The great men of science, literature, art, action—those apostles of great thoughts and lords of the great heart—belong to no special rank. They come from colleges, workshops, farms, from poor men's huts and rich men's mansions; but they all began with reliance upon themselves, and with an instinctive feeling that they must help themselves solely in climbing to the work or the station which they had assigned to themselves. Many of God's greatest apostles of thought and feeling and action have come from the humblest stations, but the most insuperable difficulties have not long been obstacles to them. These greatest of difficulties are true men's greatest helpers—they stimulate powers that might have lain dormant all through life, but often have readily yielded to the stout and reliant heart. There is no greater blessing in the world than poverty which is allied to self-reliance and the spirit of self-help. "Poverty is the northwind which lashes men into vikings." Lord Bacon says that men believe too great things of riches, and too little of indomitable perseverance.
Every nation that has a history has a long list of men who began life in the humblest stations, yet rose to high station in honor and service. No inheritance and environments can do for a man what he can do for himself. Cook, the navigator, Brindley, the engineer, and Burns, the poet, are three men who began life as day laborers; the most poetic of clergymen, Jeremy Taylor; the inventor of the spinning-jenny and founder of cotton manufacture, Sir Richard Arkwright; the greatest of landscape painters, Turner, and that most distinguished Chief-justice Tenterden were barbers. Ben Jonson, the poet; Telford, the engineer; Hugh Miller, the geologist; Cunningham, the sculptor, were English stone-masons. Inigo Jones, the architect; Hunter, the physiologist; Romney and Poie, the painters; Gibson, the sculptor; Fox, the statesman; Wilson, the ornithologist; Livingstone, the missionary—started life as weavers. Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovel; Bloomfield, the poet; Carey, the missionary—were shoemakers. Bunyan, was a tinker; Herschel, a musician; Lincoln, a rail-splitter; Faraday, a book-binder; Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive, a stoker; Watt, the discoverer of steam-power, a watchmaker; Franklin, a printer; President Johnson, a tailor; President Garfield, an employee on a canal-boat; Louisa Alcott, both housemaid and laundress; James Whitcomb Riley, an itinerant sign-painter; Thoreau, a man-of-all-work for Emerson; the poets, Keats and Drake, as well as Sir Humphry Davy, were druggists.
Benjamin Thompson was a humble New Hampshire schoolmaster whose industry, perseverance, and integrity, coupled to his genius and a truly benevolent spirit, ultimately made him the companion of kings and philosophers, Count Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire. He declined to participate in the Revolution, and was compelled to flee from his home in Rumford, now Concord (New Hampshire), leaving behind his mother, wife, and friends; but this persecution by his countrymen led to his greatness. In the spring of 1776 General Howe sent him to England with important despatches for the Ministry. At once the English government appreciated his worth and scientific men sought his acquaintance. In less than four years after he landed in England he became Under-Secretary of State. In 1788, he left England with letters to the Elector of Bavaria, who immediately offered him honorable employment which the English government permitted him to accept after he had been knighted by the king.
In Bavaria he became lieutenant-general, commander-in-chief of staff, minister of war, member of the council of state, knight of Poland, member of the academy of science in three cities, commander-in-chief of the general staff, superintendent of police of Bavaria, and chief of the regency during the sovereign's compulsory absence in 1798. During his ten years' service he made great civil and military reforms and produced such salutary changes in the condition of the people that they erected a monument in his honor in the pleasure-grounds of Munich, which he had made for them. When Munich was attacked by an Austrian army in 1796, he conducted the defense so successfully that he was accorded the highest praise throughout Europe. The Bavarian monarch showed his appreciation by making him a count; he chose the title of Count Rumford as an honor to the birthplace of his wife and child. He ended his days at Paris in literary and scientific studies and in the society of the most learned men of Europe.
The Rumford professorship at Harvard was very liberally endowed by him, and he gave five thousand dollars to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1796.
V
SOME ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN
A life is divine when duty is a joy. The best work we ever do is the work we get pleasure from doing, and the work we are likeliest to enjoy most is the work we are best fitted to do with our talent. There is nothing in the world except marriage that we should be slower in taking upon ourselves than our life-work; therefore, think much, read much, inquire much before you assume any life career.