It is firmness that makes the G.o.ds on our side.
--VOLTAIRE.
Stand firm, don"t flutter.
--FRANKLIN.
People do not lack strength they lack will.
--VICTOR HUGO.
Perpetual pushing and a.s.surance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way.
--JEREMY COLLIER.
When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the s.p.a.ce clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom.
--JOHN FOSTER.
"Do you know," asked Balzac"s father, "that in literature a man must be either a king or a beggar?" "Very well," replied his son, "_I will be a king._" After ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he won success as an author.
"Why do you repair that magistrate"s bench with such great care?" asked a bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. "Because I wish to make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself,"
replied the other. He did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few years later.
"_I will be marshal of France and a great general_," exclaimed a young French officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. He became a successful general and a marshal of France.
"There is so much power in faith," says Bulwer, "even when faith is applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies."
There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning real success, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing a Paradise Lost by shaking 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.
"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten?" asked John Hunter. "He will do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of a man never fails."
"Circ.u.mstances," says Milton, "have rarely favored famous men. They have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles."
"We have a half belief," said Emerson, "that the person is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man _who is a match for events_,--one who never found his match,--against whom other men being dashed are broken,--one who can give you any odds and beat you."
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.
At nineteen Bayard Taylor walked to Philadelphia, thirty miles, to find a publisher for fifteen of his poems. He wanted to see them printed in a book; but no publisher would undertake it. He returned to his home whistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had not abated.
In Europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks on account of his poverty. He returned to London with only thirty cents left. He tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had in his knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. Of that time he wrote: "My situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive." But his will defied circ.u.mstances and he rose above them. For two years he lived on two hundred and fifty dollars a year in London, earning every dollar of it with his pen.
His untimely death in 1879, at fifty-four, when Minister to Berlin, was lamented by the learned and great of all countries.
We are told of a young New York inventor who about twenty years ago spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful, would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune, and, what he valued more, his usefulness. The next morning the daily papers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemed vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little woman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like a fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. He went into his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands.
At length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect.
"It _shall_ succeed!" he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was crying over the papers when he went back. "They are very cruel," she said.
"They don"t understand." "I"ll make them understand," he replied cheerfully. "It was a fight for six years," he said afterward. "Poverty, sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the _dogged determination_ that it should succeed." It did succeed. The invention was a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happy man.
Napoleon was a terrible example of what the power of will can accomplish. He always threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies,--"There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. "Impossible," said he, "is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools." He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life into them. "I made my generals out of mud," he said.
To think we are able is almost to be so--to determine upon attainment, is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. The strength of Suwarrow"s character lay in his power of willing, and, like most resolute persons, he preached it up as a system.
Before Pizarro, D"Almagro and De Luque obtained any a.s.sociates or arms or soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or the powers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn ma.s.s in one of the great churches, dedicating themselves to the conquest of Peru. The people expressed their contempt at such a monstrous project, and were shocked at such sacrilege. But these decided men continued the service and afterward retired for their great preparation with an entire insensibility to the expressions of contempt. Their firmness was absolutely invincible. The world has deplored the results of this expedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness of decision of its leaders. Such firmness would keep to its course and retain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world.
At the battle of Marengo the French army was supposed to be defeated; but, while Bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move, Dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, as it was only about the middle of the afternoon. Napoleon rallied his men, renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the Austrians, though the unfortunate Dessaix lost his own life on that field.
What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any 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 Caesar"s crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon"s career, with Wellington"s, or Grant"s, or Von Moltke"s? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylae, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.
A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to the wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolves to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that reaches the goal. The sh.o.r.es of fortune are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements and successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, that in order to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that merely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it he originates a good in the universe, which the universe could not annihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all created energies of intelligence or matter were combined against it?
A man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but the superior of circ.u.mstances. He is free; nay, more, he is a king; and though this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles, once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has a royalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him.
What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will fight on the stumps? Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined endeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall place bounds to his achievements! Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries in science, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. Deprive Euler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems, thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. Lock up the poor Bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegory in the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of his cell. Burn the body of Wycliffe and throw the ashes into the Severn; but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeated with his principles, to all lands. _The world always listens to a man with a will in him._ You might as well snub the sun as such men as Bismarck and Grant.
Hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage when despondency would give up the battle of life. He is the best doctor who can implant _hope_ and courage in the human soul. So he is the greatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements.
"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope; and only backward pulls Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."
"How much I could do if I only tried."
CHAPTER XVI.
GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT.
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
--BIBLE.
The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.
--PLATO.
The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that.
--JOHN STERLING.
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
--SENECA.
The energy which issues in growth, or a.s.similates knowledge, must originate in self and be self-directed.
--THOMAS J. MORGAN.
The foes with which they waged their strife Were pa.s.sion, self and sin; The victories that laureled life, Were fought and won within.
--EDWARD H. DEWART.
"I"ll sign it after awhile," a drunkard would reply, when repeatedly urged by his wife to sign the pledge; "but I don"t like to break off at once, the best way is to get used to a thing." "Very well, old man,"
said his wife, "see if you don"t fall into a hole one of these days, with no one to help you out."