WORK AND WAIT
What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we
already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of
self-discipline.--H. P. LIDDON.
I consider a human soul without education like marble in a quarry,
which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the
polisher sketches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and
discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs throughout
the body of it.--ADDISON.
Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practise what
you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.--ARNOLD.
Haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself.--SENECA.
The more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which
belongs to you, and do more work with less effort.--CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"I was a mere cipher in that vast sea of human enterprise," said Henry
Bessemer, speaking of his arrival in London in 1831. Although but
eighteen years old, and without an acquaintance in the city, he soon
made work for himself by inventing a process of copying bas-reliefs on
cardboard. His method was so simple that one could learn in ten
minutes how to make a die from an embossed stamp for a penny. Having
ascertained later that in this way the raised stamps on all official
papers in England could easily be forged, he set to work and invented a
perforated stamp which could not be forged nor removed from a document.
At the public stamp office he was told by the chief that the government
was losing 100,000 pounds a year through the custom of removing stamps
from old parchments and using them again.
The chief also fully appreciated the new danger of easy counterfeiting.
So he offered Bessemer a definite sum for his process of perforation,
or an office for life at eight hundred pounds a year. Bessemer chose
the office, and hastened to tell the good news to a young woman with
whom he had agreed to share his fortune. In explaining his invention,
he told how it would prevent any one from taking a valuable stamp from
a document a hundred years old and using it a second time.
"Yes," said his betrothed, "I understand that; but, surely, if all
stamps had a date put upon them they could not at a future time be used
without detection."
This was a very short speech, and of no special importance if we omit a
single word of four letters; but, like the schoolboy's pins which saved
the lives of thousands of people annually by not getting swallowed,
that little word, by keeping out of the ponderous minds of the British
revenue officers, had for a long period saved the government the burden
of caring for an additional income of 100,000 pounds a year. And the
same little word, if published in its connection, would render
Bessemer's perforation device of far less value than a last year's
bird's nest. He felt proud of the young woman's ingenuity, and
promptly suggested the improvement at the stamp office.
As a result his system of perforation was abandoned and he was deprived
of his promised office, the government coolly making use from that day
to this, without compensation, of the idea conveyed by that little
insignificant word.
So Bessemer's financial prospects were not very encouraging; but,
realizing that the best capital a young man can have is a capital wife,
he at once entered into a partnership which placed at his command the
combined ideas of two very level heads. The result, after years of
thought and experiment, was the Bessemer process of making steel
cheaply, which has revolutionized the iron industry throughout the
world. His method consists simply in forcing hot air from below into
several tons of melted pig-iron, so as to produce intense combustion;
and then adding enough spiegel-eisen (looking-glass iron), an ore rich
in carbon, to change the whole mass to steel.
He discovered this simple process only after trying in vain much more
difficult and expensive methods.
"All things come round to him who will but wait."
The great lack of the age is want of thoroughness. How seldom you find
a young man or woman who is willing to take time to prepare for his
life work! A little education is all they want, a little smattering of
books, and then they are ready for business.
"Can't wait" is characteristic of the century, and is written on
everything; on commerce, on schools, on society, on churches. Can't
wait for a high school, seminary, or college. The boy can't wait to
become a youth, nor the youth a man. Youth rush into business with no
great reserve of education or drill; of course they do poor, feverish
work, and break down in middle life, and many die of old age in the
forties. Everybody is in a hurry. Buildings are rushed up so quickly
that they will not stand, and everything is made "to sell."
Not long ago a professor in one of our universities had a letter from a
young woman in the West, asking him if he did not think she could teach
elocution if she could come to the university and take twelve lessons.
Our young people of to-day are not willing to lay broad, deep
foundations. The weary years in preparatory school and college
dishearten them. They only want a "smattering" of an education. But
as Pope says,--
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
The shifts to cover up ignorance, and "the constant trembling lest some
blunder should expose one's emptiness," are pitiable. Short cuts and
abridged methods are the demand of the hour. But the way to shorten
the road to success is to take plenty of time to lay in your reserve
power. Hard work, a definite aim, and faithfulness will shorten the
way. Don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation.
