USES OF OBSTACLES.
Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.--EMERSON.
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous
difficulties.--SPURGEON.
The good are better made by ill,
As odors crushed are sweeter still.
ROGERS.
Aromatic plants bestow
No spicy fragrance while they grow;
But crushed or trodden to the ground,
Diffuse their balmy sweets around.
GOLDSMITH.
As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.--YOUNG.
There is no possible success without some opposition as a fulcrum:
force is always aggressive and crowds something.--HOLMES.
The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the
more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will
be.--HORACE BUSHMILL.
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous
circumstances would have lain dormant.--HORACE.
For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of
adversity.--SIRACH.
Though losses and crosses be lessons right severe,
There's wit there ye'll get there, ye'll find no other where.
BURNS.
Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens
it.--HAZLITT.
"Adversity is the prosperity of the great."
No man ever worked his way in a dead calm.--JOHN NEAL.
"Kites rise against, not with, the wind."
"Many and many a time since," said Harriet Martineau, referring to her
father's failure in business, "have we said that, but for that loss of
money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of
ladies with small means, sewing and economizing and growing narrower
every year; whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own
resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation,
and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home; in
short, have truly lived instead of vegetating."
* * * * * *
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN]
"Sculptor of souls, I lift to Thee
Encumbered heart and hands;
Spare not the chisel, set me free,
However dear the bands.
* * * * * *
"I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man," said George
Macdonald of Milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to write
it."
Two of the three greatest epic poets of the world were blind,--Homer
and Milton; while the third, Dante, was in his later years nearly, if
not altogether, blind. It almost seems as though some great characters
had been physically crippled in certain respects so that they would not
dissipate their energy, but concentrate it all in one direction.
"I have been beaten, but not cast down," said Thiers, after making a
complete failure of his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies. "I am
making my first essay in arms. In the tribune, as under fire, a defeat
is as useful as a victory."
A distinguished investigator in science said that when he encountered
an apparently insuperable obstacle, he usually found himself upon the
brink of some discovery.
"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads a
man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant
purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turn
disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearl the sand
which annoys it.
"Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of
the storm wind is to the eagle,--a force against him that lifts him
higher."
A kite would not fly unless it had a string tying it down. It is just
so in life. The man who is tied down by half a dozen blooming
responsibilities and their mother will make a higher and stronger
flight than the bachelor who, having nothing to keep him steady, is
always floundering in the mud. If you want to ascend in the world tie
yourself to somebody.
"It was the severe preparation for the subsequent harvest," said
Pemberton Leigh, the eminent English lawyer, speaking of his early
poverty and hard work. "I learned to consider indefatigable labor as
the indispensable condition of success, pecuniary independence as
essential alike to virtue and happiness, and no sacrifice too great to
avoid the misery of debt."
When Napoleon's companions made sport of him on account of his humble
origin and poverty he devoted himself entirely to books, and soon
rising above them in scholarship, commanded their respect. Soon he was
regarded as the brightest ornament of the class.
"To make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must
live like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a
young lawyer so much good as to be half starved."
Thousands of men of great native ability have been lost to the world
because they have not had to wrestle with obstacles, and to struggle
under difficulties sufficient to stimulate into activity their dormant
powers. No effort is too dear which helps us along the line of our
proper career.
Poverty and obscurity of origin may impede our progress, but it is only
like the obstruction of ice or debris in the river temporarily forcing
the water into eddies, where it accumulates strength and a mighty
reserve which ultimately sweeps the obstruction impetuously to the sea.
Poverty and obscurity are not insurmountable obstacles, but they often
act as a stimulus to the naturally indolent, and develop a firmer fibre
of mind, a stronger muscle and stamina of body. If the germ of the
seed has to struggle to push its way up through the stones and hard
sod, to fight its way up to sunlight and air, and then to wrestle with
storm and tempest, with snow and frost, the fibre of its timber will be
all the tougher and stronger.
"Do you wish to live without a trial?" asks a modern teacher. "Then
you wish to die but half a man. Without trial you cannot guess at your
own strength. Men do not learn to swim on a table. They must go into
deep water and buffet the waves. Hardship is the native soil of
manhood and self-reliance. Trials are rough teachers, but rugged
schoolmasters make rugged pupils. A man who goes through life
prosperous, and comes to his grave without a wrinkle, is not half a
man. Difficulties are God's errands. And when we are sent upon them
we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence. We should reach after
the highest good."
