James Ferguson, the Scotch astronomer, was very anxious when a boy to understand the mechanism of watches. His father refused to allow him to play with his watch, and so James waited until a stranger called with a watch. “Will you be good enough to tell me what time it is?” asked the boy. The gentleman told him. “Would you be willing that I should look at your watch?” continued James. “Certainly,” replied the gentleman. The boy took the watch eagerly. After examining it for a moment he asked, “What makes that box go round?” “A steel spring,” replied the owner. “How can a steel spring in a box turn it round so as to wind up all the chain?” The gentleman explained the process. “I don’t see through it yet,” answered the boy. “Well, now,” said the visitor, who had become interested, “take a long, thin piece of whale-bone, hold one end of it fast between your thumb and forefinger, and wind it around your finger. It will then attempt to unwind, and if you fix the other end of it to the inside of a small hoop and leave it to itself it will turn the hoop round and round and wind up a thread tied to the outside.” “I see it! I see it!” exclaimed the boy, enthusiastically. “Thank you, very much!” It was not long before he had made a wooden watch, which he enclosed in a case about the size of a teacup. Soon after this he was set to watching sheep by night. Here he took an interest in the stars with as great a zeal as in the watch and ere long became noted as a great astronomer.
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.
Boys of to-day are living in the most enlightened age, when everything is an improvement of the past. Time was when man lived in caves, now in mansions; when he sailed the rivers in dug-outs of trees, now in steamers; when he traveled overland in ox-carts, now on steam cars; when he depended on fire or candle light to banish darkness, now electricity; when he spun cotton and wove it by a crude hand machine, now the spinning jenny and power loom; when he wrote on the bark of a tree with a sharpened iron or stick, now on the finest paper with a typewriter; when he sent messages by swift runners, now by telegraph. He now holds communication with other continents by cable, brings distant worlds near with the telescope, examines a single hair of a fly with the microscope and harnesses the elements of nature in his forward movement. All things are conquered, utilized and perfected by industry. “Fortune,” as one said, “is ever on the side of the industrious, as winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.” There is no reason why any industrious boy should not reach the pinnacle of success. To do so will doubtless mean struggles, hard thinking, careful planning, but the end pays for all.
My boy, remember there is a place for you in the world. A place honorable, useful, influential, but it demands tireless exertion, steadfastness of purpose, carefulness of detail to reach and hold it. To neglect is to invite suffering in the future. “If I neglect my practice a day,” said Malibran the singer, “I see the difference in my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all the world knows my failure.”
Don’t wait my lad, for something to “turn up.” “Things,” said Garfield, “don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.” While ninety-nine persons wait for chances that never come, the one hundredth realizing upon his irresistible strength and determination, makes his chance. “Never mind. What is the next thing to be done?” asked young Huxley, when he failed to pass the medical examination on which he thought his future depended. Looking back in after years at his defeat, the great scientist wrote, “It does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble. It is only the people who have to stop and be washed who must lose the race.”
“When I was a boy on my father’s farm in Connecticut,” said Collis P. Huntington,—the man who had a hundred thousand people in his employ, “I worked hard, utilizing every moment, for there was plenty to do. But if I had any spare time I did chores for the neighbors. I never wanted for anything I needed! I always got it. But many buy things they do not need. When I went to New York in 1836 I had quite a sum of money, the result of my savings, judicious investments, and little tradings about the neighborhood.” He had an aim in life, and he worked till he accomplished it. That person who has not a definite purpose cannot expect to succeed. Philip, King of Macedon, lost his eye from a bowshot. When the soldiers picked up the shaft they perceived upon it these words, “To Philip’s eye!” The archer had an aim that accomplished something, and he that has not, cannot.
“It’s the boys to shape the path for men,
Boys to guide the plow and pen,
Boys to forward the task begun,
For the world’s great task is never done.