For a bright manhood, there is no such word as fail!”
True, many persevering persons fail as men call failure, but it is only like the tiger’s crouch before a high leap. Discovering the bounds through a sense of such, life thenceforth turns all its capacities into right and effective uses. “To change and to change for the better, are two different things,” says an old German proverb. Pestalozzi, the great educator, made several failures in early life, which he made stepping stones to success. Washington’s military career was a series of failures. He shared in Braddock’s defeat at Fort Duquesne. He was beaten at Long Island, driven from New York and forced to retreat through New Jersey and across the Delaware, when he suddenly turned like a lion at bay, recrossed the icy stream and overwhelmed the Hessians at Trenton. This rapid movement and his attack at Germantown first led observers like Frederick the Great to recognize his military genius. Peter Cooper failed in making hats, failed as a cabinet maker, locomotive builder and grocer, but as often as he failed he tried and tried again until he could stand upon his feet alone, then crowned his victory by giving a million dollars to help poor boys in time to come. Horace Greeley tried three or four lines of business before he founded the Tribune, and made it worth a million dollars. Patrick Henry failed as merchant and farmer, but resorting to law and politics was a brilliant success. Stephen A. Douglas made dinner tables, bedsteads and bureaus many a long year before he made himself a “giant” on the floor of Congress. Abraham Lincoln failed to make both ends meet by chopping wood, failed to earn his salt in the galley-slave life of a Mississippi flat-boatman; he had not even wit enough to run a grocery, and yet he made himself the grandest character of the nineteenth century, an emancipator of four million slaves. General Grant failed at everything. At the age of thirty-nine he was obscure, at forty-three his picture hung in the homes of the grateful millions. He first learned to tan hides, but could not sell leather enough to buy a pair of breeches, then teamed for forty dollars a month, then entered his father’s store at Galena, Illinois, as clerk, and to use his own words “nor had I any capacity to become one.” Then he enlisted as a soldier, was the hero of Appomattox, and eventually reached the highest position of honor this country can give—the Presidency. When Daniel Webster was told that his profession of law was overcrowded and that the chances were against him, he replied, “Overcrowded? There is always room at the top.” The condition of affairs is still the same. No reason can be produced why a persevering lad cannot make his way in the world to-day as in any other day, for as the philosopher Young declared, “Any man can do what any other man has done.”
“There is always a way to rise, my boy,
Always a way to advance!
Yet the road that leads to Mount Success
Does not pass by the way of Chance,
But goes through stations of Work and Strive,
Through the valley of Persevere,
And the man that succeeds, while others fail,
Must be willing to pay most dear.