"If you wish to rise," said Talleyrand, "make enemies."
There is good philosophy in the injunction to love our enemies, for
they are often our best friends in disguise. They tell us the truth
when friends flatter. Their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are
often mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. These unkind stings and
thrusts are spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler
endeavor. Friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies drag out
to the light all our weaknesses without mercy. We dread these thrusts
and exposures as we do the surgeon's knife, but are the better for
them. They reach depths before untouched, and we are led to resolve to
redeem ourselves from scorn and inferiority.
We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the
very power by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we
could never have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the
oak is braced and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests.
Our trials, our sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way.
The man who has triumphed over difficulties bears the signs of victory
in his face. An air of triumph is seen in every movement.
John Calvin, who made a theology for the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, was tortured with disease for many years, and so was Robert
Hall. The great men who have lifted the world to a higher level were
not developed in easy circumstances, but were rocked in the cradle of
difficulties and pillowed on hardships.
"The gods look on no grander sight than an honest man struggling with
adversity."
"Then I must learn to sing better," said Anaximander, when told that
the very boys laughed at his singing. Strong characters, like the
palm-tree, seem to thrive best when most abused. Men who have stood up
bravely under great misfortune for years are often unable to bear
prosperity. Their good fortune takes the spring out of their energy,
as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a vigorous climate.
Some people never come to themselves until baffled, rebuffed, thwarted,
defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around them. Trials unlock
their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their victory.
It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle
to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible; it is defeat that
has made those heroic natures that are now in the ascendency, and that
has given the sweet law of liberty instead of the bitter law of
oppression.
Difficulties call out great qualities, and make greatness possible.
How many centuries of peace would have developed a Grant? Few knew
Lincoln until the great weight of the war showed his character. A
century of peace would never have produced a Bismarck. Perhaps
Phillips and Garrison would never have been known to history had it not
been for slavery.
"Will he not make a great painter?" was asked in regard to an artist
fresh from his Italian tour. "No, never," replied Northcote. "Why
not?" "Because he has an income of six thousand pounds a year." In
the sunshine of wealth a man is, as a rule, warped too much to become
an artist of high merit. A drenching shower of adversity would
straighten his fibres out again. He should have some great thwarting
difficulty to struggle against.
The best tools receive their temper from fire, their edge from
grinding; the noblest characters are developed in a similar way. The
harder the diamond, the more brilliant the lustre, and the greater the
friction necessary to bring it out. Only its own dust is hard enough
to make this most precious stone reveal its full beauty.
The spark in the flint would sleep forever but for friction; the fire
in man would never blaze but for antagonism. The friction which
retards a train upon the track, robbing the engine of a fourth of its
power, is the very secret of locomotion. Oil the track, remove the
friction, and the train will not move an inch. The moment man is
relieved of opposition or friction, and the track of his life is oiled
with inherited wealth or other aids, that moment he often ceases to
struggle and therefore ceases to grow.
"It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this
constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water
and the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces.
Let every man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy would
follow."
Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a
standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an
opposite direction. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round
on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging
of the teamster and the straining of the horses in vain,--until the
motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the
heavy wheels, then the truck lumbered on its way. "Friction is a very
good thing," remarked a passenger.
The philosopher Kant observes that a dove, inasmuch as the only
obstacle it has to overcome is the resistance of the air, might suppose
that if only the air were out of the way it could fly with greater
rapidity and ease. Yet if the air were withdrawn, and the bird should
try to fly in a vacuum, it would fall instantly to the ground unable to
fly at all. The very element that offers the opposition to flying is
at the same time the condition of any flight whatever.
Rough seas and storms make sailors. Emergencies make giant men. But
for our Civil War the names of its grand heroes would not be written
among the greatest of our time.
The effort or struggle to climb to a higher place in life has strength
and dignity in it, and cannot fail to leave us stronger for the
struggle, even though we miss the prize.
From an aimless, idle, and useless brain, emergencies often call out
powers and virtues before unknown and suspected. How often we see a
young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a
parent, or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has
knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused
the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was
written in prison. The "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared in Bedford Jail.
The "Life and Times" of Baxter, Eliot's "Monarchia of Man," and Penn's
"No Cross, No Crown," were written by prisoners. Sir Walter Raleigh
wrote "The History of the World" during his imprisonment of thirteen
years. Luther translated the Bible while confined in the Castle of
Wartburg. For twenty years Dante worked in exile, and even under
sentence of death. His works were burned in public after his death;
but genius will not burn.
Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant
one on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch
them grow. The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. Its
roots reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing
deep into the earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing
giant, as if in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements.
Sometimes its upward growth seems checked for years, but all the while
it has been expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock
to gain a firmer anchorage. Then it shoots proudly aloft again,
prepared to defy the hurricane. The gales which sport so rudely with
its wide branches find more than their match, and only serve still
further to toughen every minutest fibre from pith to bark.
The acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling.
Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots far
and wide for support.
Take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. Place one in the country
away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only
the district school, the Sunday-school, and a few books. Remove wealth
and props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material in
him, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends him strength for
the next conflict. If he falls, he rises with more determination than
before. Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the
higher he rebounds. Obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the
gymnasium in which the fibres of his manhood are developed. He compels
respect and recognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put
the other boy in a Vanderbilt family. Give him French and German
nurses; gratify every wish. Place him under the tutelage of great
masters and send him to Harvard. Give him thousands a year for
spending money, and let him travel extensively.
The two meet. The city lad is ashamed of his country brother. The
plain, threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner
of the country boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of
the other. The poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no
chance in life," and envies the city youth. He thinks that it is a
cruel Providence that places such a wide gulf between them. They meet
again as men, but how changed! It is as easy to distinguish the
sturdy, self-made man from the one who has been propped up all his life
by wealth, position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder
to tell the difference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak
and one from the sapling of the forest. If you think there is no
difference, place each plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in
a hurricane at sea.
When God wants to educate a man, he does not send him to school to the
Graces, but to the Necessities. Through the pit and the dungeon Joseph
came to a throne. We are not conscious of the mighty cravings of our
half divine humanity; we are not aware of the god within us until some
chasm yawns which must be filled, or till the rending asunder of our
affections forces us to become conscious of a need. Paul in his Roman
cell; John Huss led to the stake at Constance; Tyndale dying in his
prison at Amsterdam; Milton, amid the incipient earthquake throes of
revolution, teaching two little boys in Aldgate Street; David
Livingstone, worn to a shadow, dying in a negro hut in Central Africa,
alone,--what failures they might all to themselves have seemed to be,
yet what mighty purposes was God working out by their apparent
humiliations!
Two highwaymen chancing once to pass a gibbet, one of them exclaimed:
"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" "Tut,
you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for,
if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." Just so
with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare
and keep out unworthy competitors.
"Success grows out of struggles to overcome difficulties," says Smiles.
"If there were no difficulties, there would be no success. In this
necessity for exertion we find the chief source of human
advancement,--the advancement of individuals as of nations. It has led
to most of the mechanical inventions and improvements of the age."
"Stick your claws into me," said Mendelssohn to his critics when
entering the Birmingham orchestra. "Don't tell me what you like but
what you don't like."
John Hunter said that the art of surgery would never advance until
professional men had the courage to publish their failures as well as
their successes.
"Young men need to be taught not to expect a perfectly smooth and easy
way to the objects of their endeavor or ambition," says Dr. Peabody.
"Seldom does one reach a position with which he has reason to be
satisfied without encountering difficulties and what might seem
discouragements. But if they are properly met, they are not what they
seem, and may prove to be helps, not hindrances. There is no more
helpful and profiting exercise than surmounting obstacles."
It is said that but for the disappointments of Dante, Florence would
have had another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the ten dumb centuries
continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for there
will be ten of them, and more) would have had no "Divina Commedia" to
hear!
It was in the Madrid jail that Cervantes wrote "Don Quixote." He was
so poor that he could not even get paper during the last of his
writing, and had to write on scraps of leather. A rich Spaniard was
asked to help him, but the rich man replied: "Heaven forbid that his
necessities should be relieved, it is his poverty that makes the world
rich."
"A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from
inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements."
"She sings well," said a great musician of a promising but passionless
cantatrice, "but she wants something, and in that something,
everything. If I were single, I would court her, I would marry her; I
would maltreat her; I would break her heart, and in six months she
would be the greatest singer in Europe."
"He has the stuff in him to make a good musician," said Beethoven of
Rossini, "if he had only been well flogged when a boy; but he is
spoiled by the ease with which he composes."
