Like the keen prow of some on-forging ship.”
I would say to every young man, no matter what his color, to choose as early as possible a good, clean-cut business, something that will help make the world better, and then strive in every worthy way to make that business the most successful of its kind in the world. The boy who lets obstacles overcome him will not succeed. The great thing is to succeed in spite of discouragements.
CHAPTER V
Be Ambitious
Many a pen has been used against this inward passion, declaring it a “secret poison, a gallant madness and the mother of hypocrisy.” The great Wolsey cried, “I charge thee, fling away ambition.” Bowes said, “The most aspiring are frequently the most contemptible,” but there are exceptions to the rule. Where there is no aspiration, there is no endeavor. It is not wrong to strain mental and physical energies to succeed, provided it is to be good and to do good. The ambition of Napoleon to lay waste the town of Acre was wrong, that of Wellington to intercept the “scourge of Europe,” right. “To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfections of our natures, is,” as Sir Philip Sidney said, “the very principle and incentive of virtue.”
One of the customs of the Norsemen was that of wearing a pickaxe crest with the motto, “Either I will find a way or make one.” An adage of the day reads, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” What one wills to do can usually be done. George Stephenson determined to make an engine to run between Liverpool and Manchester at the rate of twelve miles an hour. The Quarterly Review ridiculed the idea, saying, “As well trust one’s self to be fired off on a Congreve rocket.” He did it, nevertheless. Prince Bismarck’s greatest ambition was to snatch Germany from Austrian oppression and to gather round Prussia, in a North German confederation, all the States whose tone of thought, religion and interest, were in harmony with those of Prussia. “To attain this end,” he once said, “I would brave all dangers—exile, even the scaffold. What matters if they hang me, provided the rope with which I am hung binds this new Germany firmly to the Prussian throne?” And, he did it.
ASPIRE HIGH.
There is nothing wrong in aspiring high. George Washington proposed to carve his name higher than any other on the Natural Bridge in Virginia, and did it. Alfred Harmsworth, “king of the penny press,” said on entering journalism, “I will master the business of editing and publishing.” At twenty-one he had a little capital, at thirty he was a millionaire, and later became head of the largest publishing house in the world.
Emerson once said, “Hitch your wagon to a star.” It is but a natural condition of a healthful life when energies seek an outlet in some lofty activity. Better endeavor if but to fail, than never try at all. “I know,” says Morris, “how far high failure overleaps the bounds of low successes.” The sense of such makes us capable of a grave and holy sense of the real soberness and meaning of life. George Eliot in writing the last words of her most powerful book, exclaims, “It is so much less than what I hoped for.” A great artist was once highly praised for a beautiful painting which he had just completed. “Ah, do not praise me!” he sadly said, “it may be very beautiful, but I aimed at perfection.” When Napoleon started on his campaign he was ridiculed and nicknamed “The Little Corporal,” which cut him to the quick, but it proved to be a goad which stirred him to become a great general. In one of our courts a poor carpenter was once planing a magistrate’s bench, when an onlooker inquired, “Why are you so careful with such a rough piece of furniture?” “Because I wish to make it for the time when I shall sit as judge upon it,” was the reply. And that time came.