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.
In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be
made.--CICERO.
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.
Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a
thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.--GEORGE HENRY
LEWES.
Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what
you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.--ARNOLD.
All good abides with him who waiteth wisely.--THOREAU.
The more haste, ever the worse speed.--CHURCHILL.
Haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself.--SENECA.
"Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast."
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed-time
of character?--THOREAU.
I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to
perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both
public and private, of peace and war.--MILTON.
The safe path to excellence and success, in every calling, is that of
appropriate preliminary education, diligent application to learn the
art and assiduity in practicing it.--EDWARD EVERETT.
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 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.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: THOMAS ALVA EDISON]
"The Wizard of Menlo Park."
"What the world wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work
and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss."
* * * * * *
"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 Henry's
perforation device of far less value than a last year's bird's nest.
Henry felt proud of the young woman's ingenuity, and 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 want something, and want it quickly. They
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. You can't stop to forage your provender as the army advances;
if you do the enemy will get there first. Hard work, a definite aim,
and faithfulness, will shorten the way. Don't risk a life's
superstructure upon a day's foundation.
Unless you have prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the
opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is
valuable to you just in proportion as you have educated yourself to
make use of it. Beware of that fatal facility of thoughtless speech
and superficial action which has misled many a young man into the
belief that he could make a glib tongue or a deft hand take the place
of deep study or hard work.
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. To-day, "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 last 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 a half 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 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 twelve years with Michael Angelo,
studying anatomy that he might create the masterpiece of all art; or
with Da Vinci devoting ten years to 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. While Michael Angelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he
would not allow himself time for meals or to dress or undress; but he
kept bread within reach that he might eat when hunger impelled, and he
slept in his clothes.
A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing 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."
"I prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an
hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "In that,"
said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they
also thought nothing of it."
What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and
wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can
spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah
Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who
can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire;" a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has
a chance to show 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 Garfield, burning
his lamp fifteen minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a
Grant, fighting on in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother
generals and politicians everywhere; a Field's untiring perseverance,
spending years and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called
him a fool; 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 Titian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;"
a Stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty
years on a condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for
twelve long years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; 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, and then selling it for fifteen
pounds; a Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair"
was refused by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a
lonely garret, 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 cause, 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 under ground. Success is the child of
drudgery and perseverance and depends upon "knowing how long it takes
to succeed." Havelock joined the army at twenty-eight, and for
thirty-four years worked and waited for his opportunity; conscious of
his power, "fretting as a subaltern while he saw drunkards and fools
put above his head."
But during all these years he was fitting himself to lead that
marvelous march to Lucknow.
It was many years of drudgery and reading a thousand volumes that
enabled George Eliot to get fifty thousand dollars for "Daniel
Deronda." How came writers to be famous? By writing for years without
any pay at all; by writing hundreds of pages for mere practice work; by
working like galley-slaves at literature for half a lifetime. It was
working and waiting many long and weary years that put one hundred and
twenty-five thousand dollars into "The Angelus." Millet's first
attempts were mere daubs, the later were worth fortunes. Schiller
"never could get done." Dante sees himself "growing lean over his
Divine Comedy." It is working and waiting that gives perfection.
"I do not remember," said Beecher, "a book in all the depths of
learning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools of
art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not
known to have been long and patiently elaborated."
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 practiced
constantly before a glass, studying expression for a year and a half.
When he appeared upon the stage, Byron, who went to see him with Moore,
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."
_Festina lente_--hasten slowly--is a good Latin motto. 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
roots 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. When
the Franco-Prussian war was declared, Von Moltke was awakened at
midnight and told of the fact. He said coolly to the official who
aroused him, 'Go to pigeonhole No. ---- in my safe and take a paper
from it and telegraph as there directed to the different troops of the
empire.' He then turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual
hour in the morning. Every one else in Berlin was excited about the
war, but Von Moltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who
met him said, 'General, you seem to be taking it very easy. Aren't you
afraid of the situation? I should think you would be busy.' 'Ah,'
replied Von Moltke, 'all of my work for this time has been done long
beforehand and everything that can be done now has been done.'"
That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten.
He that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is
impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own
slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and
be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole
college course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested
facts. The facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary
college graduate who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid
you pause and reflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to
crawl on all fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop
his mental and moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education,
and only by means of it will he become what he ought to become,--man,
in the highest sense of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation
of knowledge, it is the misdirection of the mind. "One step in
knowledge," says Bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is
one step nearer to Heaven."
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."
"If a cloth were drawn around the eyes of Praxiteles' statue of Love,"
says Bulwer, "the face looked grave and sad; but as the bandage was
removed, a beautiful smile would overspread the countenance. Even so
does the removal of the veil of ignorance from the eyes of the mind
bring radiant happiness to the heart of man."
