How to Get on in the World

M >> Major A.R. Calhoon >> How to Get on in the World

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Progress, however, of the best kind is comparatively slow. Great
results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to
advance in life as we walk, step by step. De Maistre says that "To
know _how to wait_ is the great secret of success." We must sow
before we can reap, and often have to wait long, content meanwhile to
look patiently forward in hope: the fruit best worth waiting for
often ripening the slowest. But "time and patience," says the Eastern
proverb, "change the mulberry leaf to satin."

To wait patently, however, men must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is
an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the
character. As a bishop has said, "Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity;" so are cheerfulness and diligence nine-tenths of
practical wisdom. They are the life and soul of success, as well as
of happiness; perhaps the very highest pleasure in life consisting in
clear, brisk, conscious working; energy, confidence, and every other
good quality mainly depending upon it. Sydney Smith, when laboring as
a parish priest at Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire--though he did not
feel himself to be in his proper element--went cheerfully to work in
the firm determination to do his best. "I am resolved," he said, "to
like it, and reconcile myself to it, which is more manly than to
feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post of being
thrown away, and being desolate, and such like trash." So Dr. Hook,
when leaving Leeds for a new sphere of labor, said, "Wherever I many
be, I shall, by God's blessing, do with my might what my hand findeth
to do; and if I do not fined work, I shall make it."

Laborers for the public good especially have to work long and
patiently, often uncheered by the prospect of immediate recompense or
result. The seeds they sow sometimes lie hidden under the winter's
snow, and before the spring comes the husbandman may have gone to his
rest. It is not every public worker who, like Rowland Hill, sees his
great idea bring forth fruit in his lifetime. Adam Smith sowed the
seeds of a great social amelioration in that dingy old University of
Glasgow, where he so long labored, and laid the foundations of his
"Wealth of Nations;" but seventy years passed before his work bore
substantial fruits, nor indeed are they all gathered in yet.

Nothing can compensate for the loss of hope in a man: it entirely
changes the character. "How can I work--how can I be happy," said a
great but miserable thinker, "when I have lost all hope?" One of the
most cheerful and courageous, because one of the most hopeful of
workers, was Carey, the missionary. When in India, it was no uncommon
thing for him to weary out three pundits, who officiated as his
clerks in one day, he himself taking rest only in change of
employment. Carey, the son of a shoemaker, was supported in his
labors by Ward, the son of a carpenter, and Marsham, the son of a
weaver. By their labors a magnificent college was erected at
Serampore; sixteen flourishing stations were established; the Bible
was translated into sixteen languages, and the seeds were sown of a
beneficent moral revolution in British India. Carey was never ashamed
of the humbleness of his origin. On one occasion, when at the
Governor-General's table, he overheard an officer opposite him asking
another, loud enough to be heard, whether Carey had not once been a
shoemaker: "No, sir," exclaimed Carey immediately; "only a cobbler."
An eminently characteristic anecdote has been told of his
perseverance as a boy. When climbing a tree one day, his foot slipped
and he fell to the ground, breaking his leg by the fall. He was
confined to his bed for weeks, but when he recovered and was able to
walk without support, the very first thing he did was to go and climb
that tree. Carey had need of this sort of dauntless courage for the
great missionary work of his life, and nobly and resolutely he did
it.

It was a maxim of Dr. Young, the philosopher, that "Any man can do
what any other man has done;" and it is unquestionable that he
himself never recoiled from any trials to which he determined to
subject himself. It is related of him, that the first time he mounted
a horse he was in company with the grandson of Mr. Barclay, of Ury,
the well-known sportsman. When the horseman who preceded them leaped
a high fence, Young wished to imitate him, but fell off his horse in
the attempt. Without saying a word, he remounted, made a second
effort, and was again unsuccessful, but this time he was not thrown
farther than on to the horse's neck, to which he clung. At the third
trial he succeeded, and cleared the fence.

