The privileges of a superior education, like the inheritance of a fortune, depends upon the man. It should encourage those who have only themselves and God to look to for support, to remember that self-education is the best education, and that some of the greatest men have had few or no school advantages.
Daily experience shows that it is energetic individualism which produces the most powerful effects upon the life and action of others, and really constitutes the best practical education. Schools, academies, and colleges give but the merest beginnings of culture in comparison with it. Far more influential is the life- education daily given in our homes, in the streets, behind counters, in workshops, at the loom and the plough, in counting-houses and manufactories, and in the busy haunts of men. This is that finishing instruction as members of society, which Schiller designated "the education of the human race," consisting in action, conduct, self- culture, self-control—all that tends to discipline a man truly, and fit him for the proper performance of the duties and business of life—a kind of education not to be learned from books, or acquired by any amount of mere literary training. With his usual weight of words Bacon observes, that "Studies teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation;" a remark that holds true of actual life, as well as of the cultivation of the intellect itself. For all experience serves to illustrate and enforce the lesson, that a man perfects himself by work more than by reading—that it is life rather than literature, action rather than study, and character rather than biography, which tend perpetually to renovate mankind.
No matter how humble your calling in life may be, take heart from the fact that many of the world's greatest men have had no superior advantages. Lincoln studied law lying on his face before a log-fire; General Garfield drove a mule on a canal tow-path in his boyhood, and George Peabody, owing to the poverty of his family, was an errand boy in a grocery store at the age of eleven.
Great men of science, literature, and art—apostles of great thoughts and lords of the great heart—have belonged to no exclusive class or rank in life. They have come alike, from colleges, workshops, and farm-houses—from the huts of poor men and the mansions of the rich. Some of God's greatest apostles have come from "the ranks." The poorest have sometimes taken the highest places, nor have difficulties apparently the most insuperable proved obstacles in their way. Those very difficulties, in many instances, would even seem to have been their best helpers, by evoking their powers of labor and endurance, and stimulating into life faculties which might otherwise have lain dormant. The instances of obstacles thus surmounted, and of triumphs thus achieved, are indeed so numerous as almost to justify the proverb that "with will one can do anything."
If we took to England, the mother country, a land where the advantages are not nearly so great as in this and the difficulties greater, we shall find noble spirits rising to usefulness and eminence in the face of difficulties equally great.
Shoemakers have given us Sir Cloudesley Shovel the great admiral, Sturgeon the electrician, Samuel Drew the essayist, Gifford the editor of the Quarterly Review, Bloomfield the poet, and William Carey the missionary; whilst Morrison, another laborious missionary, was a maker of shoe-lasts. Within the last few years, a profound naturalist has been discovered in the person of a shoemaker at Banff, named Thomas Edwards, who, while maintaining himself by his trade, has devoted his leisure to the study of natural science in all its brandies, his researches in connection with the smaller crustaceae having been rewarded by the discovery of a new species, to which the name of "Praniza Edwardsii" has been given by naturalists.
Nor have tailors been undistinguished. John Stow, the historian, worked at the trade during some part of his life. Jackson, the painter, made clothes until he reached manhood. The brave Sir John Hawkswood, who so greatly distinguished himself at Poictiers, and was knighted by Edward III for his valor, was in early life apprenticed to a London tailor. Admiral Hobson, who broke the boom at Vigo in 1702, belonged to the same calling. He was working as tailor's apprentice near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, when the news flew through the village that a squadron of men-of-war was sailing off the island. He sprang from the shopboard, and ran down with his comrades to the beach, to gaze upon the glorious sight. The boy was suddenly inflamed with the ambition to be a sailor; and springing into a boat, he rowed off to the squadron, gained the admiral's ship, and was accepted as a volunteer. Years after, he returned to his native village full of honors, and dined off bacon and eggs in the cottage where he had worked as an apprentice.
Oliver Goldsmith was regarded as a dunce in his school days, and Daniel Webster was so dull as a school-boy as not to indicate in any way the great abilities he was to display.
Humbert was a scapegrace when a youth; at sixteen he ran away from home and was by turns servant to a tradesman at Nancy, a workman at Lyons, and a hawker of rabbit-skins. In 1792, he enlisted as a volunteer and in a year he was general of brigade. Kleber, Lefebvre, Suchet, Victor, Lannes, Soult, Massena, St. Cyr, D'Erlon, Murat, Augereau, Bessieres and Ney, all rose from the ranks. In some cases promotion was rapid, in others it was slow. St. Cyr, the son of a tanner of Toul, began life as an actor, after which he enlisted in the chasseurs and was promoted to a captaincy within a year. Victor, Due de Belluno, enlisted in the artillery in 1781: during the events preceding the Revolution he was discharged; but immediately on the outbreak of war he re-enlisted, and in the course of a few months his intrepidity and ability secured his promotion as adjutant-major and chief of battalion. Murat was the son of a village innkeeper in Perigord, where he looked after the horses. He first enlisted in a regiment of chasseurs, from which he was dismissed for insubordination; but again, enlisting he shortly rose to the rank of colonel. Ney enlisted at eighteen in a hussar regiment and gradually advanced step by step; Kleber soon discovered his merits, surnaming him "The Indefatigable," and promoted him to be adjutant-general when only twenty-five.
General Christopher Carson, or "Kit" Carson as he is known to the world, although strictly temperate in his life and as gentle as a blue-eyed child in his manner, ran away from his home in Missouri to the Western wilds, when he was a boy of fourteen. His father wanted him to be a farmer, but Providence had greater if not nobler uses for him. Out in the Rocky Mountains—then a wilderness—he learned the Indian languages, and became as familiar with every trail and pass as the red men.