreary drudgery often required to produce it would stagger
belief.
The greatest works in literature have been elaborated and elaborated,
line by line, paragraph by paragraph, often rewritten a dozen times.
The drudgery which literary men have put into the productions which
have stood the test of time is almost incredible. Lucretius worked
nearly a lifetime on one poem. It completely absorbed his life. It is
said that Bryant rewrote "Thanatopsis" a hundred times, and even then
was not satisfied with it. John Foster would sometimes linger a week
over a single sentence. He would hack, split, prune, pull up by the
roots, or practise any other severity on whatever he wrote, till it
gained his consent to exist. Chalmers was once asked what Foster was
about in London. "Hard at it," he replied, "at the rate of a line a
week."
Even Lord Bacon, one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived, at his
death left large numbers of manuscripts filled with "sudden thoughts
set down for use." Hume toiled thirteen hours a day on his "History of
England." Lord Eldon astonished the world with his great legal
learning, but when he was a student too poor to buy books, he had
actually borrowed and copied many hundreds of pages of large law books.
Matthew Hale for years studied law sixteen hours a day. Speaking of
Fox, some one declared that he wrote "drop by drop." Rousseau says of
the labor involved in his smooth and lively style: "My manuscripts,
blotted, scratched, interlined, and scarcely legible, attest the
trouble they cost me. There is not one of them which I have not been
obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to press. . . .
Some of my periods I have turned or returned in my head for five or six
nights before they were fit to be put to paper."
Beethoven probably surpassed all other musicians in his painstaking
fidelity and persistent application. There is scarcely a bar in his
music that was not written and rewritten at least a dozen times. His
favorite maxim was, "The barriers are not yet erected which can say to
aspiring talent and industry 'thus far and no further.'" Gibbon wrote
his autobiography nine times, and was in his study every morning,
summer and winter, at six o'clock; and yet youth who waste their
evenings wonder at the genius which can produce "The Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire," upon which Gibbon worked twenty years. Even
Plato, one of the greatest writers that ever lived, wrote the first
sentence in his "Republic" nine different ways before he was satisfied
with it. Burke wrote the conclusion of his speech at the trial of
Hastings sixteen times, and Butler his famous "Analogy" twenty times.
It took Vergil seven years to write his Georgics, and twelve years to
write the Aeneid. He was so displeased with the latter that he
attempted to rise from his deathbed to commit it to the flames.
Haydn was very poor; his father was a coachman and he, friendless and
lonely, married a servant girl. He was sent away from home to act as
errand boy for a music teacher. He absorbed a great deal of
information, but he had a hard life of persecution until he became a
barber in Vienna. Here he blacked boots for an influential man, who
became a friend to him. In 1798 this poor boy's oratorio, "The
Creation," came upon the musical world like the rising of a new sun
which never set. He was courted by princes and dined with kings and
queens; his reputation was made; there was no more barbering, no more
poverty. But of his eight hundred compositions, "The Creation"
eclipsed them all. He died while Napoleon's guns were bombarding
Vienna, some of the shot falling in his garden.
When a man like Lord Cavanagh, without arms or legs, manages to put
himself into Parliament, when a man like Francis Joseph Campbell, a
blind man, becomes a distinguished mathematician, a musician, and a
great philanthropist, we get a hint as to what it means to make the
most possible out of ourselves and our opportunities. Perhaps
ninety-nine of a hundred under such unfortunate circumstances would be
content to remain helpless objects of charity for life. If it is your
call to acquire money power instead of brain power, to acquire business
power instead of professional power, double your talent just the same,
no matter what it may be.
A glover's apprentice of Glasgow, Scotland, who was too poor to afford
even a candle or a fire, and who studied by the light of the shop
windows in the streets, and when the shops were closed climbed the
lamp-post, holding his book in one hand, and clinging to the lamp-post
with the other,--this poor boy, with less chance than almost any boy in
America, became the most eminent scholar of Scotland.
Francis Parkman, half blind, became one of America's greatest
historians in spite of everything, because he made himself such.
Personal value is a coin of one's own minting; one is taken at the
worth he has put into himself. Franklin was but a poor printer's boy,
whose highest luxury at one time was only a penny roll, eaten in the
streets of Philadelphia.
Michael Faraday was a poor boy, son of a blacksmith, who apprenticed
him at the age of thirteen to a bookbinder in London. Michael laid the
foundations of his future greatness by making himself familiar with the
contents of the books he bound. He remained at night, after others had
gone, to read and study the precious volumes. Lord Tenterden was proud
to point out to his son the shop where he had shaved for a penny. A
French doctor once taunted Fléchier, Bishop of Nismes, who had been a
tallow-chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which
he replied, "If you had been born in the same condition that I was, you
would still have been but a maker of candles."
Edwin Chadwick, in his report to the British Parliament, stated that
children, working on half time (that is, studying three hours a day and
working the rest of their time out of doors), really made the greatest
intellectual progress during the year. Business men have often
accomplished wonders during the busiest lives by simply devoting one,
two, three, or four hours daily to study or other literary work.
James Watt received only the rudiments of an education at school, for
his attendance was irregular on account of delicate health. He more
than made up for all deficiencies, however, by the diligence with which
he pursued his studies at home. Alexander V was a beggar; he was "born
mud, and died marble." William Herschel, placed at the age of fourteen
as a musician in the band of the Hanoverian Guards, devoted all his
leisure to philosophical studies. He acquired a large fund of general
knowledge, and in astronomy, a science in which he was wholly
self-instructed, his discoveries entitle him to rank with the greatest
astronomers of all time.