We do our best while fighting desperately to attain what the heart
covets. Martin Luther did his greatest work, and built up his best
character, while engaged in sharp controversy with the Pope. Later in
life his wife asks, "Doctor, how is it that whilst subject to Papacy we
prayed so often and with such fervor, whilst now we pray with the
utmost coldness and very seldom?"
When Lord Eldon was poor, Lord Thurlow withheld a promised
commissionership of bankruptcy, saying that it was a favor not to give
it then. "What he meant was," said Eldon, "that he had learned I was
by nature very indolent, and it was only want that could make me very
industrious."
Waters says that the struggle to obtain knowledge and to advance one's
self in the world strengthens the mind, disciplines the faculties,
matures the judgment, promotes self-reliance, and gives one
independence of thought and force of character.
"The gods in bounty work up storms about us," says Addison, "that give
mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw out into
practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth
seasons and the calms of life."
The hothouse plant may tempt a pampered appetite or shed a languid
odor, but the working world gets its food from fields of grain and
orchards waving in the sun and free air, from cattle that wrestle on
the plains, from fishes that struggle with currents of river or ocean;
its choicest perfumes from flowers that bloom unheeded, and in
wind-tossed forests finds its timber for temples and for ships.
"I do not see," says Emerson, "how any man can afford, for the sake of
his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake.
It is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity,
exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true
scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of
power."
Kossuth called himself "a tempest-tossed soul, whose eyes have been
sharpened by affliction."
Benjamin Franklin ran away, and George Law was turned out of doors.
Thrown upon their own resources, they early acquired the energy and
skill to overcome difficulties.
As soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tear
the down and feathers from their nest. The rude and rough experience
of the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and
expert in pursuing his prey.
Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out,"
while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to
"come out."
"It was not the victories but the defeats of my life which have
strengthened me," said the aged Sidenham Poyntz.
Almost from the dawn of history, oppression has been the lot of the
Hebrews, yet they have given the world its noblest songs, its wisest
proverbs, its sweetest music. With them persecution seems to bring
prosperity. They thrive where others would starve. They hold the
purse-strings of many nations. To them hardship has been "like spring
mornings, frosty but kindly, the cold of which will kill the vermin,
but will let the plant live."
In one of the battles of the Crimea a cannon-ball struck inside the
fort, crashing through a beautiful garden. But from the ugly chasm
there burst forth a spring of water which ever afterward flowed a
living fountain. From the ugly gashes which misfortunes and sorrows
make in our hearts, perennial fountains of rich experience and new joys
often spring.
Don't lament and grieve over lost wealth. The Creator may see
something grand and mighty which even He cannot bring out as long as
your wealth stands in the way. You must throw away the crutches of
riches and stand upon your own feet, and develop the long unused
muscles of manhood. God may see a rough diamond in you which only the
hard hits of poverty can polish.
God knows where the richest melodies of our lives are, and what drill
and what discipline are necessary to bring them out. The frost, the
snows, the tempests, the lightnings, are the rough teachers that bring
the tiny acorn to the sturdy oak. Fierce winters are as necessary to
it as long summers. It is its half-century's struggle with the
elements for existence, wrestling with the storm, fighting for its life
from the moment that it leaves the acorn until it goes into the ship,
that gives it value. Without this struggle it would have been
character-less, stamina-less, nerve-less, and its grain would have
never been susceptible of high polish. The most beautiful as well as
the strongest woods are found not in tropical climates, but in the
severe climates, where they have to fight the frosts and the winter's
cold.
Many a man has never found himself until he has lost his all.
Adversity stripped him only to discover him. Obstacles, hardships are
the chisel and mallet which shape the strong life into beauty. The
rough ledge on the hillside complains of the drill, of the blasting
powder which disturbs its peace of centuries: it is not pleasant to be
rent with powder, to be hammered and squared by the quarryman. But
look again: behold the magnificent statue, the monument, chiseled into
grace and beauty, telling its grand story of valor in the public square
for centuries.
The statue would have slept in the marble forever but for the blasting,
the chiseling, and the polishing. The angel of our higher and nobler
selves would remain forever unknown in the rough quarries of our lives
but for the blastings of affliction, the chiseling of obstacles, and
the sand-papering of a thousand annoyances.
Who has not observed the patience, the calm endurance, the sweet
loveliness chiseled out of some rough life by the reversal of fortune
or by some terrible affliction.
