To be born of parents who do not know how to get on, and be one of a big family, is a great blessing. We are taught by antithesis quite as much as by injunction and direction. And chiefest of all we are taught through struggle, and not through immunity in that vacuum called complete success.
Peter Cooper's childhood was one of toil and ceaseless endeavor. Just one year did he go to school, just one year in all his life, and then for only half a day at a time. His short ration of books made him anxious to know, anxious to learn, and so his disadvantages gave him a thing which college often fails to bestow—that is, the Study Habit. And the reason he got it was because he wanted to go to school and could not. Happy Peter Cooper!
And yet he never really knew that many a youth is sent to school and dinged at by pedagogues until examinations become a nightmare, and college a penalty. Thus it happens that many a college graduate is so rejoiced on getting through and standing "on the threshold," that he never looks in a book afterward. Of such a one we can very properly say, "He got his education in college"—when all the world knows that the education that really amounts to anything is that which we get out of Life.
The climbing propensities of Peter Cooper were made manifest very early in life. Later, they developed into a habit; and shifting ground from the physical to the psychic, he continued to climb all his life.
Also he made others climb, for no man climbeth by himself alone. At twelve, Peter Cooper proudly walked the ridgepole of the family residence, to the great astonishment and admiration of the little girls and the jealousy of the boys. When the children would run in breathlessly and announce to the busy mother, "Peter, he is on the house!" the mother would reply, "Then he will not get drowned in the Hudson River!" At other times it was, "Peter, he is swimming across the river!" The mother then found solace in the thought that the boy was not in immediate danger of sliding off the house and breaking his neck. Once, little Peter climbed a lofty elm to get a hanging bird's-nest that was built far out on a high projecting limb. He reached the nest all right, but his diagnosis was not correct, for it proved to be a hornets' nest, beyond dispute.
To escape the wrath of the hornets, Peter descended the tree "overhand," which being interpreted means that he dropped and caught the limbs as he went down so as to decrease the speed. The last drop was about thirty feet. The fall didn't hurt, but the sudden stop broke his collar-bone, knocked out three teeth, and cut a scar on his chin that lasted him all of his days.
Life is a dangerous business—few get out of it alive. Life consists in betting on your power to do—to achieve—to accomplish—to climb—to become. If you mistake hornets for birds, you pay the penalty for your error, as you pay for all mistakes. The only men who do things are those who dare.
Safety can be secured by doing nothing, saying nothing, being nothing. Here's to those who dare!
Because a thing had never been done before was to Peter Cooper no reason why it should not be done now. And although he innocently stirred up a few hornets' nests, he became a good judge of both birds and hornets through personal experience. That is the advantage of making mistakes. But wisdom lies in not responding to encores.