George Washington was the son of a widow, born under the roof of a
Westmoreland farmer; almost from infancy his lot had been that of an
orphan. No academy had welcomed him to its shade, no college crowned
him with its honors; to read, to write, to cipher--these had been his
degrees in knowledge. Shakespeare learned little more than reading and
writing at school, but by self-culture he made himself the great master
among literary men. Burns, too, enjoyed few advantages of education,
and his youth was passed in almost abject poverty.
James Ferguson, the son of a half-starved peasant, learned to read by
listening to the recitations of one of his elder brothers. While a
mere boy he discovered several mechanical principles, made models of
mills and spinning-wheels, and by means of beads on strings worked out
an excellent map of the heavens. Ferguson made remarkable things with
a common penknife. How many great men have mounted the hill of
knowledge by out-of-the-way paths! Gifford worked his intricate
problems with a shoemaker's awl on a bit of leather. Rittenhouse first
calculated eclipses on his plow-handle.
Columbus, while leading the life of a sailor, managed to become the
most accomplished geographer and astronomer of his time.
When Peter the Great, a boy of seventeen, became the absolute ruler of
Russia his subjects were little better than savages, and in himself
even the passions and propensities of barbarism were so strong that
they were frequently exhibited during his whole career. But he
determined to transform himself and the Russians into civilized people.
He instituted reforms with great energy, and at the age of twenty-six
started on a visit to the other countries of Europe for the purpose of
learning about their arts and institutions. At Saardam, Holland, he
was so impressed with the sights of the great East India dockyard that
he apprenticed himself to a shipbuilder, and helped to build the _St.
Peter_, which he promptly purchased. Continuing his travels, after he
had learned his trade, he worked in England in paper-mills, saw-mills,
rope-yards, watchmakers' shops, and other manufactories, doing the work
and receiving the treatment of a common laborer.
While traveling, his constant habit was to obtain as much information
as he could beforehand with regard to every place he was to visit, and
he would demand, "Let me see all." When setting out on his
investigations, on such occasions, he carried his tablets in his hand
and whatever he deemed worthy of remembrance was carefully noted down.
He would often leave his carriage if he saw the country people at work
by the wayside as he passed along, and not only enter into conversation
with them on agricultural affairs, but also accompany them to their
homes, examine their furniture, and take drawings of their implements
of husbandry. Thus he obtained much minute and correct knowledge,
which he would scarcely have acquired by other means, and which he
afterward turned to admirable account in the improvement of his own
country.
The ancients said, "Know thyself"; the twentieth century says, "Help
thyself." Self-culture gives a second birth to the soul. A liberal
education is a true regeneration. When a man is once liberally
educated, he will generally remain a man, not shrink to a manikin, nor
dwindle to a brute. But if he is not properly educated, if he has
merely been crammed and stuffed through college, if he has merely a
broken-down memory from trying to hold crammed facts enough to pass the
examination, he will continue to shrink, shrivel, and dwindle, often
below his original proportions, for he will lose both his confidence
and self-respect, as his crammed facts, which never became a part of
himself, evaporate from his distended memory.
Every bit of education or culture is of great advantage in the struggle
for existence. The microscope does not create anything new, but it
reveals marvels. To educate the eye adds to its magnifying power until
it sees beauty where before it saw only ugliness. It reveals a world
we never suspected, and finds the greatest beauty even in the commonest
things. The eye of an Agassiz could see worlds of which the uneducated
eye never dreamed. The cultured hand can do a thousand things the
uneducated hand can not do. It becomes graceful, steady of nerve,
strong, skilful, indeed it almost seems to think, so animated is it
with intelligence. The cultured will can seize, grasp, and hold the
possessor, with irresistible power and nerve, to almost superhuman
effort. The educated touch can almost perform miracles. The educated
taste can achieve wonders almost past belief. What a contrast between
the cultured, logical, profound, masterly reason of a Gladstone and
that of the hod-carrier who has never developed or educated his reason
beyond what is necessary to enable him to mix mortar and carry brick!
Be careful to avoid that over-intellectual culture which is purchased
at the expense of moral vigor. An observant professor of one of our
colleges has remarked that "the mind may be so rounded and polished by
education, and so well balanced, as not to be energetic in any one
faculty. In other men not thus trained, the sense of deficiency and of
the sharp, jagged corners of their knowledge leads to efforts to fill
up the chasms, rendering them at last far better educated men than the
polished, easy-going graduate who has just knowledge enough to prevent
consciousness of his ignorance. While all the faculties of the mind
should be cultivated, it is yet desirable that it should have two or
three rough-hewn features of massive strength. Young men are too apt
to forget the great end of life, which is to be and do, not to read and
brood over what other men have been and done."
"I repeat that my object is not to give him knowledge, but to teach him
how to acquire it at need," said Rousseau.
All learning is self-teaching. It is upon the working of the pupil's
own mind that his progress in knowledge depends. The great business of
the master is to teach the pupil to teach himself.
"Thinking, not growth, makes manhood," says Isaac Taylor. "Accustom
yourself, therefore, to thinking. Set yourself to understand whatever
you see or read. To join thinking with reading is one of the first
maxims, and one of the easiest operations."
"How few think justly of the thinking few:
How many never think who think they do."