How many business men have made their greatest strides toward manhood,
have developed their greatest virtues, when the reverses of fortune
have swept away everything they had in the world; when disease had
robbed them of all they held dear in life. Often we cannot see the
angel in the quarry of our lives, the statue of manhood, until the
blasts of misfortune have rent the ledge, and difficulties and
obstacles have squared and chiseled the granite blocks into grace and
beauty.
Many a man has been ruined into salvation. The lightning which smote
his dearest hopes opened up a new rift in his dark life, and gave him
glimpses of himself which, until then, he had never seen.
The grave buried his dearest hopes, but uncovered possibilities in his
nature of patience, endurance, and hope which he never dreamed he
possessed before.
"Adversity is a severe instructor," says Edmund Burke, "set over us by
one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better
too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our
skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty
makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in
all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial."
Men who have the right kind of material in them will assert their
personality, and rise in spite of a thousand adverse circumstances.
You cannot keep them down. Every obstacle seems only to add to their
ability to get on.
"Under different circumstances," says Castelar, "Savonarola would
undoubtedly have been a good husband, a tender father, a man unknown to
history, utterly powerless to print upon the sands of time and upon the
human soul the deep trace which he has left, but misfortune came to
visit him, to crush his heart, and to impart that marked melancholy
which characterizes a soul in grief, and the grief that circled his
brows with a crown of thorns was also that which wreathed them with the
splendor of immortality. His hopes were centred in the woman he loved,
his life was set upon the possession of her, and when her family
finally rejected him, partly on account of his profession, and partly
on account of his person, he believed that it was death that had come
upon him, when in truth it was immortality."
The greatest men will ever be those who have risen from the ranks. It
is said that there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent,
and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace.
The youth Opie earned his bread by sawing wood, but he reached a
professorship in the Royal Academy. When but ten years old he showed
the material he was made of by a beautiful drawing on a shingle.
Antonio Canova was the son of a day laborer. Thorwaldsen's parents
were poor, but, like hundreds of others, they did with their might what
their hands found to do, and ennobled their work. They rose by being
greater than their calling, as Arkwright rose above mere barbering,
Bunyan above tinkering, Wilson above shoemaking, Lincoln above
rail-splitting, and Grant above tanning. By being first-class barbers,
tinkers, shoemakers, rail-splitters, tanners, they acquired the power
which enabled them to become great inventors, authors, statesmen,
generals.
Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties
of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying
their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither
do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and
happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the
faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill, and fortitude of
the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to
outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism
worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous
sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry
and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements
of greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and
sickest families within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the
brighter the diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you
have been unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for
acquaintances.
Beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he
produced his greatest works. Schiller wrote his best books in great
bodily suffering. He was not free from pain for fifteen years. Milton
wrote his leading productions when blind, poor, and sick. "Who best
can suffer," said he, "best can do." Bunyan said that, if it were
lawful, he could even pray for greater trouble, for the greater
comfort's sake.
"Do you know what God puts us on our backs for?" asked Dr. Payson,
smiling, as he lay sick in bed. "No," replied the visitor. "In order
that we may look upward." "I am not come to condole but to rejoice
with you," said the friend, "for it seems to me that this is no time
for mourning." "Well, I am glad to hear that," said Dr. Payson, "it is
not often I am addressed in such a way. The fact is I never had less
need of condolence, and yet everybody persists in offering it; whereas,
when I was prosperous and well, and a successful preacher, and really
needed condolence, they flattered and congratulated me."
A German knight undertook to make an immense Aeolian harp by stretching
wires from tower to tower of his castle. When he finished the harp it
was silent; but when the breezes began to blow he heard faint strains
like the murmuring of distant music. At last a tempest arose and swept
with fury over his castle, and then rich and grand music came from the
wires. Ordinary experiences do not seem to touch some lives--to bring
out any poetry, any higher manhood.
Not until the breath of the plague had blasted a hundred thousand
lives, and the great fire had licked up cheap, shabby, wicked London,
did she arise, phoenix-like, from her ashes and ruin, a grand and
mighty city.
True salamanders live best in the furnace of persecution.
"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if
the truth were known," said Albion Tourgée. "Grant's failure as a
subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to
accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to."
The appeal for volunteers in the great battle of life, in exterminating
ignorance and error, and planting high on an everlasting foundation the
banner of intelligence and right, is directed to _you_. Burst the
trammels that impede your progress, and cling to hope. Place high thy
standard, and with a firm tread and fearless eye press steadily onward.
