“For there’s always a way to fail, my boy,
Always a way to slide,
And the men that you find at the foot of the hill
All sought for an easy ride.
So on and up, though the road be rough
And the storms come thick and fast,
There is room at the top for the man who tries,
And victory comes at last.”
BEGIN NOW.
My boy, be persevering. Form good resolutions. They mean success, triumph, victory. “He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution scales the barriers to it, and secures its achievement. To determine upon attainment is often attainment itself.” Aim high and pursue the path accordingly. Let others be indolent and indifferent, but press toward the goal of your ambition. As Mr. Dickens’ friend would have us understand, “It’s dogged does it.” “Eustace,” said William Carey, the founder of modern missions, to his wife, “if they write my life, and say I am a genius, they will say falsely; but if they say I can plod, they will tell the truth. Yes, Eustace, I can plod.” “Yes, sir,” said Whitcomb Riley to one who was nearly heartbroken, because his manuscripts were constantly returned, “through years, through sleepless nights, through almost hopeless days, for twenty years I tried to get into one magazine; back came my manuscripts eternally. I kept on. In the twentieth year that magazine accepted one of my articles. I was not a believer in the theory that one man does a thing much easier than any other man. Continuous, unflagging effort, persistence and determination will win. Let not the man be discouraged who has these.” “Peg away, keep pegging away,” was Lincoln’s reply to one who wanted to know what he intended to do concerning the cessation of the Civil War. Plan carefully and begin planning now. When Alexander was asked how he had been able to conquer the world, he said, “By not delaying.” Sir Robert Peel became a great orator and statesman by practising when a boy before his father, repeating to the best of his ability any address he heard. Kepler solved the laws of the planetary system, and exposed the absurd notions of the Ptolemic theory of axles and cranks by which the planets were strung together; but it took him seventeen years from the time he began until he met success, and then he exclaimed in his enthusiasm: “Nothing holds me! The die is cast! The book is written to be read now or by posterity, I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, since God has waited six thousand years for an observer.”