How to Get on in the World, Alfred Rochefort Calhoun [read any book txt] 📗

to look back at the loved scenes of my childhood. Before leaving home it was decided that I should make my way to London—then the city of promise to many young Germans. While I sat there, I made three resolutions, which during my life I have never broken. I had never gambled, but I had known others to do so, and my first resolve was not to follow their example. The second resolution was to be strictly honest in all my dealings, and this I have tried to adhere to. The third resolution was quite as important as the other two together; it was that so long as God gave me health and strength I should be unceasingly industrious."

John Jacob Astor, as a man, faithfully carried out the resolutions he made as a boy, and the world knows the consequences.

When the impartial historian comes to write the life of Horace Greeley, no matter how much he may object to his policies and politics, he will give him credit for honesty, courage, perseverance, and an industry that knew no fatigue.

While barely in his teens, young Greeley, whose father was making a desperate effort to support a large family on a poor farm in New Hampshire, started in to work for himself. His early education consisted of a few winter terms in a common school. Before he was seventeen he had learned the printer's trade, and then resolved not only to support himself, but to help his parents. Realizing his want of education, he devoted every minute he could spare from work or sleep to study.

Speaking of these early days, Mr. Greeley said:

"There was many a heavy load placed on my shoulders, but I staggered on and bore it as best I could. Many an uncongenial task was forced upon me, but I can honestly say I never shirked it. If I have succeeded in my chosen profession, it has not been due to my early advantages, for I had none, but to my strong belief that patient industry would triumph in the end."

When Horace Greeley was twenty years of age he was working in a printing office in Erie, Pennsylvania, and determined to better his fortunes by coming to New York. He had saved up one hundred and twenty dollars, and of this he sent one hundred to his father, and with the rest he turned his face to the great city, about six hundred miles away. He traveled the entire distance on foot, and reached New York with fifteen dollars, the whole trip having cost him but five.

Poorly clad, tall, gawky, and green-looking, he entered the city where he had neither friend nor acquaintance. For weeks he tramped the streets, looking vainly for work, his cash gradually growing less, but his spirits never failing. At length he found employment at his trade, where his integrity and unceasing industry soon made him conspicuous. Step by step, he worked his way up, never forgetting the poor family in Vermont, till at length he was able to establish the New York Tribune, which survives as a monument of his perseverance and industry. Although his early training was so defective, he gave every spare minute to study, and with such success that he became not only a great leader, but one of the most perfect masters of the English language. His name will long live after many writers and statesmen of greater pretensions are forgotten.

As an example of what perseverance, fortitude and energy will do, Horace Greeley's story of his own life should be studied by every ambitious young man.

Horace Greelev never laid claim to physical courage, but he had that higher courage and industry without which enduring success is impossible. In speaking of this admirable quality, a famous author says:

"The greater part of the courage that is needed in the world is not of an heroic kind. Courage may be displayed in everyday life as well as on historic fields of action. There needs, for example, the common courage to be honest—the courage to resist temptation—the courage to speak the truth—the courage to be what we really are, and not to pretend to be what we are not—the courage to live honestly within our own means, and not dishonestly upon the means of others.

"A great deal of the unhappiness, and much of the vice, of the world is owing to weakness and indecision of purpose—in other words, to lack of courage and want of industry. Men may know what is right, and yet fail to exercise the courage to do it; they may understand the duty they have to do, but will not summon up the requisite resolution to perform it. The weak and undisciplined man is at the mercy of every temptation; he cannot say no,' but falls before it. And if his companionship be bad, he will be all the easier led away by bad example into wrong-doing.

"Nothing can be more certain than that the character can only be sustained and strengthened by its own energetic action. The will, which is the central force of character, must be trained to habits of decision—otherwise it will neither be able to resist evil nor to follow good. Decision gives the power of standing firmly, when to yield, however slightly, might be only the first step in a downhill course to ruin.

"Calling upon others for help in forming a decision is worse than useless. A man must so train his habits as to rely upon his own powers and depend upon his own courage in moments of emergency. Plutarch tells of a king of Macedon who, in the midst of an action, withdrew into the adjoining town under pretence of sacrificing to Hercules; whilst his opponent Emilius, at the same time that he implored the Divine aid, sought for victory sword in hand, and won the battle. And so it ever is in the actions of daily life.

