Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

The iron, by this manipulation, is strengthened, refined, made more elastic or more resistant, and adapted to the use each artisan dreams of. If every blow should fracture it, if every furnace should burn the life out of it, if every roller should pulverize it, of what use would it be? It has that virtue, those qualities that withstand all; that draw profit from every test, and come out triumphant in the end. In the iron the qualities are, in the main, inherent; but in ourselves they are largely matters of growth, culture, and development, and all are subject to the dominating will.

Just as each artisan sees in the crude iron some finished, refined product, so must we see in our lives glorious possibilities, if we would but realize them. If we see only horseshoes or knife-blades, all our efforts and struggles will never produce hairsprings. We must realize our own adaptability to great ends; we must resolve to struggle, to endure trials and tests, to pay the necessary price, confident that the result will pay us for our suffering, our trials, and our efforts.

Those who shrink from the forging, the rolling, and the drawing out, are the ones who fail, the "nobodies," the faulty characters, the criminals. Just as a bar of iron, if exposed to the elements, will oxidize, and become worthless, so will character deteriorate if there is no constant effort to improve its form, to increase its ductility, to temper it, or to better it in some way.

It is easy to remain a common bar of iron, or comparatively so, by becoming merely a horseshoe; but it is hard to raise your life-product to higher values.

Many of us consider our natural gift-bars poor, mean, and inadequate, compared with those of others; but, if we are willing, by patience, toil, study, and struggle, to hammer, draw out, and refine, to work on and up from clumsy horseshoes to delicate hairsprings, we can, by infinite patience and persistence, raise the value of the raw material to almost fabulous heights. It was thus that Columbus, the weaver, Franklin, the journeyman printer, Aesop, the slave, Homer, the beggar, Demosthenes, the cutler's son, Ben Jonson, the bricklayer, Cervantes, the common soldier, and Haydn, the poor wheelwright's son, developed their powers, until they towered head and shoulders above other men.

There is very little difference between the material given to a hundred average boys and girls at birth, yet one with no better means of improvement than the others, perhaps with infinitely poorer means, will raise his material in value a hundredfold, five-hundredfold, aye, a thousandfold, while the ninety-nine will wonder why their material remains so coarse and crude, and will attribute their failure to hard luck.

While one boy is regretting his want of opportunities, his lack of means to get a college education, and remains in ignorance, another with half his chances picks up a good education in the odds and ends of time which other boys throw away. From the same material, one man builds a palace and another a hovel. From the same rough piece of marble, one man calls out an angel of beauty which delights every beholder, another a hideous monster which demoralizes every one who sees it.

The extent to which you can raise the value of your life-bar depends very largely upon yourself. Whether you go upward to the mainspring or hairspring stage, depends very largely upon your ideal, your determination to be the higher thing, upon your having the grit to be hammered, to be drawn out, to be thrust from the fire into cold water or oil in order to get the proper temper.

Of course, it is hard and painful, and it takes lots of stamina to undergo the processes that produce the finest product, but would you prefer to remain a rough bar of iron or a horseshoe all your life?