The Book of Courage, John Thomson Faris [interesting books to read for teens txt] 📗
- Author: John Thomson Faris
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"Who was Elihu Burritt? He was a New England blacksmith who worked on an average 10 hours a day at his forge; but who studied in his spare moments until he became known and honored all over the world as 'the learned blacksmith.' He became great—not by forging—but by the way he used his afterwork hours."
IV
WORKING HARDER
"It was the rule of his life to study not how little he could do, but how much."
These words were spoken of a great publisher and might have been made the text of the volume issued to commemorate the centenary of the business house founded by the man of whom they were spoken.
The young man was sixteen when his father drove him from their country home to the city, and apprenticed him to a firm of printers.
As an apprentice he and another young man were frequently partners in working an old-fashioned hand press. "One applied the ink with hand-balls, and the other laid on sheets and did the pulling. They changed work at regular intervals, one inking and the other pulling." The biographer who gives this description of the work of the two, adds that his hero was accustomed to remain at his press after the other men had quit work whenever he could secure a partner to assist him.
The young man's fellow worker was often persuaded to assist him in these extra efforts—usually much against his will. While he often felt like rebelling because of his partner's ambition to do his utmost for his employers, he could not restrain his admiration for the man's industry.
Once the unwilling partner said: "Often, after a good day's work, he would say to me, 'Let's break the back of another token (two hundred and fifty impressions)—just break its back.' I would often consent reluctantly but he would beguile me, or laugh at my complaints, and never let me off till the token was completed, fair and square. It was a custom for us in the summer to do a clear half-day's work before the other boys and men got their breakfast. We would meet by appointment in the grey of the early morning and go down to the printing-room."
Fellow workmen made sport of the ambitious young man, not only because of what they felt was his excessive industry, but because of his homespun clothes and heavy cow-hide boots. He seldom retorted, but once, when jests had gone further than usual, he said to a tormentor: "When I am out of my time and set up for myself, and you need employment, as you probably will, come to me and I will give you work." The man little thought the prophecy would be fulfilled, but forty years after, when the industrious apprentice was mayor of the city and one of the world's leading publishers, he was reminded of the promise made to the tormentor, and the promised position was given to him. The workman who believed in doing more than was expected of him had won his way to fame and fortune, while his derider had made no progress.
In 1817 the industrious apprentice asked a brother—who in the meantime had served his apprenticeship in a printing office—to go into business with him. Later two other brothers were taken into the firm. All were believers in the doctrine that had led the oldest member of the firm to success—the doctrine of doing as much instead of as little as possible.
Their readiness to work constantly enabled the four brothers, who started with little capital except their knowledge of their trade, to build up within a generation one of the world's greatest publishing houses. They improved every moment. But they were never tempted to work on Sunday; business was never so pressing that they would break into the day of rest, or make their men do so. In this they were only living in accordance with purposes formed during their days of working for others. It is stated of one of the brothers, whose employer rejoiced in his readiness to do hard work and plenty of it, that he was expected to work on Sunday, in order to get ready the catalogue of an auction sale which was to be held next day. "That I will not do," he said, respectfully but firmly: "I cannot work on Sunday." He did work till midnight; then—in spite of the threat that he would be discharged—he laid down his composing stick on the case. On Monday morning his employer apologized and asked him to return to work.
Thirty-six years after the founding of the house, it occupied five five-story buildings on one street and six on another street. Then a careless plumber started a fire that—within a few hours—destroyed the entire property. But the energetic men who knew how to work were not discouraged at the thought of beginning again. The night after the fire they met for conference. As they separated one of them remarked that the evening had seemed more like a time of social festivity than a consultation over a great calamity.
Business associates hastened to make offers of loans. Within forty-eight hours the firm was tendered more than one hundred thousand dollars. Publishers offered their presses, printing material and office room. Authors wrote that they were ready to wait indefinitely for pay, while employees not only made a like suggestion, but said they were willing to have their pay reduced. While none of these offers were accepted, they were greatly appreciated, for they told of the place the brothers had won for themselves by untiring industry and sterling integrity.