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 have become 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 so 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 many a
man who is now in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, or among the
tramps, or living out a miserable existence in the slums of our cities,
bent over, uncouth, rough, slovenly, has possibilities slumbering
within the rags, which would have developed him into a magnificent man,
an ornament to the human race instead of a foul blot and scar, had he
only been fortunate enough early in life to have come under efficient
and systematic training.
Laziness begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. The more business
a man has, the more he can do, for be learns to economize his time.
The industry that acquired riches, according to a wise teacher, the
patience that is required in obtaining them, the reserved self-control,
the measuring of values, the sympathy felt for fellow-toilers, the
knowledge of what a dollar costs to the average man, the memory of
it--all these things are preservative. But woe to the young farmer who
hates farming; does not like sowing and reaping; is impatient with the
dilatory and slow path to a small though secure fortune in the
neighborhood where he was born, and comes to the city, hoping to become
suddenly rich, thinking that he can break into the palace of wealth and
rob it of its golden treasures!
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 get money to
buy books which his soul thirsted for.
To Jonas Chickering there were no trifles in the manufacture of a
piano. Others might work for salaries, but he was working for fame and
fortune. Neither time nor pains were of any account to him compared
with accuracy and knowledge. He could afford to work and wait, for
quality, not quantity, was his aim. Fifty years ago the piano was a
miserable, instrument compared with the perfect mechanism of to-day.
Chickering was determined to make a piano which would yield the
fullest, richest volume of melody with the least exertion to the
player, and one which would withstand atmospheric changes and preserve
its purity and truthfulness of tone. And he strove patiently and
persistently till he succeeded.
"Thy life, wert thou the pitifullest of all the sons of earth, is no
idle dream, but a solemn reality," said Carlyle. "It is thy own. It
is all thou hast to comfort eternity with. Work then like a star,
unhasting, yet unresting."
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 he 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.
Emperor William I. was not a genius, but the secret of his power lay in
tireless perseverance. A friend says of him, "When I passed the palace
at Berlin night after night, however late, I always saw that grand
imperial figure standing beside the green lamp, and I used to say to
myself, 'That is how the imperial crown of Germany was won.'"
Ole Bull said, "If I practice one day, I can see the result. If I
practice two days my friends can see it; if I practice 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, cannot be
overestimated. You will find use for all of it. Webster once repeated
an anecdote with effect which he heard fourteen years before, and which
he had not thought of in the mean time. 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 urged 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.
Are the results so distant that you delay the preparation in the hope
that fortuitous good luck may make it unnecessary? As well might the
husbandman delay sowing his seed until the spring and summer are past
and the ground hardened by the frosts of a rigorous winter. As well
might one who is desirous of enjoying firm health inoculate his system
with the seeds of disease, and expect at such time as he may see fit to
recover from its effects, and banish the malady. 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
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 theatre, 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 his 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 practice Abraham Lincoln's homely
maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success."
"When a man has done his work," says Ruskin, "and nothing can any way
be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest
with his fate if he will, but what excuse can you find for willfulness
of thought at the very lime when every crisis of fortune hangs on your
decisions? A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home
forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! A youth
thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity
of a moment! A youth thoughtless, when his every action is a
foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation
of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than
now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly
thoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be done
there."
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. 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." Every defeat is a Waterloo to him who has no reserves.
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.
"One who reads the chronicles of discoveries is struck with the
prominent part that accident has played in such annals. For some of
the most useful processes and machinery the world is indebted to
apparently chance occurrences. Inventors in search of one object have
failed in their quest, but have stumbled on something more valuable
than that for which they were looking. Saul is not the only man who
has gone in search of asses and found a kingdom. Astrologers sought to
read from the heavens the fate of men and the fortune of nations, and
they led to a knowledge of astronomy. Alchemists were seeking for the
philosopher's stone, and from their efforts sprung the science of
chemistry. Men explored the heavens for something to explain
irregularities in the movements of the planets, and discovered a star
other than the one for which they were looking. A careless glance at
such facts might encourage the delusion that aimless straying in
bypaths is quite as likely to be rewarded as is the steady pressing
forward, with fixed purpose, towards some definite goal.
"But it is to be remembered that the men who made the accidental
discoveries were men who were looking for something. The unexpected
achievement was but the return for the toil after what was attained.
Others might have encountered the same facts, but only the eye made
eager by the strain of long watching would be quick to note the
meaning. If vain search for hidden treasure has no other recompense,
it at least gives ability to detect the first gleam of the true metal.
Men may wake at times surprised to find themselves famous, but it was
the work they did before going to sleep, and not the slumber, that gave
the eminence. When the ledge has been drilled and loaded and the
proper connections have been made, a child's touch on the electric key
may be enough to annihilate the obstacle, but without the long
preparation the pressure of a giant's hand would be without effect.
"In the search for truth and the shaping of character the principle
remains the same as in science and literature. Trivial causes are
followed by wonderful results, but it is only the merchantman who is on
the watch for goodly pearls who is represented as finding the pearl of
great price."
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.
LONGFELLOW.