Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Phillips Brooks]
"The best-loved man in New England."
"The ideal life, the life full of completion, haunts us all. We feel
the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are."
"_First, be a man._"
ARCHITECTS OF FATE
OR, STEPS TO SUCCESS AND POWER
A BOOK DESIGNED TO INSPIRE YOUTH TO
CHARACTER BUILDING, SELF-CULTURE
AND NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT
BY
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
AUTHOR OF "PUSHING TO THE FRONT
OR, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES"
_ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN FINE
PORTRAITS OF EMINENT PERSONS_
"All are architects of fate
Working in these walls of time."
"Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build."
"Let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy God."
TORONTO
WILLIAM BRIGGS
WESLEY BUILDINGS
MONTREAL: C. W. COATES
HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS
1897
Copyright, 1895,
BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN.
_All rights reserved._
PREFACE.
The demand for more than a dozen editions of "Pushing to the Front"
during its first year and its universally favorable reception, both at
home and abroad, have encouraged the author to publish this companion
volume of somewhat similar scope and purpose. The two books were
prepared simultaneously, and the story of the first, given in its
preface, applies equally well to this.
Inspiration to character-building and worthy achievement is the keynote
of the present volume, its object, to arouse to honorable exertion
youth who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions in
those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success, to
encourage and stimulate to higher resolve those who are setting out to
make their own way, with perhaps neither friendship nor capital other
than a determination to get on in the world.
Nothing is so fascinating to a youth with high purpose, life, and
energy throbbing in his young blood as stories of men and women who
have brought great things to pass. Though these themes are as old as
the human race, yet they are ever new, and more interesting to the
young than any fiction. The cry of youth is for life! more life! No
didactic or dogmatic teaching, however brilliant, will capture a
twentieth-century boy, keyed up to the highest pitch by the pressure of
an intense civilization. The romance of achievement under
difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant ends; the story of
how great men started, their struggles, their long waitings, amid want
and woe, the obstacles overcome, the final triumphs; examples, which
explode excuses, of men who have seized common situations and made them
great, of those of average capacity who have succeeded by the use of
ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose:
these will most inspire the ambitious youth. The author teaches that
there are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who
has the grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf; that
the barriers are not yet erected which declare to aspiring talent,
"Thus far and no farther"; that the most forbidding circumstances
cannot repress a longing for knowledge, a yearning for growth; that
poverty, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been
able to bar the progress of men with grit; that poverty has rocked the
cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbarism, and
have led the world up from savagery to the Gladstones, the Lincolns,
and the Grants.
The book shows that it is the man with one unwavering aim who cuts his
way through opposition and forges to the front; that in this electric
age, where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must
hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumbling-blocks and
defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and
victories to the strong and determined. The author teaches that every
germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage, and
that true success follows every right step. He has tried to touch the
higher springs of the youth's aspiration; to lead him to high ideals;
to teach him that there is something nobler in an occupation than
merely living-getting or money-getting; that a man may make millions
and be a failure still; to caution youth not to allow the maxims of a
low prudence, dinned daily into his ears in this money-getting age, to
repress the longings for a higher life; that the hand can never safely
reach higher than does the heart.
The author's aim has been largely through concrete illustrations which
have pith, point, and purpose, to be more suggestive than dogmatic, in
a style more practical than elegant, more helpful than ornate, more
pertinent than novel.
The author wishes to acknowledge valuable assistance from Mr. Arthur W.
Brown, of W. Kingston, R. I.
O. S. M.
43 BOWDOIN ST., BOSTON, MASS.
December 2, 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. WANTED--A MAN
God after a _man_. Wealth is nothing, fame is nothing. _Manhood is
everything_.
II. DARE
Dare to live thy creed. Conquer your place in the world. All things
serve a brave soul.
III. THE WILL AND THE WAY
Find a way or make one. Everything is either pusher or pushed. The
world always listens to a man with a will in him.
