Ah! that's it. The education, moral or intellectual, must be chiefly his own work. Education is education, no matter how obtained. We do not wish to be understood as depreciating the usefulness of colleges; not at all. But a mere college diploma will avail a young man but little. As before stated, education, no matter how obtained, is equally valuable. Study like that of Webster and Greeley, by New Hampshire pine knots, and that of Thurlow Weed before the sap-house fire, is just as valuable, when once obtained, as if it had the sanction of some college president.
The world will only ask, "What can he do?" and will not care a fig for any college certificate. The point is; if a young man be not endowed by self-reliance and a firm determination, colleges will avail him nothing; but if he have these, colleges will push him wonderfully. Nevertheless, colleges are not essential to success—an educated idiot will never make a statesman. It is said that when John C. Calhoun was attending Yale College he was ridiculed for his intense application to his studies. He replied, "Why, sir, I am forced to make the most of my time, that I may acquit myself creditably when in Congress." A laugh followed which roused his Southern blood, and he exclaimed: "Do you doubt it? I assure you that if I was not convinced of my ability to reach the National Capitol as a representative within three years from my graduation, I would leave college this very day." While there are some things in this speech that were possibly unbecoming; yet the principle of self-reliance, this faith in himself, this high aim in life, was undoubtedly the marked characteristic which brought to Calhoun his splendid success.
No young man will ever succeed who will not cultivate a thinking mind. If he is not original in aims and purposes he will not succeed. Witness the attempt of others to continue the business of Stewart. They had not only his experience, but the benefit of his great wealth; he succeeded without either—they failed with both; he was obliged to establish a business—they had the benefit of his great patronage.
It has been said that a lawyer cannot be a merchant. Why? While a lawyer he thinks for himself: When a merchant he allows others to think for him. A certain great manufacturer made "kid" gloves his specialty, and so well did he succeed that to-day his trade mark imports to manufactured ratskins a value incommunicable by any other talisman. It is a poor kind of enterprise which thus depends upon the judgment of others. What can be more absurd than for a man to hope to rank as a thundering Jupiter when he borrows all his thunder. Remember that the world only crowns him as truly great who has won for himself that greatness.
[Economy of Time.]
"Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
How many young men for whom nature has done so much, "blush unseen," and waste their ability. Franklin said, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." We have seen how Franklin used his time. Born the son of a soap-boiler, lived to become one of our most noted philosophers, died worth thousands. Advice from such men carries conviction, for we cannot but feel that our chances are fully equal to what theirs were.
Gladstone, England's most noted Premier, once said, "Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after-life with usury, but the waste of it will make you dwindle away until you fairly sink out of existence, unknown, unmourned." Thurlow Weed was so poor in boyhood that he was of necessity glad to use pieces of carpet to cover his all but freezing feet; thus shod he walked two miles to borrow a history of the French revolution, which he mastered stretched prone before the sap-fire, while watching the kettles of sap transformed to maple sugar. Thus was it that he laid the foundation of his education, which in after years enabled him to sway such mighty power at Albany; known as the "king maker."
Elihu Burritt, a child of poverty, the son of a poor farmer, the youngest of ten children. He was apprenticed at eighteen to a blacksmith. He wanted to become a scholar and bought some Greek and Latin works, carrying them in his pocket and studying as he worked at the anvil. From these he went to Spanish, Italian and French. He always had his book near him and improved every spare moment. He studied seven languages in one single year. Then he taught school one year, but his health failing, he went into the grocery business. Soon what money he had was swept away by losses.