Patience is Nature's motto. She works ages to bring a flower to
perfection. What will she not do for the greatest of her creation?
Ages and aeons are nothing to her; out of them she has been carving her
great statue, a perfect man.
Johnson said a man must turn over half a library to write one book.
When an authoress told Wordsworth she had spent six hours on a poem, he
replied that he would have spent six weeks. Think of Bishop Hall
spending thirty years on one of his works! Owens was working on the
"Commentary to the Epistle to the Hebrews" for twenty years. Moore
spent several weeks on one of his musical stanzas which reads as if it
were a dash of genius.
Carlyle wrote with the utmost difficulty and never executed a page of
his great histories till he had consulted every known authority, so
that every sentence is the quintessence of many books, the product of
many hours of drudging research in the great libraries. Today, "Sartor
Resartus" is everywhere. You can get it for a mere trifle at almost
any bookseller's, and hundreds of thousands of copies are scattered
over the world. But when Carlyle brought it to London in 1851, it was
refused almost contemptuously by three prominent publishers. At length
he managed to get it into "Fraser's Magazine," the editor of which
conveyed to the author the pleasing information that his work had been
received with "unqualified disapprobation."
Henry Ward Beecher sent half a dozen articles to the publisher of a
religious paper to pay for his subscription, but they were respectfully
declined. The publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly" returned Miss
Alcott's manuscript, suggesting that she had better stick to teaching.
One of the leading magazines ridiculed Tennyson's first poems, and
consigned the young poet to temporary oblivion. Only one of Ralph
Waldo Emerson's books had a remunerative sale. Washington Irving was
nearly seventy years old before the income from his books paid the
expenses of his household.
In some respects it is very unfortunate that the old system of binding
boys out to a trade has been abandoned. To-day very few boys learn any
trade. They pick up what they know, as they go along, just as a
student crams for a particular examination, just to "get through,"
without any effort to see how much he may learn on any subject.
Think of an American youth spending ten years with Da Vinci on the
model of an equestrian statue that he might master the anatomy of the
horse! Most young American artists would expect, in a quarter of that
time, to sculpture an Apollo Belvidere.
A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little something for his album.
Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you only
five minutes," objected the rich man. "Yes, but it took me thirty
years to learn how to do it in five minutes."
What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and
wait, whether the world applaud or hiss; a Mirabeau, who can struggle
on for forty years before he has a chance to show the world his vast
reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who
have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for their
first great opportunities; a Grant, fighting on in heroic silence, when
denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a Michael
Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his
matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all remuneration
therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a Thurlow
Weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet
for shoes, to borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly
devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise
Lost" in a world he could not see; a Thackeray, struggling on
cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair" was refused by a dozen publishers; a
Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret; men whom neither
poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate; not daunted
by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men who can
work and wait.
When a young lawyer Daniel Webster once looked in vain through all the
law libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of fifty dollars
the necessary books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in
which his client was a poor blacksmith. He won his case, but, on
account of the poverty of his client, only charged fifteen dollars,
thus losing heavily on the books bought, to say nothing of his time.
Years after, as he was passing through New York City, he was consulted
by Aaron Burr on an important but puzzling case then pending before the
Supreme Court. He saw in a moment that it was just like the
blacksmith's case, an intricate question of title, which he had solved
so thoroughly that it was to him now as simple as the multiplication
table. Going back to the time of Charles II he gave the law and
precedents involved with such readiness and accuracy of sequence that
Burr asked in great surprise if he had been consulted before in the
case. "Most certainly not," he replied, "I never heard of your case
till this evening." "Very well," said Burr, "proceed"; and, when he
had finished, Webster received a fee that paid him liberally for all
the time and trouble he had spent for his early client.
Albert Bierstadt first crossed the Rocky Mountains with a band of
pioneers in 1859, making sketches for the paintings of Western scenes
for which he had become famous. As he followed the trail to Pike's
Peak, he gazed in wonder upon the enormous herds of buffaloes which
dotted the plains as far as the eye could reach, and thought of the
time when they would have disappeared before the march of civilization.
