^ H co»»E'-^ffiS«lM« !j*§?4 075 437 453 DATE DUE U«V .J V BjQS mmH^ GAYLOBD PRINTED IN U SA The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924075437453 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1984 to replace die irreparably deteriorated original. 1995 COLUMBUS {After painiinj in Royal Arsenal^ Madrid) " Sail on, sail on, sail on, and on," RISING IN THE WORLD OR, ARCHITECTS OF FATE A BOOK DESIGNED TO INSPIRE YOUTH TO CHARACTER BUILDING, SELF-CULTURE AND NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT BY ORISON SWETT HARDEN AUTHOR OF " PUSHING TO THK FRONT OK, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES*' EDITOR OF "success," ETC. ILLUSTRATED WITH THIRTY-TWO FINE PORTRAITS OF EMINENT PERSONS '* AU 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." THE SUCCESS COMPAlsTY Cooper Union, New York 1897 ;$- ^' Om' iMi. 1.1, 7^' "J /\1 1 ^ '/' / C Copyright, 1895 and 1897, By orison SWETT MAKDEN. All rights reserved. ,1,1 li'iV, !*'J PEEFACE. 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 achieve- ment 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 determina- tion to get on in the world. Nothing is so fascinating to a youth with high pur- pose, 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 interest- ing 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 difiiculties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant ends ; the story of how great men started, their struggles, their long waitings, amid want and woe, the obstacles over- come, the final triumphs ; examples, which explode ex- cuses, 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 iv PRE FA CE. inspire the ambitious youtli. The author teaclu's that tliere are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who has tlie grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf ; that the barriers are not j^et 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 povertj^, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been able to bar the progress of men with grit ; that povertj"^ has rocked the cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbar- ism, 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 unwaver- ing 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 deter- mined. 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 tliere is some- thing nobler in an occupation than merely living-getting or raone3^-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 prac- tical than elegant, more helpful than, ornate, more per- tinent than novel. The author wishes to acknowledge valuable assistance from Mr. Arthur W. Brown, of W. Kingston, E. I. O. S. M. 43 BowDOiN St., Boston, Mass. December 2, 1895. CONTENTS. CHAPTEE piaa L Wanted — A Max 1 GcMi is after A7nan. Wealth is nothing, fame is nothing. Man- hood is everything. II. Dake . . 10 Dare to live thy creed. Conquer your place in the world. All things serve a brave souL III. The WiLt AND THE Way 38 Find a way or make one. Everi'thing is either pusher or pushed. The woi'ld always listens to a mau with a will iu him. IV. Success under Difficulties 60 There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its way to recognition through detraction, calumny, and persecu- tion. V. Uses of Obstacles 86 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. ( VL One Unwaveking Aim 107 V Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Try to be \. somebody with all your might. YJL Sowing and Reaping 125 "What is put into tlie first of life is put into the whole of life. Start right. Vin. Self-Help 145 Self-made or never made. The greatest men have risen from the ranks. IX. Work and Wait . . 167 Don^t risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation. X. Clear Grit 186 The goddess of fame or of fortune has been won by many a poor boy who had no friends, no backing, or anj'thiug but pure grit and invincible purpose to commend him. XI. The Grandest Thing in the World 202 Manhood is above all riches and overtops all titles ; character is greater than any career. XIL Wealth in Economy . 227 ** Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable ; but debt is infinitely worse than all." CONTENTS. XIII. Rich avithout Money . 239 To have nothing is not povcrt)'. Whoever uplifts civilization is rich though he die penniless, and future generations will erect his ULOuunieut. XIV. Opportunities -where You Are 256 "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 . 2GS There is nothing small in a world wlieie a mud-crack swells to an Amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold, XVI. Self-Ma STERY 2SS Guard your weak point. Be lord over yourself. XVII. Nature's Little Bill . . 306 Many a man pays for his success with a slice of his constitution. Most of us carry our creeds in our bile-ducts. If they are healthy, we are optimists ; if diseased, pessimists. XVIII. Vocations, Good and Bad 327 Half the world is out of place and tortured with the conscious- ness of unfulfilled destiny. Civilization will mark its highest tide when every man finds his place and fills it. XIX. The Man with an Idea 343 The man with an idea ha^ ever changed the face of the world. XX. Decision 358 To dally with your purpose, to half will, to hang forever in the balance, is to lose j-our grip on life. XXL Power of the Mind over the Body 370 The mind has power to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to preserve it from decay to a far greater extent than we are apt to think. XXIL The Ch.\rities 390 When everybody else denounces and curses a man, Charity says, '* "Wait : there is a god in that man somewhere." XXIIL The Curse of Idleness 410 A lazy man is of no more use than a dead man, and he takes up more room. XXIV. Our Schools and Schoolmasters ... . . 421 Poverty and hardship have ever been the great schoolmasters of the race, and have forced into prominence many a man who would otherwise have remained unknown. XXV. Books 430 Perhaps no other things have such power to lift the poor out of poverty, the wretched out of misery, to make the burden-bearer forget Iiis burden, the sick his suffering, as books. XXVI. KvERY Man his own Paradise. . , . . . 448 Paradise is not lost except to those who have blinded their eyes to its beauties, stopped their ears to its harmonies, and blunted their sensibilities to its sweet experiences. LIST OF PORTRAITS. CoLUJiBUS Frontispiece I. Phillips Brooks . . ... To/ace 1 II. Olivek Hazard Perry . ... ... 10 III. Walter Scott .... 38 IV. William Hicklixg Prescott .... . . . CO V. John Bunyan . . . 8(i VI. Bernard Palissv 106 VI. Richard Arkwrighl' 112 VII. Victor Hugo .... 124 VIII. James A. Garfield ... 144 VIII. Michael Faraday 1.52 IX. Thomas Alva Edison 166 X. Andrew Jackson 186 XI. John Greenleaf Whittier 202 XI. Lafayette 216 XII. Alexander Hamilton 226 XIII. Ralph W-\ldo Emerson 238 XIV. Thomas Jefferson ; 2.56 XV. Locis Agassiz .... 268 XVL James Russell Lowell . . 288 XVII. James G. Blaine 306 XVIIL Charles Sumner 326 XIX. George Stephenson ... 342 XIX. Robert Fulton . So2 XX. Patrick Henry . . 358 XXI. Alexander H. Stephens ... 370 XXII. Washington Irving . 390 XXII. Florence Nightingale . ... 400 XXIV. Henry Clay 420 XXV. George Eliot 430 XXV. Henky Wadsworth Longfellow 440 XXVt John Ruskin . . . 44S PHILLIPS BROOKS ** The best-loved man in New England." ** The ideal life, the life full of completion, haunts ua alL "We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are." ARCHITECTS OF PATE. CHAPTER I. WANTED A MAN. " Wanted ; men : Not systems fit and wise, Not faiths with rigid ej-es. 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. — Jeke- MIAH. 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. — Alexandek 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, un- impassioned, impossible ghost. My eyes and ears are revolted by any neglect of the physical facts, the limitations of man. — Emekson. 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 tlie right mixture. The fine adjustment of the existing elements, where the well-mixed man is born •2 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. with e^'es not too dull, nor too good, with fire enough and earth enough, capable of recei\'ing 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, men;" and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scorufulh' : " I called for men, not pj-gmies." The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every profession, every occupation ; every call- ing : " Wanted — A jNIan." Wanted, a man who will not lose his individualitj' in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "Xo," though all the world saj^ "Yes." Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated hj a mighty purj)ose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood ; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty 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, disci- pline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupa- tion. A thousand pulpits vacant in a single religious de- nomination, 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 crip- WANTED — A MAN. 3 pies 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 speeialtj^, and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and die. Wanted, a man who is broad, wlio does not take half views of things. Wanted, a man who mixes com- mon 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 him- self." Grod calls a man to be upright and pure and gener- ous, 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 sensibilitj* ; 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. Al- though 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 everj 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 ; 4 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. and whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badlj' prepared to till 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. Mature has destined us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination con- cerning society. To live is the profession 1 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 he 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 Bap- tist, 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 joayself a man ; if I do not succeed in that, I can suc- ceed in nothing." ^ Montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by it- self 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 WANTED — A MAN. 5 must have a robustness of health. Meve 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. Ouly he is healthy Avho exults in mere animal existence ; whose vevy 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 boj-s 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 great- est 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 instru- ments 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 gradu- ated every year from our grand institutions, whose ob- ject is to make stalwart, independent, self-supporting men, turned out into the world saplings instead of stal- wart oaks, " memory-glands " instead of brainy men, helpless instead of self-supporting, sickly instead of ro- bust, "weak instead of strong, leaning instead of erect. " So many promising youths, and never a finished man ! " b AllCHITECTS OF FATE. The character sympathizes with and unconsciously takes on the nature of the bodj*. 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 high- est standard ; and there is an inherent protest or con- tempt for preventable deticiencj'. Xature too demands that man be ever at the top of his condition. The giant's strength with the imbecile's brain Avill 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 com- ing 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 per- fect 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 viola- tion of nature's laws. His whole character will be im- pressible, and will respond to the most delicate touches of nature. WANTED — .1 MAN. 1 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 de- termination 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 every- where or be worthless, according to his individual rep- utation 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 pro- test, his reputation will be lost and confidence in him ruined. If the youth should start out with the fixed determi- nation that every statement he makes shall be the exact truth ; that every promise he makes shall be redeemed to the letter ; that everj' 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 price- less 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 al- most unlimited credit and the confidence of all ; and would have developed into noble man-timber. What are palaces and equipages ; what though a man 8 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. could cover a continent with liis title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce ; compared ^vith conscious rec- titude, with a face that never turns pale at the accuser's voice, witli a bosom that never throbs with the fear of ex- posure, 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 j'our 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 j'our own, with nothing be- tween your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude ; — this is to he a man. " He that of such a height hath built his mind. And reared the dwelling ot his thought so strong As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame Of his resolved powers ; nor all the wind Of vanit\' or malice pierce to wrong His settled peace, or to disturb the same; What a fair seat hath he ; from whence he mav The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey." \_Linesfmi7id in one of the books of Beecltei-^s Library.'] A man is never so happj' as when he is totus in se ; as when he suffices to himself, and can walk without crutches or a guide. Said Jean Paul Eichter : "I have made as much out of mj'self 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 5-et 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 WANTED — A MAN. J In forest, brake, or den, As beasts exce! cold rocks and brambles rude, — Men wlio their duties kno^v, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tju-aiit while they rend the cliain. William Jones. God give us men. A time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and read^' 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 ! YouNGo " 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. CHArXER II. DARE. The Spartans did not inquire how many the enem\' are, but where the\ are. — Agis II. What 's brave, what's noble, let*s do it after the ]iii;h Roman fashion, and make death proud to take us. — Shakespeaue. Better, like Hector, in the field to die, Than, like a perfumed Paris, turn and fly. " LoSGFfSLLOW. Let me die facing the enemy. — Bayakd. Who conquers me, shall find a stubborn foe. Bykon. Courage in danger is half the battle. Plautus. Ko great deed is done B3- falterers who ask for certainty. George Eliot. Fortune befriends the bold. — Dryden. Tender handed stroke a nettle, And it stings 3'"ou for your pains ; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains. Aaron Hill. We make waj' for the man who boMl^' pushes past us. — Bovee. Man should dare all things that he knows is right, And fear to do nothing save what is wrong. Phere Gary. Soft-heartedness, in times like these, Shows softness in the upper story. Lowell. O friend, never strike sail to fear. Come into port grandly, or sail with God the seas- — Emersos. To stand with a smile upon your face against a stake from which you cannot get away — that, no doubt, is heroic. But the true glorj' is resig- nation to the inevitable. To stand unchained, with perfect liberty to go away, held only by the higher claims of duty, and let the fire creep up to the heart, —this is heroism. — F. W. Robertson. " Steady, men ! Every man must die where he stands!" said Colin Campbell to the Ninety -third COMMODORE PERRY * We have met the enemy and they are ours.' *' He either fears his fate too much Or his deserts too small. That dares not put it to the touch, To gaiu or lose it all." DARE. 11 Highlanders at Balaklava, as an overwhelming force of Russian cavalry came sweeping down. "Ay, ay, Sir Colin ! we '11 do that ! " was the cordial response from men many of whom had to keep their word by thus obeying. "Bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, . although the men were retreating. "No," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors." " To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's noble defiance to the enemies of France. " The Commons of France have resolved to deliber- ate," said Mirabeau to De Breze, who brought an order from the king for them, to disperse, June 23, 1789. " We have heard the intentions that have been attrib- uted to the king ; and you, sir, who cannot be recog- nized as his organ in the National Assembly, — j^ou, •who have neither place, voice, nor right to speak, — you are not the person to bring to us a message of his. Go, say to those who sent you that we are here by the power of the people, and that we will not be driven hence, save by the power of the bayonet." When the assembled senate of Rome begged Eegulus not to return to Carthage to fulfill an illegal promise, he calmly replied : " Have you resolved to dishonor me ? Torture and death are awaiting me, but what are these to the shame of an infamous act, or the wounds of a guilty mind ? Slave as I am to Carthage, I still have the spirit of a Roman. I have sworn to return. It is my duty. Let the gods take care of the rest." The courage which Cranmer had shown since the accession of Mary gave way the moment his final doom was announced. The moral cowardice which had displayed itself in his miserable compliance with the lust and despotism of Henry displayed itself again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase 12 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. pardon. But pardon -was impossible; and Crannicr's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weak- ness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford on the 21st of ]\[arcli, to repeat his recantation on the way to the stake. " Now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before him, — " now I come to the great thing that troubleth niy conscience more than anj" other thing tliat ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth ; which here I now renouncie and refuse as things written by a hand contrary to the truth which 1 thought in my heart, and written for fear of death to save my life, if it might be. And, forasmuch as my hand of- fended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand there- fore shall be the first punished ; for if I come to the fire it shall be the first burned." " This was the hand that wrote it," he again exclaimed at the stake, "therefore it shall suffer first punishment ; " and holding it steadily in the flame, "he never stirred nor cried till life was gone." " Oh, if I were only a man ! " exclaimed Rebecca Bates, a girl of fourteen, as she looked from the win- dow of a lighthouse at Scituate, Mass., during the War of 1812, and saw a British warship anchor in the har- bor. " What could you do ? " asked Sarah Winsor, a young visitor. "See what a lot of them the boats contain, and look at their guns ! " and she pointed to five large boats, filled with soldiers in scarlet uniforms, who were coming to burn the vessels in the harbor and destroy the town. " I don't care, I 'd fight," said Rebecca. " I 'd use father's old shotgun — anything. Think of uncle's new boat and the sloop ! And how hard it is to sit here and see it all, and not lift a finger to help. Father and uncle are in the village and will do all they^ can. How still it is in the town ! There is not a man to be seen." " Oh, they are hiding till the soldiers get nearer," said Sarah ; " then we '11 hear the DARE. • 13 shots and the dram." "The dram!" exclaimed Re- becca, "how can they use it? It is here. Father broxight it home last night to mend. See ! the first boat has reached the sloop. Oh ! they are going to burn her. Where is that dram ? I 've a great mind to go down and beat it. We could hide behind the sand- hills and bushes." As flames began to rise from the sloop the ardor of the girls increased. They found the drum and an old fife, and, slipping out of doors unno- ticed by IMrs. Bates, soon stood behind a row of sand- hills. " Eub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub," went the dram, and " squeak, squeak, squeak," went the fife. The Americans in the town thought that help had come from Boston, and rushed into boats to attack the red- coats. The British paused in their work of destruc- tion; and, when the fife began to play "Yankee Doodle," they scrambled into their boats and rowed in haste to the warship, which weighed anchor and sailed away as fast as the wind would carry her. A woman's piercing shriek suddenly startled a party of surveyors at dinner in a forest of northern Virginia on a calm, sunny day in 1750. The cries were repeated in quick succession, and the men sprang through the undergrowth to learn their cause. " Oh, sir," exclaimed the woman as she caught sight of a youth of eighteen, but a man in stature and bearing ; " you will surely do something for me ! Make these friends release me. My boy, — my poor boy is drowning, and they will not let me go!" "It would be madness; she will jump into the river," said one of the men who was holding her; "and the rapids would dash her to pieces in a moment ! " Throwing off his coat, the youth sprang to the edge of the bank, scanned for a moment the rocks and whirling currents, and then, at sight of part of the boy's dress, plunged into the roaring rapids. "Thank God, he will save my child ! " cried the mother, and all rushed to the brink of the precipice ; " there he is ! Oh, my boy, my darling boy ! How could I leave you ? " 14 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. But all eyes were bent upon the youth struggling with strong heart and hope amid the dizzy sweep of the whirling currents far below. Xow it seemed as if he would be dashed against a projecting rock, over which the water flew in foam, and anon a whirlpool would drag him in, from whose grasp escape would seem impossible. Twice the boy went out of sight, but he had reappeared the second time, although frightfully near the most dangerous part of the river. The rush of waters here was tremendous, and no one had ever dared to approach it, even in a canoe, lest he should be dashed to j)ieces. The youth redoubled his exertions. Three times he was about to grasp the child, when some stronger eddy would toss it from him. One final effort he makes ; the child is held aloft by his strong right arm ; but a cry of horror bursts from the lips of every spectator as boy and man shoot over the falls and vanish in the seething waters below. " There they are ! " shouted the mother a moment later, in a delirium of joy. " See ! they are safe ! Great God, I thank Thee ! " And sure enough they emerged unharmed from the boiling vortex," and in a few minutes reached a low place in the bank and were drawn up by their friends, the boy senseless, but still alive, and the youth almost exhausted. "God will give you a reward," solemnly spoke the grateful woman. "He will do great things for you in return for this day's work, and the blessings of thousands besides mine will attend you." The youth was George Washington. "Your Grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed," said a phrenologist, who was exam- ining Wellington's head. "You are right," replied the Iron Duke, "and but for my sense of duty I should have retreated in my first fight." That first fight, on an Indian field, was one of the most terrible on record. In the reverses which followed Napoleon, he met the DARE. 15 allies at Arcis. A live sliell having fallen in front of one of his j'ouiig battalions, which recoiled and wavered in expectation of an explosion, Xapoleon, to reassure them, spurred his charger toward the instrument of destruction, made him smell the burning match, waited unshaken for the explosion, and was blown up. Rolling in the dust with his mutilated steed, and rising without a wound amid the plaudits of his soldiers, he calmly called for another horse, and continued to brave the grape-shot, and to fly into the thickest of the battle. When General Jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare to approach him. "Call a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." But they also shrank in fear from the ruffian. " Call me, then," said Jackson ; " this court is adjourned for five minutes." He left the bench, walked straight up to the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who dropped his weapons, afterwards saj'ing, " There was something in his eye I could not resist." One of the last official acts of the late President Carnot, of France, was the sending of a medal of the French Legion of Honor to a little American girl, who lives in Indiana. '\Vhile a train on the Pan Handle Eailroad, having on board several distinguished Prench- men, was bound to Chicago and the World's Pair, Jennie Carey, who was then ten years old, discovered that a trestle was on fire, and that if the train, which was nearly due, entered it a dreadful wreck would take place. Thereupon she ran out upon the track to a place where she could be seen from some little distance. Then she took oH her red flannel skirt and, when the train came in view, waved it back and forth across the track. It was seen, and the train stopped. On board of it were seven hundred people, many of whom must 16 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. have suffered death but for Jennie's courage and pres- ence of mind. When they returned to France, tlie Frenchmen brought the occurrence to the notice of President Carnot, and tlie result was the sending of the medal of this famous French societj^, the purpose of which is the honoring of bravery and merit, wherever they may be found. After the battle of Fort Donelson, the wounded were hauled down the hill in rough board wagons, and most of them died before they reached St. Louis. One blue- eyed boy of nineteen, with both arms and both legs shattered, had lain a long time and was neglected. He said, " Why, you see they could n't stop to bother with us because they had to take the fort. When they took it we all forgot our sufferings and shouted for joy, even to the dying." Louis IX. of France was cajjtured by the Turks at the battle of Mansoora, during the Seventh Crusade, and his wife Marguerite, with a babe at the breast, was in Damietta, many m^iles away. The Infidels sur- rounded the city, and pressed the garrison so hard that it was decided to capitulate. The queen summoned the knights, and told them that she at least would die in armor upon the ramparts before the enemy should become masters of Damietta. " Before Iier words they thrilled like leaves When winds are in the wood ; And a deepening murmur told of men Roused to a loftier mood." Grasping lance and shield, they vowed to defend their queen and the cross to the last. Damietta was saved. Pyrrhus marched to Sparta to reinstate the deposed Cleonymus, and quietly pitched his tents before Laco- nia, not anticipating resistance. In consternation, the Spartans in council decided to send their women to Crete for safety. But the women met and asked Queen DARE. 17 Arehidainia to remonstrate. Slic went to tlie council, sword in hand, and told the men that their wives did not care to live after Sparta was destro^-ed. " We are lirave men's mothers, and brave men's wives ; We are reailj' to do and dare ; We are ready to man j-our walls with onr lives, And string your bows with onr hair." They hurried to the walls and worked all night, aid- ing the men in digging trenches. When Pj-rrhiis attacked the city next day, his repulse was so emphatic that he withdi'ew from Laconia. Charles V. of Spain passed through Thuringia in 1547, on his return to Swabia after the battle of iluehl- burg. He wrote to Catherine, Countess Dowager of Schwartzburg, promising that her subjects should not be molested in their persons or property if they would supply the Spanish soldiers with provisions at a reason- able price. On approaching Eudolstadt, General Alva and Prince Henry of Brunswick, with his sons, invited themselves, by a messenger sent forward, to breakfast with the Countess, who had no choice but to ratify so delicate a request from the commander of an army. Just as the guests were seated at a generous repast, the Countess was called from the hall and told that the Spaniards were using violence and driving away the cattle of the peasants. Quietly arming all her retinue, she bolted and barred all the gates and doors of the castle, and returned to the banquet to complain of the breach of faith. Gen- eral Alva told her that such was the custom of war, adding that such trifling disorders were not to be heeded. "That we shall presently see," said Catha- rine; "my poor subjects must have their own again, or, as God lives, prince's blood for oxen's blood ! " The doors were opened, and armed men took the places of the waiters behind the chairs of the guests. Henry clianged color; then, as the best way out of a bad 18 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. scrape, lauglied loudly, and ended by praising the splendid acting of his hostess, and promising that Alva should order the cattle restored at once. Not until a courier returned, saying that the order had been obeyed, and all damages settled satisfactorily, did the armed ■waiters leave. The Countess then thanked her guests for the honor they had done her castle, and they retired with protestations of their distinguished consideration. It was the heroic devotion of an Indian girl that saved the life of Captain John Smith, when the power- ful King Powhatan had decreed his death. Ill could the struggling colonj- spare him at that time. "When the consul shouted that the bridge was totter- ing, Lartius and Herminius sought safety in flight. But Horatius strode still nearer the foe, the single champion of his countrjr and liberty, and dared the ninety thou- sand to come on. Dead stillness fell upon the Tuscans, so astonished were they at the audacity of the Roman. He first broke the awful silence, so deep that his clear, strong voice could be heard by thousands in both armies, between which rolled the Tiber, as he denounced the baseness and perfidy of the invaders. Not until his words were drowned by the loud crash of fiercelj" disrupturing timbers, and the sullen splash of the dark river, did his enemies hurl their showers of arrows and javelins. Then, dexterously warding off the missiles with his shield, he plunged into the Tiber. Although stabbed in the hip by a Tuscan spear which lamed him for life, he swam in safety to Rome. "It is a bad omen," said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness for a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare venture now upon the sea." So he returned to his house ; but his young son Leif decided to go, and, with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed southward in searcli of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarui had DARE. 19 been driven bj- a storm, wliile sailing in another Viking ship two or three years before. The first land that the3r saw was probably Labrador, a barren, rngged plain. Leif called thi^ countr3' Heluland, or the land of flat stones. Sailing onward many daj's, he came to a low, level coast thickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the country Markland, probably the modern Nova Scotia. Sailing onward, they came to an island which they named Vinland on account of the abundance of delicious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the year 1000. Here where the city of Ifewport, E. I., stands, they spent many months, and then re- turned to Greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and strange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and no doubt Eric was sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen. May 10, 1796, Napoleon -carried the bridge at Lodi, in the face of the Austrian batteries. Fourteen cannon — some accounts say thirty — were trained upon the French end of the structure. Behind them were six thousand troops. Napoleon massed four thousand gren- adiers at the head of the bridge, with a battalion of three hundred carbineers in front. At the tap of the drum the foremost assailants wheeled from the cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canis- ter, and attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. The front ranks went down like stalks of grain before a reaper ; the column staggered and reeled backward, and the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task before them. Without a word or a look of reproach, Napoleon placed himself at their head, and his aids and generals rushed to his side. Forward again, this time over heaps of dead that choked the passage, and a quick run, counted by seconds pnly, carried lie col- umn across two hundred yards of clear space, scarcely a shot from the Austrians taking effect beyond the point where the platoons wheeled for the first leap. 20 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. So sudden and so niiraoulous was it all that tlio Aus- trian artillerists abandoned their guns instantly, and their supports fled in a panic instead of rushing to the frout and meeting the French onslaught. This Napo- leon had counted on in making the bold attack. The contrast between jSTapoleon's slight figure and the mas- sive grenadiers suggested the nickname "Little Cor- poral." The great secret of the success of Joan of Arc was the boldness of her attacks. When Stephen of Colonna fell into the hands of base assailants, and they asked him in derision, " Where is now your fortress ? " " Here," was his bold reply, placing his hand upon his heart. It was after the Mexican War when General Mc- Clellan was employed as a topographical engineer in surveying the Pacific coast. From his headquarters at Vancouver he had gone south to the Columbia Eiver with two companions, a soldier and a servant. One evening he received word that the chiefs of the Columbia River tribes desired to confer with him. From the messenger's manner he suspected that the Indians meant mischief. He warned his companions that they must be ready to leave camp at a moment's notice. Mounting his horse, he rode boldly into the Indian village. About thirty chiefs were holding coun- cil. McClellan was led into the circle, and placed at the right hand of Saltese. He was familiar with the Chinook jargon, and could understand every word spoken in the council. Saltese made known the griev- ance of the tribes. Two Indians had been captured by a party of white pioneers and hanged for theft. Retal- iation for this outrage seemed indispensable. The chiefs pondered long, but had little to sajj^. McClellan had been on friendly terms with them, and was not responsible for the forest executions. Still, he was a white man, and the chiefs had vowed vengeance against DARE. 21 the race. The council -was prolonged for hours before sentence was passed, and then Saltese, in the name of the head men of the tribes, decreed that McClellan should immediately be put to death in retaliation for the hanging of the two Indian thieves. ISIcClellan had said nothing. He had known that argument and pleas for justice or mercy would be of no avail. He had sat motionless, apparently indiffer- ent to his fate. By his listlessness he had thrown his captors off their guard. When the sentence was passed he acted like a flash. Flinging his left arm around the neck of Saltese, he whipped out his revolver and held it close to the chief's temple. "Eevoke that sentence, or I shall kill you this instant ! " he cried, with his fingers clicking the trigger. " I revoke it ! " exclaimed Saltese, fairly livid from fear. " I must have your word that I can leave this council in safety." " You have the word of Saltese," was the quick response. McClellan knew how sacred was the pledge which he had received. The revolver was lowered. Saltese was released from the embrace of the strong arm. McClel- lan strode out of the tent with his revolver in his hand. jSTot a hand was raised against him. He mounted his horse and rode to his camp, where his two followers were ready to spring into the saddle and to escape from the villages. He owed his life to his quickness of per- ception, and to his accurate knowledge of Indian char- acter. In 1856, Eufus Choate spoke to an audience of nearly five thousand in Lowell in favor of the candi- dacy of James Buchanan for the presidency. The floor of the great hall began to sink, settling more and more as he proceeded with his address, until a sound of cracking timber below would have precipitated a stampede with fatal results but for the coolness of B. F. Butler, who presided. Telling the people to remain quiet, he said that he would see if there were any 22 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. cause for alarm. He found tlie supports of the floor in so bad a condition tliat the slightest applause would be likely to bury the audience in the ruins of the building. Returning rather leisurely to the platform, he whis- pered to Clioate as he passed, " We shall all be in ill five minutes ; " then he told the crowd that there was no immediate danger if they would slowly dis- perse, although he thought it prudent to adjourn to a place where there would be no risk whatever. The post of danger, he added, was on the platform, which was most weakly supported, therefore he and those with him would be the last to leave. ]S!"o doubt many lives were saved by his coolness. Many distinguished foreign and American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then vice- president of the United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. " Colfax dares not drink," sneered a Senator who had already taken too mucli. "You are right," said the Vice-President, " I dare not." When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousing reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of Grant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their good-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner, the com- mittee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be procured for the table that night. When the time came to serve the wine, the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietly turned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a great surprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the occasion. Without a single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that night. DARE. 23 A deep sewer at JSToyoii, France, had been opened for repairs, and carelessly left at night without covering or lights to warn people of danger. Late at night four men stvrmbled in, and lay some time before their sit- uation was known in the town. No one dared go to the aid of the men, then unconscious from breathing noxious gases, except Catherine Yassen, a servant girl of eighteen. She insisted on being lowered at once. Fastening a rope around two of the men, she aided in raising them and restoring them to consciousness. Descending again, she had just tied a rope around a third man, when she felt her breath failing. Tj-ing another rope to her long, curly hair, she swooned, but was drawn up with the m.an, to be quickly revived by fresh air and stimulants. The fourth man was dead when his body was pulled up, on account of the delay from the fainting of Catherine. Two French officers at Waterloo were advancing to charge a gi-eatly superior force. One, observing that the other showed signs of fear, said, " Sir, I believe you are frightened." "Yes, I am," was the reply, " and if you were half as much frightened, you would run away." "That's a brave man," said Wellington, when he saw a soldier turn pale as he marched against a bat- tery ; " he knows his danger, and faces it." " There are many cardinals and bishops at Worms," said a friend to Luther, " and they will burn your body to ashes as they did that of John Huss." Luther replied : "Although they should make a fire that should reach from Worms to Wittenberg, and that should flame up to heaven, in the Lord's name I would pass through it and appear before them." He said to another : " I would enter Worms though there were as many devils there as there are tiles upon the roofs of the houses." Another said : " Duke George will surely arrest you." He replied: "It is my duty to go, and 24 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. I will go, though it. rain Duke Georges for nine days together." " Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me," exclaimed Luther at the Diet of AVorms, facing his foes. A Western paper recently ' invited tlie surviving Union and Confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed hy each during the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at Beaufort, S. C, where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, Dr. IMiner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until lie had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. He replied : " I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, al- though. I must drink it in water. It is ' Our Mothers.' " The men were so affected and ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked Mm for displaying cour- age greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a camion. It took great courage for the commercial Quaker, John Bright, to espouse a cause which called down upon his head the derision and scorn and hatred of the Parliament. For years he rested under a cloud of obloquy, but Bright was made of stern stuff. It was only his strength of character and masterly eloquence, which saved him from political annihilation. To a man who boasted that his ancestors came over with the Conquerors, he replied, " I never heard that they did anything else." A Tory lordling said, when Bright was ill, that Providence had inflicted upon Bright, for tlie measure of his talents, disease of the brain. When Bright went back into the Commons he replied : " This may be so, but it will be some consolation to the friends and family of the noble lord to know that that disease is one which even Providence cannot inflict upon him." " When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the World, and takes him boldly by the beard," DAUE. 25 says Holmes, " he is often sui-prised to find it come off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away timid adventurers." It takes courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest poverty wheu others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say " Xo " squarel^r when those around you saj- " Yes." It takes courage to do j'our duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous although neglecting sacred obligations. It takes courage to umnask your true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for what you really are. It takes courage and pluck to be outvoted, beaten, laughed at, scoffed, ridiculed, derided, misunderstood, misjudged, to stand alone with all the world against you, but ** They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three." " There is never wanting a dog to bark at you." " An honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him." " Let any man show the world that he feels Afraid of its bark, and 'twill fly at his heels. Let him fearlessh" face it, 't will leave him alone. And 't will fawn at his feet if he fling it a bone." We live ridiculously for fear of being thought ridicu- lous. *' 'T is he is the coward who proves false to his vows, To his manhood, his honor, f(ir a laugh or a sneer: 'T is he is the hero who stands firm, though alone, For the truth and the right without flinching or fear." The youth who starts out by being afraid to speak what he thinks will usually end by being afraid to think what he wishes. 26 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. How we sluiiik from an act of our own. "\\'e \\xe as others live. Custom or fashion dictates, or your doctor or minister, and they in turn dare not dei^art from their schools. Dress, living, servants, carriages, everj'thing must conform, or be ostracized. Who dares conduct his household or business affairs in his own way, and snap his fingers at Dame Grundy ? INIany a man has marched up to the cannon's mouth in battle who dared not face public opinion or oppose Mrs. Grundy. It takes courage for a public man not to bend the knee to popxilar prejudice. It takes courage to refuse to follow custom when it is injurious to his health and morals. To espouse an unpopular cause in Congress requires more courage than to lead a charge in battle. How much easier for a politician to prevaricate and dodge an issue than to stand squarely on his feet like a man. As a rule, eccentricity is a badge of power, but how many women would not rather strangle their individ- uality than be tabooed by Mrs. Grundy ? Yet fear is really the only thing to fear. "Whoever you may be," said Sainte-Beuve, "great genius, distinguished talent, artist honorable or ami- able, the qualities for which you deserve to be praised will all be turned against you. Were you a Virgil, the pious and sensible singer par excellence, there are people who will call you an effeminate poet. Were you a Horace, there are people who will reproach you with the very purity and delicacy of your taste. If you were a Shakespeare, some one will call you a drunken savage. If you were a Goethe, more than one Pharisee will proclaim you the most selfish of egotists." As the strongest man has a weakness somewhere, so the greatest hero is a coward somewhere. Peter was courageous enough to draw his sword to defend his master, but he could not stand the ridicule and the DARE. 27 finger of scorn of the maidens in the high priest's hall, and he actually denied even the acquaintance of the master he had declared he would die for. " I will take the responsibility," said Andrew Jack- son, on a memorable occasion, and his words have become proverbial. Not even Congress dared to oppose the edicts of John Quincy Adams. If a man would accomplish anything in this world, he must not be afraid of assuming responsibilities. Of course it takes courage to run the risk of failure, to be subjected to criticism for an unpopular cause, to expose one's self to the shafts of everybody's ridicule, but the man who is not true to himself, who cannot carry out the sealed orders placed in his hands at his birth, regardless of the world's yes or no, of its approval or disapproval, the man who has not the courage to trace the pattern of his own destiny, which no other soul knows but his own, can never rise to the true dignity of manhood. All the world loves courage ; youth craves it ; they want to hear about it, they want to read about it. The fascination of the "blood and thunder " novels and of the cheap story papers for youth are based upon this idea of courage. If the boys cannot get the real article, they will take a counterfeit. Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are those of persons conscious " of being beneath their position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style." .Bruno, condemned to be burned alive in Rome, said to his judge : " You are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than I am to receive it." Anne Askew, racked until her bones were dislocated, never flinched, but looked her tormentor calmly in the face and refused to abjure her faith. 28 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. " We are afraid of truth,, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of eacli other." " Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage," said Emerson. Physicians used to teach that courage depends on the circulation of the blood in the arteries, and that during iiassion, anger, trials of strength, wrestling or fighting, a large aniouut of blood is collected in the arteries, and does not pass to the veins. A strong pulse is a fortune in itself. "Rage," said Shaftesbury, "can make a coward forget himself and fight." " I should have thought fear would have kept you from going so far," said a relative who found the little boy ISTelson wandering a long distance from home. " Fear ? " said the future admiral, " I don't know him." "Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." To de- termine to do anything is half the battle. " To think a thing is impossible is to make it so." Courage is vic- tory, timidity is defeat. That simple shepherd-lad, David, fresh from his flocks, marching unattended and unarmed, save with his shepherd's staff and sling, to confront the colossal Goliath with his massive armor, is the sublimest auda- city the world has ever seen. " Dent, I wish you would get down, and see what is the matter with that leg there," said Grant, when he and Colonel Dent were riding through the thickest of a fire that had become so concentrated and murderous that his troops had all been driven back. "I guess looking after your horse's legs can wait," said Dent ; " it is simply murder for us to sit here." " All right," said Grant ; " if you don't want to see to it, I will." He dismounted, untwisted a piece of telegraph wire which had begun to out the horse's leg, examined it deliberately, and climbed into his saddle. " Dent," said he, " when you 've got a horse that you think a great deal of, you should never take any chances with him. DARE. 29 If that wire had been left there for a little time longer he would have gone dead lame, and would perhaps have been ruined for life." "Wellington said that at Waterloo the hottest of the battle raged round a farmhouse, with an orchard sur- rounded by a tliick hedge, which was so important a point in the British position that orders were given to hold it at any hazard or sacrihce. At last the powder and ball ran short and the hedges took fire, surrounding the orchard with a wall of flame. A messenger had been sent for ammunition, and soon two loaded wagons came galloping toward the farmhouse. " The driver of the first wagon, with the reckless daring of an English boy, spurred his struggling and terrified horses through the burning heap ; but the flames rose fiercely round, and caught the powder, which exploded in an instant, send- ing wagon, horses, and rider in fragments into the air. For an instant the driver of the second wagon paused, appalled by his comrade's fate ; the next, observing that the flames, beaten back for the moment by the explosion, afforded him one desperate chance, sent his horses at the smouldering breach and, amid the deaf- ening cheers of the garrison, landed his terrible cargo safely within. Behind him the flames closed up, and raged more fiercely than ever." At the battle of Friedland a cannon-ball came over the heads of the French soldiers, and a young soldier instinctively dodged. Napoleon looked at him and smilingly said : " My friend, if that ball were destined for you, though you were to burrow a hundred feet under ground it would be sure to find you there." When the mine in front of Petersburg was finished, the fuse was lighted, and the Union troops were drawn up ready to charge the enemy's- works as soon as the explosion should make a breach. But seconds, min- utes, and tens of minutes passed, without a sound from the mine, and the suspense became painful. Lieuten- 30 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. ant Doughty and Sergeant Eees volunteered to examine the fuse. Through the long subterranean galleries they hurried in silence, not knowing but they were advancing to a horrible death. They found the defect, fired the train anew, and soon a terrible upheaval of earth gave tlie signal to march to victory. At the battle of Copenhagen, as Nelson walked the deck slippery with blood and covered with the dead, he said : " This is warm work, and this day maj^ be the last to any of ns in a moment. But, mark me, I would not be elsewhere for thousands." At the battle of Trafalgar, when Nelson was shot and was being carried below, he covered his face, that those fighting might not know their chief had fallen. In a skirmish at Salamanca, while the enemy's guns ■were pouring shot into his regiment, Sir William Napier's men became disobedient. He at once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders imder fire. The men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade as coolly as if it were a re- view. Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. Does compe- tition trouble you ? work away ; what is your competi- tor but a man ? Conquer your jilace in the ivorld, for all things serve a brave soul. Combat difiRculty man- fully ; sustain misfortune bravely ; endure povert}* nobly ; encounter disappointment courageouslj''. The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an ei^idemic of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort ; and who, if obey could have been induced to begin, would, in all probability, have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "jSTo great deed is done," says George Eliot, " by falterers who ask for certainty." DARE. 31 The brave, cheerful man will survive liis blighted hopes and disappointments, take them for just wliat they are, lessons and perhaps blessings in disguise, and will march boldly and clieerfully forward in the battle of life. Or, if necessary, he will bear his ills with a patience and calm endurance deeper than ever plummet sounded. He is the true hero. Iheu to side ^vith Truth is noble when we share lier wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just: Then it is the brave man chooses, wliile the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is cruciiied. Lowell. Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By feariug to attempt. SHAKESPE.tHE. After the great inward struggle was over, and he had determined to remain loyal to his principles, Thomas More walked cheerfully to the block. His wife called him a fool for staying in a dark, damp, filthy prison when he might have his liberty by merely renouncing his doctrines, as some of the bishops had done. But he preferred death to dishonor. His daughter showed the power of love to drive away fear. She remained true to her father when all others, even her mother, had forsaken him. After his head had been cut oif and exhibited on a pole on London Bridge, the poor girl begged it of the authorities, and requested that it be buried in the coffin with her. Her request was granted, for her death occurred soon. When Sir Walter B,aleigh came to the scaffold he was very faint, and. began his speech to the crowd by saying that during the last two days he had been visited by two ague fits. "If, therefore, you perceive any weakness in me, I beseech you ascribe it to my sick- ness rather than to myself." He took the axe and kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: " 'T is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." 32 ARCHITECTS OF FA TE. Don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in crossing bridges you have not readied. Don't fool with a nettle ! Grasp with iirra- ness if you would rob it of its sting. To half will and to hang forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life. Abraham Lincoln's boj-hood was one long struggle with poverty-, with little education, and no influential friends. A^'hen at last he had begun the practice of law, it required no little daring to cast his fortune with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputation he had gained. Only the most sublime moral courage could have sustained him as President to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a long train of disaster ; to issue the Emancipation Proclama- tion ; to support Grant and Stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press ; and through it all to do the right as God gave him to see the right. Lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed it to be right. At the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his bread and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers had refused, Lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate whenever an opportunity pre- sented. "Go to Lincoln," people would say, when these hounded fugitives were seeking protection ; " he 'a not afraid of any cause, if it 's right." As Salmon P. Chase left the court room after making an impassioned plea for the runaway slave girl Matilda, a man looked at him in surprise and said : " There goes a fine young fellow who has just ruined himself." But in thus ruining himself Chase had taken the first im- portant step in a career in which he became Governor of Ohio, United States Senator from Ohio, Secretary of the United States Treasury, and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. At the trial of William Penn for having spoken at a DARE. 33 Quaker meeting, the recorder, not satisfied Avitli the first verdict, said to the jury : "We will have a verdict by the help of God, or yon shall starve for it." " You are Englishmen," said Penn ; " mind your privileges, give not away your right." At last the jury, after two days and two nights without food, returned a verdict of "Not guilty." The recorder fined them forty marks apiece for their independence. What cared Christ for the jeers of the crowd ? The palsied hand moved, the blind saw, the leper was made whole, the dead spake, despite the ridicule and scoffs of the spectators. What cared Wendell Phillips for rotten eggs, deri- sive scorn, and hisses ? In him " at last the scornful world had met its match." AVere Beecher and Gough to be silenced by the rude English mobs that came to extinguish them ? No ! they held their ground and compelled unwilling thousands to hear and to heed. Did Anna Dickinson leave the platform when the pistol bullets of the Molly Maguires flew about her head ? She silenced those pistols by her courage and her arguments. What the world wants is a Knox, who dares to preach on with a musket leveled at his head, a Garri- son, who is not afraid of a jail, or a mob, or a scaffold erected in front of his door. " Storms may howl around thee, Foes may hunt and hound thee: Shall they overpower thee ? Never, never, never." When General Butler was sent with nine thousand men to quell the New York riots, he arrived in advance of his troops, and found the streets thronged with an angry mob, which had already hanged more than one man to lamp-posts. Without waiting for his men, Butler went to the place where the crowd was most dense, overturned an ash barrel, stood upon it, and be- 3-4 AUCHITECTS OF FATE. g-an ; •• Pelegiitos from Five roiuts. liends from liell, you have murdered your superiors," and the blood- staiued crowd quailed before the courajreous words of a single man in a city which !Mayor Fernando Wood could nor restrain with rhe aid of poliee and militia. "Our enemies are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopyhv. •• And we are before them," was the cool reply of Leouidas- Peliver your arms," came the message from Xerxes. •• Come and take them," was the answer Leouidas sent back. A I'ei-sian soldier said: •• You will nor be able to see the sun for living javelins and arrows." '• Then we will fight in the shade," re- jilied a Lacedemonian, ^^'hat wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth. ■ It is impossible." said a stiiflE officer, when Xapoleon gave directions for a daring plan. •• Impossible ! " thundered the great commander, " imjwssHile is the ad- jective of fools ! " Xapoleon went to the edge of his possibility. Grant never knew when he was beaten. "When told that he was surrounded by the enemy at Belmont, he quietly replied : " ^Yell, then we must cut our way out." The courageous man is an example to the inti-epid. His influence is magnetic. He creates an epidemic of nobleness. jNIen follow him, even to the death. The spirit of courage will transform the whole tem- per of your life. "The wise and active conquer diffi- culties by daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly shiver and sicken at the sight of trial and hazard, and make the impossibility they fear." " The hero," says Emerson, " is the man who is im- movably centred." Emin Pasha, the explorer of Africa, was left behind by his exploring party under circumstances that were thought certainly fati\l. and his death was i-eported with great assurance. Early the next winter, as his troop DARE. 35 was on its toilsome but oxcitiiij^ way through Central Africa, it came upon a most wretched sight. A party of natives had been kidnapped by the slave-hunters, and dragged in chains thus far toward the land of bondage. But small-pox had set in, and the miserable company had been abandoned to their fate. Emin sent his men ahead, and stayed behind in this camp of death to act as physician and nurse. How many lives he saved is not known, though it is known that he nearly lost his own. The age of chivalry is not gone by. This is as knightly a deed as poet ever chronicled. A mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magi- cian was kept in sueh constant distress by its fear of a cat, that the magician, taking pity on it, turned it into a cat itself. Immediately it began to suffer from its fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began to suffer from fear of a tiger. The magi- cian therefore turned it into a tiger. Then it began to suffer from fear of hunters, and the magician sold in dis- gust : " Be a mouse again. As you have only the heart of a mouse, it is impossible to help j'ou by giving j'ou the body of a nobler animal." ^Rfen who have dared have moved the world, often be- fore reaching the prime of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne at twenty, had conquered the known world before dying at thirty -three. Julius Csesar captured eight hundred cities, conquered three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young man. