The lesson he learned that day stood him in good stead when later he was taking his first difficult examination in a technical school. His neighbor stopped to look over the paper from beginning to end, and was heard to mutter, "How do they expect us to get through ten questions like these in an hour's time?" The boy from the printing office had no time for such an inquiry, but began work at once on the first question, without troubling himself about those that came later until he was ready for them.
So it was when, his technical course completed, he was confronted by his first great railroad task, the clearing up of a wreck that looked to his assistants like an inextricable tangle. After one good look at it he pitched in for all he was worth, thus inspiring the men who had felt the task was impossible, and within a few hours the tracks were clear.
The ability to pitch in at once on a hard job is one characteristic of the man who accomplishes tasks that make others sit up and take notice. John Shaw Billings, the famous librarian, had this ability. To a friend who praised him for the performance of what others thought to be a most difficult task, he said:
"I'll let you into the secret—it is nothing really difficult if you only begin. Some people contemplate a task until it looks so big it seems impossible, but I just begin, and it gets done somehow. There would be no coral islands if the first bug sat down and began to wonder how the job was to be done."
II
PURPOSE FORMING
One of the interesting points the fascinated reader of biography comes to look for is the first hint of the formation of the purpose that later characterized the life of the subject. There is infinite variety, but in every case there is apt to be something that takes the purposeful reader back to the days when his own ambition was taking shape.
For instance, there is Daniel Boone. One would not be apt to select him as an example of one whose life was ruled by a purpose deliberately formed and adhered to for many years. Yet he had his vision of what he desired to accomplish when, at twenty-one years of age, he was marching from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to join Braddock's company. On the way he met John Finley, a hunter who had traveled through Ohio and into the wild regions to the south. His tale of Kentucky fired Boone's imagination, and the two men planned to go there just as soon as the trip to Fort Duquesne was at an end. It proved impossible to carry out the plan for many years, but Boone never lost sight of his purpose, and ultimately he carved out the Wilderness Road and opened the way for the pioneers to seek homes in the Kentucky Wilderness.
Alexander Hamilton was but twelve years old when he wrote from his home in St. Croix, in the West Indies, to a friend in America:
"I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hope of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it, but I mean to prepare the way for futurity."
Not for a day did he lose sight of his purpose. The opportunity he sought came years later. He sailed for America, and began the career that led to usefulness and fame.