IV. SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES
There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its
way to recognition through detraction, calumny, and persecution.
V. USES OR OBSTACLES
The Great Sculptor cares little for the human block as such; it is the
statue He is after; and He will blast, hammer, and chisel with poverty,
hardships, anything to get out the man.
VI. ONE UNWAVERING AIM
Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Try to be somebody
with all your might.
VII. SOWING AND REAPING
What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life.
_Start right_.
VIII. SELF-HELP
Self-made or never made. The greatest men have risen from the ranks.
IX. WORK AND WAIT
Don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation.
X. CLEAR GRIT
The goddess of fame or of fortune has been won by many a poor boy who
had no friends, no backing, or anything but pure grit and invincible
purpose to commend him.
XI. THE GRANDEST THING IN THE WORLD
Manhood is above all riches and overtops all titles; character is
greater than any career.
XII. WEALTH IN ECONOMY
"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach,
are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than all."
XIII. RICH WITHOUT MONEY
To have nothing is not poverty. Whoever uplifts civilization is rich
though he die penniless, and future generations will erect his monument.
XIV. OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU ARE
"How speaks the present hour? _Act_." Don't wait for great
opportunities. _Seize common occasions and make them great_.
XV. THE MIGHT OF LITTLE THINGS
There is nothing small in a world where a mud-crack swells to an
Amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold.
XVI. SELF-MASTERY
Guard your weak point. Be lord over yourself.
LIST OF PORTRAITS.
CHAP.
I. Phillips Brooks . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
II. Oliver Hazard Perry
III. Walter Scott
IV. William Hickling Prescott
V. John Bunyan
VI. Richard Arkwright
VII. Victor Hugo
VIII. James A. Garfield (missing from book)
IX. Thomas Alva Edison
X. Andrew Jackson
XI. John Greenleaf Whittier (missing from book)
XII. Alexander Hamilton
XIII. Ralph Waldo Emerson
XIV. Thomas Jefferson
XV. Louis Agassiz
XVI. James Russell Lowell
ARCHITECTS OF FATE.
CHAPTER I.
WANTED--A MAN.
"Wanted; men:
Not systems fit and wise,
Not faiths with rigid eyes,
Not wealth in mountain piles,
Not power with gracious smiles,
Not even the potent pen:
Wanted; men."
Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and
know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a
man.--JEREMIAH.
All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a man!
Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man,--it
is you, it is I, it is each one of us! . . . How to constitute one's
self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing
easier, if one wills it.--ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
"'Tis life, not death for which we pant!
'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant:
More life and fuller, that we want."
I do not wish in attempting to paint a man to describe an air-fed,
unimpassioned, impossible ghost. My eyes and ears are revolted by any
neglect of the physical facts, the limitations of man.--EMERSON.
But nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth her nobly born,
And laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and rank to scorn;
She moulds with care a spirit rare, half human, half divine,
And cries exulting, "Who can make a gentleman like mine?"
ELIZA COOK.
"In a thousand cups of life," says Emerson, "only one is the right
mixture. The fine adjustment of the existing elements, where the
well-mixed man is born with eyes not too dull, nor too good, with fire
enough and earth enough, capable of receiving impressions from all
things, and not too susceptible, then no gift need be bestowed on him.
He brings his fortune with him."
Diogenes sought with a lantern at noontide in ancient Athens for a
perfectly honest man, and sought in vain. In the market place he once
cried aloud, "Hear me, O men;" and, when a crowd collected around him,
he said scornfully: "I called for men, not pygmies."
The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every
profession, every occupation, every calling; "Wanted--A Man."
Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who
has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"
though all the world say "Yes."
Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not
permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his
manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one facility to
stunt or paralyze his other faculties.
Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low
estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a
living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and
culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.
A thousand pulpits vacant in a single religious denomination, a
thousand preachers standing idle in the market place, while a thousand
church committees scour the land for men to fill those same vacant
pulpits, and scour in vain, is a sufficient indication, in one
direction at least, of the largeness of the opportunities of the age,
and also of the crying need of good men.