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his first battle as a colonel at twenty- two. Lafayette was made general of the whole French army at twent3^ Charlemagne was master of France and Germany at thirty. Conde was only twenty-two 36 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. \\"heii lie conquered at Rocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the i^rinciple of the pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was in Parliament at twentj--one. Gladstone was in. Parlia- ment before he was twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was Lord of the Treasurj\ Elizabeth Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve ; De Quiucey at eleven. Kobert Browning wrote at eleven poetrj' of no mean order. Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbe}-, published a volume of poems at fifteen. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving col- lege. Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twentjr-three. Luther was but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the bishop and defied the pope. ISTelson was a lieutenant in the Brit- ish Navy before he was twenty. He was but forty- seven when he received his death wound at Trafalgar. Charles the Twelfth was only nineteen Avhen he gained the battle of Narva ; at thirtj^-six, Cortez was the con- queror of Mexico ; at thirty-two, Clive had established the British power in India. Hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at Cannae, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the republic of Rome ; and Napoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of Italy, he outgeneraled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of Austria. Equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the allotted limit of life. Victor Hugo and Wellington were both in their prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. George Bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five. Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a marvel of literary and seholarljf ability. " Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the gold of Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor ? No ! Give its sails to the wind ! " DARE. 37 Shakespeare says : " He is not worthy of the lioiie}'- eomb that shuns the hive because the bees have stings." *'Tlie brave man is not he who feels no fear. For that were stupid and irrational ; But he whose noble soul its fear subdues And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from." The inscription on the gates of Busyrane: "Be bold." On the second gate: "Be bold, be bold, and ever more be bold ; " the third gate : " Be not too bold." Many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of "woi'th simply because he did not dare to commence. Begin! Begin!! Begin!!! Whatever people niaj' think of you, do that which you believe to be right. Be alike indifferent to censure or praise. — Pythagoras. Fear makes man a slave to others. This is the tyrant's chain. Anxiety is a form of cowardice erabitteruig life. — Channing. Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things. Our blood is nearer and dearer to us than our money, and our life than our estate. Women are more taken with cour- age than with gene^osit^^ — Colton. Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath. Merchant of Venice^ InscriptiononLeaden Casket. I dare to do all that may become a man : Who dares do more is none. Shakespeare. For man's great actions are performed in minor struggles. Tliere are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch b^"" inch in the shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. There are noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees, no renown rewards, and no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandon- ment, and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes. — Victor Hugo. Who waits until the wind shall silent keep, Who never finds the ready hour to sow, Who w^atcheth clouds, will have no time to reap. Helen Hunt Jackson. Quit yourselves like men- — 1 Samuel iv. 9. CHAPTER III. THE WILL AND THE WAT. ■'The 'way' will be found by a resolute will." " I will find a way or make one." Nothing is impossible to the man who can will. — Mirabead. A politician weaUly and amiably in the right is no match for a politi- cian tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. — E. P. WiiirPLE. The iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail : A feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle, And rally to a nobler strife the giants that had fled. TUPPER. ** Man alone can perform the impossible. They can who think they can. Character is a perfectly educated will.'' The education of tlie will is the object of our existence. For the resolute and determined there is time and opportunity. — Emeusos. Invincible determination, and a right nature, are the levers that move the world. — President Porter. In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood there is no such word as fail. — Bclwek. Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficult}^ out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way. — Jeremy Collier. When a firm and decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom. John Foster. The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast. Serene, and resolute and still. And calm and self-possessed. Longfellow. "As well can the Prince of Orange pluck the stars from the sky, as bring the ocean to the wall of Leyden for your relief," was the derisive shout of the Span- WALTER SCOTT *' The Wizard of the North." ' So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man. When Duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' The youth replies, 'I can.' " THE WILL AND THE WAY. 39 ;s>. soldiers when told that the Dutch fleet would raise that terrible four months' siege of 1574. lUit from the parched lips of William, tossing on his hed of fever at llotterdam, had issued the command : " Breal: doini the dikes : give Holland hack to ocean : " and the people had replied : " Better a drowned land than a lost land." They began to demolish dike after dike of the strong lines, ranged one within another for fifteen miles to their city of the interior. It was an enormous task ; the garrison was starving; and the besiegers laughed in scorn at the slow progress of the puny insects who sought to rule the waves of the sea. But ever, as of old, heaven aids those who help themselves. On the first and second of October a violent equinoctial gale rolled the ocean inland, and swept the fleet on the ris- ing waters almost to the camp of the Spaniards. The next morning the garrison sallied out to attack their enemies, but the besiegers had fled in terror under cover of the darkness. The next day the wind changed, and a counter tempest brushed the water, with the fleet upon it, from the surface of Holland. The outer dikes were replaced at once, leaving the North Sea within its old bounds. AVhen the flowers bloomed the following spring, a joyous procession marched through the streets to found the University of Leyden, in com- memoration of the "wonderful deliverance of the city. At a dinner party given in 1837, at the residence of Chancellor Kent, in New York city, some of the most distinguished men in the country were invited, and among them was a young and rather melancholy and reticent Frenchman. Professor Morse was one of the guests, and during the evening he drew the attention of Mr. Gallatin, then a prominent statesman, to the stranger, observing that his forehead indicated great intellect. "Yes," replied Mr. Gallatin, touching his own forehead with his finger, " there is a great deal in that head of his : but he has a strange fancy. Can yon 40 ARCHITIiCTS OF FATE. believe it? He lias the idea tliat he will one daj' be the Emperor of France. Can j'ou conceive anything more absurd ? " It did seem absurd, for this reserved Frenchman was then a poor adventurer, an exile from Ids country, with- out fortune or powerfid connections, and yet, fourteen years later, his idea became a fact, — his dream of be- coming Napoleon III. was realized. True, before he accomplished his purpose there were long dreary years of imprisouinent, exile, disaster, and patient labor and hope, but he gained his ambition at last. He was not scrupulous as to the means employed to accomplish his ends, yet he is a remarkable example of what pluck and energy can do. When it was proposed to unite England and America by steam, Dr. Lardner delivered a lecture before the Eoyal Society " proving " that steamers could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry coal enough to produce steam during the -ivhole voyage. The passage of the steamship Sirius, which crossed in nineteen days, was fatal to Lardner's theory. When it was proposed to build a vessel of iron, many persons said: "Iron sinks — only wood can float:" but exjjeri- ments proved that the miracle of the prophet in mak- ing iron " swim " could be repeated, and now not only ships of war, but merchant vessels, are built of iron or steel. A will found a way to make iron float. Mr. Ingram, imblisher of the "London Illustrated News," who lost his life on Lake Michigan, walked ten miles to deliver a single paper rather than disappoint a customer, when he began life as a newsdealer at Not- tingham, England. Does anjr one wonder that such a youth succeeded ? Once he rose at two o'clock in the morning and walked to London to get some papers be- cause there was no post to bring them. He determined that his customers should not be disappointed. This is the kind of will that finds a way. THU WILL AND THE WAY. 41 There is scarcely anything in all biography grander than the saying of young Henry Fawcett, Gladstone's last Postmaster-General, to his grief-stricken father, who had put out both his eyes by bird-shot during a game hunt : " Never mind, father, blindness shall not interfere with my success in life." One of the most pathetic sights in London streets, long afterward, was Henry Fawcett, j\L P., led everywhere by a faithful daughter, who acted as amanuensis as well as guide to her plucky father. Think of a young man, scarcely on the threshold of active life, suddenly losing the sight of both eyes and yet, by mere pluck and almost incom- prehensible tenacity of purpose, lifting himself into eminence, in any direction, to say nothing of becoming one of the foremost men in a country noted for its great men. Most youth would have succumbed to such a misfortune, and would never have been heard from again. But fortunately for the world, there are yet left many Fawcetts, many Prescotts, Parkmans, Gava- uaghs. The courageous daughter who was eyes to her father was herself a marvelous example of pluck and deter- mination. For the first time in the history of Oxford College, which reaches back centuries, she succeeded in winning the post which had only been gained before hy great men, such as Gladstone, — the post of senior wrangler. This achievement had had no parallel in history up to that date, and attracted the attention of the whole civilized world. Not only had no woman ever held this position before, but with few exceptions it had only been held by men who in after life became highly distinguished. Who can deny that where there is a will, as a rule, there 's a way ? When Grant was a boy he could not find " can't " in the dictionary. It is the men who have no "can't" in their dictionaries that make things move. "Circumstances," says Milton, "have rarely favored 42 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. famous men. Tliey have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles." The true way to conquer circumstances is to be a greater circumstance yourself. Yet, while desiring to impress in the most forcible manner possible the fact that will-power is necessary to success, and that, other things being equal, the greater the will-power, the grander and more complete the suc- cess, we cannot indorse the preposterous theory that there is nothing in circumstances or environments, or tliat any man, simply because he has an indomitable will, may become a Bonaparte, a Pitt, a Webster, a Beecher, a Lincoln. We must temper determination with discretion, and support it with knowledge and common sense, or it will only lead us to run our heads against posts. We must not expect to overcome a stub- born fact by a stubborn will. We merely have the right to assume that we can do anything within the limit of our utmost faculty, strength, and endurance. Obstacles permanently insurmountable bar our progress in some directions, but in any direction we may reason- ably hope and attempt to go, we shall find that the ob- stacles, as a rule, are either not insurmountable or else not permanent. The strong-willed, intelligent, persis- tent man will find or make a way where, in the nature of things, a way can be found or made. Every schoolboy knows that circumstances do give clients to lawyers and patients to physicians ; place or- dinary clergymen in extraordinary pulpits ; place sons of the rich at the head of immense corporations and large houses, when they have very ordinary ability and scarcely any experience, while poor young men with ex- traordinary abilities, good education, good character, and large experience, often have to fight their way for years to obtain even very ordinary situations. Every one knows that there are thousands of young men, both in the city and in the country, of superior ability, who THE WILL AND THE WAY. 43 seem to be compelled by circumstances to remain, in very ordinary positions for small pay, wiien others about them are raised by money or family influence into de- sirable places. In other words, we all know that the best men do not always get the best places : circum- stances do have a great deal to do with our position, our salaries, and our station in life. Many young men who are nature's noblemen, who are natural leaders, are working under superintendents, foremen, and managers infinitelv their inferiors, but whom circumstances have placed above them and will keep there, unless some emergency makes merit indis- pensable. No, the race is not always to the swift. Every one knows that there is not always a way where there is a will ; that labor does not always con- quer all things ; that there are things impossible even to him that wills, however strongly ; that one cannot al- ways make anything of himself he chooses ; that there are limitations in our very natures which no amount of will-power or industry can overcome ; that no amount of sun-staring can ever make an eagle out of a crow. The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time very far toward his chosen goal. The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given to him. This is success, and there is no other. While it is true that our circumstances or environ- ments do affect us, in most things they do not pre- vent our growth. The corn that is now ripe, whence comes it, and what is it ? Is it not large or small, stunted wild maize or well-developed ears, according to the conditions under which it has grown ? Yet its en- vironments cannot make wheat of it. Nor can our cir- cumstances alter our nature; It is part of our nature, and wholly within our power^ greatly to change and to 44 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. take advantage of our circumstances, so that, unlike the corn, we can rise much superior to our natural surround- ings simply because we can thus vary and improve the surroundings. In other words, man can usually build the very road on which he is to run his race. It is not a question of what some one else can do or become, which every youth should ask himself, but what can I do ? How can I develop myself into the grandest possible manhood ? So- far, then, from the power of circumstances being a hindrance to men in trying to build for themselves an imperial highway to fortune, these circumstances constitute the very quarry out of which they are to get paving-stones for the road. While it is true that the will-power cannot perform miracles, yet that it is almost omnipotent, that it can perform wonders, all history goes to prove. As Shake- speare says : — **Men at some time are masters of their fates : The fault,- dear Brutus, is not in our star's, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." " There is nobody," says a Roman Cardinal, " whom Fortune does not visit once in his life : but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when on the wing. Show me a man who is, according to popular preju- dice, a victim of bad luck, and I will show you one who has some unfortunate crooked twist of temperament that invites disaster. He is ill-tempered, or conceited, or trifling; lacks character, enthusiasm, or some other requisite for success. Disraeli says that man is not the creature of circum- stances, but that circumstances are the creatures of men. THE WILL AND THE WAY. 45 What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built anj- cities ? Has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs ? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? "Was there any chance in Csesar's crossing the Eubicon ? What had chance to do with Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von jMoltke's ? Every bat- tle was won before it was begun. AVhat had luck to do with Therraopylaj, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our suc- cesses we ascribe to ourselves ; our failures to destiny. Man is not a helpless atom in this vast creation, with a fixed position, and naught to do but obey his own polarity-. Believe in the power of will, which annihilates the sickly, sentimental doctrine of fatalism, — you must but can't, you ought but it is impossible. Give me the man " Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the slvirts of liappy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance. And grapples with his evil star." It is only the ignorant and superficial who believe in fate. " The first step into thought lifts this mountain of necessity." " Fate is unpenetrated causes." " They may well fear fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim : but he who rests on what he is has a destiny beyond destiny, and can make mouths at fortune." The indomitable will, the inflexible purpose, will find a way or make one. There is always room for a man of force. " He who has a firm will," says Goethe, " moulds the world to himself." " People do not lack strength," says Victor Hugo, " they lack will." " He who resolves upon any great end, by that very resolution has scaled the great barriers to it, and he who seizes the grand idea of self-cultivation, and sol- emnly resolves upon it, will find that idea, that resolu- 46 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. tion, Imviiing like fire withiix him, and ever putting liini vipon his own improvement. He will find it removing difficulties, searching out, or making means ; giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness." Nearly all great men, those who have towered high above their fellows, have been remarkable above all things else for their energy of will. Of Julius Cajsar it was said by a contemporary that it was his activity and giant determination, rather than his military skill, that won his victories. The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own advancement ; who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds it up into paint for his great life's pic- ture, who keeps his heart open that he may catch every noble impulse, and everything which may inspire him, — that youth will be sure to make his life successful; there are no " if s " or " ands " about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from final success. No tyranny of circumstances can permanently im- prison a determined will. The world always stands aside for the determined man. Will makes a way, even through seeming impos- sibilities. " It is the half a neck nearer that shows the blood and wins the race : the one march more that wins the campaign : the five minutes more of unyielding cour- age that wins the fight." Again and again had the irre- pressible Carter Harrison been consigned to oblivion by the educated and moral element of Chicago. Nothing could keep him down. He was invincible. A son of Chicago, he had partaken of that nineteenth century miracle, that phcsnix-like nature of the city which, though she was burned, caused her to rise from her THE WILL AND THE WAY. 47 ashes and become a greater and a grander Chicago, a wonder of the world. Carter Harrison would not down. He entered the Democratic Convention and, witli an audacity rarely' equaled, in spite of their protest, boldly declared himself their candidate. Every newspaper in Chicago, save the " Times," his own paper, bitterly op- posed his election: but notwithstanding all opposition, he was elected by twenty thousand majority. The aris- tocrats hated him, the moral element feared him, but the poor people believed in him : he pandered to them, flattered them, till they elected him. While we would, not by any means hold Carter Harrison up to j-outh as a model, yet there is a great lesson in his will-power and wonderful tenacity of purpose. " The general of a large army may be defeated," said Confucius, " but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant." The poor, deaf pauper, Kitto, who made shoes in the almshouse, and who became the greatest of Biblical scholars, wrote in his journal, on the threshold of man- hood : " I am not myself a believer in impossibilities : I think that all the fine stories about natural abilitj^, etc., are mere rigmarole, and that every man may, accord- ing to his opportunities and industry, render himself almost anything he wishes to become." Years ago, a young mechanic took a bath in the river Clyde. While swimming from shore to shore he dis- cerned a beautiful bank, uncultivated, and he then and there resolved to be the owner of it, and to adorn it, and to build upon it the finest mansion in all the borough, and name it in honor of the maiden to whom he was espoused. "Last summer," says a well-known American, " I had the pleasure of dining in that princely mansion, and receiving this iact from the lips of the great shipbuilder of the Clyde." That one purpose was made the ruling passion of his life, and all the energies of his soul were put in requisition for its accomplishment. 48 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. Lincoln is probabl}' the most venuirkable example on the pages of liistoiy, showing the possibilities of out counti-y. From the poverty in which he was born, through the rowdyism of a frontier town, the rudeness of frontier society, the discouragement of early bank- ruptcy, and the fluctuations of poi)ulav politics, he rose to the championship of union and freedom. Lincoln's will made Ins way. When his friends nom- inated him as a candidate for the legislature, his enemies made fun of him. ^Yhen making his campaign speeches he wore a mixed jean coat so short that he could not sit down on it, fiax and tow-linen trousers, straw hat, and pot-metal boots. He had nothing in the world but character and friends. When his friends suggested law to him, he laughed at the idea of his being a lawyer. He said he had n't brains enough. He read law barefoot under the trees, his neighbors said, and he sometimes slept on the counter in the store where he worked. He had to borrow money to buy a suit of clothes to make a respectable appearance in the legislature, and walked to take his seat at Vandalia, - — one hundred miles. While he was in the legislature, John F. Stuart, an eminent lawyer of Springfield, told him how Clay had even inferior chances to his, had got all of the education he had in a log schoolhouse without windows or doors ; and finally induced Lincoln to study law. See Thurlow Weed, defying poverty and wading through the snow two miles, with rags for shoes, to borrow a book to read before the sap-bush fire. See Locke, living on bread and water in a Dutch garret. See Heyne, sleeping many a night on a barn floor with only a book for his pillow. See Samuel Drew, tighten- ing his apron strings " in lieu of a dinner." See young Lord Eldon, before daylight copying Coke on Littleton over and over again. History is full of such examples. He who will pay the price for victory needs .neve? THE WILL AND THE WAY. 49 fear final defeat. Why were the Roman legionaries victorious ? " For Romans, in Rome's quarrels, Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son, nor wi£e, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old." Fowell Buxton, writing to one of his sons, says : " 1 am sure that a young man may be very much what he pleases." Dr. Mathews has well said that "there is hardly a word in the whole human vocabulary which is more cruelly abused than the word ' luck.' To all the faults and failures of men, their positive sins and their less culpable shortcomings, it is made to stand a godfather and sponsor. Go talk with the bankrupt man of busi- ness, who has swamped his fortune by wild speculation, extravagance of living, or lack of energy, and you will find that he vindicates his wonderful self-love by con- founding the steps which he took indiscreetly with those to which he was forced by ' circumstances,' and complacently regarding himself as the victim of ill-luck. Go visit the incarcerated criminal, who has imbued his hands in the blood of his fellow-man, or who is guilty of less heinous crimes, and you will find that, joining the temptations which were easy to avoid with those which were comparatively irresistible, he has hurriedly patched up a treaty with conscience, and stifles its compunctious visitings by persuading himself that, from first to last, he was the victim of circumstances. Go talk with the mediocre in talents and attainments, the weak-spirited man who, from lack of energy and application, has made but little headway in the world, being outstripped in the race of life by those whom he had despised as his inferiors, and you will find that he, too, acknowledges the all-potent power of luck, and soothes his humbled pride by deeming himself the victim of ill-fortune. In short, from the most venial offense 60 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. to the most flagrant, there is hardly anj- wrong act or neglect to which this too fatally convenient word is not applied as a palliation." Paris was in the hands of a mob, the autliorities were panic-stricken, for they did not dare to trust their un- derlings. In came a man who said, " I know a young officer who has the courage and ability- to quell this mob." " Send for him ; send for him ; send for him," said thej-. Napoleon was sent for, came, subjugated the mob, subjugated the authorities, ruled France, then conquered Europe. What a lesson is Napoleon's life for the sickly, wishy- washy, dwarfed, sentimental " dudes," hanging about our cities, country, and universities, complaining of their hard lot, dreaming of success, and wondering why they are left in the rear in the great race of life. Success in life is dependent largelj' upon the will- power, and whatever weakens or impairs it diminishes success. The will can be educated. That which most easily becomes a habit in us is the will. Learn, then, to will decisively and strongly ; thus fix j-our floating life, and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows. " It is not talent that men lack, it is the will to labor ; it is the purpose,, not the power to produce." It was this insatiable thirst for knowledge which held to his task, through povertjj^ and discouragement, John Leyden, a Scotch shepherd's son. Barefoot and alone, he walked six or eight miles daily to learn to read, which was all the schooling he had. His desire for an education defied the extremest poverty, and no obstacle could turn him from his purpose. He was rich when he discovered a little bookstore, and his thirsty soul would drink in the precious treasures from its priceless volumes for hours, perfectly oblivious of the scanty meal of bread and water which awaited him at his lowly lodging. Nothing could 'discourage him from THE WILL AND THE WAY. 51 trying to improve himself by study. It seemed to him that an ojjportunity to get at books and lectv.res was all that any man could need. Before he was nineteen, this poor shepherd boy with no chance had astonished the professors of Edinburgh b}"^ his knowledge of fereek and Latin. Hearing that a surgeon's assistant in the Civil Ser- vice was wanted, although he knew nothing whatever of medicine, he determined to apply for it. There were only six months before the place was to be filled, but nothing could daunt him, and in six months' time he actually took his degree with honor. AValter Scott, who thought this one of the most remarkable illustra- tions of perseverance, helped to fit him out, and he sailed for India. Webster was very poor even after he entered Dart- mouth College. A friend sent him a recipe for greas- ing his boots. Webster wrote and thanked him, and added : " But my boots need other doctoring, for they not only admit water, but even peas and gravel-stones.'" Yet he became one of the greatest men in the world. Sydney Smith said : " Webster was a living lie, because no man on earth could be as great as he looked." Carlyle said of him : " One would incline at sight to back him against the world." What seemed to be luck followed Stephen Girard all his life. !No matter what he did, it always seemed to others to turn to his account. His coming to Philadel- phia seemed a lucky accident. A sloop was seen one morning off the mouth of Delaware Bay floating the flag of France and a signal of distress. Young Girard was captain of this sloop, and was on his way to a Canadian port with freight from New Orleans. An American skipper, seeing his distress, went to his aid, but told him the American war had broken out, and that the British cruisers were all along the American coast, and would seize his vessei. He told him his only 62 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. eliaiiee was to make a push for riiiladelphia. (.!ii-ard did not know the way, and had uo inouey. The skipper loaned him iive doUars to get tlie sei-vice of a pilot wlio demanded his mone}" in advance. His sloop passed into the Delaware just in time to avoid capture by a British war vessel. He sold the sloop and cargo in Philadelphia, and began business on the capital. Being a foreigner, unable to sjieak English, short, stout, and with a repulsive face, blind in one eye, it was hard for him to get a start. But he was not the man to give up. He had begun as a cabin boy at thirteen, and for nine years sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies. He improved every leisure minute at sea, mastering the art of navigation. At the age of eight he first discovered that he was blind in one eye. His father, evidently thinking that he would never amount to anything, would not help him to an education beyond that of mere reading and writing, but sent his younger brothers to college. The discovery of his blindness, the neglect of his father, and the chagrin of his brothers' advancement, soured his whole life. When he began business for himself in Philadelphia, there seemed to be nothing he would not do for mone}-. He bought and sold anything, from groceries to old junk. He bottled wine and cider, from which he made a good profit. Everything he touched prospered. In 1780, he resumed the New Orleans and St. Domingo trade, in which he had been engaged at the breaking out of the Revolution. Here great success again attended him. He had two vessels lying in one of the St. Domingo ports when the great insurrection on that island broke out. A number of the rich planters fled to his vessels with their valuables, which thej' left for safe keeping while they went back to their estates to secure more. They probably fell victims to the cruel negroes, for they never returned, and Girard was the THE WILL AND THE WAY. 53 lucky possessor of $50,000 wlucli the goods brouglit ill Philadephia. Everybody, especially his jealous brother merchants, attributed his great success to his luck. AVhile un- doubtedly he was fortunate in happening to be at the right place at the right time, yet he was precision, method, accuracy, energy itself. He left nothing to chance. His plans and schemes were worked out with mathematical care. His letters, written to his captains in foreign ports, laying out their routes aud giving de- tailed instruction from which they were never allowed to deviate under any circumstances, are models of fore- sight and systematic planning. He never left anything of importance to others. He was rigidly accurate in his instructious, and would not allow the slightest de- parture from them. He used to say that while his captains might save him money by deviating from instructions once, yet they would cause loss in ninety- nine other cases. Once, when a captain returned and had saved him several thousand dollars by buying his cargo of cheese in another port than that in which he had been instructed to buy, Girard was so enraged, al- though he was several thousand dollars richer, that he discharged the captain on the spot, notwithstanding the latter had been faithful in his service for many years, and thought he was saving his employer a great deal of money by deviating from his instructions. Girard lived in a dingy little house, poorer than that occupied by many of his employees. He married a servant girl of great beauty, but she proved totally unfitted for him, and died at last in the insane asylum. Girard never lost a ship, and many times what brought financial ruin to many others, as the War of 1812, only increased his wealth. What seemed luck with him was only good judgment and promptness in seizing opportu- nities, and the greatest care and zeal in improving them to their utmost possibilities. 