The thought haunted him and found its final embodiment in "The Last of
the Buffaloes" in 1890. To perfect this great work he had spent twenty
years.
Everything which endures, which will stand the test of time, must have
a deep, solid foundation. In Rome the foundation is often the most
expensive part of an edifice, so deep must they dig to build on the
living rock.
Fifty feet of Bunker Hill Monument is under ground; unseen and
unappreciated by those who tread about that historic shaft, but it is
this foundation, apparently thrown away, which enables it to stand
upright, true to the plumb-line through all the tempests that lash its
granite sides. A large part of every successful life must be spent in
laying foundation stones underground. Success is the child of drudgery
and perseverance and depends upon "knowing how long it takes to
succeed."
Endurance is a much better test of character than any one act of
heroism, however noble.
The pianist Thalberg said he never ventured to perform one of his
celebrated pieces in public until he had played it at least fifteen
hundred times. He laid no claim whatever to genius; he said it was all
a question of hard work. The accomplishments of such industry, such
perseverance, would put to shame many a man who claims genius.
Before Edmund Kean would consent to appear in that character which he
acted with such consummate skill, The Gentleman Villain, he practised
constantly before a glass, studying expression for a year and a half.
When he appeared upon the stage, Byron, who went with Moore to see him,
said he never looked upon so fearful and wicked a face. As the great
actor went on to delineate the terrible consequences of sin, Byron
fainted.
"For years I was in my place of business by sunrise," said a wealthy
banker who had begun without a dollar; "and often I did not leave it
for fifteen or eighteen hours."
Patience, it is said, changes the mulberry leaf to satin. The giant
oak on the hillside was detained months or years in its upward growth
while its root took a great turn around some rock, in order to gain a
hold by which the tree was anchored to withstand the storms of
centuries. Da Vinci spent four years on the head of Mona Lisa, perhaps
the most beautiful ever painted, but he left therein an artistic
thought for all time.
Said Captain Bingham: "You can have no idea of the wonderful machine
that the German army is and how well it is prepared for war. A chart
is made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with
the different nations, and every officer's place in the scheme is laid
out beforehand. There is a schedule of trains which will supersede all
other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged
that the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to
take such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice."
A learned clergyman was thus accosted by an illiterate preacher who
despised education: "Sir, you have been to college, I presume?" "Yes,
sir," was the reply. "I am thankful," said the former, "that the Lord
opened my mouth without any learning." "A similar event," retorted the
clergyman, "happened in Balaam's time."
A young man just graduated told the President of Trinity College that
he had completed his education, and had come to say good-by. "Indeed,"
said the President, "I have just begun my education."
Many an extraordinary man has been made out of a very ordinary boy: but
in order to accomplish this we must begin with him while he is young.
It is simply astonishing what training will do for a rough, uncouth,
and even dull lad, if he has good material in him, and comes under the
tutelage of a skilled educator before his habits become fixed or
confirmed.
Even a few weeks' or months' drill of the rawest and roughest recruits
in the late Civil War so straightened and dignified stooping and
uncouth soldiers, and made them manly, erect, and courteous in their
bearing, that their own friends scarcely knew them. If this change is
so marked in the youth who has grown to maturity, what a miracle is
possible in the lad who is taken early and put under a course of drill
and systematic training, both physical, mental, and moral! How often a
man who is in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, or among the tramps,
or living out a miserable existence in the slums of our cities, rough,
slovenly, has slumbering within the rags possibilities which would have
developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race
instead of a foul blot and ugly scar, had he only been fortunate enough
early in life to have enjoyed the benefits of efficient and systematic
training!
Laziness begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. Edison described
his repeated efforts to make the phonograph reproduce an aspirated
sound, and added: "From eighteen to twenty hours a day for the last
seven months I have worked on this single word 'specia.' I said into
the phonograph 'specia, specia, specia,' but the instrument responded
'pecia, pecia, pecia.' It was enough to drive one mad. But I held
firm, and I have succeeded."
The road to distinction must be paved with years of self-denial and
hard work.
Horace Mann, the great author of the common school system of
Massachusetts, was a remarkable example of that pluck and patience
which can work and wait. His only inheritance was poverty and hard
work. But he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a
determination to get on in the world. He braided straw to earn money
to buy books for which his soul thirsted.
