Haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself.--SENECA.
"Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast."
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed-time of character?--Th.o.r.eAU.
I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war.--MILTON.
The safe path to excellence and success, in every calling, is that of appropriate preliminary education, diligent application to learn the art and a.s.siduity in practicing it.--EDWARD EVERETT.
The more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you, and do more work with less effort.--CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"I was a mere cipher in that vast sea of human enterprise," said Henry Bessemer, speaking of his arrival in London in 1831. Although but eighteen years old, and without an acquaintance in the city, he soon made work for himself by inventing a process of copying bas-reliefs on cardboard. His method was so simple that one could learn in ten minutes how to make a die from an embossed stamp for a penny. Having ascertained later that in this way the raised stamps on all official papers in England could easily be forged, he set to work and invented a perforated stamp which could not be forged nor removed from a doc.u.ment.
At the public stamp office he was told by the chief that the government was losing 100,000 pounds a year through the custom of removing stamps from old parchments and using them again. The chief also appreciated the new danger of easy counterfeiting. So he offered Bessemer a definite sum for his process of perforation, or an office for life at eight hundred pounds a year. Bessemer chose the office, and hastened to tell the good news to a young woman with whom he had agreed to share his fortune. In explaining his invention, he told how it would prevent any one from taking a valuable stamp from a doc.u.ment a hundred years old and using it a second time.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THOMAS ALVA EDISON]
"The Wizard of Menlo Park."
"What the world wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss."
"Yes," said his betrothed, "I understand that; but, surely, if all stamps had a date put upon them they could not at a future time be used without detection."
This was a very short speech, and of no special importance if we omit a single word of four letters; but, like the schoolboy"s pins which saved the lives of thousands of people annually by not getting swallowed, that little word, by keeping out of the ponderous minds of the British revenue officers, had for a long period saved the government the burden of caring for an additional income of 100,000 pounds a year. And the same little word, if published in its connection, would render Henry"s perforation device of far less value than a last year"s bird"s nest.
Henry felt proud of the young woman"s ingenuity, and suggested the improvement at the stamp office. As a result his system of perforation was abandoned and he was deprived of his promised office, the government coolly making use from that day to this, without compensation, of the idea conveyed by that little insignificant word.
So Bessemer"s financial prospects were not very encouraging; but, realizing that the best capital a young man can have is a capital wife, he at once entered into a partnership which placed at his command the combined ideas of two very level heads. The result, after years of thought and experiment, was the Bessemer process of making steel cheaply, which has revolutionized the iron industry throughout the world. His method consists simply in forcing hot air from below into several tons of melted pig-iron, so as to produce intense combustion; and then adding enough spiegel-eisen (looking-gla.s.s iron), an ore rich in carbon, to change the whole ma.s.s to steel. He discovered this simple process only after trying in vain much more difficult and expensive methods.
"All things come round to him who will but wait."
The great lack of the age is want of thoroughness. How seldom you find a young man or woman who is willing to take time to prepare for his life work. A little education is all they want, a little smattering of books, and then they are ready for business.
"Can"t wait" is characteristic of the century, and is written on everything; on commerce, on schools, on society, on churches. Can"t wait for a high school, seminary, or college. The boy can"t wait to become a youth, nor the youth a man. Youth rush into business with no great reserve of education or drill; of course they do poor, feverish work, and break down in middle life, and many die of old age in the forties. Everybody is in a hurry. Buildings are rushed up so quickly that they will not stand, and everything is made "to sell."
Not long ago a professor in one of our universities had a letter from a young woman in the West, asking him if he did not think she could teach elocution if she could come to the university and take twelve lessons.
Our young people of to-day want something, and want it quickly. They are not willing to lay broad, deep foundations. The weary years in preparatory school and college dishearten them. They only want a "smattering" of an education. But as Pope says,--
"A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again."
The shifts to cover up ignorance, and "the constant trembling lest some blunder should expose one"s emptiness," are pitiable. Short cuts and abridged methods are the demand of the hour. But the way to shorten the road to success is to take plenty of time to lay in your reserve power. You can"t stop to forage your provender as the army advances; if you do the enemy will get there first. Hard work, a definite aim, and faithfulness, will shorten the way. Don"t risk a life"s superstructure upon a day"s foundation.
Unless you have prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you just in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it. Beware of that fatal facility of thoughtless speech and superficial action which has misled many a young man into the belief that he could make a glib tongue or a deft hand take the place of deep study or hard work.
Patience is nature"s motto. She works ages to bring a flower to perfection. What will she not do for the greatest of her creation?
Ages and aeons are nothing to her, out of them she has been carving her great statue, a perfect man.
Johnson said a man must turn over half a library to write one book.
When an auth.o.r.ess told Wordsworth she had spent six hours on a poem, he replied that he would have spent six weeks. Think of Bishop Hall spending thirty years on one of his works. Owens was working on the "Commentary to the Epistle to the Hebrews" for twenty years. Moore spent several weeks on one of his musical stanzas which reads as if it were a dash of genius. Carlyle wrote with the utmost difficulty, and never executed a page of his great histories till he had consulted every known authority, so that every sentence is the quintessence of many books, the product of many hours of drudging research in the great libraries. To-day, "Sartor Resartus" is everywhere. You can get it for a mere trifle at almost any bookseller"s, and hundreds of thousands of copies are scattered over the world. But when Carlyle brought it to London in 1851, it was refused almost contemptuously by three prominent publishers. At last he managed to get it into "Fraser"s Magazine," the editor of which conveyed to the author the pleasing information that his work had been received with "unqualified disapprobation." Henry Ward Beecher sent a half dozen articles to the publisher of a religious paper to pay for his subscription, but they were respectfully declined.
The publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly" returned Miss Alcott"s ma.n.u.script, suggesting that she had better stick to teaching. One of the leading magazines ridiculed Tennyson"s first poems, and consigned the young poet to oblivion. Only one of Ralph Waldo Emerson"s books had a remunerative sale. Washington Irving was nearly seventy years old before the income from his books paid the expenses of his household.
In some respects it is very unfortunate that the old system of binding boys out to a trade has been abandoned. To-day very few boys learn any trade. They pick up what they know, as they go along, just as a student crams for a particular examination, just to "get through,"
without any effort to see how much he may learn on any subject.
Think of an American youth spending twelve years with Michael Angelo, studying anatomy that he might create the masterpiece of all art; or with Da Vinci devoting ten years to the model of an equestrian statue that he might master the anatomy of the horse. Most young American artists would expect, in a quarter of that time, to sculpture an Apollo Belvidere. While Michael Angelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he would not allow himself time for meals or to dress or undress; but he kept bread within reach that he might eat when hunger impelled, and he slept in his clothes.
A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing for his alb.u.m.
Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you only five minutes," objected the rich man. "Yes, but it took me thirty years to learn how to do it in five minutes."
"I prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "In that,"
said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they also thought nothing of it."
What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for their first great opportunities; a Garfield, burning his lamp fifteen minutes later than a rival student in his academy; a Grant, fighting on in heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals and politicians everywhere; a Field"s untiring perseverance, spending years and a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; a Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment,"
refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a t.i.tian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;"
a Stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a Thurlow Weed, walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in a world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair"
was refused by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret, whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate; not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men who can work and wait.
When a young lawyer Daniel Webster once looked in vain through all the law libraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of fifty dollars the necessary books, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which his client was a poor blacksmith. He won his cause, but, on account of the poverty of his client, only charged fifteen dollars, thus losing heavily on the books bought, to say nothing of his time.
Years after, as he was pa.s.sing through New York city, he was consulted by Aaron Burr on an important but puzzling case then pending before the Supreme Court. He saw in a moment that it was just like the blacksmith"s case, an intricate question of t.i.tle, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to him now as simple as the multiplication table. Going back to the time of Charles II. he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness and accuracy of sequence that Burr asked in great surprise if he had been consulted before in the case. "Most certainly not," he replied, "I never heard of your case till this evening." "Very well," said Burr, "proceed," and, when he had finished, Webster received a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble he had spent for his early client.
Albert Bierstadt first crossed the Rocky Mountains with a band of pioneers in 1859, making sketches for the paintings of western scenes for which he had become famous. As he followed the trail to Pike"s Peak, he gazed in wonder upon the enormous herds of buffaloes which dotted the plains as far as the eye could reach, and thought of the time when they would have disappeared before the march of civilization.
The thought haunted him and found its final embodiment in "The Last of the Buffaloes" in 1890. To perfect this great work he had spent twenty years.
Everything which endures, which will stand the test of time, must have a deep, solid foundation. In Rome the foundation is often the most expensive part of an edifice, so deep must they dig to build on the living rock.
Fifty feet of Bunker Hill Monument is under ground; unseen and unappreciated by those who tread about that historic shaft, but it is this foundation, apparently thrown away, which enables it to stand upright, true to the plumb-line through all the tempests that lash its granite sides. A large part of every successful life must be spent in laying foundation stones under ground. Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance and depends upon "knowing how long it takes to succeed." Havelock joined the army at twenty-eight, and for thirty-four years worked and waited for his opportunity; conscious of his power, "fretting as a subaltern while he saw drunkards and fools put above his head."
But during all these years he was fitting himself to lead that marvelous march to Lucknow.
It was many years of drudgery and reading a thousand volumes that enabled George Eliot to get fifty thousand dollars for "Daniel Deronda." How came writers to be famous? By writing for years without any pay at all; by writing hundreds of pages for mere practice work; by working like galley-slaves at literature for half a lifetime. It was working and waiting many long and weary years that put one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars into "The Angelus." Millet"s first attempts were mere daubs, the later were worth fortunes. Schiller "never could get done." Dante sees himself "growing lean over his Divine Comedy." It is working and waiting that gives perfection.
"I do not remember," said Beecher, "a book in all the depths of learning, nor a sc.r.a.p in literature, nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is not known to have been long and patiently elaborated."
Endurance is a much better test of character than any one act of heroism, however n.o.ble.
The pianist Thalberg said he never ventured to perform one of his celebrated pieces in public until he had played it at least fifteen hundred times. He laid no claim whatever to genius; he said it was all a question of hard work. The accomplishments of such industry, such perseverance, would put to shame many a man who claims genius.
Before Edmund Kean would consent to appear in that character which he acted with such consummate skill, The Gentleman Villain, he practiced constantly before a gla.s.s, studying expression for a year and a half.
When he appeared upon the stage, Byron, who went to see him with Moore, said he never looked upon so fearful and wicked a face. As the great actor went on to delineate the terrible consequences of sin, Byron fainted.
"For years I was in my place of business by sunrise," said a wealthy banker who had begun without a dollar, "and often I did not leave it for fifteen or eighteen hours."
_Festina lente_--hasten slowly--is a good Latin motto. Patience, it is said, changes the mulberry leaf to satin. The giant oak on the hillside was detained months or years in its upward growth while its roots took a great turn around some rock, in order to gain a hold by which the tree was anch.o.r.ed to withstand the storms of centuries. Da Vinci spent four years on the head of Mona Lisa, perhaps the most beautiful ever painted, but he left therein, an artistic thought for all time.