The story of Timour, the Tartar, learning a lesson of perseverance
under adversity from the spider is well know. Not less interesting is
the anecdote of Audubon, the American ornithologist, as related by
himself: "An accident," he says, "which happened to two hundred of my
original drawings, nearly put a stop to my researches in ornithology.
I shall relate it, merely to show how far enthusiasm--for by no other
name can I call my perseverance--may enable the preserver of nature
to surmount the most disheartening difficulties. I left the village
of Henderson, in Kentucky, situated on the banks of the Ohio, where I
resided for several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I
looked to my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in a
wooden box, and gave them in charge of a relative, with injunctions
to see that no injury should happen to them. My absence was of
several months; and when I returned, after having enjoyed the
pleasures of home for a few days, I inquired after my box, and what I
was pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced and opened;
but, reader, feel for me--a pair of Norway rats had taken possession
of the whole, and reared a young family among the gnawed bits of
paper, which, but a month previous, represented nearly a thousand
inhabitants of air! The burning heat which instantly rushed through
my brain was too great to be endured without affecting my whole
nervous system. I slept for several nights, and the days passed like
days of oblivion--until the animal powers being recalled into action
through the strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my
notebook and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gayly as if
nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make better
drawings than before; and ere a period not exceeding three years had
elapsed, my portfolio was again filled."

The accidental destruction of Sir Isaac Newton's papers, by his
little dog "Diamond" upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by
which the elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment
destroyed, is a well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it is
said that the loss caused the philosopher such profound grief that it
seriously injured his health, and impaired his understanding. An
accident of a somewhat similar kind happened to the manuscript of Mr.
Carlyle's first volume of his "French Revolution." He had lent the
manuscript to a literary neighbor to peruse. By some mischance, it
had been left lying on the parlor floor, and become forgotten. Weeks
ran on, and the historian sent for his work, the printers being loud
for "copy." Inquiries were made, and it was found that the maid-of-
all-work, finding what she conceived to be a bundle of waste paper
on the floor, had used it to light the kitchen and parlor fires with!
Such was the answer returned to Mr. Carlyle; and his feelings can be
imagined. There was, however, no help for him but to set resolutely
to work to rewrite the book; and he turned to it and did it. He had
no draft and was compelled to rake up from his memory, facts, ideas,
and expressions which had been long since dismissed. The composition
of the book in the first instance had been a work of pleasure; the
rewriting of it a second time was one of pain and anguish almost
beyond belief. That he persevered and finished the volume under such
circumstances, affords an instance of determination of purpose which
has seldom been surpassed.

There is no walk in life, in which success has been won, that has not
its brilliant examples of the achievements of perseverance. The
literary life, in which all who read are interested, has many
illustrations of this. No great career affords stronger proof of this
than that of the great Sir Walter Scott, who, delighting his own
generation, must be honored by all the generations that follow.

His admirable working qualities were trained in a lawyer's office,
where he pursued for many years a sort of drudgery scarcely above
that of a copying clerk. His daily dull routine made his evenings,
which were his own, all the ore sweet; and he generally devoted them
to reading and study. He himself attributed to his prosaic office
discipline that habit of steady, sober diligence, in which mere
literary men are so often found wanting. As a copying clerk he was
allowed 3_d._ for every page containing a certain number of words; and
he sometimes, by extra work, was able to copy as many as 120 pages in
twenty-four hours, thus earning some 30_s._; out of which he would
occasionally purchase an odd volume, otherwise beyond his means.

During his after-life Scott was wont to pride himself upon being a
man of business, and he averred, in contradiction to what he called
the cant of sonneteers, that there was no necessary connection
between genius and an aversion or contempt for the common duties of
life. On the contrary, he was of opinion that to spend some fair
portion of every day in any matter-of-fact occupation was good for
the higher faculties themselves in the upshot. While afterward acting
as clerk to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he performed his
literary work chiefly before breakfast, attending the court during
the day, where he authenticated registered deeds and writings of
various kinds. "On the whole," says Lockhart, "it forms one of the
most remarkable features in his history, that throughout the most
active period of his literary career, he must have devoted a large
proportion of his hours, during half at least of every year, to the
conscientious discharge of professional duties." It was a principle
of action which he laid down for himself, that he must earn his
living by business, and not by literature. On one occasion he said,
"I determined that literature should be my staff, not my crutch, and
that the profits of my literary labor, however convenient otherwise,
should not, if I could help it, become necessary to my ordinary
expenses."

