A man is made up largely of his daily observations. School training serves to fit and discipline him so that he may read rightly the lesson of the things he sees around him. Men have made mighty fortunes by just using their eyes.
Several years ago I took dinner in New York with one of the great millionaires of that city. In the course of our talk he told me something about his boyhood days—how, with hardly a penny in his pocket, he slung a pack on his back and set out along the Erie Canal, looking for a job. At last he got one. He was paid three dollars a week to make soft soap for the laborers to use at the locks in washing their hands. One can hardly imagine a more humble occupation; but this boy kept his eyes open. He saw the disadvantages of soft soap, and set to work to make a hard substitute for it. Finally he succeeded, and his success brought him many, many millions.
Every person is designed for a definite work in life, fitted for a particular sphere. Before God he has a right to that sphere. If you are an excellent housekeeper you should not be running a loom, and it is your duty to prepare yourself to enter at the first opportunity the sphere for which you are fitted.
George W. Childs, who owned the Philadelphia Ledger, once blacked boots and sold newspapers in front of the Ledger building. He told me how he used to look at that building and declare over and over to himself that some day he would own the great newspaper establishment that it housed. When he mentioned his ambition to his associates they laughed at him. But Childs had indomitable grit, and ultimately he did come to own that newspaper establishment, one of the finest in the country.
Another thing very necessary to the pursuit of success is the proper employment of waiting moments. How do you use your waiting time for meals, for trains, for business? I suppose that if the average individual were to employ wisely these intervals in which he whistles and twiddles his thumbs he would soon accumulate enough knowledge to quite make over his life.
I went through the United States Senate in 1867 and asked each of the members how he got his early education. I found that an extremely large percentage of them had simply properly applied their waiting moments. Even Charles Sumner, a university graduate, told me that he learned more from the books he read outside of college than from those he had studied within. General Burnside, who was then a Senator, said that he had always had a book beside him in the shop where he worked.
Before leaving the subject of the power of the will, there is one thing I would like to say: a true will must have a decent regard for the happiness of others. Do not get so wrapped up in your own mission that you forget to be kind to other people, for you have not fulfilled every duty unless you have fulfilled the duty of being pleasant. Enemies and ignorance are the two most expensive things in a man's life. I never make unnecessary enemies—they cost too much.
Every one has within himself the tools necessary to carve out success. Consecrate yourself to some definite mission in life, and let it be a mission that will benefit the world as well as yourself. Remember that nothing can withstand the sweep of a determined will—unless it happens to be another will equally as determined. Keep clean, fight hard, pick your openings judiciously, and have your eyes forever fixed on the heights toward which you are headed. If there be any other formula for success, I do not know it.
The biography of
that great patriot—