04 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. Luck is not God's price for success : that is alto- gether too cheap, nor does he dicker with men. The mathematician tells j^oii that if you throw the dice, there are thirty chances to one against j'our turn- ing up a particular number, and a hundred to one against your repeating the same throw three times in succession : and so on in an augmenting ratio. What is luck ? Is it, as has been suggested, a blind man's buff among the laws ? a ruse among the elements ? a trick of Dame Nature ? Has any scholar defined luck ? any philosopher explained its nature ? any chemist shown its composition ? Is luck that strange, nonde- script fairy, that does all things among men that they cannot account for ? If so, why does not luck make a fool speak words of wisdom ; an ignoramus utter lec- tures on philosophy ? Many a young man who has read the story of John Wanamaker's romantic career has gained very little in- spiration or help from it toward his own elevation and advancement, for he looks upon it as the result of good luck, chance, or fate. " What a lucky fellow," he says to himself as he reads ; " what a bonanza he fell into." But a careful analysis of Wanamaker's life only en- forces the same lesson taught by the analysis of most great lives, namely, that a good mother, a good consti- tution, the habit of hard work, indomitable energy, a de- termination which knows no defeat, a decision which never wavers, a concentration which never scatters its forces, courage which never falters, a self-mastery which can say No, and stick to it, an " ignominious love of detail," strict integrity and downright honesty, a cheerful disposition, unbounded enthusiasm in one's calling, and a high aim and noble purpose insure a very large measure of success. Youth should be taught that there is something in circumstances; that there is such a thing as a poor pedestrian happening to find no obstruction in his way, THE WILL AND THE WAY. 55 and reaching the goal when a better walker finds the drawbridge up, the street blockaded, and so fails to win the race ; that wealth often does place unworthy sons in high positions ; that family influence does gain a law- yer clients, a physician patients, an ordinary scholar a good professorship ; but that, on the other hand, po- sition, clients, patients, professorships, manager's and superintendent's positions do not necessarily constitute success. He should be taught that in the long run, as a rule, the best man does win the best place, and that per- sistent merit does succeed. There is about as much chance of idleness and inca- pacity winning real success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a Paradise Lost by shak- ing up promiscuously the separate words of Webster's Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel ; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirt and detail. The youth should be taught that " he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate ; " that " diligence is the mother of good luck ; " that, nine times' out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent ; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity. Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her : — "In idle wishes fools supinely stay: Be there a will and wisdom finds a way." It has been well said that the very reputation of being strong willed, plucky, and indefatigable is of priceless value. It often cows enemies and dispels at the start oppositionto one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable. " If Eric 's in robust health, and has slept well, and 56 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his departure from Greenland," says Emerson, " he will steer west and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man, and tlie ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further, and reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results." Obsta- cles tower before the living man like mountain chains, stopping his path and hindering his progress. He sur- mounts them by his energj-. He makes a new path over theui. He climbs upon them to mountain heights. They cannot stop him. They do not much delay him. He transmutes difficulties into power, and makes tem- porary failures into stepping-stones to ultimate success. How many might have been giants who are only dwarfs. How many a one has died " with all his music in him." It is astonishing what men who have come to their senses late in life have accomplished by a sudden reso- lution. Arkwright was fifty years of age when he began to learn English grammar and improve his writing and spelling. Benjamin Franklin was past fifty before he began the study of science and philosophy. Milton, in his blindness, was past the age of fifty when he sat down to complete his world-known epic, and Scott at fifty-five took up his pen to redeem an enormous liabil- ity. " Yet I am learning," said Michael Angelo, when threescore years and ten were past, and he had long attained the highest triumphs of his art. Even brains are second in importance to will. The vacillating man is always pushed aside in the race of life. It is only the weak and vacillating who halt be- fore adverse circumstances and obstacles. A man with an iron will, with a determination that nothing shall check his career, if he has perseverance and grit, is sure to succeed. .^Ve may not find time for what we THE WILL AND THE WAY. 57 would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our strength, we usually approximate if we do not fully reach. Hunger breaks through stone walls ; stern necessity will find a way or make one. Success is also a great physical as well as mental tonic, and tends to strengthen the will-power. Dr. Johnson says : " Resolutions and success reciprocally produce each other." Strong-willed men, as a rule, are successful men, and great success is almost impossible without it. A man who can resolve vigorously upon a course of action, and turns neither to the right nor the left, though a paradise tempt him, who keeps his eyes upon the goal, whatever distracts him, is sure of success. We could almost classify successes and failures by their various degrees of will-power. Men like Sir James Mackintosh, Coleridge, La Harpe, and many others who have dazzled the world with their bril- liancy, but who never accomplished a tithe of what they attempted; who were always raising our expecta- tions that they were about to perform wonderful deedr, but who accomplished nothing worthy of their abilities, have been deficient in will-power. One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it. The great linguist of Bologna mastered a hundred languages by taking them singly, as the lion fought the bulls. I wish it were possible to show the youth of America the great part that the will might play in their success in life and in their happiness also. The achievements of will-power are simply beyond computation. Scarcely anything in reason seems impossible to the man who can will strong enough and long enough. How often we see this illustrated in the case of a young woman who suddenly becomes conscious that she is plain and unattractive ; who, by prodigious ex- ercise of her will and untiring industry, resolves to 58 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. redeem herself from obscurity and commonness ; and who not only makes up for her deficiencies, but elevates herself into a prominence and importance which mere personal attractions could never have given her. Char- lotte Cushman, without a charm of form or face, climbed to the very top of her profession. How many j'oung men, stung by consciousness of phj'sical de- formity or mental deficiencies, have, by a strong persis- tent exercise of will-power, raised themselves from mediocrit}' and placed themselves high above those who scorned them. Historj- is full of examples of men and women who have redeemed themselves from disgrace, poverty, and misfortune, by the firm resolution of an iron will. The consciousness of being looked upon as inferior, as in- capable of accomplishing what others accomplish ; the sensitiveness at being considered a dunce in school, has stung many a youth into a determination which has elevated him far above those who laughed at him, as in the case of Newton, of Adam Clark, of Sheridan, Wel- lington, Goldsmith, Dr. Chalmers, Curran, Disraeli, and hundreds of others. " Whatever you wish, that you are ; for such is the force of the human will, joined to the Divine, that whatever we wish to be seriously, and with a true intention, that we become." While this is not strictlj' true, yet there is a deal of truth in it. It is men like Mirabeau, who " trample upon impossi- bilities ; " like Napoleon, who do not wait for opportuni- ties, but make them ; like Grant, who has only " uncon- ditional surrender" for the enemy, who change the very front of the world. " We have but what we make, and every good is locked by nature in a granite hand, sheer labor must imclench." What cares Henry L. Bulwer for the suffocating cough, even though he can scarcely speak above a whis- Ijer ? In the House of Commons he makes his immor- tal speech on the Irish Church just the same. THE WILL AND THE WAY. 59 " I can't, it is impossible," said a foiled lieutenant, to Mexander. " Be gone," shouted the conquering Mace- donian, "there is nothing impossible to him who will try." Were I called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out in life with high hopes, I should say unhesitatinglj', they lacked will-power. They could not half will. What is a man without a will ? He is like an engine without steam, a mere sport of chance, to be tossed about liither and thither, always at the mercy of those who have wills. I should call the strength of will the test of a young man's possibilities. Can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip ? It is the iron grip that takes the strong hold on life. What chance is there in this crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life ? " The truest wisdom," said Napoleon, "is a resolute determi- nation." An iron will without principle might produce a Napoleon ; hut with character it would make a Wel- lington or a Grant, untarnished by ambition or avarice. " The undivided will 'Tis that compels the elements and wrings A human music from the indifferent air." CHAPTER IV. SUCCESS UNDEK DIFFICULTIES. Victories that are easy are cheap. Those onl}' are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting. — Beeciiee. Man owes his growtli chiefly to that active striving of tlie will, that en- counter with difficulty, which we call effort; and it is astonishing to find how often results that seenied impracticable are thus made possible. — Epes Sakgent. I know no such urtquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all change of companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at its port. — Emkhson. Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence ; The last result of wisdom stamps it true ; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew. Goethe. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them. — Washington Irving. " I HAVE here three teams that I want to get over to Staten Island," said a boy of twelve one day in 1806 to the innkeeper at South Amboy, N. J. " If yon will put us across, I '11 leave with you one of my horses in pawn, and if I don't send you back six dollars within forty- eight hours you may keep the horse." The innkeeper asked the reason for this novel propo- sition, and learned that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel stranded near Sandy Hook, and take it to New York in lighters. The boy had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. The work accomplished, he had started with only six dollars to travel a long distance home over the Jersey WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT How can you keep a determined man from success ? Place Btumbling-blocks in his way, and he uses them for stepping-stones. Imprison him, and he produces the ** Pilgrim's Progress." Deprive him of eyesight, and he writes the '* Con- quest of Mexico." SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 61 sands, and reached South Amboy penniless. " I '11 do it," said the innkeeper, as he looked into the bright honest eyes of the boy. The horse was soon redeemed. " My son," said this same boy's mother, on the first of May, 1810, when he asked her to lend him one hun- dred dollars to buy a boat, having imbibed a strong liking for the sea ; " on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be sixteen years old. If, by that time, you will plow, harrow, and plant with corn the eight- acre lot, I will advance you the money." The field was rough and stony, but the work was done in time, and well done. From this small beginning Cornelius Vanderbilt laid the foundation of a colossal fortune. He would often work all night; and, as he was never absent from his post by day, he soon had the best busi- ness in New York harbor. In 1813, when it was expected that !New York would be attacked by British ships, all the boatmen except Cornelius put in bids to convey provisions to the mili- tary posts around New York, naming extremely low rates, as the contractor would be exempted from mili- tary duty. " Why don't you send in a bid ? " asked his father. " Of what use ? " replied young Vanderbilt ; "they are offering to do the work at half price. It can't be done at such rates." " Well," said his father, " it can do no harm to try for it." So, to please his father, but with no hope of success, Cornelius made an offer fair to both sides, but did not go to hear the award. When his companions had all returned with long faces, he went to the commissary's office and asked if the contract had been given. " Oh, yes," was the reply ; " that business is settled. Cornelius Van- derbilt is the man. What ? " he asked, seeing that the youth was apparently thunderstruck, "is it you?" " My name is Cornelius Vanderbilt," said the boatman. "Well," said the commissary, "don't you know why we have given the contract to you ? " " No." " Why, 62 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. it is because we want this business dour, and we know you'll do it." Character gives conlidence. In 1818 he owned two or three of the finest coasting schooners in New York harbor, and had a capital of nine thousand doUars. Seeing that steam-vessels would soon win siipremac\- over those carrj-ing sails only, he gave up his fine business to become the caiitain of a steamboat at one thousand dollars a year. For twelve years he ran between Xew York city and New Bruns- wick, X. J. In 1829 he began business as a steamboat owner, in the face of opposition so bitter that he lost his last dollar. But the tide turned, and he prospered so lupidly that he at length owned over one hundred steamboats. He early identified himself with the grow- ing railroad interests of the country, and became the richest man of his day in America, Barnum began the race of business life barefoot, for at the age of fifteen lie was obliged to buy on credit the shoes he wore at his father's funeral. He was a re- markable example of success under difficulties. There was no keeping him down ; no opposition daunted him, no obstacles were too great for him to overcome. Think of a man being ruined at fiftj^ j'ears of age ; yes, worse than ruined, for he was heavilj- in debt besides. Yet on the very daj' of his downfall he begins to rise again, wringing victorj'- from defeat by his indomitable persistence. " Eloquence must have been born with j'ou," said a friend to J. P. Curran. "Indeed, mj dear sir, it was not," replied the orator ; " it was born some three and twenty years and some months after me." Speaking of his first attempt at a debating club, he said : " I stood up, trembling through ever}"- fibre ; but remembering that in this I was but imitating Tully, I took courage and had actually proceeded almost as far as ' Mr. Chair- man,' when, to my astonishment and terror, I perceived that every eye was turned on me. There were onlj^ six SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 63 or seven present, and the room could not have contained as many more ; yet Avas it, to my panic-stricken imagi- nation, as if I were the central object in nature, and assembled millions were gazing upon me in breathless expectation. I became dismayed and dumb. 'My friends cried, ' Hear him ! ' but there was nothing to hear." He was nicknamed " Orator Mum," and well did he deserve the title until he ventured to stare in astonishment at a speaker who was " culminating chronology by the most preposterous anachronisms." " I doubt not," said tlie annoyed speaker, " that ' Orator Mum ' possesses won- derful talents for eloquence, but I would recommend him to show it in future by some more popular method than his silence." Stung by the taunt, Curran rose and gave the man a "piece of his mind," speaking quite fluently in his anger. Encouraged by this success, he took great pains to become a good speaker. He cor- rected his habit of stuttering by reading favorite pas- sages aloud every day slowly and distinctly, and spoke at every opportunity. Bunyan wrote his " Pilgrim's Progress " on the un- twisted papers used to cork the bottles of milk brought for his meals. Gifford wrote his first copy of a math- ematical work, when a cobbler's apprentice, on small scraps of leather; and Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on his plow handle. A poor Irish lad, so pitted by smallpox that boys made sport of him, earned his living by writing little ballads for street musicians. Eight cents a day was often all he could earn. He traveled through France and Italy, begging his way by singing and playing the flute at the cottages of the peasantry. At twenty-eight he was penniless in London, and lived in the beggars' quarters in Axe Lane. In his poverty, he set up as a doctor in the suburbs of London. He wore a second- hand coat of rusty velvet, with a patch on the left breast which he adroitly covered with his three-cor- 64 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. nered hat during Ids visits ; and we have an amusing anecdote of his contest of courtesy with a patient who persisted in endeavoring to relieve him of his hat, which only made him x'l'ess it more devoutly to his heart. He often had to pawn his clothes to keep from starving. He sold his '' Life of Voltaire " for twentj' dollars. After great hardship he managed to publish his " Polite Learning in Europe," and this brought him to xJublic notice. Xe.Kt came " The Traveller," and the wretched man in a Fleet Street garret found himself famous. His landlady' once arrested him for rent, but Dr. Johnson came to his relief, took from his desk the manuscript of the " Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it for three hundred dollars. He spent two years revising "The Deserted Village" after it was first written. Generous to a fault, vain and improvident, imposed on by others, he was continually in debt ; although for his " History of the Earth and Animated Xature " he re- ceived four thousand dollars, and some of his works, as, for instance, " She Stoops to Conquer," had a large sale. But in spite of fortune's frown and his own weakness, he Avon success and fame. The world, which so often comes too late with its assistance and laurels,, gave to the weak, gentle, loving author of " The Vicar of Wakefield" a monument in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The x)Oor, scrofulous, and almost blind boy, Samuel Johnson, was taken b^- his mother to receive the touch of Queen Anne, which was supposed to heal the "King's Evil." He entered Oxford as a servant, copy- ing lectures from a student's notebooks, while the boys made sport of the bare feet showing through great holes in his shoes. Some one left a i^air of new shoes at his door, but he was too proud to be helped, and threw them out of the window. He was so poor that he was obliged to leave college, and at twenty-six married a widow of forty-eight. He started a private SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 65 school with his wife's money ; but, getting only three pupils, was obliged to close it. He went to London, where he lived on nine cents a day. In his distress he wrote a poem in which appeared in capital letters the line, " Slow rises worth by poverty depressed," which attracted wide attention. He suffered greatly in Lon- don for thirteen years, being arrested once for a debt of thirteen dollars. At forty he published "The Vanity of Human Wishes," in which were these lines : — "Then mark what ills the scholar's life assail; Toil, envv, want, the patron and the jail." When asked how he felt about his failures, he replied : "Like a monument," — that is, steadfast, immovable. He was an indefatigable worker. In the evenings of a single week he wrote "Rasselas," a beautiful little story of the search for happiness, to get money to pay the funeral expenses of his mother. With six assist- ants he worked seven years on his Dictionary, which made his fortune. His name was then in everybody's mouth, and when he no longer needed help, assistance, as usual, came from every quarter. The great universi- ties hastened to bestow their degrees, and King George invited him to the palace. Lord Mansfield raised himself by indefatigable in- dustry from oatmeal porridge and poverty to affluence. and the Lord Chief Justice's Bench. Of five thousand articles sent every year to "Lip- pincott's Magazine," only two hundred were accepted. How much do you think Homer got for his Iliad ? or Dante for his Paradise ? Only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other people's stairs. In science, the man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon : the man who invented the microscope, and first saw earth, died from starvation, driven from his home. It is very clear in- deed that God means all good work and talk to be done for nothing. Shakespeare's "Hamlet" was sold for 66 AHCHITECTS OF FATE. about tweuty-tive doliai-.s ; but liis autograph lias sold for five tliousaiul dollars. During the ten years in wiiieli he made his greatest discoveries, Isaac Xewtou could hardly pay two shilliugs a week to the Eoyal .Society of which he was a member. Some of his friends wanted to get him excused from this payment, but he would not allow them to act. There are no more interesting pages in biography than those which record how Emerson, as a child, was unable to read the second volume of a certain book, because his widowed mother could not afford the amount (five cents) necessary to obtain it from the circulating library. Linnaeus was so poor when getting his education, that he had to mend his shoes with folded paper, and often had to beg his meals of his friends. "Who in the days of the First Empire cared to recall the fact that Napoleon, Emperor and King, was once forced to borrow a louis from Talma, when he lived in a garret on the Quai Conti ? David Livingstone at ten years of age was put into a cotton factory near Glasgow. Out of his first \\'eek's wages he bought a Latin Grammar, and studied in the night schools for j"ears. He would sit up and study till midnight rinless his mother drove him to bed, notwith- standing he had to be at the factory- at six in the morn- ing. He mastered A'irgil aud Horace in this waj-, and read extensivelj', besides studying botanj'. So eager and thirsty- for knowledge was he, that he would place his book before him on the spinning-jenny, and amid the deafening roar of machinery would pore o^'er its pages. George Eliot said of the years of chise work upon her " Eomola," " I began it a young woman, I finished it an old woman." One of Emerson's biographers says, re- ferring to his method of rewriting, revising, correcting, and eliminating : '•' His apples were sorted over and over again, until only the very rarest, the most perfect, were SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. G7 left. It did not matter that those thrown away were vevy good and helped to make clear the possibilities of the orchard, they were unmercifully cast aside." Car- lyle's books were literally' wrung out of him. The pains he took to satisfy himself of a relatively insignificant fact were incredible. Before writing his essay on Dide- rot, he read twenty-tive volumes at the rate of one per day. He tells Edward Fitzgerald that for the twentieth time he is going over the confused records of the battle of Naseby, that he may be quite sure of the topog- raphy. " All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder," says Johnson, " are in- stances of the resistless force of perseverance : it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that dis- tant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion ; yet those petty operations, in- cessantljr continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings." The Rev. Eliphalet Nott, a pulpit orator, was es- pecially noted for a sermon on the death of Alexander Hamilton, the great statesman, who was shot in a duel by Aaron Burr. Although Nott had managed in some way to get his degree at Brown University, he was at one time so poor after he entered the ministry that he could not buy an overcoat. His wife sheared their only cos- set sheep in January, wrapped it in burlap blankets to keep it from freezing, carded and spun and wove the wool, and made it into an overcoat for him. Great men never wait for opportunities ; they make them. Nor do they wait for facilities or favoring cir- cumstances ; they seize upon whatever is at hand, work out their problem, and master the situation. A young 68 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. man determined and willing will find a way or ]nake one. A Franklin does not require elaborate apparatus ; lie can bring electricity from the clouds with a common kite. A Watt can make a model of the condensing steam-engine out of an old sj'ringe used to inject the arteries of dead bodies previous to dissection. A Dr. Black can discover latent heat with a pan of water and two thermometers. A Newton can unfold the composi- tion of light and the origin of colors with a prism, a lens, and a piece of pasteboard. A Humphry Davy can experiment with kitchen pots and pans, and a Fara- day can experiment on electricity by means of old bot- tles, in his spare minutes while a book-binder. "When science was in its cradle the Marquis of ^Yorcester, an English nobleman, imprisoned in the Tower of London, was certainly not in a very good position to do anything for the world, but would not waste his time. The cover of a vessel of hot water blown off before his ej"es led to a series of observations, which he published later in a book called " Century of Inventions." These obser- vations were a sort of text-book on the power of steam, which resulted in Newcomen's steam - engine, which Watt afterward perfected. A Ferguson maj)S out the heavenly bodies, lying on his back, by means of threads with beads stretched between himself and the stars. Not in his day of bodily strength and political power, but blind, decrepit, and defeated with his party, Milton composed " Paradise Lost." Great men have found no royal road to their tri- umph. It is always the old route, by way of industry and perseverance. The farmer boy, Elihu B. Washburn, taught school at uen dollars per month, and early learned the lesson that it takes one hundred cents to make a dollar. In after years he fought " steals " in Congress, until he was called the "Watchdog of the Treasury." From his long membership he became known as the " Father SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 69 of the House." He administered the oath to Schuyler Colfax as Speaker three times. He recommended Grant as colonel of a regiment of volunteers. The latter, when President, appointed him Secretary of State, and, later, Minister to France. During the reign of the Commune, the representatives of nearly all other for- eign nations fled in dismay, but Washburn remained at his post. Shells exploded close to his office, and fell all around it, but he did not leave even when Paris was in flames. For a time he was really the minister of all foreign countries, in Paris ; and represented Prussia for almost a year. The Emperor William conferred upon him the Order of the Red Eagle, and gave him a jeweled star of great value. How could the poor boy, Elihu Burritt, working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith's shop, get an education ? He had but one book in his library, and carried that in his hat. But this boy with no chance became one of America's wonders. When teaching school, Garfield was very poor. He tore his only blue jean trousers, but concealed the rents by pins until night, when he retired early that his boarding mistress might mend his clothes. "When you get to be a United States Senator," said she, " no one will ask what kind of clothes you wore wljen teaching school." Although Michael Angelo made himself immortal in three different occupations, his fame might well rest upon his dome of St. Peter as an architect, upon his " Moses " as a sculptor, and upon his " Last Judgment " as a painter ; yet we find by his correspondence now in the British Museum, that when he was at work on his colossal bronze statue of Pope Julius II., he was so poor that he could not have his younger brother come to visit him at Bologna, because he had but one bed in which he and three of his assistants slept together. "I was always at the bottom of my purse," said 70 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. Zola, ill describing the struggles of liis early years of autliorsliip. " Very often I had not a sou left, and not knowing, either, where to get one. I rose generally at four in the morning, and began to stud}^ after a break- fast consisting of one raw egg. But no matter, those were good times. After taking a walk along the quays, I entered my garret, and joj'fully partaking of a din- ner of three apples, I sat down to work. I wrote, and I was happy. In winter I would allow mj'self no fire ; wood was too expensive — only on fete days was I able to afford it. But I had several pipes of tobacco and a candle for three sous. A three-sous candle, only think of it ! It meant a wdiole night of literature to me." James Brooks, once the editor and proprietor of the " New York Daily Express," and later an eminent con- gressman, began life as a clerk in a store in Maine, and when twenty-one received for his pay a hogshead of Xew England rum. He was so eager to go to college that he started for Waterville with his trunk on his back, and when he was graduated he was so poor and plucky that he carried his trunk on his back to the station when he went home. When Elias Howe, liarassed by want and woe, was in London comx^leting his first sewing-machine, he had frequently to borrow money to live on. He bought beans and cooked them himself. He also borrowed money to send his wife back to America. He sold his first machine for five pounds, although it was worth fifty, and then he pawned his letters patent to pay his expenses home. The boy Arkwright begins barbering in a cellar, but dies worth a million and a half. The world treated his novelties just as it treats everybody's novelties — made infinite objection, mustered all the impediments, but he snapped his fingers at their objections, and lived to become honored and wealthy. There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 71 had to fight its way to public reoognition in the face of detraction, calumny, and persecution. " Every- where," says Heine, "that a great soul gives utterance to its thouglits, there also is a Golgotha." Nearly every great discovery or invention that has blessed mankind has had to fight its way to recognition, even against the opposition of the most progressive men. Even Sir Charles Napier fiercely opposed the intro- duction of steam power into the Eoyal Navy. In the House of Commons, he exclaimed, " ]Mr. Speaker, when we enter Her ^Majesty's naval service and face the chances of war, we go prepared to be hacked in pieces, to be riddled by bullets, or to be blown to bits by shot and shell ; but Mr. Speaker, we do not go jjrepared to be boiled alive." He said this with tremendous emphasis. " Will any one explain how there can be a light without a wick ? " asked a member of Parliament, when William Murdock, toward the close of the eigh- teenth century, said that coal gas would give a good light, and could be conveyed into buildings in pipes. " Do you intend taking the dome of St. Paul's for a gasometer ? " was the sneering question of even the great scientist, Humphry Davy. Walter Scott ridi- culed the idea of lighting London by " smoke," but he soon used it at Abbotsford, and Da%^ achieved one of his greatest triumphs by experimenting with gas until he had invented his safety lamp. Titian used to crush the flowers to get their color, and painted the white walls of his father's cottage in Tyrol with all sorts of pictures, at which the moun- taineers gazed in wonder. " That boy will beat me one day," said an old painter as he watched a little fellow named Michael Angelo making drawings of pot and brushes, easel and stool, and other articles in the studio. The barefoot boy did persevere until he had overcome every difficulty and become a master of his art. 72 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. "William H. Frescott was a remarkable example of what a bo3' with '■ no chance " can do. While at col- lege, he lost one eye by a hard piece of bread thrown during a " biscuit battle," then so common after meals ; and, from sympathj^, the other eye became almost use- less. But the bo3' had pluck and determination, and would not lead a useless life. He set his heart upon being a historian, and turned all his energies in that di- rection. By the aid of others' eyes, he spent ten years studying before he even decided upon a particular theme for his first book. Then he spent ten years more, por- ing over old archives and manuscripts, before he pub- lished his " Ferdinand and Isabella." What a lesson in his life for young men ! What a rebuke to those who have thrown away their opportunities and wasted their lives ! " Galileo with an opera-glass," said Emerson, " dis- covered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since with the great telescopes. Colum- bus found the new world in an undecked boat." Surroundings which men call unfavorable cannot pre- vent the unfolding of your powers. From the plain fields and lowlands of Avon came the Shakespearean genius which has charmed the world. From among the rock-ribbed hills of New Hampshire sprang the greatest of American orators and statesmen, Daniel Webster. From the crowded ranks of toil, and homes to which luxury is a stranger, have often come the leaders and benefactors of our race. Indeed, when Christ came upon earth. His early abode was a place so poor and so much despised that men thought He could not be the Christ, asking, in utter astonishment, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " "I once knew a little colored boy," said Frederick Douglass, " whose mother and father died when he was but six years old. He was a slave, and had no one to care for him. He slept on a dirt floor in a hovel, and SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 73 iu cold weather would crawl into a meal-bag head fore- most, and leave his feet in the ashes to keep them warm. Often he would roast an ear of corn and eat it to satisfy his hunger, and many times has he crawled under the barn or stable and secured eggs, which he would roast in the fire and eat. That boy did not wear pantaloons, as you do, but a tow-linen shirt. Schools were unknown to him, and he learned to spell from an old Webster's spelling-book, and to read and write from posters on cellar and barn doors, while boys and men would helj) him. He would then preach and speak, and soon be- came well known. He became presidential elector. United States marshal. United States recorder. United States diplomat, and accumulated some wealth. He wore broadcloth, and did n't have to divide crumbs with the dogs under the table. That boy was Frederick Douglass. What was possible for me is possible for you. Don't think because you are colored you can't accomplish anything. Strive earnestly to add to your knowledge. So long as you remain in ignorance, so long will you fail to command the respect of your fellow- men." Where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career, and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the pre- lude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern times ? Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel ; of what real parentage we know not ; reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair sur- rounding ; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and visions ; with scarcely a natural grace ; singularly awk- ward, ungainly even among the uncouth about him : it was reserved for this remarkable character, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme com- mand at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. The great leaders of his party vveye njade to stand aside j the most experienced and 74 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. accomplislied men of the day, men like Sewavd, and Chase, and Snmuer, statesmen famous and trained, were sent to the rear, while this strange figure was brought by unseen hands to the front, and given the reins of power. The story is told of a man in London deprived of both legs and arms, who managed to write with his month and perform other things so remarkable as to enable him to earn a fair living. He would lay certain sheets of pa- per together, pinning them at the corner to make them hold. Then he would take a pen and write some verses ; after which he would proceed to embellish the lines bj- many skillful flourishes. Dropping the pen from his mouth, he would next take up a needle and thread, also with his mouth, thread the needle, and make several stitches. He also painted with a brush, and was in many other ways a wonderful man. Instead of being a burden to his family he was the most impor- tant contributor to their welfare. Arthur Cavanagh, M. P., was born without arms or legs, yet it is said that he was a good shot, a skillful fisherman and sailor, and one of the best cross country riders in Ireland. He was a good conversationalist, and an able member of Parliament. He ate with his fork attached to his stump of an arm, and wrote holding his pen in his teeth. In riding he held the bridle in his mouth, his body being strapped to the saddle. He once lost his means of support in India, but went to work with his accustomed energy, and obtained em- ployment as a carrier of dispatches. People thought it strange that Gladstone should ap- point blind Henry Fawcett Postmaster-General of Great Britian ; but never before did any one fill the office so well. John B. Herreshoff, of Bristol, R. I., although blind since he was fifteen years old, is the founder and head of one of the most noted shipbuilding establishments in the world. He has superintended the construction SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. lb of some of the swiftest torpedo boats and steam and sail- ing yachts afloat. He frequenth* takes his turn at the wheel in sailing his vessels on trial trips. He is aided greatly by his younger brother ISTathaniel, but can plan vessels and conduct business without him. After exam- ining a vessel's hull or a good model of it, he will give detailed instructions for building another just like it, and will make a more accurate duplicate than can most boat-builders whose sight is perfect. The Rev. William H. Milburn, who lost his sight when a child, studied for the ministrj'', and was ordained before he attained his majority. In ten j-ears he trav- eled about 200,000 miles in missionary work. He has written half a dozen books, among them a very careful history of the Mississippi Valley. He has long been chaplain of the lower house of Congress. Blind Fanny Crosby, of New York, was a teacher of the blind for many years. She has written nearly three thousand hymns, among which are "Pass Me not, O Gentle Saviour," "Rescue the Perishing," "Saviour more than Life to Me," and " Jesus keep Me near the Cross." Nor are these by any means the only examples of blind people now doing their full share of the world's work. In the United States alone there are engaged in musical occupation one hundred and fifty blind piano tuners, one hundred and fifty blind teachers of music in schools for the blind, five hundred blind private teach- ers, one hundred blind church organists, fifteen or more blind composers and publishers of music, and several blind dealers in musical instruments. There is tw open door to the temple of success. Every one who enters makes his own door, which closes be- hind him to all others, not even permitting his own children to pass. Nearly forty years ago, on a rainy, dreary day in No- vember, a young widow in Philadelphia sat wondering 76 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. how she could feed and clothe three little ones left dependent by the death of her husband, a naval officer. Happening to think of a box of which her husband had spoken, she opened it, and found therein an envelope containing directions for a code of colored light signals to be used at night on the ocean. The system was not complete, but she perfected it, went to Washington, and induced the Secretary of the Navy to give it a trial. An admiral soon wrote that the signals were good for nothing, although the idea was valuable. For months and years she worked, succeeding at last in producing brilliant lights of different colors. She was paid $20,000 for the right to manufacture them in our navy. Nearly all the blockade runners captured in the Civil War were taken by the aid of the Coston signals, which are also considered invaluable in the Life Saving Ser- vice. INIrs. Coston introduced them into several Euro- pean navies, and became wealthy. A modern writer says that it is one of the mysteries of our life that genius, that noblest gift of God to man, is nourished by poverty. Its greatest works have been achieved by the sorrowing ones of the world in tears and despair. Not in the brilliant salon, not in the tap- estried library, not in ease and competence, is genius usually born and nurtured ; but often in adversity and destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a straitened household, in bare and fireless garrets, with the noise of squalid children, in the turbulence of domestic conten- tions, and in the deep gloom of uncheered despair. This is its most frequent birthplace, and amid scenes like these uupropitious, repulsive, wretched surround- ings, have men labored, studied, and trained themselves, until they have at last emanated from the gloom of that obscurity the shining lights of their times ; have become the companions of kings, the guides and teachers of their kind, and exercised an influence upon the thought of the world amounting to a species of intel- lectual legislation. SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 77 Cliauncey Jerome's education was limited to tlu'ee months in the district school each year until he was ten, when his father took him into his blacksmith shop at Plymouth, Conn., to make nails. Money was a scarce article with young Cliauncey. He once chopped a load of wood for one cent, and often chopped by moonlight for neighbors at less than a dime a load. His father died when he was eleven, and his mother was forced to send Chauncey out, with tears in his eyes and a little bundle of clothes in his hand, to earn a living on a farm. His new employer kept him at work early and late chopping down trees all day, his shoes sometimes full of snow, for he had no boots until he was nearly twenty-one. At fourteen he was apprenticed for seven years to a carpenter, who gave him only board and clothes. Several times during his apprenticeship he carried his tools thirty miles on his back to his work at different places. After he had learned his trade he frequently walked thirty miles to a job with his kit upon his back. One day he heard people talking of Eli Terry, of Plymouth, who had uiidertaken to make two hundred clocks in one lot. "He'll never live long enough to finish them," said one. "If he should," said another, "he could not possibly sell so many. The very idea is ridiculous." Chauncey pondered long over this rumor, for it had long been his dream to become a great clock-maker. He tried his hand at the first op- portunity, and soon learned to make a wooden clock. When he got an order to make twelve at twelve dollars apiece he thought his fortune was made. One night he happened to think that a cheap clock could be made of brass as well as of wood, and would not shrink, swell, or warp appreciably in any climate. He acted on the idea, and became the first great manufacturer of brass clocks. He made millions at the rate of six hundred a day, exporting them to all parts of the globe. " The History of the English People " was written 78 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. while J. E. (rreen was struggling against a mortal ill- ness. He had collected a vast store of materials, and had begun to write, when his disease made a sudden and startling progress, and his physicians said they conld do nothing to arrest it. In the extremity of ruiu and defeat he applied himself with greater fidelity to his work. The time that might still be left to him fo)- work must henceforth be wrested, day by day, from the grasp of death. The writing occupied live months ; while from hour to hour and day to day his life was prolonged, his doctors said, by the sheer force of his own will and his inflexible determination to finish the " Making of England." He lay, too weak to lift a book, or to hold a pen, dictating every word, sometimes through hours of intense suffering. Yet so conscien- tious was he that, driven by death as he was, the greater jDart of the book was rewritten live times. When it was done he began the " Conquest of England," wrote it, re- viewed it, and then, dissatisfied with it, rejected it all and began again. As death laid its cold fingers on his heart, he said : " I still have some work to do that I know is good. I will try to win but one week more to write it down." It was not until he was actually dying that he said, " I can work no more." "What does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered ? " Schiller produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to tor- ture. Handel was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with dis- tress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. Mozart composed his great operas, and last of all his " Requiem," when oppressed by debt and struggling with a fatal disease. Beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness. Perhaps no one ever battled harder to overcome ob- SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 79 stacles wliieli would lia\'e disheartened most lueu than Demosthenes. He had such a weak voice, and such an impediment in his speech, and was so short of breath, tliat he could scarcely get through a single sentence without stopping to rest. All his first attempts were nearly drowned by the hisses, jeers, and scoffs of his audie'.'ces. His first effort that met with success was against his guardian, who had defrauded him, and whom he compelled to refund a part of his fortune. He was so discouraged by his defeats that he determined to give up forever all attempts at oratory. One of his auditors, however, believed the young man had something in him, and encouraged him to persevere. He accordingly ap- peared again in public, but was hissed down as before. As he withdrew, hanging his head in great confusion, a noted actor, Satyrus, encouraged him still further to try to overcome his impediment. He stammered so much that he could not pronounce some of the letters at all, and his breath would give out before he could get through a sentence. Finally, he determined to be an orator cost what it might. He went to the seashore and practiced amid the roar of the breakers with small pebbles in his mouth, in order to overcome his stammer- ing, and at the same time accustom himself to the hisses and tumults of his audience. He overcame his short breath by practicing speaking while running up steep and difficult places on the shore. His awkward gestures were also corrected by long and determined drill before a mirror. Disheartened by the expense of removing the trouble- some seeds, Southern planters were seriously considering the abandonment of cotton culture. To clean a pound of cotton required the labor of a slave for a day. Eli Whitney, a young man fronr ISTew England, teaching school in Georgia, saw the state of affairs, and deter- mined to invent a machine to do the work. He worked in secret for many months in a cellar, and at last made 80 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. a machine which cleaned the cotton perfectly and rap- idly. Just as success crowned his long labor thieves broke into the cellar and stole his model. He recovered the model, but the princiiDle was stolen, and other ma- chines were made without his consent. In vain he tried to xjrotect his right in the courts, for Southern juries would almost invariably decide against him. He had started the South in a great industry, and added mil- lions to her wealth, yet the courts united with the men who had infringed his patents to rob him of the reward of his ingenuity and industry. At last he abandoned the whole thing in disgust, and turned his attention to making improvements in firearms, and with such suc- cess that he accumulated a fortune. Robert Collyer, who brought his bride in the steerage when he came to America at the age of twenty-seven, worked at the anvil nine years in Pennsylvania, and then became a preacher, soon winning national renown. A shrewd observer says of John Chinaman : " Xo sooner does he put his foot among strangers than he begins to work. ISTo office is too menial or too laborious for him. He has come to make money, and he will make it. His frugality requires but little : he barely lives, but he saves what he gets ; commences trade in the smallest possible way, and is continually adding to his store. The native scorns such drudgery, and remains poor ; the Chinaman toils patiently on, and grows rich. A few years pass by, and he has warehouses ; becomes a contractor for produce ; buys foreign goods by the cargo ; and employs his newly imported countrymen, who have come to seek their fortune as he did. He is not particularly scrupulous in matters of opinion. He never meddles with politics, for they are dangerous and not profitable ; but he will adopt any creed, and carefully follow any observances, if, by so doing, he can confirm or improve his position. He thrives with the Spaniard, and works while the latter sleeps. He is too quick for SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 81 the Dutchman, and can smoke and bargain at the same time. He has harder work with the Englishman, but still he is too much for him, and succeeds. Climate has no effect on him: it cannot stop his hands, unless it kills him ; and if it does, he dies in harness, battling for money till his last breath. Whoever he maj- be, and in whatever position, whether in his own or a foreign country, he is diligent, temperate, and uncomplaining. He keeps the word he pledges, pays his debts, and is capable of noble and generous actions. It has been customary to speak lightly of him, and to judge a whole people by a few vagabonds in a provincial seaport, whose morals and manners have not been improved bj- foreign society." Columbus was dismissed as a fool from court after court, but he pushed his suit against an incredulous and ridiculing world. Eebuffed by kings, scorned by queens, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the overmastering purpose which dominated his souL The words " New World " were graven upon his heart ; and reputation, ease, pleasure, position, life itself if need be, must be sacrificed. Threats, ridicule, ostracism, storms, leaky vessels, mutiny of sailors, could not shake his mighty purpose. You cannot keep a determined man from success. Place stumbling-blocks in his way and he takes them for stepping-stones, and on them will climb to great- ness. Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. Cripple him, and he writes the Waverley Novels. Lock him up in a dungeon, and he composes the immortal " Pilgrim's Progress." Put him in a cradle in a log cabin in the wilderness of America, and in a few years you will find him in the Capitol at the head of the greatest nation on the globe. Would it were possible to convince the struggling youth of to-day that all that is great and noble and true in the history of the world is the result of infinite pains- 82 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. taking, perpetual plodding, of common every-day in- dusti-y ! When Lavoisier the chemist asked that his execution might be postponed for a few days in order to ascertain the results of the experiments he was conducting in prison, the communists refused to grant the request, say- ing : " The Republic has no need of philosophers." Dr. Priestley's house was burned and his chemical library destroyed by a mob shouting : " No philosophers," and he was forced to flee from his country. Bruno was burned in Rome for revealing the heavens, and Versa- lius was condemned for dissecting the human body ; but their names shall live as long as time shall last. Kossuth was two years in prison at Buda, but he kept on working, undaunted. John Hunter said : " The few things I have been enabled to do have been accom- plished under the greatest difficulties, and have encoun- tered the greatest opposition." Roger Bacon, one of the profoundest thinkers the world has produced, was terribly persecuted for his studies in natural philosophy, yet he persevered and won success. He was accused of dealing in magic, his books were burned in public, and he was kept in prison for ten years. Even our own revered Washington was mobbed in the streets because he would not pander to the clamor of the people and reject the treaty which Mr. Jay had arranged with Great Britain. But he re- mained firm, and the people adopted his opinion. The Duke of Wellington was mobbed in the streets of Lon- don and his windows were broken while his wife lay dead in the house ; but the " Iron Duke " never faltered in his course, or swerved a hair's breadth from his purpose. William Phips, when a young man, heard some sailors on the street, in Boston, talking about a Spanish ship, wrecked off the Bahama Islands, which was supposed to have money on board. Toung Phips determined to SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 83 find it. He set out at once, and, after many liardsliips, discovered the lost treasure. He then heard of anotlier ship, wrecked off Port De La Plata many years before. He set sail for England and importuned Charles II. for aid. To his delight the king fitted up the ship Rose Algier for him. He searched and searched for a long time in vain. He had to return to England to repair his vessel. James II. was then on the throne, and he had to wait for four years before he could raise money to return. His crew mutinied and threatened to throw him overboard, but he turned the ship's guns on them. One day an Indian diver went down for a curious sea plant and saw several cannon lying on the bottom. They proved to belong to the wreck for which he was looking, sunk fifty years before. He had no- thing but dim traditions to guide him, but he returned to England with $1,500,000. The King made him High Sheriff of New England, and he was afterward made Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Ben Jonson, when following his trade of a mason, worked on Lincoln's Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket. Joseph Hunter was a carpenter in youth, Robert Burns a plowman, Keats a druggist, Thomas Carlyle and Hugh Miller masons. Dante and Descartes were soldiers. ' Andrew Johnson was a tailor. Cardinal Wolsey, Defoe, and Kii-ke White were butchers' sons. Faraday was the son of a black- smith, and his teacher, Humphry Davy, was an appren- tice to an apothecary. Kepler was a waiter boy in a German hotel, Bunyan a tinker, Copernicus the son of a Polish baker. The boy Herschel played the oboe for his meals. Marshal Ney, the " bravest of the brave," rose from the ranks. His great industry gained for him the name of " The Indefatigable." Soult served fourteen years before he was made a sergeant. When made Foreign Minister of France he knew very little of geography, even. Richard Cobden was a boy in a Lon- 84 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. don wareliouse. Ilis first speeeli in Pai-liament was a complete failure ; but he was not afraid of defeat, and soon became one of tlie greatest orators of his day. Seven shoemakers sat in Congress during the first cen- tury of our government : Eoger Sherman, Henry Wil- son, Gideon Lee, AVilliam Graham, John Halley, H. V. Baldwin, and Daniel Sheffey. A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring suc- cess from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. The man who has not fought his way up to his ow^n loaf, and does not bear the sear of desperate conflict, does not know the highest meaning of success. The money acquired by those who have thus strug- gled upward to success is not their only, or indeed their chief reward. When, after years of toil, of opposition, of ridicule, of repeated failure, Cyrus W. Field placed his hand upon the telegraph instrument ticking a mes- sage under the sea, think you that the electric thrill passed no further than the tips of his fingers ? When Thomas A. Edison demonstrated in Menlo Park that the electric light had at last been developed into a com- mercial success, do you suppose those bright rays failed to illuminate the inmost recesses of his soul ? Edward Everett said : " There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of enjoyment in a single moment. I can fancy the emotion of Galileo when, first raising the newly constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the m.oon. It was such another moment as that when the immortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the vrork of their divine art ; like that when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492, beheld the shores of San Salvador ; like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton ; like that when Franklin saw, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 85 by the stiffening fibres of the hemp cord of liis kite, tliat he held the lightning in his grasp ; like that when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found." " Observe you tree in your neighbor's garden," says Zanoni to Viola in Bulwer's novel. " Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered the germ, from which it sprung, in the clefts of the rock. Choked up and walled round by crags and build- ings, by nature and man, its life has been one struggle for the light. You see how it has writhed and twisted, — how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has labored and worked, stem and branch, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it through each disfavor of birth and circumstances — why are its leaves as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms, can embrace the open sunshine ? My child, because of the very instinct that impelled the struggle, — because the labor for the light won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every adverse accident of sorrow, and of fate, to turn to the sun, to strive for the heaven ; this it is that gives know ledge to the strong and happiness to the weak." " Each petty hand Can steer a ship becalmed; but he that will Govern her and carry her to her ends, must know His tides, his currents; how to shift his sails; What she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers; What her springs are, her leaks, and how to stop them; What strands, what shelves, what rocks to threaten her; The forces and the natures of all winds. Gusts, storms, and tempests; when her keel plows hell. And deck knocks heaven; then to manage her Becomes the name and office of a pilot." CHAPTER V. USES OF OBSTACLES. Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds hvains. — Emebson. Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous ditficu ties. — Spukgeo.n. The good are better made by ill, As odors crushed are sweeter still. EOGEHS. Aromatic plants bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow; But crush'd or trodden to tlie ground, DifEuse 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 wilhout, the more signiticant and the higher in Inspiration his life will be. — IIokace Bush- KKLL. Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circum- stances would have lain dormant. — Hokace. For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adver- sity. — SiRACH. Tliough losses and crosses be lessons right severe, There 's wit tliere ye 'II get there, ye '11 find no other where. BUKSS. 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. — JoHX Neal. " Kites rise against, not with, the wind." " Many and many a time since," said Harriet Marti- neau, 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 JOHN BUNYAN " Sculptor of soula, I lift to Thee Encumbered heart and hands ; Spare not the chisel, set me free However dear the banda." USES OF OBSTACLES. 87 with smajl means, sewing and economizing and growing navvowev every year ; wliereas, by being tlirown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked liard and usefidly, won friends, reputation, and inde- pendence, seen tlie world abundantly, abroad and at home; in short, have truly lived instead of vegetating." " I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man," said George Macdonald of jNIilton, "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 ]\Iilton ; while the third, Dante, was in his later years nearlj-, if not altogether, blind. It almost seems as though some great charac- ters had been physically crippled in certain respects so that they would not dissipate their energy, but con- centrate 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 ob- stacle, 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 awaken- ing 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 88 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. 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 indis- pensable condition of success, pecuniary independence as essential alike to virtue and happiness, and no sacri- fice 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 eniment ju- rist, " a young man must live like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a young law- yer 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 suffi- cient 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 im- petuously to the sea. Poverty and obscurity are not insurmountable obstacles, but they often act as a stim- ulus 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 USES OF OBSTACLES. 89 up to sunlight and air, and then to wrestle with storm and tempest, with snow and frost, the fibre of its tim- ber will be all the tougher and stronger. " Do you wish to live without a trial ? " asks a mod- ern 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 confi- dence. We should reach after the highest good." "If you wish to rise," said Talleyrand, "make ene- mies." 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 tfl 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. 90 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. The man who has triumphed over difficulties bears the signs of victory in liis face. An air of triuniidi is seeir in every movement. Jolin Calvin, who made a theology for the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, was tortured with dis- ease for many years, and so was Kobert 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 Anaximan- der, when told that the very bo3s laughed at his singing. Strong characters, like the palm-tree, seem to thrive best when most abused. j\[en 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 ener- vates 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 na- tures 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 great- ness 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 Bis- marck. Perhaps Phillips and Garrison would never have been known to history had it not been for slavery. (JSES OF OBSTACLES. 91 "Will lie not make a great iiaiiiter?" was asked in regard to an artist fresh froui liis Italian tour. '-jS'o, never," replied Northcote. " AVliy not ? " '■ ]5ecause he lias 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 devel- oped 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 biit for friction ; the fire in man would never blaze but for an- tagonism. 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 mo- ment 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 there- fore ceases to grow. "It is this scantiness of means, this continual defi- ciency, 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 92 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. urging of the teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain, — until the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy Avheels, and 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 great- est of ou.r 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 unsuspected. How often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a par- ent, 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 jjrison. The " Pilgrim's Progress " appeared in Bedford Jail. The " Life and Times " of Baxter, Eliot's " Monarehia of Man," and Penn's " No Cross, No Crown," were writ- ten 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 USES OF OBSTACLES. 93 Dante worked in exile, and even luulei- sentence of death. His ^yol•ks were burned in public after liis 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 up- ward 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 hurri- cane. 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 rec- ognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put the other boy in a Vanderbilt family. Give him 94 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. French and German nurses ; gratify every wish. I'lace 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, tawnjr 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 j'outh. 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 differ- ence 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 Eoman cell ; John Huss led to the stake at Constance ; Tyndale dying in his prison at Amsterdam ; ]\Iilton, amid the incipient earthquake throes of revolution, teaching two little boys in Aldgate Street ; David Liv- ingstone, 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 pur- poses was God working out by their apparent humilia- tions ! USES OF OBSTACLES. 93 Two liighwayiuen chancing once to pass a gibbet, one of them exclaimed : " What a fine iirofession ours would be if there were no gibbets ! " " Tut, you block head," 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 pur- suit ; it is the difficulties that scare and keep out un- worthy competitors. " Success grows out of struggles to overcome difficul- ties," 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 ad- vancement 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 pub- lish their failures as well as their successes. " Young men need to be taught not to expect a per- fectly smooth and easy way to the objects of their en- deavor or ambition," says Dr. Feabody. " Seldom does one reach a position with which he has reason to be sat- isfied 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 96 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. Quixote." He was so jioor that lie 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 suc- cess from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements." " She sings well," said a great musician of a promis- ing but passionless cantatrice, " but she wants some- thing, and in that something, everything. If I were single, I would court her ; I would marry her ; I wonld 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 Beethove-n of Eossini, " 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 Tliurlow withheld a promised commissionership of bankruptcy, saying that it was a favor not to give it then. "What he m.eant 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. USES OF OBSTACLES. 97 " 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 sea- sons 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, exaspera- tion, 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 Foyntz. 98 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. Almost from the dawn of liistory, oppression has been the lot of the Hebrews, yet tlioy have given the world its noblest songs, its wisest proverbs, its sweetest mnsic. "With them persecution seems to bring pros- perity. They thrive where others would starve. They hold the purse-striiigs of many nations. To them hard- ship 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 gar- den. 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 ricb exijerieuce and new joys often spring. Don't lament and grieve over lost wealth. The Cre- ator maj- 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 onlj' 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 sturdj^ oak. Fierce winters are as neces- sary 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. AVithout this struggle it w^ould 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, USES OF OBSTACLES. 1)9 wliere 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 onlj' to discover him. Obstacles, hardships are the chisel and mallet which shape the strong life into beaut}". 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 magnifi- cent 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 for- ever 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 lias not observed the patience, the calm endur- ance, 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 great- est 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 him- self whicli, until then, he had never seen. The grave buried his dearest hopes, but uncovered 100 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. 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 w^ho 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. Ou.r antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difRculty 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 thou- sand adverse circumstances. You cannot keep them down. Every obstacle seems only to add to their abil- ity to get on. " Under different circumstances," says Castelar, " Sa- vonarola 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 cen- tred 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 immor- tality." 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 Academj'. USES OF OBSTACLES. 101 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 en- abled them to become great inventors, authors, states- men, 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 voy- ager. 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 soft- ness and security. A man upon whom continuous sun- shine 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 fami- lies 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 102 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. leading productions when blind, poor, and sick. " Who best can suffer.'' said he, •■ best can do." Bunyan said that, if it were lawful, lie 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. Paj"Son, smiling, as he laj' sick in bed. '■ Xo," replied the visitor. •' In order that we may look upward.-' " I am not come to condole but to rejoice with j-ou,"' said the friend; ''for it seems tome that this is no time for mourning.'' " Well, I am glad to hear that," said Dr. Payson, "it is not often I am ad- dressed in such a way. The fact is I never had less need of condolence, and yet everybody persists in of- fering 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 jEolian harp bj' 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, anj- higher manhood. jSTot until the breath of the plague had blasted a hun- dred 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 perse- cution. "Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if the truth were known," said Albion Tourgee. " 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 nevei had aspired to." USES OF OBSTACLES. 103 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 intelli- gence 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. Xot 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 wronf;^, 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. Macanlay 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 Camj/bell, 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, mag- azines. 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 col- lege course. Newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious of de- layed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her 104 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drud- gery and emancipate liim 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 Hin- doo rjrot a penny and to the American laborer a dollar for his daily toil ; that makes Mexico with its mineral wealth poor, and ISTew 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 bar- barism. 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 sculp- tor will chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. Nature will chip and pound us remorselesslj' 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 thou- sand ways, if she can develop a little character. Every- thing must give way to that. Wealth is nothing, posi- tion is nothing, fame is nothing, inanliood is everything. Not ease, not pleasure, not happiness, but a wmu, Nature is after. In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which stands out boldly be- yond everything else. Every other idea or figure on USES OF OBSTACLES. 105 the cauvas is subordinate to it, but pointing to the cen- tral 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 evevy 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 dis- tance, 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 ad- justed as to eliminate from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks that, in larger in- terests 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 con- flict 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 tem- 106 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. pie-building, whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and tills life Avith cries and blows. Tlie thousand rivalries of our daily business, the hercer ani- mosities 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? AVe 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 the^^ are, lessons, and perhaps blessings in disguise, is the true hero. There is a strength Deep bedded in our hearts of which we reck Bui. 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 liand, 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 gi'eat 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. Bhowning. BERNARD PALISSY * i had no other books than heaven and earth." " Who is it in the suburbs liere This Potter, working with such cheer. This madman, as the people say, Who breaks his tables and his chairs To feed his f uruace fires ! " CHAPTER VI. ONE UNWAVERING AIM. Life is an arrow — therefore you must know What mark to aim at, how to use the bow — Then draw it to the head and let it go. Henry van Dyke. The important thing in life is to have a great aim, and to possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it. — Goethk. Concentration alone conquers. ■ — C. Buxton. " He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither." " A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." Let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and then stick to it if he would be successful. — Fkasklin. *' Digression is as dangerous as stagnation in the career of a 5'oung man in business." Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows un- consciously into genius. — Bumver. Genius is intensity. — Bai.zac. " Why do you lead sucli a solitary life ? " asked a friend of Michael Angelo. " Art is a jealous mistress," replied the artist ; " she requires the whole man." Dur- ing his labors at the Sistine Chapel, according to Dis- raeli, he refused to meet any one, even at his own house. "That day we sailed westward, which was our course," were the simple but grand words which Co- lumbus wrote in his journal day after day. Hope might rise and fall, terror and dismay might seize upon the crew at the mysterious variations of the compass, but Columbus, unappalled, pushed due west and nightly added to his record the above words. "Cut an inch deeper," said a member of the Old Guard to the surgeon probing his wound, "and you will find the Emperor," — meaning his heart. By the 108 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. marvelous power of concentrated piiri)ose Xapoleon liail left his name on the very stones of the capital, had burned it indelibly into the heart of every Frenchman, and had left it written in living letters all over Europe. France to-day has not shaken off the spell of that name. In the fair city on the Seine the mj'stic " N " confronts j-Qu everywhere. Oh, the power of a great purpose to work miracles ! It has changed the face of the world. Napoleon knew that there were plenty of great men in France, but they did not know the might of the unwavering aim by which he was changing the destinies of Europe. He saw that what was called the " balance of power " was only an idle dream ; that, unless some master-mind could be found which was a match for events, the mil- lions would rule in anarchy. His iron will grasped the situation ; and like William Pitt, he did not loiter around balancing the probabilities of failure or success, or dally with his purpose. There was no turning to the right nor to the left ; no dreaming away time, nor building air-castles ; but one look and purpose, forward, upward and onward, straight to his goal. He always hit the bull's-ej^e. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. He was like a great burning-glass, concentrating the raj'S of the sun upon a single spot ; he burned a hole wherever he went. The secret of his power lay in. his ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place in the enemy's ranks, he would mass his men and hurl them like an avalanche upon the critical point, crowding volley upon volley, charge upon charge, till he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of con- centration there is in this man's life ! He was able to focus all his faculties upon the smallest detail, as well as upon an empire. But, alas ! Napoleon was himself defeated by violation of his own tactics, — the con- stantly repeated crushing force of heavy battalions upon one point. OXE UNWAVERING AIM. 109 To succeed to-day a man must concentrate all the faculties of his mind ui>ou one unwavering aim, and have a tenacity of purpose which means death or vic- tory. Every other inclination which tempts him from his aim must be suppressed. Xew Jersey has many ports, but they are so shallow and narrow that the shipping of the entire state amounts to but little. On the other hand, New York has but one ocean port, and yet it is so broad, deep, and grand, that it leads America in its enormous sliipping trade. She sends her vessels into every port of the ■world, -while the ships of her neighbor are restricted to local voyages. A man may star%^e on a dozen half-learned trades or occupations ; he may grow rich and famous upon one trade thoroughly mastered, even though it be the humblest. Even Gladstone, with his ponderous yet active brain, saj's he cannot do two things at once ; he throws his entire strength iipon whatever he does. The intensest energy characterizes everything he undertakes, even his recreation. If such concentration of energy is necessarj^ for the success of a Gladstone, what can we common mortals hope to accomplish by "scattera- tion ? " All great men have been noted for their power of concentration which makes them oblivious of every- thing outside their aim. Victor Hugo wrote his " No- tre Dame"_ during the revolution of 1830, while the bullets were whistling across his garden. He shut himself up in one room, locking his clothes up, lest they should tempt him to go out into the street, and spent most of that winter wrapped in a big gray com- forter, pouring his very life into his work. Genius is intensity. Abraham Lincoln possessed such power of concentration that he could repeat' quite correctly a sermon to which he had listened in his boy- 110 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. hood. Dr. 0. W. Holmes, -wlien an Audover student, riveted his eyes on the book he was studying as though he were reading a will that made liini heir to a nrillion. A New York sportsman, in answer to an advertise- ment, sent twenty-five cents for a sure receipt to pre- vent a shotgun from scattering, and received the fol- lowing : "Dear Sir: To keej) a gun from scattering put in but a single shot." It is the men who do one thing in this world who come to the front. Who is the favorite actor ? It is a Jefferson, who devotes a lifetime to a "Rip Van Winkle," a Booth, an Irving, a Kean, who plays one character until he can play it better than any other man living, and not the shallow players who imperson- ate all parts. It is the man who never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality. It is an Edison, a ilorse, a Bell, a Howe, a Stephenson, a Watt. It is Adam Smith, spending ten years on the " Wealth of Nations." It is Gibbon, giving twenty years to his " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It is a Hume, writing thirteen hours a day on his " History of England." It is a Webster, spending thirty-six years on his dictionary. It is a Bancroft, working twenty- six years on his " History of the United States." It is a Eield, crossing the ocean fifty times to lay a cable, while the world ridicules. It is a Newton, writing his " Chronology of Ancient Nations " sixteen times. It is a Grant, who proposes to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." These are the men who have writ- ten their names prominently in the history of the world. A one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than the ten-talent man who scat- ters his energies and never knows exactly what he will do. The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers upon one thing, can accomplish something ; the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to ao- ONE UNWAVERING AIM. Ill complish anything. Drop after drop, continually fall- ing, wears a passage through the hardest rock. The hasty tempest, as Carlyle points out, rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind. A great purpose is cumulative ; and, like a great magnet, it attracts all that is kindred along the stream of life. A Yankee can splice a rope in many different ways ; an English sailor only knows one way, but that is the best one. It is the one-sided man, the sharp-edged man, the man of single and intense purpose, the man of one idea, who turns neither to the right nor to tlie left, though a paradise tempt him, who cuts his way through obstacles and forges to the front. . The time has gone forever when a Bacon can span universal knowledge ; or when, absorbing all the knowledge of the times, a Dante can sustain arguments against fourteen dispu- tants in the University of Paris, and conquer in them ail. The day when a man can successfully drive a dozen callings abreast is a thing of the past. Concen- tration is the keynote of the century. Scientists estimate that there is energy enough in less than fifty acres of sunshine to run all the machinery in the world, if it could be concentrated. But the sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without setting anything on fire ; although these rays focused by a burning-glass woiild melt solid granite, or even change a diamond into vapor. There are plenty of men who have ability enough ; the rays of their faculties, taken separately, are all right, but they are powerless to col- lect them, to bring them all to bear upon a single spot. Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, be- cause they have no power to concentrate their talents upon one point, and this makes all the difference be- tween success and failure. Chiseled upon the tomb of a disappointed, heart- broken king, Joseph II. of Austria, in the Eoyal Ceme- 112 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. rery at Vienna, a travoler tells us, is this epitaph: ■ Here lies a monarch who, with the best of intentions, never carried out a single plan." Sir James ^lackintosh was a man of remarkable ability. He excited in everj' one who knew him the greatest expectations. Man}' watched his career with much interest, expecting that he would dazzle the world. But there was no purpose in his life. He had intermittent attacks of enthusiasm for doing great things, but his zeal all evaporated before he could de- cide what to do. This fatal defect in his character kept him balancing between conflicting motives ; and his whole life was almost thrown away. He lacked power to choose one object and persevere with a single aim, sacrificing ever}^ interfering inclination. He vacil- lated for weeks trying to determine whether to use " usefulness " or " utility" in a composition. One talent utilized in a single direction will do infi- nitely more than ten talents scattered. A thimbleful of powder behind a ball in a rifle will do more execu- tion than a carload of powder unconfined. The rifle- barrel is the purpose that gives direct aim to the pow^- der, which otherwise, no matter how good it might be, would be powerless. The poorest scholar in school or college often, in practical life, far outstrips the class leader or senior wrangler, simply because what little ability lie has he employs for a definite object, while the other, depending upon his general ability and bril- liant prospects, never concentrates his powers. "A sublime self-confidence," says E. P. "Whipple, "springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, lifts him alto- gether above the fear of danger and death, and commu- nicates an almost superhuman audacity to his will." It is fashionable to ridicule the man of one idea, but the men who have changed the front of the world have been men of a single aim. No man can make his mark RICHARD ARKWRIGHT What a sublime spectacle is that of a man going straight to his goal, cutting hia way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles which dishearten others, as though they were stepping-stones. ONE UNWAVERING AIM. 113 on this age of specialties who is not a man of one idea, one supreme aim, one master passion. The man who would make himself felt on this bustling planet, who would make a breach in the compact conservatism of our civilization, must play all his guns on one point. A wavering aim, a faltering purpose, has no place in the nineteenth century. " jNIental shiftlessness " is the cause of many a failure. The world is full of unsuc- cessful men who spend their lives letting empty buckets down into empty wells. " Mr. A. often laughs at me," said a young American chemist, " because I have but one idea. He talks about everything, aims to excel in many things ; but I have learned that, if I ever wish to make a breach, I must play my guns continually upon one point." This great chemist, when an obscure schoolmaster, used to study by the light of a pine knot in a log cabin. Not many years later he was performing experiments in electro- magnetism before English earls, and subsequently he was at the head of one of the largest scientific insti- tutes of this country. This man was the late Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. Douglas Jerrold once knew a man who was familiar with twenty-foiir languages but could not express a thought in one of them. We should guard against a talent which we cannot hope to practice in perfection, says Goethe. Improve it as ■ we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the matter has become apparent to us, pain- fully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching. An old proverb says : " The master of one trade will support a wife and seven children, and the master of seven will not support himself." It is the single aim that tvins. Men with monopoliz- ing ambitions rarely live in history. They do not focus their powers long enough to burn their names indelibly into the roll of honor. Edward Everett, even 114 AuctirrECTs of fate. with his magnificent powers, disappointed tlie expecta- tions of his friends. He spread himself over the whole field of knowledge and elegant culture ; but the men- tion of the name of Everett does not call up any one great achievement as does that of names like Garrison and riiillips. Voltaire called the Frenchman La IIar[)e