Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

He may not be conscious of the terrible effects, the gradual deterioration of character which comes from a frivolous wasting of his evenings and half-holidays, but the character is being undermined just the same.

Young men are often surprised to find themselves dropping behind their competitors, but if they will examine themselves, they will find that they have stopped growing, because they have ceased their effort to keep abreast of the times, to be widely read, to enrich life with self-culture.

It is the right use of spare moments in reading and study which qualify men for leadership. And in many historic cases the "spare" moments utilized for study were not spare in the sense of being the spare time of leisure. They were rather spared moments, moments spared from sleep, from meal times, from recreation.

Where is the boy to-day who has less chance to rise in the world than Elihu Burritt, apprenticed at sixteen to a blacksmith, in whose shop he had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light? Yet he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals, carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and studying nights and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in the odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. While the rich boy and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes open, young Burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it.

He had a thirst for knowledge and a desire for self-improvement, which overcame every obstacle in his pathway. A wealthy gentleman offered to pay his expenses at Harvard. But no, Elihu said he could get his education himself, even though he had to work twelve or fourteen hours a day at the forge. Here was a determined boy. He snatched every spare moment at the anvil and forge as if it were gold. He believed, with Gladstone, that thrift of time would repay him in after years with usury, and that waste of it would make him dwindle. Think of a boy working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith shop, and yet finding time to study seven languages in a single year.

It is not lack of ability that holds men down but lack of industry. In many cases the employee has a better brain, a better mental capacity than his employer. But he does not improve his faculties. He dulls his mind by cigarette smoking. He spends his money at the pool table, theater, or dance, and as he grows old, and the harness of perpetual service galls him, he grumbles at his lack of luck, his limited opportunity.

The number of perpetual clerks is constantly being recruited by those who did not think it worth while as boys to learn to write a good hand or to master the fundamental branches of knowledge requisite in a business career. The ignorance common among young men and young women, in factories, stores, and offices, everywhere, in fact, in this land of opportunity, where youth should be well educated, is a pitiable thing in American life. On every hand we see men and women of ability occupying inferior positions because they did not think it worth while in youth to develop their powers and to concentrate their attention on the acquisition of sufficient knowledge.

Thousands of men and women find themselves held back, handicapped for life because of the seeming trifles which they did not think it worth while to pay attention to in their early days.

Many a girl of good natural ability spends her most productive years as a cheap clerk, or in a mediocre position because she never thought it worth while to develop her mental faculties or to take advantage of opportunities within reach to fit herself for a superior position. Thousands of girls unexpectedly thrown on their own resources have been held down all their lives because of neglected tasks in youth, which at the time were dismissed with a careless "I don't think it worth while." They did not think it would pay to go to the bottom of any study at school, to learn to keep accounts accurately, or fit themselves to do anything in such a way as to be able to make a living by it. They expected to marry, and never prepared for being dependent on themselves,—a contingency against which marriage, in many instances, is no safeguard.

The trouble with most youths is that they are not willing to fling the whole weight of their being into their location. They want short hours, little work and a lot of play. They think more of leisure and pleasure than of discipline and training in their great life specialty.