How to Get on in the World: A Ladder to Practical Success

by A. R. Calhoun

It was the knowledge gained in those early days that enabled Kit
Carson to carry succor to Fremont's men perishing in the mountains.
Not only did Carson bring food to the dying men, but when they were
strong enough to move he guided them to a place of safety.

This truly great man averted many an Indian war, and did as much for the settlement and civilization of the West as any man of his day— more, indeed. In the days of secession he was a patriot, and though he might have grown rich at the expense of the Government, he preferred to die a poor and honored man.

Admiral Farragut, although born in East Tennessee, went into the United States Navy at the early age of eleven. He was the youngest midshipman in the service. "Before I had reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I prided myself on my profanity, and could drink with the strongest."

One morning on recovering from a debauch he reviewed the situation and saw the shoals ahead. Then and there he fell on his knees and asked God to help him. From that day on he gave up tobacco, liquor, and profanity, devoted himself to the study of his profession, and so became the greatest Admiral of modern times. "The canal boat captains, when I was a boy," said General Garfield, "were a profane, carousing, ignorant lot, and, as a boy, I was eager to imitate them. But my eyes were opened before I contracted their habits, and I left them."

John B. Gough is an example of such a change of life that should encourage every young man who has made a mis-step.

Among like men of the same class may be ranked the late Richard Cobden, whose start in life was equally humble. The son of a small farmer at Midhurst in Sussex, he was sent at an early age to London and employed as a boy in a warehouse in the City. He was diligent, well-conducted, and eager for information. His master, a man of the old school, warned him against too much reading; but the boy went on in his own course, storing his mind with the wealth found in books. He was promoted from one position of trust to another, became a traveler for his house, secured a large connection, and eventually started in business as a calico-printer at Manchester. Taking an interest in public questions, more especially in popular education, his attention was gradually drawn to the subject of the Corn Laws, to the repeal of which he may be said to have contributed more than all the rest of Parliament.

It would be a mistake, however, to judge from this that all the world's greatest men, started life poor, or that some men of wealth and prominent family have not contributed their share, and have not, by reason of that wealth, sedulously followed a useful life-calling.

Riches are so great a temptation to ease and self-indulgence, to which men are by nature prone, that the glory is all the greater of those who, born to ample fortunes, nevertheless take an active part in the work of their generation—who "scorn delights and live laborious days."

It was a fine thing said of a subaltern officer in the Peninsular campaigns, observed trudging along through mud and mire by the side of his regiment, "There goes 15,000 pounds a year!" and in our own day, the bleak slopes of Sebastopol and the burning soil of India have borne witness to the like noble self-denial and devotion on the part of the richer classes; many a gallant and noble fellow, of rank and estate, having risked his life, or lost it, in one or other of those fields of action, in the service of his country.

Nor have the wealthier classes been undistinguished in the more peaceful pursuits of philosophy and science. Take, for instance, the great names of Bacon, the father of modern philosophy, and of Worcester, Boyle, Cavendish, Talbot and Rosse in science. The last named may be regarded as the great mechanic of the peerage; a man who, if he had not been born a peer, would probably have taken the highest rank as an inventor. So thorough was his knowledge of smith- work that he is said to have been pressed on one occasion to accept the foremanship of a large workshop, by a manufacturer to whom his rank was unknown. The great Rosse telescope, of his own fabrication, is certainly the most extraordinary instrument of the kind that has yet been constructed.