Wanted, a man who is well balanced, who is not cursed with some little
defect or weakness which cripples his usefulness and neutralizes his
powers. Wanted, a man of courage, who is not a coward in any part of
his nature.
Wanted, a man who is symmetrical, and not one-sided in his development,
who has not sent all the energies of his being into one narrow
specialty, and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and
die. Wanted, a man who is broad, who does not take half views of
things. Wanted, a man who mixes common sense with his theories, who
does not let a college education spoil him for practical, every-day
life; a man who prefers substance to show, who regards his good name as
a priceless treasure.
Wanted, a man "who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but
whose passions are trained to heed a strong will, the servant of a
tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of
nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as
himself."
God calls a man to be upright and pure and generous, but he also calls
him to be intelligent and skillful and strong and brave.
The world wants a man who is educated all over; whose nerves are
brought to their acutest sensibility, whose brain is cultured, keen,
incisive, penetrating, broad, liberal, deep; whose hands are deft;
whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic, whose heart is tender,
broad, magnanimous, true.
The whole world is looking for such a man. Although there are millions
out of employment, yet it is almost impossible to find just the right
man in almost any department of life. Every profession and every
occupation has a standing advertisement all over the world: "Wanted--A
Man."
Rousseau, in his celebrated essay on education, says: "According to the
order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the
profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the
duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to fill any of those offices
that have a relation to him. It matters little to me whether my pupil
be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. Nature has destined
us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination
concerning society. To live is the profession I would teach him. When
I have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a
lawyer, nor a divine. _Let him first be a man_; Fortune may remove him
from one rank to another as she pleases, he will be always found in his
place."
A little, short doctor of divinity in a large Baptist convention stood
on a step and said he thanked God he was a Baptist. The audience could
not hear and called "Louder." "Get up higher," some one said. "I
can't," he replied. "To be a Baptist is as high as one can get." But
there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a
_man_.
As Emerson says, Talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he
rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty?
is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody?
does he stand for something? He must be good of his kind. That is all
that Talleyrand, all that State Street, all that the common sense of
mankind asks.
When Garfield was asked as a young boy, "what he meant to be," he
answered: "First of all, I must make myself a man, if I do not succeed
in that, I can succeed in nothing."
Montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a
body by itself alone, but to train a man.
One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good
animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the
coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must
have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health.
It is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life
and beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere
animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding
pulse throughout his body, who feels life in every limb, as dogs do
when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of
ice.
Pope, the poet, was with Sir Godfrey Kneller, the artist, one day, when
the latter's nephew, a Guinea slave-trader, came into the room.
"Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two
greatest men in the world." "I don't know how great men you may be,"
said the Guinea man, "but I don't like your looks. I have often bought
a much better man than either of you, all muscles and bones, for ten
guineas."
Sydney Smith said, "I am convinced that digestion is the great secret
of life, and that character, virtue and talents, and qualities are
powerfully affected by beef, mutton, pie crust, and rich soups. I have
often thought I could feed or starve men into virtues or vices, and
affect them more powerfully with my instruments of torture than
Timotheus could do formerly with his lyre."
What more glorious than a magnificent manhood, animated with the
bounding spirits of overflowing health?
It is a sad sight to see thousands of students graduated every year
from our grand institutions, whose object is to make stalwart,
independent, self-supporting men, turned out into the world saplings
instead of stalwart oaks, "memory-glands" instead of brainy men,
helpless instead of self-supporting, sickly instead of robust, weak
instead of strong, leaning instead of erect. "So many promising
youths, and never a finished man!"
The character sympathizes with and unconsciously takes on the nature of
the body. A peevish, snarling, ailing man cannot develop the vigor and
strength of character which is possible to a healthy, robust, jolly
man. There is an inherent love in the human mind for wholeness, a
demand that man shall come up to the highest standard; and there is an
inherent protest or contempt for preventable deficiency. Nature too
demands that man be ever at the top of his condition. The giant's
strength with the imbecile's brain will not be characteristic of the
coming man.