His punctuality was one of the most carefully cultivated of his
habits, otherwise it had not been possible for him to get through so
enormous an amount of literary labor. He mad it a rule to answer
every letter received by him on the same day, except where inquiry
and deliberation were requisite. Nothing else could have enabled him
to keep abreast with the flood of communications that poured in upon
him and sometimes put his good-nature to the severest test. It was
his practice to rise by five o'clock and light his own fire. He
shaved and dressed with deliberation, and was seated at his desk by
six o'clock, with his papers arranged before him in the most accurate
order, his works of reference marshaled round him on the floor, while
at least one favorite dog lay watching his eye, outside the line of
books. Thus by the time the family assembled for breakfast, between
nine and ten, he had done enough--to use his own words--to break the
neck of a day's work. But with all his diligent and indefatigable
industry, and his immense knowledge, the result of may years' patient
labor, Scott always spoke with the greatest diffidence of his own
powers. On one occasion he said, "Throughout every part of my career
I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance."

But perseverance and effort do not always mean successful work.
Freeman Hunt distinguishes admirably between activity and energy in
the following statement, which it would be well to remember:

"There are some men whose failure to succeed in life is a problem to
others, as well as to themselves. They are industrious, prudent, and
economical; yet, after a long life of striving, old age finds them
still poor. They complain of ill-luck; they say fate is against them.
But the real truth is that their projects miscarry because they
mistake mere activity for energy. Confounding two things essentially
different, they suppose that if they are always busy, they must of a
necessity be advancing their fortune; forgetting that labor
misdirected is but a waste of activity."

"The person who would succeed in life is like a marksman firing at a
target--if his shot misses the mark, it is but a waste of powder; to
be of any service at all, it must tell in the bull's eye or near it.
So, in the great game of life, what a man does must be made to count,
or it had almost as well be left undone.

"The idle warrior, cut from a block of wood, who fights the air on
the top of a weather-cock, instead of being made to turn some machine
commensurate with his strength, is not more worthless than the merely
active man who, though busy from sunrise to sunset, dissipates his
labor on trifles, when he ought skillfully to concentrate it on some
great end.

"Every person knows some one in his circle of acquaintance who,
though always active, has this want of energy. The distemper, if we
may call it such, exhibits itself in various ways. In some cases, the
man has merely an executive faculty when he should have a directing
one; in other words, he makes a capital clerk for himself, when he
ought to do the thinking work for the establishment. In other cases,
what is done is either not done at the right time, or not in the
right way. Sometimes there is no distinction made between objects of
different magnitudes, and as much labor is bestowed on a trivial
affair as on a matter of great moment.

"Energy, correctly understood, is activity proportioned to the end.
The first Napoleon would often, when in a campaign, remain for days
without undressing himself, now galloping from point to point, now
dictating dispatches, now studying maps and directing operations. But
his periods of repose, when the crisis was over, were generally as
protracted as his previous exertions had been. He has been known to
sleep for eighteen hours without waking. Second-rate men, slaves of
tape and routine, while they would fall short of the superhuman
exertions of the great emperor, would have considered themselves lost
beyond hope if they imitated what they call his indolence. They are
capital illustrations of activity, keeping up their monotonous jog-
trot for ever; while Napoleon, with his gigantic industry,
alternating with such apparent idleness, is an example of energy.