"Many are the valiant purposes formed, that end merely in words; deeds intended, that are never done; designs projected, that are never begun; and all for want of a little courageous decision. Better far the silent tongue but the eloquent deed. For in life, and in business, dispatch is better than discourse; and the shortest of all is Doing. 'In matters of great concern, and which must be done,' says Tillotson, 'there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution—to be undetermined when the case is so plain and the necessity so urgent. To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it—this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to another, until he is starved and destroyed.'"

CHAPTER XV SOME OF LABOR'S COMPENSATIONS.

Although it is better for every young man, if possible, to adhere to one thing, yet, as we shall see when we come to treat of the life of that remarkable man Peter Cooper, change does not necessarily mean vacillation. For the mere sake of consistency a man would be foolish who neglected a good chance to succeed in another field. Edison started life as a newsboy, but it would be folly to say that he should have stuck to that very respectable, but not usually lucrative occupation. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was an artist till middle life. Alexander T. Stewart and James Gordon Bennett, the one a most successful journalist, and the other the greatest merchant of his day, began life as school-teachers. And so we might continue the list; but even these examples do not warrant the belief that a change of calling is necessary to success, but rather that the change may increase the chances. As a rule, however, the changes have been forced by unforeseen circumstances, of which these strong men were quick to see the advantages.

In beginning the life journey, as in starting out on a day's journey, it is of great importance to have a destination in view. In every effort there should be kept in mind the end to be attained—an ideal to achieve which every faculty must be enlisted.

Men whose lives have been eminently successful tell us that their greatest reward was not found in the accomplishment of their life purpose, but in the slow, but certain advance made from day to day.

The joy of travel does not lie in reaching the destination, but in the companions met with on the journey, the changing scenery through which the traveler passes, and even the inconveniences that break up the monotony of the ordinary routine life. It is so with our life- work. The cradle and the grave mark the beginning and the end of the journey, but the joy of living lies in the varied incident and effort to be met with between the two.

It is well for us that this is so; well for us that we do not have to wait for the reward till the end comes.

We may, as in the cases named, change our means of travel, but so long as success is our purpose, it matters not so much what variation we may make in the route, when we seek to attain it.

The old-fashioned country school debating societies had one subject that never lost its popularity, and on which the rural orators exhausted their eloquence and ingenuity: "Resolved, that there is more happiness in participation than in anticipation." We doubt if any debating society ever settled the question, in a way that would be acceptable to all. As a rule the younger people decided, irrespective of the argument, that participation was the most desirable; but the older people wisely shook their heads and took the other side of the case.

Often when the end has been gained, it has been discovered that the reward was not worth the effort, and that the full compensation was gained in the peace, the regular habits, the health, and the sense of duty well-performed which kept up the hope and the strength during the long years of toil.

There is a temperance in eating, as well as in drinking; even honest labor when carried to an excess that impairs the powers of mind and body, may be classed with intemperance; indeed, it should be a part of every young man's course of self-study to learn his own physical and mental limitations.

There is everything in knowing how to work, and in learning when to rest. One of the rewards of judicious labor, and by no means the least of them is—health. Health is not only essential to the happiness of ourselves and of those with whom we come into contact, but no permanent success can be won without it.

Benjamin Franklin, himself a model of industry and of good health, even in old age, says:

"I have always worked hard, but I have regarded as sinful the haste and toil that sap the health. There is reason why disease should seize on the idler, but the industrious man, whose toil is well- regulated, should have no occasion for a physician, unless in case of accident. Labor, like virtue, is its own reward."

In looking over the callings of people who have retained all their powers to an age so long beyond the allotted time as to seem phenomenal, there is not one case that we can recall where the life has not been distinguished for temperance, orderliness, and persistent but temperate industry.

The health that waits upon labor is among its best results, as it must continue to be among its greatest blessings. More particularly is health to be derived from out-door employment, as life on the farm and an active participation in its many and varied labors. Physical exercise is essential to health, under any and all circumstances, whether it be in the nature of labor or recreation. It must be borne in mind, however, that in labor are to be found the surest correctives of many abuses of health, as bringing into play influences of the more satisfactory sort upon the mind as considered in contrast to idleness. Idleness is the parent of many vices, some one says, and it is true. The freedom from the annoying reflection that one is making no use of physical or mental abilities to secure protection from want and suffering, sweetens labor and gives it a value which all true men must appreciate and carefully consider. How often have the wearied journalist and accountant, tired out in body and mind at the desk of unremitting application, found, in the life and labor of the farm and shop, relief and a return to the blessings of health. There are other occupations and employments just as necessary, but many of them are pursued under considerations not leading to, but rather away from, health. Any one, however, may take from business