GETTING AROUSED
"How's the boy gittin' on, Davis?" asked Farmer John Field, as he
watched his son, Marshall, waiting upon a customer. "Well, John, you
and I are old friends," replied Deacon Davis, as he took an apple from
a barrel and handed it to Marshall's father as a peace offering; "we
are old friends, and I don't want to hurt your feelin's; but I'm a
blunt man, and air goin' to tell you the truth. Marshall is a good,
steady boy, all right, but he wouldn't make a merchant if he stayed in
my store a thousand years. He weren't cut out for a merchant. Take
him back to the farm, John, and teach him how to milk cows!"
If Marshall Field had remained as clerk in Deacon Davis's store in
Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he got his first position, he could
never have become one of the world's merchant princes. But when he
went to Chicago and saw the marvelous examples around him of poor boys
who had won success, it aroused his ambition and fired him with the
determination to be a great merchant himself. "If others can do such
wonderful things," he asked himself, "why cannot I?"
Of course, there was the making of a great merchant in Mr. Field from
the start; but circumstances, an ambition-arousing environment, had a
great deal to do with stimulating his latent energy and bringing out
his reserve force. It is doubtful if he would have climbed so rapidly
in any other place than Chicago. In 1856, when young Field went there,
this marvelous city was just starting on its unparalleled career. It
had then only about eighty-five thousand inhabitants. A few years
before it had been a mere Indian trading village. But the city grew by
leaps and bounds, and always beat the predictions of its most sanguine
inhabitants. Success was in the air. Everybody felt that there were
great possibilities there.
[Illustration: Marshall Field]
Many people seem to think that ambition is a quality born within us;
that it is not susceptible to improvement; that it is something thrust
upon us which will take care of itself. But it is a passion that
responds very quickly to cultivation, and it requires constant care and
education, just as the faculty for music or art does, or it will
atrophy.
If we do not try to realize our ambition, it will not keep sharp and
defined. Our faculties become dull and soon lose their power if they
are not exercised. How can we expect our ambition to remain fresh and
vigorous through years of inactivity, indolence, or indifference? If
we constantly allow opportunities to slip by us without making any
attempt to grasp them, our inclination will grow duller and weaker.
"What I most need," as Emerson says, "is somebody to make me do what I
can." To do what I can, that is my problem; not what a Napoleon or a
Lincoln could do, but what _I_ can do. It makes all the difference in
the world to me whether I bring out the best thing in me or the
worst,--whether I utilize ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or ninety per cent
of my ability.
Everywhere we see people who have reached middle life or later without
being aroused. They have developed only a small percentage of their
success possibilities. They are still in a dormant state. The best
thing in them lies so deep that it has never been awakened. When we
meet these people we feel conscious that they have a great deal of
latent power that has never been exercised. Great possibilities of
usefulness and of achievement are, all unconsciously, going to waste
within them.
Some time ago there appeared in the newspapers an account of a girl who
had reached the age of fifteen years, and yet had only attained the
mental development of a small child. Only a few things interested her.
She was dreamy, inactive, and indifferent to everything around her most
of the time until, one day, while listening to a hand organ on the
street, she suddenly awakened to full consciousness. She came to
herself; her faculties were aroused, and in a few days she leaped
forward years in her development. Almost in a day she passed from
childhood to budding womanhood. Most of us have an enormous amount of
power, of latent force, slumbering within us, as it slumbered in this
girl, which could do marvels if we would only awaken it.
The judge of the municipal court in a flourishing western city, one of
the most highly esteemed jurists in his state, was in middle life,
before his latent power was aroused, an illiterate blacksmith. He is
now sixty, the owner of the finest library in his city, with the
reputation of being its best-read man, and one whose highest endeavor
is to help his fellow man. What caused the revolution in his life?
The hearing of a single lecture on the value of education. This was
what stirred the slumbering power within him, awakened his ambition,
and set his feet in the path of self-development.