After the fire the house became greater than ever, so that to-day it stands as an example of what "hard work coupled with high ideals" may accomplish. And to every young man the thought of it gives inspiration to follow in the steps of the founder who "made it the rule of his life to study not how little he could do, but how much."
V
ABUSING THE WILL TO WORK
There are times when the real test of a worker's courage is not his readiness to work but his will to curb the temptation to be intemperate in work.
When the word "intemperance" is mentioned most people think at once of strong drink; many people are unwilling to think of anything but strong drink. As if where there is no temptation to drink there can be no temptation to intemperance!
Paul had a different idea. When he wrote to the Corinthians, "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," he must have had in mind scores of different ways in which intemperance endangers success.
If people were to make a list of some of the aspects of intemperance that are characteristic of modern life, it is quite likely that a large proportion would omit one of the most serious of all—the intemperance of the man who lives to work, who drives himself to work, who is never happy unless he is working, who makes himself and others unhappy because he labors too long, and too persistently, perhaps with the result that his own promising career is wrecked and the industry of others is interfered with seriously.
One of the most striking illustrations of intemperance in work is supplied by the life of Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican, one of the famous editors of the generation beginning a few years after the Civil War.
Mr. Bowles was but eighteen years old when he had his first warning that his system could not stand the strain of the work to which a strong will drove him. His mother used to set a rocking chair for him at the table at meal-time, because, as she said, "Sam has so little time to rest." But the rocking chair was empty for months, when a breakdown sent him South for a long period of recuperation.
When he returned home he plunged into work with all his might. "He worked late at night; vacations and holidays were unknown; of recreation and general society he had almost nothing," his biographer says. For years his office hours began before noon and continued until one or two in the morning. Finally the strain became too great, and loss of sight was feared. Still he forced himself to work, and the injury to his brain was begun that was later to cause his death. He would take a bottle of cold tea to the office, that by its use he might aid his will to work when nature said, "Stop!" For a long time his only sleep—and it was sadly broken sleep—was on a lounge in the office, from two to six or seven in the morning. Then he would set to work again. "By his unceasing mental activity he wore himself out," the comment was made on his career. "For the last twenty years of his life his nerves and stomach were in chronic rebellion. Heavy clouds of dyspepsia, sciatica, sleeplessness, exhaustion, came often and staid long."
The intemperate worker knew what he was doing. Once he wrote to a friend, "You can't burn the candle at both ends, and make anything by it in the long run; and it is the long pull that you are to rely on, and whereby you are to gain glory." Persistent headaches, "nature's sharp signal that the engine had been overdriven," added to the warning. At last, when he was thirty-seven, he wrote: "My will has carried me for years beyond my mental and physical power; that has been the offending rock. And now, beyond that desirable in keeping my temper, and forcing me up to proper exercise and cheerfulness through light occupation, I mean to call upon it not at all, if I can help it, and to do only what comes freely and spontaneously from the overflow of power and life. This will make me a light reader, a small worker."
Well for him if he had kept his resolution. Still he drove himself to work beyond what his body and brain could stand. Then came paralysis. "Nothing is the matter with me but thirty-five years of hard work," he said. At the time of his death he was not fifty-one years old.
His friends could not but admire him for strength of will, for achievement in the face of ill health, for triumph, by sheer will-power, over every obstacle except the will that drove him to his death. He accomplished much, but how much more he might have accomplished if he had been temperate in his use of the wonderful powers of mind and body which God had given him!
In connection with this glimpse of the life of one who illustrates the disaster brought by the will to be intemperate, it is helpful to think of the life of another American man of letters whose will to be temperate in his treatment of a body weak and frail prolonged life and usefulness.
Francis Parkman, the historian, was never a well man after his trip that resulted in the writing of The Oregon Trail. In fact, he was a physical wreck at twenty-five years of age. He could not even write his own name, until he first closed his eyes; he was unable to fix his mind on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous system was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. However, in spite of this limitation, which became worse, if possible, instead of better, he managed to accomplish an immense amount of the finest literary work by doing what he could and stopping when this was wise. His will to take care of himself was given the mastery of his will to work. For forty-four years after
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