Not ease, but effort, not facility, but difficulty, makes men.
Toilsome culture is the price of great success, and the slow growth of
a great character is one of its special necessities. Many of our best
poets
"Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
And learn in suffering what they teach in song."
Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathing
criticism of his first book, "Hours of Idleness," published when he was
but nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, "There is scarce an instance
in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byron
reached." In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott,
Southey, and Campbell, and died at thirty-seven, that age so fatal to
genius. Many an orator like "stuttering Jack Curran," or "Orator Mum,"
as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence by ridicule and
abuse.
This is the crutch age. "Helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere.
We have institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries,
newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are
all worked out in "explanations" and "keys." Our boys are too often
tutored through college with very little study. "Short roads" and
"abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious
methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college
course. Newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion.
Self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if
conscious of delayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her
wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and
emancipate him from Eden's curse.
But do not misinterpret her edict. She emancipates from the lower only
to call to the higher. She does not bid the world go and play while
she does the work. She emancipates the muscles only to employ the
brain and heart.
The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not
developed in warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on
trees, and where exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying
climate and on a stubborn soil. It is no chance that returns to the
Hindoo ryot a penny and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily
toil; that makes Mexico with its mineral wealth poor, and New England
with its granite and ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the
struggle to obtain, it is poverty the priceless spur, that develops the
stamina of manhood, and calls the race out of barbarism. Labor found
the world a wilderness and has made it a garden.
As the sculptor thinks only of the angel imprisoned in the marble
block, so Nature cares only for the man or woman shut up in the human
being. The sculptor cares nothing for the block as such; Nature has
little regard for the mere lump of breathing clay. The sculptor will
chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. Nature will
chip and pound us remorselessly to bring out our possibilities. She
will strip us of wealth, humble our pride, humiliate our ambition, let
us down from the ladder of fame, will discipline us in a thousand ways,
if she can develop a little character. Everything must give way to
that. Wealth is nothing, position is nothing, fame is nothing,
_manhood is everything_.
Not ease, not pleasure, not happiness, but a _man_, Nature is after.
In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure
which stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or
figure on the canvas is subordinate to it, but pointing to the central
idea, finds its true expression there. So in the vast universe of God,
every object of creation is but a guideboard with an index-finger
pointing to the central figure of the created universe--Man. Nature
writes this thought upon every leaf, she thunders it in every creation.
It is exhaled from every flower; it twinkles in every star.
Oh, what price will Nature not pay for a man! Ages and aeons were
nothing for her to spend in preparing for his coming, or to make his
existence possible. She has rifled the centuries for his development,
and placed the universe at his disposal. The world is but his
kindergarten, and every created thing but an object-lesson from the
unseen universe. Nature resorts to a thousand expedients to develop a
perfect type of her grandest creation. To do this she must induce him
to fight his way up to his own loaf. She never allows him once to lose
sight of the fact that it is the struggle to attain that develops the
man. The moment we put our hand upon that which looks so attractive at
a distance, and which we struggled so hard to reach, Nature robs it of
its charm by holding up before us another prize still more attractive.
"Life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate
from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks
that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them
or no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able
to sleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the
while there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes
with the stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve
its use and do its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes
are not wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of
toilers who labor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our
temple-building, whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll,
and fills life with cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our
daily business, the fiercer animosities when we are beaten, the even
fiercer exultation when we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster,
the piercing scream of defeat,--these things we have not yet gotten rid
of, nor in this life ever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them?
We are here, my brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God's
quarry and on God's anvil for a nobler life to come." Only the muscle
that is used is developed.
The constantly cheerful man, who survives his blighted hopes and
disappointments, who takes them just for what they are, lessons, and
perhaps blessings in disguise, is the true hero.
There is a strength
Deep bedded in our hearts of which we reck
But little, till the shafts of heaven have pierced
Its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent
Before her gems are found?
MRS. HEMANS.
"If what shone afar so grand
Turns to ashes in the hand,
On again, the virtue lies
In the struggle, not the prize."
"The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails."
"So many great
Illustrious spirits have conversed with woe,
Have in her school been taught, as are enough
To consecrate distress, and make ambition
Even wish the frown beyond the smile of fortune."
Then welcome each rebuff,
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand but go.
BROWNING.