“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”
AMERICAN BOYS.
Never in the history of any people did boys have so much in their favor to assist them in reaching the pinnacle of success as American boys. Back of them is an ancestry of the best blood of the leading nations of the world, an ancestry noted for persistence, reverence, piety and patriotism.
The educational institutions of the land have “turned out” thousands of young men who have beaten their pathway upward in spite of adverse circumstances, all of which seems to say to the boy to-day, “There’s room at the top in whatever profession you may follow.” A good beginning is the most necessary thing, for “it is half the battle.” In any race a man can well afford to miss applause at the starting-line, if he gets it at the goal. A slow but determined start is not incompatible with a swift conclusion. Experienced mountain-climbers seem almost lazy, so calmly do they put one foot in front of the other; but they stand well-breathed on the summit, while their comrades are panting at the halfway station. One must not swerve to the right or left, but, setting his face toward duty, like Marcus Curtius who rode to death in the Roman Forum, he must push forward, with an honest ambition to reach the goal of success. It is not always the boy of aristocratic birth, wealthy parentage or social standing that wins the world’s laurels, but usually those boys who are unfortunately situated, who hew their way in the world instead of having it laid out and smoothed for them.
One of our Presidents, when asked what was his coat-of-arms, remembering that he had been a chopper of wood in his youth, replied, “A pair of shirt-sleeves.” Lord Tenterden was proud to point out to his son the shop in which his father had shaved for a penny. A French doctor once taunted Flechier, bishop of Nimes, who had been a tallow-chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which Flechier replied, “If you had been born in the same condition that I was, you would still have been a maker of candles.”
Where is the boy with nobility of soul and purpose, who, though poor, is not tidy; who, being of humble origin, is not industrious; who, ridiculed by others, is not kind; and who, cramped by circumstances, is not heroic? That boy will rise to honor and fill an important place in life. He, like other boys of this country, may be a star rather than a flashing meteor in the realm of society.
ASPIRING BOYS.
From a farm to the Presidential chair seems a long distance, but Abraham Lincoln traveled it, and left behind him a name and reputation never to die. Andrew Johnson began life as a tailor and subsequently rose to be the chief officer of the nation. George Peabody was an apprentice in a country store, and ended as a millionaire philanthropist. Cyrus W. Field was in early life a clerk, but the world is indebted to him for the successful completion of the Atlantic cable. Samuel F. B. Morse, from an artist, became the inventor of the electric telegraph. Charles Dickens, the great novelist, began life as a newspaper reporter. Levi P. Morton was a clerk, John Wanamaker a messenger-boy, Lyman J. Gage a night-watchman and James Whitcomb Riley a wandering sign-painter. The record, instead of being in the tens, could be increased to thousands of statesmen, governors, generals, business and professional men who have risen from the farm, the shop, the store, to important offices within the nation’s gift. There is no reason why a boy cannot make his way in the world. He may not be President, or banker, or lawyer, but he can fill an honorable position. He may be a master mechanic, a model business man, a useful educator, if he is willing to begin at the lowest round in the ladder, namely, neatness.
Boys are men of a smaller growth, and if they fail to cultivate self-respect, it means the blighting of manhood, the ostracism of society, and the closing of the gate of opportunities to success. Self-respect is a robe with which every boy should clothe himself. It lies at the root of all virtues. It begets a stability of character, is the sentinel of the soul as the eyelid of the eye, and the corner-stone of all virtues.