Gladstone was bound to win. Although he had spent many years of
preparation for his life work, in spite of the consciousness of
marvelous natural endowments which would have been deemed sufficient by
many young men, and notwithstanding he had gained the coveted prize of
a seat in Parliament, yet he decided to make himself master of the
situation; and amid all his public and private duties, he not only
spent eleven terms more in the study of the law, but also studied Greek
constantly and read every well-written book or paper he could obtain,
so determined was he that his life should be rounded out to its fullest
measure, and that his mind should have broad and liberal culture.
Ole Bull said: "If I practise one day, I can see the result; if I
practise two days, my friends can see it; if I practise three days, the
great public can see it."
The habit of seizing every bit of knowledge, no matter how
insignificant it may seem at the time, every opportunity, every
occasion, and grinding them all up into experience, can not be
overestimated. You will find use for all of it. Webster once repeated
with effect an anecdote which he had heard fourteen years before, and
which he had not thought of in the meantime. It exactly fitted the
occasion. "It is an ill mason that rejects any stone."
Webster was once urged to speak on a subject of great importance, but
refused, saying he was very busy and had no time to master the subject.
"But," replied his friend, "a very few words from you would do much to
awaken public attention to it." Webster replied, "If there be so much
weight in my words, it is because I do not allow myself to speak on any
subject until my mind is imbued with it." On one occasion Webster made
a remarkable speech before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, when
a book was presented to him; but after he had gone, his "impromptu"
speech, carefully written out, was found in the book which he had
forgotten to take away.
Demosthenes was once asked to speak on a great and sudden emergency,
but replied, "I am not prepared." In fact, it was thought by many that
Demosthenes did not possess any genius whatever, because he never
allowed himself to speak on any subject without thorough preparation.
In any meeting or assembly, when called upon, he would never rise, even
to make remarks, it was said, without previously preparing himself.
Alexander Hamilton said, "Men give me credit for genius. All the
genius I have lies just in this: when I have a subject in hand I study
it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its
bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I
make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the
fruit of labor and thought." The law of labor is equally binding on
genius and mediocrity.
Nelaton, the great surgeon, said that if he had four minutes in which
to perform an operation on which a life depended, he would take one
minute to consider how best to do it.
"Many men," says Longfellow, "do not allow their principles to take
root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do flowers they
have planted, to see if they are growing." We must not only work, but
also wait.
"The spruce young spark," says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his
mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily
during the day, and talking about the theater, the opera, or a fast
horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the
business and make a man of himself because he will not join in wasting
his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not
earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept
a situation from the fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to
despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits
and acquiring fortune."
"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this
busy city of New York for over thirty years," said Dr. Cuyler, "and I
find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures
lies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success is
oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. The
easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time
dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher
of charity. They who understand and practise Abraham Lincoln's homely
maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success."
The Duke of Wellington became so discouraged because he did not advance
in the army that he applied for a much inferior position in the customs
department, but was refused. Napoleon had applied for every vacant
position for seven years before he was recognized, but meanwhile he
studied with all his might, supplementing what was considered a
thorough military education by researches and reflections which in
later years enabled him easily to teach the art of war to veterans who
had never dreamed of his novel combinations.
Reserves which carry us through great emergencies are the result of
long working and long waiting. Dr. Collyer declares that reserves mean
to a man also achievement,--"the power to do the grandest thing
possible to your nature when you feel you must, or some precious thing
will be lost,--to do well always, but best in the crisis on which all
things turn; to stand the strain of a long fight, and still find you
have something left, and so to never know you are beaten, because you
never are beaten."
He only is independent in action who has been earnest and thorough in
preparation and self-culture. "Not for school, but for life, we
learn"; and our habits--of promptness, earnestness, and thoroughness,
or of tardiness, fickleness, and superficiality--are the things
acquired most readily and longest retained.
To vary the language of another, the three great essentials to success
in mental and physical labor are Practice, Patience, and Perseverance,
but the greatest of these is Perseverance.
"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."