Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
of Praxiteles' statue of Love," says Bulwer, "the face looked grave and sad; but as the bandage was removed, a beautiful smile would overspread the countenance. Even so does the removal of the veil of ignorance from the eyes of the mind bring radiant happiness to the heart of man."
A young man just graduated told the President of Trinity College that he had completed his education, and had come to say good-by. "Indeed," said the President, "I have just begun my education."
Many an extraordinary man has been made out of a very ordinary boy; but in order to accomplish this we must begin with him while he is young. It is simply astonishing what training will do for a rough, uncouth, and even dull lad, if he has good material in him, and comes under the tutelage of a skilled educator before his habits have become confirmed. Even a few weeks' or months' drill of the rawest and roughest recruits in the late Civil War so straightened and dignified stooping and uncouth soldiers, and made them so manly, erect, and courteous in their bearing, that their own friends scarcely knew them. If this change is so marked in the youth who has grown to maturity, what a miracle is possible in the lad who is taken early and put under a course of drill and systematic training, both physical, mental, and moral. How many a man who is now in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, or among the tramps, or living out a miserable existence in the slums of our cities, bent over, uncouth, rough, slovenly, has possibilities slumbering within the rags, which would have developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race instead of a foul blot and scar, had he only been fortunate enough early in life to have come under efficient and systematic training.
Laziness begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. The more business a man has, the more he can do, for be learns to economize his time.
The industry that acquired riches, according to a wise teacher, the patience that is required in obtaining them, the reserved self-control, the measuring of values, the sympathy felt for fellow-toilers, the knowledge of what a dollar costs to the average man, the memory of it—all these things are preservative. But woe to the young farmer who hates farming; does not like sowing and reaping; is impatient with the dilatory and slow path to a small though secure fortune in the neighborhood where he was born, and comes to the city, hoping to become suddenly rich, thinking that he can break into the palace of wealth and rob it of its golden treasures!
Edison described his repeated efforts to make the phonograph reproduce an aspirated sound, and added: "From eighteen to twenty hours a day for the last seven months I have worked on this single word 'specia.' I said into the phonograph 'specia, specia, specia,' but the instrument responded 'pecia, pecia, pecia.' It was enough to drive one mad. But I held firm, and I have succeeded."
The road to distinction must be paved with years of self-denial and hard work.
Horace Mann, the great author of the common school system of Massachusetts, was a remarkable example of that pluck and patience which can work and wait. His only inheritance was poverty and hard work. But he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a determination to get on in the world. He braided straw to get money to buy books which his soul thirsted for.
To Jonas Chickering there were no trifles in the manufacture of a piano. Others might work for salaries, but he was working for fame and fortune. Neither time nor pains were of any account to him compared with accuracy and knowledge. He could afford to work and wait, for quality, not quantity, was his aim. Fifty years ago the piano was a miserable, instrument compared with the perfect mechanism of to-day. Chickering was determined to make a piano which would yield the fullest, richest volume of melody with the least exertion to the player, and one which would withstand atmospheric changes and preserve its purity and truthfulness of tone. And he strove patiently and persistently till he succeeded.
"Thy life, wert thou the pitifullest of all the sons of earth, is no idle dream, but a solemn reality," said Carlyle. "It is thy own. It is all thou hast to comfort eternity with. Work then like a star, unhasting, yet unresting."
Gladstone was bound to win; although he had spent many years of preparation for his life work, in spite of the consciousness of marvelous natural endowments which would have been deemed sufficient by many young men, and notwithstanding he had gained the coveted prize of a seat in Parliament, yet he decided to make himself master of the situation; and amid all his public and private duties, he not only spent eleven terms more in the study of the law, but he studied Greek constantly and read every well written book or paper he could obtain, so determined was he that his life should be rounded out to its fullest measure, and that his mind should have broad and liberal culture.
Emperor William I. was not a genius, but the secret of his power lay in tireless perseverance. A friend says of him, "When I passed the palace at Berlin night after night, however late, I always saw that grand imperial figure standing beside the green lamp, and I used to say to myself, 'That is how the imperial crown of Germany was won.'"
Ole Bull said, "If I practice one day, I can see the result. If I practice two days my friends can see it; if I practice three days the great public can see it."
The habit of seizing every bit of knowledge, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time, every opportunity, every occasion, and grinding them all up into experience, cannot be overestimated. You will find use for all of it. Webster once repeated an anecdote with effect which he heard fourteen years before, and which he had not thought of in the mean time. It exactly fitted the occasion. "It is an ill mason that rejects any stone."
Webster was once urged to speak on a subject of great importance, but refused, saying he was very busy and had no time to master the subject. "But," replied his friend, "a very few words from you would do much to awaken public attention to it." Webster replied, "If there be so much weight in my words, it is because I do not allow myself to speak on any subject until my mind is imbued with it." On one occasion Webster made a remarkable speech before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, when a book was presented to him, but after he had gone, his "impromptu" speech, carefully written out, was found in the book which he had forgotten to take away.
Demosthenes was once urged to speak on a great and sudden emergency, but replied, "I am not prepared." In fact, it was thought by many that Demosthenes did not possess any genius whatever, because he never allowed himself to speak on any subject without thorough preparation. In any meeting or assembly, when called upon, he would never rise, even to make remarks, it was said, without previously preparing himself.
Alexander Hamilton said, "Men give me credit for genius. All the genius I have lies just in this: when I have a subject in hand I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought." The law of labor is equally binding on genius and mediocrity.
Are the results so distant that you delay the preparation in the hope that fortuitous good luck may make it unnecessary? As well might the husbandman delay sowing his seed until the spring and summer are past and the ground hardened by the frosts of a rigorous winter. As well might one who is desirous of enjoying firm health inoculate his system with the seeds of disease, and expect at such time as he may see fit to recover from its effects, and banish the malady. Nelaton, the great surgeon, said that if he had four minutes in which to perform an operation, on which a life depended, he would take one minute to consider how best to do it.
"Many men," says Longfellow, "do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing." We must not only work, but wait.
"The spruce young spark," says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits and acquiring fortune."
"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this busy city of New York for