Man has been a dwarf of himself, but a higher type of manhood stands at
the door of this age knocking for admission.
As we stand upon the seashore while the tide is coming in, one wave
reaches up the beach far higher than any previous one, then recedes,
and for some time none that follows comes up to its mark, but after a
while the whole sea is there and beyond it, so now and then there comes
a man head and shoulders above his fellow-men, showing that Nature has
not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man will overtop
the highest wave of manhood yet given to the world.
Apelles hunted over Greece for many years, studying the fairest points
of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a forehead and there a
nose, here a grace and there a turn of beauty, for his famous portrait
of a perfect woman which enchanted the world. So the coming man will
be a composite, many in one. He will absorb into himself not the
weakness, not the follies, but the strength and the virtues of other
types of men. He will be a man raised to the highest power. He will
be self-centred, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His
sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of nature's
laws. His whole character will be impressible, and will respond to the
most delicate touches of nature.
What a piece of work--this coming man! "How noble in reason. How
infinite in faculties. In form and motion how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. The
beauty of the world. The paragon of animals."
The first requisite of all education and discipline should be
man-timber. Tough timber must come from well grown, sturdy trees.
Such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or
an exquisite carving. But it must become timber first. Time and
patience develop the sapling into the tree. So through discipline,
education, experience, the sapling child is developed into hardy
mental, moral, physical timber.
What an aid to character building would be the determination of the
young man in starting out in life to consider himself his own bank;
that his notes will be accepted as good or bad, and will pass current
everywhere or be worthless, according to his individual reputation for
honor and veracity; that if he lets a note go to protest, his bank of
character will be suspected; if he lets two or three go to protest,
public confidence will be seriously shaken; that if they continue to go
to protest, his reputation will be lost and confidence in him ruined.
If the youth should start out with the fixed determination that every
statement he makes shall be the exact truth; that every promise he
makes shall be redeemed to the letter; that every appointment shall be
kept with the strictest faithfulness and with full regard for other
men's time, if he should hold his reputation as a priceless treasure,
feel that the eyes of the world are upon him, that he must not deviate
a hair's breadth from the truth and right; if he should take such a
stand at the outset, he would, like George Peabody, come to have almost
unlimited credit and the confidence of all, and would have developed
into noble man-timber.
What are palaces and equipages; what though a man could cover a
continent with his title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce, compared
with conscious rectitude, with a face that never turns pale at the
accuser's voice, with a bosom that never throbs with the fear of
exposure, with a heart that might be turned inside out and disclose no
stain of dishonor? To have done no man a wrong; to have put your
signature to no paper to which the purest angel in heaven might not
have been an attesting witness; to walk and live, unseduced, within
arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire
and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude;--_this is to
be a man_.
"He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And reared the dwelling of his thought so strong
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he; from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey."
[_Lines found in one of the books of Beecher's Library._]
A man is never so happy as when he is _totus in se_; as when he
suffices to himself, and can walk without crutches or a guide. Said
Jean Paul Richter: "I have made as much out of myself as could be made
of the stuff, and no man should require more."
Man is the only great thing in the universe. All the ages have been
trying to produce a perfect model. Only one complete man has yet been
evolved. The best of us are but prophecies of what is to come.
What constitutes a state?
Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No: men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake, or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude,--
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain.
WILLIAM JONES.
God give us men. A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands:
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor--men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking.
ANON.
Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide,
And let in manhood--let in happiness;
Admit the boundless theatre of thought
From nothing up to God . . . which makes a man!
YOUNG.
"The wisest man could ask no more of fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true."
In speech right gentle, yet so wise; princely of mien,
Yet softly mannered; modest, deferent,
And tender-hearted, though of fearless blood.
EDWIN ARNOLD.