"We do not mean to imply that chronic indolence, if relieved
occasionally by spasmodic fits of industry, is to be recommended. Men
who have this character run into the opposite extreme of that which
we have been stigmatizing, and fail as invariably of securing success
in life. To call their occasional periods of application energy,
would be a sad misnomer. Such persons, indeed, are but civilized
savages, so to speak; vagabonds at heart in their secret hatred of
work, and only resorting to labor occasionally, like the wild Indian
who, after lying for weeks about his hut, is roused by sheer hunger
to start on a hunting excursion. Real energy is persevering, steady,
disciplined. It never either loses sight of the object to be
accomplished, or intermits its exertions while there is a possibility
of success. Napoleon on the plains of Champagne, sometimes fighting
two battles in one day, first defeating the Russians and then turning
on the Austrians, is an illustration of this energy. The Duke of
Brunswick, idling away precious time when he invaded France at the
outbreak of the first Revolution, is an example of the contrary.
Activity beats about a cover like an untrained dog, never lighting on
the covey. Energy goes straight to the bird at once and captures it."

CHAPTER XVII

SUCCESS BUT SELDOM ACCIDENTAL.

A man may leap into sudden fortune at a bound, and without effort or
foresight, but it is doubtful if any great permanent success ever was
the outcome of blind chance.

The old adage, "Trust to luck," like many other adages that time has
kept in unmerited circulation, is a bad one. The man who trusts to
luck for his clothing is apt to wear rags, and he who depends on it
for food is sure to go hungry.

We hear a great deal about the wonderful things that have been done
by chance, but we seldom take the time to examine them. We read that
sir Isaac Newton, sitting in his garden one day, "Chanced to see an
apple fall to the ground," and this set him to thinking, and he
discovered the laws of gravitation. New, ever since the first apple
fell from the first tree in Eden, men have been watching that very
commonplace occurrence. We might extend the field so as to embrace
oranges, coconuts and all the fruits and nuts which, in every land
and through all the long centuries of man's existence, have been
falling to the ground--not by chance, however, yet they set no men to
thinking, simply because not one of the millions of men who "chanced"
to see the incident, "chanced" to have the reasoning powers of the
great English scientist. If the apple, instead of falling to the
ground, had shot up, without visible cause, to the sky, then the
dullest observer would have wondered, even if he did not attempt to
find an explanation. The falling of the apple in Newton's garden was
not a chance, but an ordinary incident, which was made much of in the
mind of an extraordinary man.

Watt "chanced" to see the lid of the kettle in his mother's kitchen
lifted by the steam within, and this incident we are asked to believe
was the origin of the engine invented by that great man. If no one
else had ever witnessed a like phenomenon, then we might give some
consideration to the element of chance. It was in the brain of Watt,
and not in the lifting of the kettle lid, that the steam engine was
born. There are no accidents in the progress of science.

In the same way, we are asked to believe that Galileo discovered the
telescope, Whitney the cotton gin, and Howe the sewing machine.

But there have been some curious cases of chance fortune. A man out
hunting in California made a mis-step and was plunged into a deep
gulch in the Sierra Nevada. His gun was broken and he was sorely
bruised, but he was more that repaid for the accident by the
discovery of a rich gold mine at the bottom.

What would you think of the man, who, because of this, should
shoulder a gun and go into the mountains, hoping to be precipitated
into a gulch full of gold. If he started out for this purpose, of
course, the element of chance would be eliminated, and yet that man
would show just as much good sense as do the thousands who go through
life--trusting to luck, and hoping for a miracle that never comes.

Success may be unforeseen, but it is a rare thing for it to come to
the man who has not been preparing for it.

Lord Bacon well says: "Neither the naked hand nor the understanding,
left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments
and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than
the hand."

The Romans had a saying which is as true to-day as when first
uttered: "Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you
seize her by the forelock, you may hold her, but if suffered to
escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again."

Accident does very little toward the production of any great result
in life. Though sometimes what is called "a happy hit" may be made by
a bold venture, the common highway of steady industry and application
is the only safe road to travel. It is said of the landscape painter,
Wilson, that when he had nearly finished a picture in a tame, correct
manner, he would step back from it, his pencil fixed at the end of a
long stick, and after gazing earnestly on the work, he would suddenly
walk up and by a few bold touches give a brilliant finish to the
painting. But it will not do for everyone who would produce an
effect, to throw his brush at the canvas in the hope of producing a
picture. The capability of putting in these last vital touches is
acquired only by the labor of a life; and the probability is, that
the artist who has not carefully trained himself beforehand, in
attempting to produce a brilliant effect at a dash, will only produce
a blotch.

Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the true
worker. The greatest men are not those who "despise the day of small
things," but those who improve them the most carefully. Michael
Angelo was one day explaining to a visitor at his studio what he had
been doing to a statue since a previous visit. "I have retouched this
part--polished that--softened this feature--brought out that muscle--
given some expression to this lip, and more energy to that limb."
"But these are trifles," remarked the visitor. "It may be so,"
replied the sculptor, "but recollect that trifles make perfection,
and perfection is no trifle." So it was said of Nicolas Poussin, the
painter, that the rule of his conduct was, that "whatever was worth
doing at all was worth doing well;" and when asked, late in life, by
his friend Vigneul de Marville, by what means he had gained so high a
reputation among the painters of Italy, Poussin emphatically
answered, "Because I have neglected nothing."

Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by
accident, if carefully inquired into it will be found that there has
really been very little that was accidental about them. For the most
part, these so-called accidents, have only been opportunities,
carefully improved by genius. The brilliantly colored soap-bubbles
blown through a common tobacco-pipe--though "trifles light as air" in
most eyes--suggested to Dr. Young his beautiful theory of
"interferences," and led to his discovery relating to the diffraction
of light. Although great men are popularly supposed only to deal with
great things, men such as Newton and Young were ready to detect the
significance of the most familiar and simple facts; their greatness
consisting mainly in their wise interpretation of them.

The difference between men consists, in a great measure, in the
intelligence of their observation. The Russian proverb says of the
nonobservant man, "He goes through the forest and sees no firewood."
"The wise man's eyes are in his head," says Solomon, "but the fool
walketh in darkness." "Sir," said Johnson on one occasion, to a fine
gentleman just returned from Italy, "some men would learn more in the
Hampstead stage than others in the tour of Europe." It is the mind
that sees as well as the eye. Where unthinking gazers observe
nothing, men of intelligent vision penetrate into the very fibre of
the phenomena presented to them, attentively noting differences,
making comparisons and recognizing their underlying idea. Many before
Galileo had seen a suspended weight swing before their eyes with a
measured beat, but he was the first to detect the value of the fact.
One of the vergers in the cathedral at Pisa, after replenishing with
oil a lamp which hung from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and
Galileo, then a youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively,
conceived the idea of applying it to the measurement of time. Fifty
years of study and labor, however, elapsed before he completed the
invention of his Pendulum--the importance of which, in the
measurement of time and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely be
overrated. In like manner, Galileo, having casually heard that one
Lippershey, a Dutch spectacle-maker, had presented to Count Maurice
of Nassau an instrument by means of which distant objects appeared
nearer to the beholder, addressed himself to the cause of such a
phenomenon, which led to the invention of the telescope and proved
the beginning of the modern science of astronomy. Discoveries such as
these could never have been made by a negligent observer, or by a
mere passive listener.

While Captain (afterward Sir Samuel) Brown was occupied in studying
the construction of bridges, with the view of contriving one of a
cheap description to be thrown across the Tweed near which he lived,
he was walking in his garden one dewy autumn morning, when he saw a
tiny spider's net suspended across his path. The idea immediately
occurred to him, that a bridge of iron ropes or chains might be
constructed in like manner, and the result was the invention of his
suspension bridge. So James Watt, when consulted about the mode of
carrying water by pipes under the Clyde, along the unequal bed of the
river, turned his attention one day to the shell of a lobster
presented at table; and from that model he invented an iron tube,
which, when laid down, was found effectually to answer the purpose.
Sir Isambard Brunel took his first lessons in forming the Thames
Tunnel from the tiny shipworm: he saw how the little creature
perforated the wood with its well-armed head, first in one direction
and then in another, till the archway was complete, and then daubed
over the roof and sides with a kind of varnish; and by copying this
work exactly on a large scale, Brunel was at length enabled to
construct his shield and accomplish his great engineering work.

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