Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym) - "The Merry Thought: or the Glass Window and Bog House Miscellany"

Jessie Graham Flower - "Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods"

Various - "Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance"

Richard F. Burton - "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

How to Succeed

O >> Orison Swett Marden >> How to Succeed




"I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me
_how_ he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always
went straight forward and _did it_." So answered Sir Edward Hawke, when
his appointment of Howe for some peculiarly responsible duty was
criticized on the ground that Howe was the junior admiral in the fleet.

There is a tradition among the Indians that Manitou was traveling in the
invisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beasts
glare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before an
impassable river. As he determined to proceed, the thorns turned out
phantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow.
When we march on obstacles disappear. Many distinguished foreign and
American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine
was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of the
United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "Colfax does not
drink," sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. "You are
right," said the Vice-President, "I dare not."

A Western party recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate
officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during
the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at
Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied,
Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he
could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song.
He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I must
drink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers.'" The men were so affected and
ashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displaying
courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon.

When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousing
reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man of
Grant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other
Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their
good-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner,
the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could be
procured for the table at night. When the time came to serve the wine,
the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietly
turned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a great
surprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the occasion. Without a
single word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tables
turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken that
night.

Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the
liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity,
nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly
courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are
those of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and trying
to conceal it or make up for it by style." It takes courage for a young
man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise
and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your
comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest
poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say "No"
squarely when those around you say "Yes." It takes courage to do your
duty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famous
although neglecting sacred obligations. It takes courage to unmask your
true self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass for
what you really are.




CHAPTER XV.

WILL-POWER.

In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring
a thorough will to do it.
--W. HUMBOLDT.

It is firmness that makes the gods on our side.
--VOLTAIRE.

Stand firm, don't flutter.
--FRANKLIN.

People do not lack strength they lack will.
--VICTOR HUGO.

Perpetual pushing and assurance 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 space 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."

"Circumstances," 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 circumstances 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 associates or arms
or soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or the
powers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn mass 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 shores 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 circumstances. 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 assimilates knowledge,
must originate in self and be self-directed.
--THOMAS J. MORGAN.

The foes with which they waged their strife
Were passion, 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."

Not long after, when intoxicated, he did fall into a shallow well, but
his shouts for help were fortunately heard by his wife. "Didn't I tell
you so?" she asked. "It's lucky I was in hearing or you might have
drowned." He took hold of the bucket and she tugged at the windlass; but
when he was near the top her grasp slipped and down he went into the
water again. This was repeated until he screamed: "Look here, you're
doing that on purpose, I know you are." "Well, now, I am," admitted the
wife. "Don't you remember telling me it's best to get used to a thing by
degrees? I'm afraid if I bring you up sudden, you would not find it
wholesome." Finding that his case was becoming desperate, he promised to
sign the pledge at once. His wife raised him out immediately, but warned
him that if ever he became intoxicated and fell into the well again, she
would leave him there.

A man captured a young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. It grew
up like a kitten, fond and gentle. There was no evidence of its savage,
bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. But one day while
the master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his hand
started the blood from a scratch. The moment the beast tasted blood, his
ferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon his master to tear
him to pieces. Sometimes the appetite for drink, which was thought to
be buried years ago, is roused by the taste or the smell of "the devil
in solution," and the wretched victim finds himself a helpless slave to
the passion which he thought dead.

When a young man, Hugh Miller once drank the two glasses of whiskey
which fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons with
whom he worked. On reaching home he tried to read Bacon's Essays, his
favorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehend
the meaning. "The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt,
one of degradation," said he. "I had sunk, by my own act, for the time,
to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege
to be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable one
for forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never
again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking
usage; and with God's help I was enabled to hold by the determination."

In a certain manufacturing town an employer one Saturday paid to his
workmen $700 in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. On Monday
$450 of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by the
saloon-keepers. When the fact was made known, the workmen were so
startled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. The
times would not be so "hard" for the workmen if the saloons did not
take in so much of their wages. If they would organize a strike against
the saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase of
wages, and to include an increase of savings.

How often we might read the following sign over the threshold of a
youthful life: "For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "golden
chances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little
sensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife,
lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent
possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a
thousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, a
brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a
skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all
exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a
shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty
degeneration of the heart, for Bright's disease, for a drunkard's
liver."

With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed
the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a
mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful
battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the
sunlight; but he had conquered the demon which had almost killed him.
Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off
using tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the end of
it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew camomile,
gentian, tooth-picks, but it was of no use. He bought another plug of
tobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully, but he
looked at it and said, "You are a _weed_, and I am a _man_. I'll master
you if I die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily.

There was an abbot that desired a piece of ground that lay conveniently
for him. The owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he was
contented to let it. The abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm it
for one crop. He had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns--a crop that
lasted three hundred years. So Satan asks to get possession of our souls
by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong that
seems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted the
seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground.

"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter
Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever
issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."

Thomas A. Edison was once asked why he was a total abstainer. He said,
"I thought I had a better use for my head."

Byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his natural
propensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and control
his animal appetites was a very different thing. At all events, it
seemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest.
Let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life's voyage cultivate
this one great virtue, "self-control." There is nothing so important to
a youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivated
will; everything depends upon it. If he has it, he will succeed; if he
does not have it, he will fail.

"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer
himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful
and vile."

"Silence," says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the
contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy."

"He is a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man
who will not."

Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we
should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I
mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what
virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our
vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the
shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control
your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.

It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation or
apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A man
feels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm of
passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool.
And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too.

The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and
furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon
Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door.
His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more;
and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel
upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder
must needs produce a shower." Alcibiades, his friend, talking with him
about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an
everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have so
accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the
noise of carriages in the street."

It is said of Socrates, that whether he was teaching the rules of an
exact morality, whether he was answering his corrupt judges, or was
receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, he was still the
same man; that is to say, calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid--in a word,
wise to the last.

"It is not enough to have great qualities," says La Rochefoucauld; "we
should also have the management of them." No man can call himself
educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will.

"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said
Eardley Wilmot; "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it
would be Godlike to forgive it."

"He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive,
with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet
restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, the spiritual
heroes."

To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are
exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why
put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is
remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a
poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a
servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you
feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too
much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak
in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the "sweet by and by,"
when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled.

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