Chauncey Jerome's education was limited to three months in the district school each year until he was ten, when his father took him into his blacksmith shop at Plymouth, Connecticut, to make nails. Money was a scarce article with young Chauncey. His father died when he was eleven, and his mother was forced to send him out to earn a living on a farm. At fourteen he was apprenticed for seven years to a carpenter, who gave him only board and clothes. One day he heard people talking of Eli Terry, of Plymouth, who had undertaken to make two hundred clocks in one lot. "He'll never live long enough to finish them," said one. "If he should," said another, "he could not possibly sell so many. The very idea is ridiculous."
Chauncey pondered long over this rumor, for it had long been his dream to become a great clock-maker. He tried his hand at the first opportunity, and soon learned to make a wooden clock. When he got an order to make twelve at twelve dollars apiece he thought his fortune was made.
One night he happened to think that a cheap clock could be made of brass as well as of wood, and would not shrink, swell, or warp appreciably in any climate. He acted on the idea, and became the first great manufacturer of brass clocks. He made millions at the rate of six hundred a day, exporting them to all parts of the globe.
A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from hard surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. The man who has not fought his way upward, and does not bear the scar of desperate conflict, does not know the highest meaning of success.
Columbus was dismissed as a fool from court after court, but he pushed his suit against an unbelieving and ridiculing world. Rebuffed by kings, scorned by queens, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the overmastering purpose which dominated his soul. The words "New World" were graven upon his heart; and reputation, ease, pleasure, position, life itself, if need be, must be sacrificed. Neither threats, ridicule, storms, leaky vessels, nor mutiny of sailors, could shake his mighty purpose.
Lucky for the boy who can say, "In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail." We do not care for the men who change with every wind! Give us men like mountains, who change the winds. You cannot at one dash rise into eminence. You must hammer it out by steady and rugged blows.
A man can get what he wants if he pays the price—persistent, plodding perseverance. Never doubt the result; victory will be yours. There may be ways to fortune shorter than the old, dusty highway; but the staunch men in the community all go on this road. If you want to do anything, don't stand back waiting for a better chance to arise, but rush in and seize it; and then cling to it with all the power you possess until you have made it serve the purpose for which you desired it, or yield the good which you believe it to contain.
The lack of perseverance is the cause of many a failure. We do not stand by our plans faithfully. Fashion, or criticism, or temporary weariness, or fickleness of taste, leads us off; and we have to begin our work all over. Look at the history of every noted invention; read the lives of musicians who were born with genius, but wrought out triumph by perseverance; and you will find abundant proof that without perseverance nothing valuable can be accomplished.
GEORGE STEPHENSON.
George Stephenson's struggle for the adoption of his locomotive is another noteworthy case in point. People said "he is crazy"; "his roaring steam engine will set the houses on fire with its sparks"; "the smoke will pollute the air"; "the carriage makers and coachmen will starve for want of work." So intense was the opposition, that for three whole days the matter was debated in the House of Commons; and on that occasion a government inspector said that if a locomotive ever went ten miles an hour, he would undertake to eat a stewed engine for breakfast. "What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as horses?" asked a writer in the English Quarterly Review for March, 1825. "We trust that Parliament will, in all the railways it may grant, limit the speed to eight or nine miles an hour, which we entirely agree, with Mr. Sylvester, is as great as can be ventured upon."