an oven which Avas alwaj's heating, but which never cooked anything. Hartley Coleridge was splendidly endowed with talent, like Sir James JMackintosh, but there was one fatal lack iir his character — he had no definite purpose, and his life was a failure. Unstable as water, he could not excel. Southey, his uncle, says : " Coleridge has two left hands." He was so morbidlj'" shy from living alone in his dreamland that he could not open a letter without trembling. He would often rally from his purposeless life, and resolve to redeem himself from the oblivion he saw staring him in the face; but, like Mackintosh, he remained a man of promise merely to the end of his life. The world alwaj'S makes way for the man with a purpose in him, like Bismarck or Grant. Look at Eufus Choate, concentrating all his attention first on one juryman, then on another, going back over the whole line again and again, until he has burned his arguments into their souls ; until he has hypnotized them with his purpose ; until they see with his eyes, think his thoughts, feel his sensations. He never stopped until he had projected his mind into theirs, and permeated their lives with his* individuality. There was no escape from his concentration of purpose, his persuasive rhetoric, his convincing logic. " Carry the jury at all hazards," he used to say to young law- yers ; " move heaven and earth to carry the jury, and then fight it out with the judge on the law questions as best you can." The man who succeeds has a programme. He fixes his course and adheres to it. He lays his plans and ONE UNWAVERIXG AIM. 115 executes them. He goes straight to liis goal. He is not pushed this way and that every time a difficulty is thrown in his path; if he can't get over it he goes through it. Constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. The mind must be focused on a defi- nite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. This age of concentration calls, not for educated men merely, not for talented men, not for geniuses, not for jacks-of-all-trades, but for men who are trained to do one thing as well as it can be done. Xapoleon could go through the drill of his soldiers better than any one of his men. Stick to your aim. The constant changing of one's occupation is fatal to all success. After a young man has spent five or six years in a dry goods store, he con- cludes that he would rather sell groceries, thereby throwing away five years of valuable experience which will be of very little use to him in the grocery business ; and so he spends a large part of his life drifting around from one kind of employment to another, learning part of each, but all of none, forgetting that experience is worth more to him than money, and that the years devoted to learning his trade or occupation are the most valuable. Half-learned trades, no matter if a man has twenty, will never give him a good living, much less a competency, while wealth is absolutely out of the question. How many young men fail to reach the point of effi- ciency in one line of work before they get discouraged and venture into something else. How easy to see the thorns in one's own profession or vocation, and only the roses in that of another. A young man in business, for instance, seeing a physician riding about town in his carriage, visiting his patients, imagines that a doc- 116 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. tor must have an easy, ideal life, and wonders that he himself should have embarked in an occupation so full of disagreeable drudgery and hardships. He does not know of the years of dry, tedious study which the phj-- sician has consumed, the months and perhaps 3'ears of waiting for patients, the dry detail of anatomy, the end- less names of drugs and technical terms. Scientists tell us that there is nothing in nature so ugly and disagreeable but intense light will make it beautiful. The complete mastery of one profession will render even the driest details interesting. The con- sciousness of thorough knowledge, the habit of doing everything to a finish, gives a feeling of strength, of superiority, which takes the drudgery out of an occu- pation. The more completely we master a vocation the more thoroughly we enjoy it. In fact, the man who has found his place and become master in it could scarcely be induced, even though he be a farmer, or a carpenter, or grocer, to exchange places with a governor or con- gressman. To be successful is to find your sphere and fill it, to get into your place and master it. There is a sense of great power in a vocation after a man has reached the point of efficiency in it, the point of productiveness, the point where his skill begins to tell and bring in returns. Up to this point of efficiency, while he is learning his trade, the time seems to have been almost thrown away. But he has been storing up a vast reserve of knowledge of detail, laying founda- tions, forming his acquaintances, gaining his reputation for truthfulness, trustworthiness, and integrity, and in establishing his credit. When he reaches this point of efficiency, all the knowledge and skill, character, influ- ence, and credit thus gained come to his aid, and he soon finds that in what seemed almost thrown away lies the secret of his prosperity. The credit he estab- lished as a clerk, the confidence, the integrity, the friendships formed, he finds equal to a large capita] ONE UNWAVERING AIM. 117 when he starts out fov himself ami takes the highway to fortune; while the young man who half learned several trades, and got discouraged and stopped just short of the point of efficiency, just this side of suc- cess, is a failure because he did n't go far enough ; he did not press on to the point at which his acquisition would have been profitable. In spite of the fact that nearlj' all very successful men have made a life work of one thing, Ave see on every hand hundreds of young men and women flitting about from occupation to occupation, trade to trade, in one thing to-day and another to-morrow, — just as though they could go from one thing to another by turning a switch, as if they could run as well on another track as on the one they have left, regardless of the fact that no two careers have the same gauge, that every man builds his own road upon which another's engine -cannot run either with speed or safety. This fickleness, this disposition to shift about from one occu- pation to another, seems to be peculiar to American life, so much so that, when a young man meets a friend whom he has not seen for some time, the commonest question to ask is, " What are you doing now ? " show- ing the improbability or uncertainty that he is doing to-day what he was doing when they last met. Some people think that if they " keep everlastingly at it " they will succeed, but this is not so. Working without a plan is as foolish as going to sea without a compass. A ship which has broken its rudder in mid- ocean may "keep everlastingly at it," may keep on a full head of steam, driving about all the time, but it never arrives anywhere, it never reaches any port unless by accident; and if it does find a haven, its cargo may not be suited to the people, the climate, or conditions among which it has accidentally drifted. The ship must be directed to a definite port, for which its cargo is adapted, and where there is a demand for it, 118 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. and it must aim steadily for tliat port through sun- shine and storm, through tempest and fog. So a man who would succeed must not drift about rudderless on the ocean of life. He must not only steer straight toward his destined port when the ocean is smooth, when the currents and winds serve, but he must keep his course in the very teeth of the wind and the tempest, and even when enveloped in the fogs of dis- appiointment and mists of opposition. The Cunarders do not stop for fogs or storms ; they plow straight through the rough seas with only one thing in view, their destined port, and no matter what the weather is, no matter what obstacles they encounter, their arri- val in port can be predicted to within a few hours. It is practically certain, too, that the ship destined for Boston will not turn up at Fort Sumter or at Sandy Hook. On the prairies of South America there grows a flower that always inclines in the same direction. If a traveler loses his way and has neither compass nor chart, by turning to this flower he will find a guide on which he can implicitly rely ; for no matter how the rains descend or the winds blow, its leaves point to the north. So there are many men whose purposes are so well known, whose aims are so constant, that no matter what difficulties they may encounter, or Avhat opposition they may meet, yon can tell almost to a certainty where they will come out. They may be delayed by head winds and counter currents, but they will always head for the poH and will steer straight towards the harbor. You know to a certainty that whatever else they may lose, they will not lose their compass or rudder. Whatever may happen to a man of this stamp, even though his sails may be swept away and his mast stripped to the deck, though he may be wrecked by the storms of life, the needle of his compass will still point ONE UiWWWEltlNG AIM. 119 to the North Star of his hope. Wliatever comes, his life will not be puvposeless. Even a wreck that makes its port is a greater success than a full-rigged ship wdth all its sails flying, with everj' mast and rope intact which merely drifts into an accidental harbor. To iix a wandering life and give it direction is not an easy task, but a life which has no definite aim is sure to be frittered away in empty and purposeless dreams. "Listless triflers," "busy idlers," "purposeless busy- bodies," are seen everj^vhere. A healthy, definite purpose is a remedy for a thousand ills which attend aimless lives. Discontent, dissatisfaction, flee before a definite purpose. An aim takes the drudgery out of life, scatters doubts to the winds, and clears up the gloomiest creeds. AVhat we do without a purpose begrudgingly, with a purpose becomes a delight, and no work is well done nor healthily done which is not enthusiastically done. It is just that added element which makes work immortal. ]\Iere energy is not enough ; it must be concentrated on some steady, unwavering aim. What is more common than "unsuccessful geniuses," or failures with "com- manding talents " ? Indeed, " unrewarded genius " has become a proveib. Every town has unsuccessful edu- cated and talented men. But education is of no value, talent is worthless, unless it can do something, achieve something. Men who can do something at everything, and a very little at anything, are not wanted in this age. In Paris, a certain Monsieur Kenard announced himself as a " public scribe, who digests accounts, ex- plains the language of flowers, and sells fried pota- toes." Jacks-at-all-trades are at war with the genius of the times. What this age wants is young men and women who can do one thing without losing their identity or indi- ^aduality, or becoming narrow, cramped, or dwarfed. Nothing can take the place of an all-absorbing purpose ; 120 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. education will not, genius will not, talent will not, industry will not, will-power will not. The purposeless life must ever be a failure. What good are powers, faculties, imless we can use them for a purpose ? What good would a chest of tools do a carpenter unless he could use them ? A college education, a head full of knowledge, are worth little .to the men who cannot use them to some definite end. The man without a purpose never leaves his mark upon the world. He lias no individuality ; he is ab- sorbed in the mass, lost in the crowd, weak, wavering, incompetent. His outlines of individuality and angles of character have been worn off, planed down to suit the common thought until he has, as a man, been lost in the throng of humanity. "He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a con- centration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity." What a great directness of purpose may be traced in the career of Pitt, who lived — ay, and died — for the sake of political supremacy. From a child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public career worthy of his illustrious father. Even from boy- hood he bent all his energy to this one great purpose. He went straight from college to the House of Com- mons. In one year he was Chancellor of the Ex- chequer ; two years later he was Prime Minister of England, and reigned virtually king for a quarter of a century. He was utterly oblivious of everything out- side his aim ; insensible to the claims of love, art, liter- ature, living and steadily working for the sole purpose of wielding the governing power of the nation. His whole soul was absorbed in the overmastering passion for political power. "Consider, my lord," said Rowland Hill to the Prime Minister of England, " that a letter to Ireland and the ONE UNWAVERING AIM. 121 answer back would cost tliousaiids upon thousands of my affectionate countrymen more than a fifth of their week's wages. If you shut the post office to them, which you do now, you shut out warm hearts aud gen- erous affections from home, kindred, and friends." The lad learned that it cost to carry a letter from London to Edinburgh, four hundred and four miles, one eighteenth of a cent, while the government charged for a simple folded sheet of paper twenty-eight cents, aud twice as much if there was the smallest inclosure. Against the opposition and contempt of the post-of&ce department he at length carried his point, and on January 10, 1840, penny postage was established throughout Great Britain. Mr. Hill was chosen to introduce the system, at a salary of fifteen hundred pounds a year. His success was most encouraging, but at the end of two years a Tory minister dismissed him without paying for his services, as agreed. The public was indignant, and at once contributed sixty-five thousand dollars ; and, at the request of Queen Victoria, Parliament voted him one hundred thousand dollars aud ten thousand dollars a year for life. Christ knew that one affection rules in man's life when he said, " No man can serve two masters." One affection, one object, will be supreme in us. Everything else will be neglected and done with half a heart. One may have subordinate plans, but he can have but one supreme aim, and from this aim all others will take their character. It is a great purpose which gives meaning to life ; it unifies all our powers, binds them together in one cable ; makes sti-ong and united what was weak, sepa- rated, scattered. "Painting is my wife and my works are my chil- di-en," replied Michael Angelo when asked why he did not marry. "Smatterers" are weak and superficial. Of what 122 AitciJiTiurrs of fate. use is a uuui wlio kix-iw.s a little of ovcrytliiiiL; and not much of anything ? It is the nioiiientuni of constantly reiieated acts that tells the story. "Let thine eyes look straight before thee. I'onder the jiath of thy feet anut where will it end':'" inquired the latter. It was lifelong. C)ne mistake too many makes all the difference between safety and destruction. How many men would like to go to sleep beggars and wake up Rothschilds or x\stors ? How many would fain go to bed dunces and wake up Solomons '/ You reap what j'ou have sown. Those who have sown dunce- seed, vice-seed, laziness-seed, alwa3-s get a crop. They that sow the wind shall reap tlie whirlwind. Habit, like a child, repeats whatever is done before it. Oh, the power of a repeated act to get itself repeated again and again ! But, like the wind, it is a power which we can use to force our way in its very teeth as does the ship, and thus multiply our strength, or we can drift with it without exertion upon the rocks and shoals of destruction. What a great thing it is to "start right" in life. Every young man can see that the first steps lead to the last, with all except his own. No, his little pre- varications and dodgings will not make him a liar, but he can see that they surely will in John Smith's case. He can see that others are idle and on the road to ruin, but cannot see it in his own case. There is a wonderful relation between bad habits. They all belong to the same family. If you take in one, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, you will soon have the whole. A man who has formed the habit of laziness or idleness will soon be late at his engagements ; a man who does not meet his engage- ments will dodge, apologize, prevaricate, and lie. I have rarely known a perfectly truthful man who was always behind time. You have seen a ship out in the bay swinging with the tide and the waves ; the sails are all up, and you wonder why it does not move ; but it cannot, for down SOWING AND REAPING. 139 beneatli the water it is aucliored. So we often see a young man apparently well ecLuipped, well educated, and we wonder that he does not advance toward man- hood and character. But, alas ! we tind that he is an- chored to some secret vice, and he can never advance until he cuts loose. " The ih'fit crime past compels us into more. And guilt grows^ff^e tliat was but choice before.'' *' Small habits, well pursued betimes. May reach the dignity of criuies." Thousands can sympathize with David when he cried, " lily sins have taken such hold upon me that I am not able to look up ; my heart faileth me." Like the damned spot of blood on Lady jNIacbeth's hand, these foul spots on the imagination will not out. What a penalty nature exacts for physical sins. The gods are just, and " of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us." Plato wrote over his door, " Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." The greatest value of the study of the classics and mathematics comes from the habits of accurate and concise thought which it induces. The habit-forming j)ortion of life is the dangerous period, and we need the discipline of close application to hold us outside of our studies. Washington at thirteen wrote one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior, and was most careful in the formation of all habits. Franklin, too, devised a plan of self-improvement and character build- ing. No doubt the noble characters of these two men, almost superhuman in their excellence, are the natural result of their early care and earnest striving towards perfection. Fielding, describing a game of cards between Jona- than Wild, of pilfering propensities, and a professional gambler, says : " Such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr. Wild could 140 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. not keep liis hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty ; nor coukl the count abstain from pahning a card, though he was well aware JNIr. Wild had no money to pay him." " Habit," >saj's Montaigne, " is a violent and treacher- ous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slj'ly and nnperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but hav- ing by this gentle and humble beginning, with the aid of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furi- ous and tj-rannic countenance against which we have no more the courage nor the power so much as to lift up our eyes." It led a New York man actually to cut off his hand with a cleaver under a test of what he would resort to, to get a glass of whiskey. It has led thou- sands of nature's noblemen to drunkards' and libertines' graves. Gough's life is a startling illustration of the power of habit, and' of the ability of one apparently a hopeless slave to break his fetters and walk a free man in the sunlight of heaven. He came to America when nine years old. Possessed of great powers of song, of mim- icry, and of acting, and exceedingly social in his tastes, a thousand temptations " Widened and strewed with flowers the way Down to eternal ruin." " I would give this right hand to redeem those terri- ble seven years of dissipation and death," he would often say in after years when, with his soul still scarred and battered from his conflict with blighting passion, he tearfully urged young men to free themselves from the chains of bestial habits. In the laboratory of Faraday a workman one day knocked into a jar of acid a silver cup ; it disappeared, ■was eaten up by the acid, and could not be found. The question came up whether it could ever be found. The great chemist came in and put certain chemicals into the jar, and every particle of the silver was precipi- SOW/NO AND lUiAPING. 141 taU'd to the boltoiu. 'J'lic muss wils Uiom sent to a sil- vci'siiiitli, iiiiil tlio cu]) I'n.stoi'od. iSo a precious youth wlio lias I'allcii into the, sink of inifiuity, lost, dissolved in sill, can only be lestored by the (Jn^at (!!i(;niist. AVhat is put into the liist ol' life, is put into tJM! whole of liio. "(Jut of a church of twenty-acven hundred menibei'S, I have never had to exelude a single one who was received while a child," said Siuir^;eon. It is the earliest sin that exercises the most influence for evil. 15cnedict Arnold was the only general in the Itevolu- tion that disgraced liis country. Ho liad great military talent, wonderful energy, and a courage equal to any cmcrgenoy. But Arnold did, not start r'ujht. Even when a boy he was despised for his cruelty and his selfish- ness, lie delighted in torturing insects and birds that he might watch their suffinings. lie scattered pieces of glass and shar]) tacks on the floor of the shop he was tending, to cut the feet of the barefooted boys. Even in the army, in spite of his bravery, tlie soldiers hated him, and the oflicers dared iiot trust hiin. Ixit no innn trust the firel falnc step Of Ruiltj it liangR upon n precipice, Whoso steep descent in last perdition ends. YOUNO. Years ago there was a district lying near Westmin- ster Abbey, London, called the "Devil's Acre," — a school for vicious habits, where depravity was univer- sal ; where professional beggars were fitted with all the appliances of imposture; where there was an agency for the hire of children to be carried about by forlorn widows and deserted wives, to move the compassion of street-giving benevolence; where young pickpockets were trained in the art and mystery which was to con- duct them in due cotirse to an expensive voyage for the good of their country to Botany Bay. Victor Hugo describes a strange association of men in the seventeenth century who bought children and dis- 142 ARCHITECrS OF FATE. toi-ted and made iiioiistrosities of theiu to aiiuisc the nobility with ; and in cultured ISostou there is an asso- ciation of so-called '• respectable men," wlio have opened thousands of '' places of business '' for deforming men, women, and children's souls. But we deforni ourselves with agencies so pleasant that we think we are having a good time, until we become so changed and enslaved that we scarcely' recognize ourselves. Vice, the pleasant guest which we first invited into our heart's parlor, becomes vulgarly familiar, and intrenches herself deep in our very being. We ask her to leave, but she simply laughs at us from the hideous wrinkles she has made in our faces, and refuses to go. Our secret sins defy us from the hideous furrows they have cut in our cheeks. Each im- pure thought has chiseled its autograph deep into the forehead, too deep for erasure ; and the glassy, bleary eye adds its testimony to our ruined character. The devil does not apply his match to the hard coal ; but he first lights the shavings of " innocent sins," and the shavings the wood, and the wood the coal. Sin is gradual. It does not break out on a man until it has long circulated through his s^'stem. Murder, adultery, theft, are not committed in deed until they have been committed in thought again and again. " Don't write there," said a man to a boy who was writing with a diamond pin on a pane of glass in the window of a hotel. " Why not ? " inquired the boy. " Because you can't rub it out." Yet the glass might have been broken and all trace of the writing lost, but things written upon the human soul can never be re- moved, for the tablet is immortal. "In all the wide range of accepted British maxims," said Thomas Hughes, " there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one, as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will, and I defy you to make anything but a devil's maxim of it. What man, be he young, old, or middle-aged, SOWING AND HEAPING. 143 sows, that, and uotliiug else, shall he reap. The only thing to do with wild oats is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the lire, and get tlieui burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground, vip they will come with long, tough roots and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, -will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them." \V« scatter seeds with careless hand, And dream -w-e ne'er shall see them more; But for a tlioiisaiid years Their fruit appears. In weeds that mar the laud. John Keble. Theodora boasted that she could draw Socrates' disci- ples away from him. " That may be," said the philoso- pher, " for you lead them down an easy descent whereas I am forcing them to mount to virtue — an arduous as- cent and unknown to most men." " When I am told of a sickly student," said Daniel Wise, " that he is ' studying himself to death,' or of a feeble young mechanic, or clerk, that his hard work is destroying him, I study his countenance, and there, too often, read the real, melancholy truth in his dull, averted, sunken eye, discolored skin, and timid manner. These signs proclaim that the young man is in some way vio- lating the laws of his physical nature. He is secretly destroying himself. Yet, say his unconscious and ad- miring friends, ' He is falling a victim to his own dili- gence ! ' Most lame and impotent conclusion ! He is sapping the very source of life, and erelong will be a mind in ruins or a heap of dust. Young man, beware of his example ! ' Keep thyself pure ; ' observe the laws of your physical nature, and the most unrelaxing indus- try will never rob you of a month's health, nor shorten the thread of your life ; for industry and health are com- panions, and long life is the heritage of diligence." 144 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. "How shall I a habit break V" As you did that habit niaUc- Ais you gathered, you must lose ; As you yielded, now refuse. Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they biud us neck and wrist. Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stand. As we builded, stone b}' stone. We must loil, unhelped, alone, Till the wall is overthrown. But remember, as we try, Lighter ever^' test goes by; Wading in, the stream grows deep Toward the centre's downward sweep; Backward turn, each step ashore Shallower is than that before. Ah, the precious years we waste Leveling what we raised in haste; Doing what must be undone, Ere content or love be won ! First across the gulf we cast Kite-borne ihreads till lines are passed. And habit builds the bridge at last. JoHK Boyle O'Reillt. JAMES A. GARFIELD '*The weak, the leaning, the dependent, the vacillating Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride That glows in him, who on himself relies : His joy is not that he has won the crown, But that the power to win the crown is his." CHAPTER YIII. SELF-HEH-. I learned that no man in God's wide eartli is either Aviliin^ or ahle to help any other man. — Pestalozzi. What I am I have made myself. — Humi'huy Davy. Be snre, my .eon, and remember that the best men always make them- selves. — Patkick Henky. Hereditary- bondsmen, know ye not Who would be free tliemsclves must strike the blow? Bykon. God gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest. — J. G. Hollakd. Never forget that others will depend upon you, and that you cannot depend upon them. — Dit.mas, Fils. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven. — Shakespeare. The best education in the world is that got by struggling to obtain a liv- ing. — Wesdell Phillips. Every person has two education-s one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives himself. — Gibbon. What the superior man seeks is in himself: what the small man seeks is ill others. — Confucius. Who waits to have his task marked ont. Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. Lowell. In battle or business, whatever the game, In law, or in love, it 's ever the same : In the struggle for power, or scramble for pelf, Let this be 3'our motto, "Eely on yourself." Saxe- Let every eye negotiate for itself. And trust no agent. Shakespeake. " CoiiOXEL Crockett makes room for himself ! " ex- claimed a backwoods congressman in answer to the exclamation of the White House usher to " Make room for Colonel Crockett ! " This remarkable man was not afraid to oppose the head of a great nation. He pre- 14G ARCHITECTS OF FATE. fen-ed being right to being president. Though rough, uncultured, and uncouth, Crockett was a man of great courage and determination. Garfield was the youngest member of the House of Representatives when he entered, but he had not been in his seat sixty days before his ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there. He suc- ceeded because all the world in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because when once in the front he plaj'ed his part with an intrepidity and a commanding ease that were but the outward evidences of the immense reserves of energy on which it was in his power to draw. " Take the place and attitude which belong to you," says Emerson, " and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man with profound un- concern to set his own rate." Grant was no book soldier. Some of his victories were contrary to all instructions in military works. He did not dare to disclose his plan to invest Vicksburg, and he even cut off all communication on the Missis- sippi Eiver for seven days that no orders could reach him from Genei-al Halleck, his superior officer ; for he knew that Halleck went by books, and he was proceed- ing contrary to all military theories. He was making a greater military history than had ever been written up to that time. He was greater than all books of tactics. The consciousness of power is everything. That man is strongest who owes most to himself. "Man, it is within yourself," says Pestalozzi, "it is in the inner sense of j^our power that resides nature's instrument for your development." Richard Arkwright, the thirteenth child, in a hovel, with no education, no chance, gave his spinning model to the world, and put a sceptre in England's right hand Buch as the queen never wielded. SELF-HELP. 147 " A person under the firm persuasion that he can com- mand resources virtually has them," says Livy. Solario, a wandering gypsy tinker, fell deeply in love with the daughter of the painter Coll' Antonio del Flore, but was told that no one but a painter as good as the father should wed the maiden. " AVill you give me ten years to learn to paint, and so entitle myself to the hand of your daughter ? " Consent was given, Coll' Antonio thinking that he would never be troubled fur- ther by the gypsy. About the time that the ten years were to end the king's sister showed Coll' Antonio a Madonna and Child, which the painter extolled in terms of the highest praise. Judge of his surprise on learn- ing that Solario was the artist. But later, his son-in- law surprised him even more by his rare skill. Louis Philippe said he was the only sovereign in Europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots. When asked to name iiis family coat-of-arms, a self- made President of the United States replied, " A pair of shirtsleeves." "Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify," said James A. Garfield ; " but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my acquaintance I have never known a man to be drowned who was worth the saving." It is not the men who have inherited most, except it be in nobility of soul and purpose, who have risen high- est ; but rather the men with no " start " who have won fortunes, and have made adverse circumstances a spur to goad them up the steep mount, Avhere " Fame's proud temple eliines afar." To such men, every possible goal is accessible, and hon- est ambition has no height that genius or talent may tread, which has not felt the impress of their feet. You may leave your millions to your son, but have you really given him anything ? You cannot transfer 148 AnClllTKCTS OF FATE. the discipline, the experience, tlie power which the' ac- quisition lias given you ; you cannot transfer the de- light of achieving, the joy felt only in growth, the pride of acquisition, the character which trained habits of accuracy, method, promptness, patience, dispatch, hon- esty di dealing, politeness of manner have developed. You cannot transfer the skill, sagacity, prudence, fore- sight, which lie concealed in your wealth. It meant a great deal for you, but means nothing to your heir. In climbing to your fortune, you developed the muscle, stamina, and strength which enabled you to maintain your lofty position, to keep your millions intact. You had the power which comes only from experience, and which alone enables j'ou to stand firm on your dizzy height. Your fortune was experience to you, joy, growth, discipline, and character; to him it will be a temptation, an anxietj^, which will probably dwarf him. It was wings to you, it will be a dead weight to him ; it was education to j^ou and expansion of your highest powers ; to him it may mean inaction, letharg^^, indo- lence, weakness, ignorance. You have taken the price- less spur — necessit}' — away from him, the spur which has goaded man to nearly all the great achievements in the history of the world. You thought it a kindness to deprive yourself in order that your son might begin where you left off. You thought to spare him the drudgery, the hardships, the deprivations, the lack of opportunities, the meagre edu- cation, which you had on the old farm. But you have put a crutch into his hand instead of a staff ; you have taken away from him the incentive to self-development, to self-elevation, to self-discipline and self-help, without which no real success, no real happiness, no great char- acter -is ever possible. His enthusiasm will evaporate, his energy will be dissipated, his ambition, not being stimulated by the struggle for self-elevation, will grad- ually die away. If you do everything for your son and SELF-HELP. 149 figlit liis battles for liim, you will have a weakling on your hands at twenty-one. '■ ]\ry life is a wreck," said the dying Cyrus W. Field, " my fortune gone, nij- home dishonored. Oh, I was so unkind to Edward when I thought I was being kind. If I had onlj' had firmness enough to compel my boys to earn their living, then they would have known the meaning of money." His table was covered with med- als and certificates of honor from many nations, in recognition of his great work for civilization in mooring two continents side by side in thought, of the fame he had won and could never lose. Eut grief shook the sands of life as he thought only of the son who had brought disgrace upon a name before unsullied ; the ■wounds were sharper than those of a serpent's tooth. During the great finaucial crisis of 1857 ]Maria Mitch- ell, who was visiting England, asked an English lady what became of daughters when no property was left them. " They live on their brothers," was the reply^ " But what becomes of the American daughters," asked the English lady, " when there is no money left ? " " They earn it," was the reply. !Meii who have been bolstered up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. When misfortune cOmes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. If the prop is not there down they go. Once down, they are as helpless as capsized turtles, or unhorsed men in armor. Many a frontier boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were knocked out from under him and he was obliged to stand upon his own feet. " A man's best friends are his ten fingers," said Rob- ert Collyer, who brought his wife to America in the steerage. Young men who are always looking for some- thing to lean upon never amount to anything. There is no manhood mill which takes in boys and turns out men. What you call " no chance " may be 150 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. your " onlj- chance." Don't wait for your place to be made for you ; make it yourself. Don't wait for some- body to give j-ou a lift ; lift j-ovirself. Henrj' AVard Beeclier did not wait for a call to a big cliurcli witli a large salary. He accepted the first i^astorate offered him, in a little town near Cincinnati. He became liter- ally the light of the church, for he trimmed the lanrps, kindled the fires, swept the rooms, and rang the bell. His salary was only about $200 a year, — but he knew that a fine church and great salary cannot make a great man. It was work and opportunity that he w^anted. He felt that if there was anything in him work would bring it out. " Physiologists tell us," says Waters, " that it takes twenty-eight j-ears for the brain to attain its full devel- opment. If this is so, why should not one be able, by liis own efforts, to give this long-growing organ a par- ticular bent, a peculiar character ? Why should the will not be brought to bear upon the formation of the brain as well as of the backbone ? " The will is merely our steam power, and we may put it to any work we please. It will do our bidding, whether it be building up a character, or tearing it down. It may be applied to building up a habit of truthfulness and honesty, or of falsehood and dishonor. It will help build up a man or a brute, a hero or a coward. It will brace up reso- lution until one may almost perform miracles, or it may be dissipated in irresolution and inaction until life is a wreck. It will hold you to your task until you have formed a powerful habit of industry and application, until idleness and inaction are painful, or it will lead you into indolence and listlessness until every effort will be disagreeable and success impossible. " The first thing I have to impress upon you is," says J. T. Davidson, " that a good name must be the fruit of one's own exertion. You cannot possess it by patri- mony ; you cannot purchase it with money ; you will SELF-HELP. 151 not light on it by chance ; it is independent of birth, station, talents, and wealth ; it must be the outcome of your own endeavor, and the reward of good principles and honorable conduct. Of all the elements of success in life none is more vital than self-reliance, — a deter- mination to be, under God, the creator of your own reputation and advancement. If difficulties stand in the way, if exceptional disadvantages oppose you, all the better, as long as you have pluck to fight through them. I want each young man here (you will not misunder- stand me) to have faith in himself and, scorning props and buttresses, crutches and life-preservers, to take ear- nest hold of life. Many a lad has good stuff in him that never comes to anything because he slips too easily into some groove of life ; it is commonly those who have a tough battle to begin with that make their mark upon their age." When Beethoven was examining the work of Mosehe- les, he found written at the end " Finis, with God's help." He wrote under it " Man, help yourself." A young man stood listlessly watching some anglers on a bridge. He was poor and dejected. At length, approaching a basket filled with fish, he sighed, "If now I had these I would be happy. I could sell them and buy food and lodgings." " I will give you just as many and just as good," said the owner, who chanced to overhear his words, " if you will do me a trifling far vor." " And what is that ? " asked the other. " Only to tend this line till I come back ; I wish to go on a short errand." The proposal was gladly accepted. The old man was gone so long that the young man began to get impatient. Meanwhile the fish snapped greedily at the hook, and he lost all his depression in the excite- ment of pulling them in. When the owner returned he had. caught a large number. Counting out from them as many as were in the basket, and presenting them to the youth, the old fisherman said, " I fulfill my prom- 152 AliCHITECTS OF FATE. ise from the fish 3-ou have caught, to teach you wheu- ever you see others earuiiig what you need to waste no time in foolish wishing, but cast a line for yourself." A white squall caught a party of tourists on a lake in Scotland, and threatened to capsize the boat. When it seemed tliat the crisis was really come, the largest and strongest man in the party, in a state of intense fear, said, '-Let us pray." '-Xo, no, my man," shouted tlie bluif old boatman ; "let the Vittln man jn-aij. Yuu tuka an oar.'" The greatest curse that can befall a young man is to lean. The grandest fortunes ever accumulated or possessed on earth were and are the fruit of endeavor that had no capital to begin with save energj'', intellect, and the will. From CrcESus down to Rockefeller the story is the same,. not only in the getting of wealth, but also in the acquirement of eminence ; those men have won most who relied most upon themselves. It has been said that one of the most disgusting sights in this world is that of a J'oung man with healthy blood, broad shoulders, presentable calves, and a hun- dred and fifty pounds, more or less, of good bone and muscle, standing with his hands in his pockets longing for help. " The male inhabitants in the Township of Loafer- dom, in the County of Hatework," says a printer's sqxiib, "found themselves laboring under great incon- venience for want of an easily traveled road between Poverty and Independence. They therefore petitioned the Powers that be to levy a tax upon the property of the entire county for the purpose of laying out a mac- adamized highwa}"-, broad and smooth, and all the way down hill to the latter place." " It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves," says Irving, "springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles " MICHAEL FARADAY " King of two hands." *'Tlie world is no longer clay, but rather iron in the hands of its workers, and men must hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows. " SELF-HELP. 153 " Every one is the artificer of his own fortune," says Sallust. Man is not merely the architect of his own fortune, but he must lay the bricks himself. Bayard Taylor, at twenty-three, wrote: "I will become the sculptor of my own mind's statue." His biography shows how often the chisel and hammer were in his hands to shape himself into his ideal. " I have seen none, known none, of the celebrities of my time," said Samuel Cox. " All my energy was directed upon one end, to improve my- self." "Man exists for culture," says Goethe; "not for what he can accomplish, but for what can be accom- plished in him." When young Professor Tyndall was in the govern- ment service, he had no definite aim in life until one day a government official asked him how he employed his leisure time. " You have five hours a day at your disposal," said he, "and this ought to be devoted to systematic study. Had I at your age some one to ad- vise me as I now advise you, instead of being in a sub- ordinate position, 1 might have been at the head of my department." The very next day young Tyndall began a regular course of study, and went to the University of Marburg, where he became noted for his indomitable industry. He was so poor that he bought a cask, and cut it open for a bathtub. He often rose before daylight to study, while the world was sliimbering about him. Labor is the only legal tender in the world to true success. The gods sell everything for that, nothing without it. You will never find success " marked down." The door to the temple of success is never left open. Every one who enters makes his own door which closes behind him to all others. Circumstances have rarely favored great men. They have fought their way to triumph over the road of diffi- culty and through all sorts of opposition. A lowly be- 154 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. jjjiuiiiiig and a humble origin are no bar to a great career. The farmers' boj'S fill manj' of the greatest plai-.es in legislatures, in sjaidicates, at the bar, in pulpits, in Congress, to-daj-. Boj's of lowly origin have made many of the greatest discoveries, are presidents of our banks, of our colleges, of our universities. Our poor boys and girls have written many of our greatest books, and have filled the highest places as teachers and journalists. Ask almost any great man in our large cities where he was born, and he will tell you it was on a farm or in a small country village. Nearly all of the great caj)italists of the city came from the country. " 'T is better to be lowly born." The founder of Boston University left Cape Cod for Boston to make his way with a capital of only four dol- lars. Like Horace Greeley, he could find no opening for a boy ; but what of that ? He made an opening. He found a board, and made it into an oyster stand on the street corner. He borrowed a wheelbarrow, and went three miles to an oyster smack, bought three bush- els of oysters, and wheeled them to his stand. Soon his little savings amounted to $130, and then he bought a horse and cart. This poor boy with no chance kept right on till he became the millionaire Isaac Eich. Chauncey Jerome, the inventor of machine-made clocks, started with two others on a tour through New Jersey, they to sell the clocks, and he to make cases for them. On his way to New York he went through New Haven in a lumber wagon, sating bread and cheese. He afterward lived in a fine mansion in New Haven. Self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world. How many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift. But success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed ; pay the price and it is yours. Where is the boy to-day who ShLF-HELP. 155 has less chance to vise in the wofkl than Elihu Biin-itt, apprenticed to a blacksmith, iu whose shop he had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle- light ? Yet, he managed, by studying with a book be- fore him at his meals, carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and studying nights and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. While the rich bo}' and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes open, young Burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it. At thirty years of age he was master of every important language in Europe and was studying those of Asia. What chance had such a boy for distinction ? Prob- ably not a single j-outh will read this book who has not a better opportunitj' for success. Yet he had a thirst for knowledge, and a desire for self-improvement, which overcame every obstacle in his pathway. A wealthy gentleman offered to pay his expenses at Harvard ; but no, he said he could get his education himself, even though he had to work twelve or fourteen hours a day at the forge. Here was a determined boy. He snatched every spare moment at the anvil and forge as though it w^ere gold. He believed, with Gladstone, that thrift of time would repay him in after years w^ith usury, and that waste of it would make him dwindle. Think of a boy working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith's shop, and yet finding time to study seven languages in a sin- gle year ! If the youth of America who are struggling against cruel circumstances, to do something and be somebody in the world, could only understand that ninety per cent, of what is called genius is merely the result of persist- ent, determined industry, is in most cases downright hard work, that it is the slavery to a single idea which has given to many a mediocre talent the reputation of ■ being a genius, they would be inspired with new hope. 15C ARCHITECTS OF FATE. It is interesting to note that the men who talk most about genius ave tlie men who like to work the least. The lazier the man, the more he will have to say about great things being done by genius. The greatest geniuses have been the greatest workers. Sheridan was considered a genius, but it was found that the "brilliants" and "off-hand sayings" with wliicli he used to dazzle the House of Commons were elaborated, polished and repolished, and put down in his memoran- dum book read}' for any emergency. Genius has been well defined as the infinite capacity for taking pains. If men who have done great things could only reveal to the. struggling youth of to-day how much of their reputations was due to downright hard digging and plodding, what an uplift of inspiration and encouragement they would give. How often I have wished that the discouraged, struggling j'outh could know of the heart-aches, the liead-aehes, the nerve-aches, the disheartening trials, the discouraged hours, the fears and despair involved in works which have gained the admiration of the world, but which have taxed the vX- most powers of their authors. You can read in a few minutes or a few hours a poem or a book with only pleasure and delight, but the days and months of weary plodding over details and dreary drudgery often re- quired to produce it would stagger belief. The greatest works in literature have been elaborated and elaborated, line by line, paragraph by paragraj)!!, often rewritten a dozen times. The drudgery which literary men have put into the productions which have stood the test of time is almost incredible. Lucretius worked nearly a lifetime on one poem. It completely absorbed his life. It is said that Bryant rewrote " Thanatopsis " a hundred times, and even then was not satisfied with it. John Foster would sometimes linger a week over a single sentence. He would hack, split, prune, pull tip by the roots, or practice any other SELF-HELP. 157 severity on whatever he wrote, till it gained his consent to exist. Chalmers was once asked what Foster was about in London. " Hard at it," he replied, " at the rate of a line a week." Dickens, one of the greatest writers of modern fiction, was so worn down by hard work that he looked as " haggard as a murderer." Even Lord Bacon, one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived, left large numbers of MSS. filled with " sudden thoughts set down for use." Hume toiled thir- teen hours a day on his " History of England." Lord Eldon astonished the world with his great legal learn- ing, but when he was a student too poor to buj' books, he had actually borrowed and copied many hundreds of pages of large law books, such as Coke upon Littleton, thus saturating his mind with legal principles which afterward blossomed out into what the world called remarkable genius. Matthew Hale for years studied law sixteen hours a day. Speaking of Fox, some one declared that he wrote " drop by drop." Rousseau says of the labor involved in his smooth and lively style : "My manuscripts, blotted, scratched, interlined, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me. There is not one of them which I have not been obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to press. . . . Some of my periods I have turned or returned in my head for five or six nights before they were fit to be put to paper." It is said that Waller spent a whole summer over ten lines in one of his poems. Beethoven probably sur- passed all other musicians in his painstaking fidelity and persistent application. There is scarcely a bar in his music that was not written and rewritten at least a dozen times. His favorite maxim was, " The barriers are not yet erected which can say to aspiring talent and industry ' thus far and no further.' " Gibbon wrote his autobiography nine times, and was in his study every morning, summer and winter, at six o'clock; 158 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. and yet _yoiith who uastc their evenings wonder at the genius wliich can produce "The Decline and Fall of the Komau Empire," upon which Gibbon worked twenty years. Even Plato, one of the greatest writers that ever lived, wrote the first sentence in his '• llepub- lic" nine different ways before he was satisfied with it. lUirke's famous " Letter to a Noble Lord," one ot the finest things in the English language, was so com- pletely blotted over with alterations when the proof was returned to the printing-office that the compositors refused to correct it as it was, and entirely reset it. Burke wrote the conclusion of his speech at the trial of Hastings sixteen times, and Butler wrote his famous " Analogy " twenty times. It took Virgil seven years to write his Georgics, and twelve years to write the jEneid. He was so displeased with the latter that he attempted to rise from his deathbed to commit it to the flames. Haj'dn was very jioor ; his father was a coachman and he, friendless and lonely, married a servant girl. He was sent away from home to act as errand boy for a music teacher. He absorbed a great deal of informa- tion, but he had a hard life of persecution until he be- came a barber in Vienna. Here he blacked boots for an influential man, who became a friend to him. In 1798 this poor boy's oratorio, "The Creation," came upon the musical world like the rising of a new sun which never set. He was courted by princes and dined with kings and queens ; his reputation was made ; there was no more barbering, no more poverty. But of his eight hundred compositions, "The Creation" eclipsed them all. He died while Napoleon's guns w^ere bom- barding Vienna, some of the shot falling in his gar- den. The greatest creations of musicians were written with an effort, to fill the " aching void " in the human heart. Frederick Douglass, America's most representative SELF-HELP. 159 colored man, born a slave, was reared in bondage, liber- ated by his own exertions, educated and advanced hy sheer pluck and perseverance to distinguished posi- tions in the service of his country, and to a high place in the respect and esteem of the whole world. When a man like Lord Cavauagh, without arms or legs, manages to put himself into Parliament, when a man like Francis Joseph Campbell, a blind man, be- comes a distinguished mathematician, a musician, and a great philanthropist, we get a hint as to wliat it means to make the most possible out of ourselves and oppor- tunities. Perhaps ninety-nine out of a hundred under such unfortunate circumstances would be content to remain helpless objects of charity for life. If it is your call to acquire money power instead of brain power, to acquire business power instead of professional power, double your talent just the same, no matter what it may be. A glover's apprentice of Glasgow, Scotland, who was too poor to afford even a candle or a fire, and who studied by the light of the shop windows in the streets, and when the shops were closed climbed the lamp-post, holding his book in one hand, and clinging to the lamp-post' with the other, — ^this poor boy, with less chance than almost any boy in America, became the most eminent scholar of Scotland. Francis Parkman, half blind, became one of Amer- ica's greatest historians in spite of everything, because he made himself such. Personal value is a coin of one's own minting; one is taken at the worth he has put into himself. Franklin was but a poor printer's boy, whose highest luxury at one time was only a penny roll, eaten in the streets of Philadelphia. Richard Ark- wright, a barber all his earlier life, as he rose from poverty to wealth and fame, felt the need of correcting the defects of his early education. After his fiftietli year he devoted two hours a day, snatched from his 160 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. sleep, to improving himself in orthography, grammar, and writing. Michael Faraday was a poor boy, son of a black- smith, who apprenticed him at the age of thirteen to a bookbinder in London. Michael laid the foundations of his future greatness by making himself familiar with the contents of the books he bound. He remained at night, after others had gone, to read and study the precious volumes. Lord Tenterden was proud to point out to his son the shop where his father had shaved for a penny. A French doctor once taunted Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, who had been a tallow-chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which he replied, " If you had been born in the same condition that I was, you would still have been but a maker of candles." The Duke of Argyle, walking in his garden, saw a Latin copy of Newton's " Principia " on the grass, and supposing that it had been taken from his library, called for some one to carry it back. Edmund Stone, however, the son of the duke's gardener, claimed it. " Yours ? " asked the surprised nobleman. " Do you understand geometry, Latin, and Newton ? " "I know a little of them," replied Edmund. " But how," asked the duke, "came you by the knowledge of all these things ? " "A servant taught me to read ten years since," answered Stone. " Does one need to know anything more than the twenty-four letters, in order to learn everything else that one wishes ? " The duke was astonished. " I first learned to read," said the lad ; " the masons were then at work upon your house. I approached them one day and observed that the architect used a rule and com- passes, and that he made calculations. I inquired what might be the meaning and use of these things, and I was informed that there was a science called arithmetic. I purchased a book of arithmetic and learned it. I was told that there was another science called geometry ; I SELF-HELP. 161 bought the necessary books and learned geometry. By reading I found that there were good books on these sciences in Latin, so I bought a dictionary and learned Latin. I understood, also, that there were good books of the same kind in French ; I bought a dictionary, and learned French. This, my lord, is what I have done; it seems to me that we may learn everything when we know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet." Edwin Chadwick, in his report to the British Parlia- ment, stated that children, working on half time, that is, studying three hours a day and working the rest of their time out of doors, really made the greatest intel- lectual progress during the year. Business men have often accomplished wonders during the busiest lives by simply devoting one, two, three, or four hours daily to study or other literary work. ^ James Watt received only the rudiments of an educa- tion at school, for his attendance was irregular on ac- count of delicate health. He more than made up for all deficiencies, however, by the diligence with which he pursued his studies at home. Alexander V. was a beggar ; he was "born mud, and died marble." William Herschel, placed at the age of fourteen as a musician in the band of the Hanoverian Guards, devoted all his leisure to philosophical studies. He acquired a large fund of general knowledge, and in astronomy, a science in which he was wholly self-instructed, his discoveries entitle him to rank with the greatest astronomers of all time. George Washington was the son of a widow, born under the roof of a Westmoreland farmer ; almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an orphan. No academy had welcomed him to its shade, no college crowned him with its honors ; to read, to write, to ci- pher, these had been his degrees in knowledge. Shake- speare learned little more than reading and writing at school, but by self-culture he made himself the great 162 ARCHITECTS OF FATE. mastei- among literary men. Burns, too, enjoj'ed few advantages of education, and liis youtli was jiassed in almost abject poverty. James Ferguson, the son of a half-starved peasant, learned to read by listening to the recitations of one of his elder brothers. While a mere boy he discovered several mechanical principles, made models of mills and spinning - wheels, and by means of beads on strings worked out an excellent map of the heavens. Fergu- son made remarkable things with a common penknife. How many great men have mounted the hill of know- ledge b}- out-of-the-way paths. Gilford worked his in- tricate problems with a shoemaker's awl on a bit of leather. Eittenhouse first calculated eclipses on his plow-handle. A will finds a way. Julius Csesar, who has been unduly honored for those great military achievements in which he appears as the scourge of his race, is far more deserving of respect for those wonderful Commentaries, in which his mili- tary exploits are recorded. He attained distinction by his writings on astronomjr, grammar, historj^, and sev- eral other subjects. He was one of the most learned men and one of the greatest orators of his time. Yet his life was spent amid the turmoil of a camp or the fierce struggle of politics. If he found abundant time for studj', who may not ? Frederick the Great, too, was busy in eampt the greater part of his life, yet whenever a leisure moment came, it was sure to be de- voted to study. He wrote to a friend, " I become every day more covetous of my time ; I render an account of it to myself, and I lose none of it but with great regret." Columbus, while leading the life of a sailor, managed to become the most accomplished geographer and as- tronomer of his time. When Peter the Great, a boy of seventeen, became the absolute ruler of Eussia, his subjects were little bet- sJiLF-HELP. 163 tei- tliau savages, and in himself, even, the passions and propensities of bavbarism were so strong that they were frequently exhibited during his whole career. But he determined to transform himself and the Russians into civilized people. He instituted reforms with great en- ^^'SYj f>'ii