A Nebraska woman won a prize of $250 for this essay on “What Constitutes Success,” written in competition with many others:
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.
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SUCCESS AND CIRCUMSTANCES
I remember Thackeray saying to me, concerning a certain chapter in one of his books that the critics agreed in accusing of carelessness: “Careless? If I’ve written that chapter once, I’ve written it a dozen times—and each time worse than the last!” a proof that labor did not assist in his case. When an artist fails it is not so much from carelessness—to do his best is not only profitable to him, but a joy. But it is not given to every man—not, indeed, to any—to succeed whenever and however he tries. The best painter that ever lived never entirely succeeded more than four or five times; that is to say, no artist ever painted more than four or five masterpieces, however high his general average may have been, for such success depends on the coincidence, not only of genius and inspiration, but of health and mood and a hundred other mysterious contingencies.—Sir John Millais, Magazine of Art.
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SUCCESS BY EXPERIMENTATION
A few years ago the cotton-boll weevil, which had increased steadily from year to year, reached a point at which it destroyed in Texas over $30,000,000 worth of cotton in one season. Many men in southern Texas were bankrupted, cotton-planting was given up in certain places, and it looked as if this great wealth-producing industry were doomed in Texas and probably also in time over the entire South. The practical farmers were completely overwhelmed. Here the Department of Agriculture started three lines of experimentation; first, to find some other harmless insect or parasite that would destroy the boll weevil as the white scale had been destroyed in California; second, to develop a species of cotton that could resist weevil attack; and third, to find a method of cultivation that would lessen the injury of the attack of the weevil when made. The ants, which the department brought from South America to eat up the boll weevil, proved a failure, but the development of a better method of cultivation and the use of better adapted varieties of cotton proved so successful that Texas farmers now, following the methods worked out by the department investigators, again raise their magnificent crops of cotton, in spite of the boll weevil.—The Evening Post.
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