Ambition which ennobles, must do well whatever there is to be done. Gladstone’s advice to boys was, “Be thorough in what you do, and remember that, though ignorance often may be innocence, pretension is always despicable.” President Garfield tells of a schoolmate who established a factory for the single purpose of making hammers, which he had brought to great perfection, and in which he took a great pride. The statesman said to his old friend, “By this time you must be able to make a pretty good hammer.” The hammer-maker, who was shipping his wares by the thousands to all parts of the earth, replied: “No, we do not make any pretty good hammers; we make the best hammers that can be made.” “I commission thee, my son,” said an aged artist, whose eye was failing and hand trembling, “do thy best.” The young man hesitated, thinking the duty too vast to finish his master’s work, but the injunction “do thy best” rang in his ears. With prayer for help and high purpose in heart, the young man began. As he wrought, his hand grew steady, his conception cleared, each stroke became a master-stroke until with tearful exultation, the aged artist gave over into the hand of Leonardo da Vinci the task from which his own trembling hand was dropping, which task for da Vinci meant a world-wide reputation.
“I was invited,” said the late D. W. Richardson, “to give an address at St. Andrew’s University, and to listen in the evening to a lecture by another man—like myself, an outsider. I was not personally acquainted with this other man, but I knew that he filled an important judicial office in Scotland, and was considered one of the most able and learned, as well as one of the wittiest men in that country. He chose for his subject ‘Self-Culture,’ and for an hour held us in a perfect dream of pleasure. For my own part, I could not realize that the hour had fled. The lecture ended at seven o’clock, and at eight I found myself seated at dinner by the side of the lecturer, at the house of one of the university professors. In the course of the dinner I made some reference to the hall in which the exercises of the day had been held, how good it was for sound, and what a fine structure to look upon. ‘And did you like the way in which the stones were laid inside?’ asked my new friend. ‘Immensely,’ I replied, ‘the man who laid those stones was an artist who must have thought that his work would live through the ages.’ ‘Well, that is pleasant to hear,’ he said, ‘for the walls are my ain daein’.’ He had the Scottish accent when in earnest. ‘Fortunate man,’ I replied, ‘to have the means to build so fine a place,’ for I thought, naturally enough, that, being a rich man, he had built this hall at his own expense, and presented it to the university. ‘Fortunate, truly,’ he answered, ‘but not in that sense. What I mean is, that I laid every one of those stones with my ain hand. I was a working mason, and the builder of the hall gave me the job of laying the inside stone-work; and I never had a job in my life in which I took so much pride and so much pleasure.’
“While this man was working with his hands he was working also with his brain. He took his degree, went to the bar, and became a man honored throughout the country. We applauded his brilliant lecture; but those silent, beautiful stones before him, which echoed our applause, must, I think, have been to him one cheer more, and a big one.”
Be ambitious, my boy. Embrace every opportunity, for such “is the small end of a big thing.” The small end comes first and may be good as a handle. “My chance has come,” said Commodore Dewey to a naval captain with whom he dined just before leaving Washington to assume command of the Asiatic squadron early in 1898. “You know, Farragut did not get his chance till he was over sixty, but he took it, and—” something interfered with the conversation and the sentence was never finished in words, but the rest of it reverberated around the world from the roar of Dewey’s guns at Manila. Keep your eyes open. Hear, but say little. Count the cost before you bargain. Weigh matters before you buy, and if there is a possibility of success, grasp it. Spare no labor, nor shrink from danger, for in the words of Montrose,
“He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.”