I have known several men who never realized their possibilities until
they reached middle life. Then they were suddenly aroused, as if from
a long sleep, by reading some inspiring, stimulating book, by listening
to a sermon or a lecture, or by meeting some friend,--someone with high
ideals,--who understood, believed in, and encouraged them.
It will make all the difference in the world to you whether you are
with people who are watching for ability in you, people who believe in,
encourage, and praise you, or whether you are with those who are
forever breaking your idols, blasting your hopes, and throwing cold
water on your aspirations.
The chief probation officer of the children's court in New York, in his
report for 1905, says: "Removing a boy or girl from improper
environment is the first step in his or her reclamation." The New York
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, after thirty years
of investigation of cases involving the social and moral welfare of
over half a million of children, has also come to the conclusion that
environment is stronger than heredity.
Even the strongest of us are not beyond the reach of our environment.
No matter how independent, strong-willed, and determined our nature, we
are constantly being modified by our surroundings. Take the best-born
child, with the greatest inherited advantages, and let it be reared by
savages, and how many of its inherited tendencies will remain? If
brought up from infancy in a barbarous, brutal atmosphere, it will, of
course, become brutal. The story is told of a well-born child who,
being lost or abandoned as an infant, was suckled by a wolf with her
own young ones, and who actually took on all the characteristics of the
wolf,--walked on all fours, howled like a wolf, and ate like one.
It does not take much to determine the lives of most of us. We
naturally follow the examples about us, and, as a rule, we rise or fall
according to the strongest current in which we live. The poet's "I am
a part of all that I have met" is not a mere poetic flight of fancy; it
is an absolute truth. Everything--every sermon or lecture or
conversation you have heard, every person who has touched your
life--has left an impress upon your character, and you are never quite
the same person after the association or experience. You are a little
different,--modified somewhat from what you were before,--just as
Beecher was never the same man after reading Ruskin.
Some years ago a party of Russian workmen were sent to this country by
a Russian firm of shipbuilders, in order that they might acquire
American methods and catch the American spirit. Within six months the
Russians had become almost the equals of the American artisans among
whom they worked. They had developed ambition, individuality, personal
initiative, and a marked degree of excellence in their work. A year
after their return to their own country, the deadening, non-progressive
atmosphere about them had done its work. The men had lost the desire
to improve; they were again plodders, with no goal beyond the day's
work. The ambition aroused by stimulating environment had sunk to
sleep again.
Our Indian schools sometimes publish, side by side, photographs of the
Indian youths as they come from the reservation and as they look when
they are graduated,--well dressed, intelligent, with the fire of
ambition in their eyes. We predict great things for them; but the
majority of those who go back to their tribes, after struggling awhile
to keep up their new standards, gradually drop back to their old manner
of living. There are, of course, many notable exceptions, but these
are strong characters, able to resist the downward-dragging tendencies
about them.
If you interview the great army of failures, you will find that
multitudes have failed because they never got into a stimulating,
encouraging environment, because their ambition was never aroused, or
because they were not strong enough to rally under depressing,
discouraging, or vicious surroundings. Most of the people we find in
prisons and poor-houses are pitiable examples of the influence of an
environment which appealed to the worst instead of to the best in them.
Whatever you do in life, make any sacrifice necessary to keep in an
ambition-arousing atmosphere, an environment that will stimulate you to
self-development. Keep close to people who understand you, who believe
in you, who will help you to discover yourself and encourage you to
make the most of yourself. This may make all the difference to you
between a grand success and a mediocre existence. Stick to those who
are trying to do something and to be somebody in the world,--people of
high aims, lofty ambition. Keep close to those who are
dead-in-earnest. Ambition is contagious. You will catch the spirit
that dominates in your environment. The success of those about you who
are trying to climb upward will encourage and stimulate you to struggle
harder if you have not done quite so well yourself.
There is a great power in a battery of individuals who are struggling
for the achievement of high aims, a great magnetic force which will
help you to attract the object of your ambition. It is very
stimulating to be with people whose aspirations run parallel with your
own. If you lack energy, if you are naturally lazy, indolent, or
inclined to take it easy, you will be urged forward by the constant
prodding of the more ambitious.