Success but Seldom Accidental : Part 4

How to Get on in the World: A Ladder to Practical Success
By Major A.R. Calhoon

(Page 20 of 28)

Coleridge said of Davy: "There is an energy and elasticity in his mind, which enables him to seize on and analyze all questions, pushing them to their legitimate consequences. Every subject in Davy's mind has the principle of vitality. Living thoughts spring up like turf under his feet." Davy, on his part said of Coleridge, whose abilities he greatly admired: "With the most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and enlightened mind, he will be the victim of a want of order, precision, and regularity."

It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world so much as purpose and persistent industry. To the feeble, the sluggish and purposeless, the happiest accidents will avail nothing - they pass them by, seeing no meaning in them. But it is astonishing how much can be accomplished if we are prompt to seize and improve the opportunities for action and effort which are constantly presenting themselves. Watt taught himself chemistry and mechanics while working at his trade of a mathematical instrument maker, at the same time that he was learning German from a Swiss dyer. Stephenson taught himself arithmetic and mensuration while working as an engine-man, during the night shifts; and when he could snatch a few moments in the intervals allowed for meals during the day, he worked his sums with a bit of chalk upon the sides of the colliery wagons. Dalton's industry was the habit of his life.

He began from his boyhood, for he taught a little village school when he was only about twelve years old - keeping the school in winter, and working upon his father's farm in summer. He would sometimes urge himself and companions to study by the stimulus of a bet, though bred a Quaker; and on one occasion by his satisfactory solution of a problem, he won as much as enabled him to buy a winter's store of candles. He continued his meteorological observations until a day or two before he died - having made and recorded upward of 200,000 in the course of his life.

With perseverance, the very odds, and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value. An hour in every day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits would, if profitably employed, enable a person of ordinary capacity to go far toward mastering a science. It would make an ignorant man a well-informed one in less than ten years. Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learned worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened. Dr. Mason Good translated Lucretuis while riding in his carriage in the streets of London, going the round of his patients.

Dr. Darwin composed nearly all his works in the same way while driving about in his "sulky" from house to house in the country ==writing down his thoughts on little scraps of paper, which he carried about with him for the purpose. Hale wrote his "Contemplations" while traveling on circuit. Dr. Burney learned French and Italian while traveling on horseback from one musical pupil to another in the course of his profession. Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and fro from a lawyer's office; and we personally know a man of eminent position who learned Latin and French while going messages as an errand-boy.

Hugh Miller was a busy man of observant faculties, who studied literature as well as science, with zeal and success. The book in which he has told the story of his life("My Schools and Schoolmasters"), is extremely interesting, and calculated to be eminently useful. It is the history of the formation of a truly noble character in the most humble condition of life, and inculcates most powerfully the lessons of self-help, self-respect, and self- dependence. While Hugh was but a child, his father, who was a sailor, was drowned at sea, and he was brought up by his widowed mother. He had a school training after a sort, but his best teachers were the boys with whom he played, the men amongst whom he lived. He read much and miscellaneously, and picked up odd sorts of knowledge from many quarters - from workmen, carpenters, fishermen and sailors, and above all, from the old boulders strewed along the shores of the Cromarty Firth.

With a big hammer which had belonged to his great-grandfather, an old buccaneer, the boy went about chipping the stones, and accumulating specimens of mica, porphyry, garnet, and such like. Sometimes he had a day in the woods, and there, too, the boy's attention was excited by the peculiar geological curiosities which came in his way. While searching among the rocks on the beach, he was sometimes asked, in irony, by the farm-servants who came to load their carts with sea-weed, whether he "was getting' siller in the stane," but was so unlucky as never to be able to answer in the affirmative.

When of a suitable age he was apprenticed to the trade of his choice - that of a working stone-mason; and he began his laboring career in a quarry looking out upon the Cromarty Firth. This quarry proved one of his best schools. The remarkable geological formations which it displayed awakened his curiosity. The bar of deep-red stone beneath, and the bar of pale-red clay above, were noted by the young quarryman, who even in such unpromising subjects, found matter of observation and reflection. Where other men saw nothing, he detected analogies, differences, and peculiarities which set him a-thinking. He simply kept his eyes and his mind open; was sober, diligent and persevering; and this was the secret of his intellectual growth.

His curiosity was excited and kept alive by the curious organic remains, principally of old and extinct species of fishes, ferns, and ammonites, which were revealed along the coast by the washings of the waves, or were exposed by the stroke of his mason's hammer. He never lost sight of the subject, but went on accumulating observations and comparing formations, until at length, many years afterward, when no longer a working mason, he gave to the world his highly interesting work on the "Old Red Sandstone," which at once established his reputation as a scientific geologist. But this work was the fruit of long years of patient observation and research. As he modestly states in his autobiography, "The only merit to which I lay claim in the case is that of patient research - a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass me; and this humble faculty of patience, when rightly developed, may lead to more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself."

"Chance," said an old Vermont farmer, "is like going into a field with a pail, and waiting for a cow to come to you and back up to be milked."

"Shun delays, they breed remorse; Take thy time while time is lent thee; Creeping snails have weakest force, Fly their fault, lest You repent thee; Good is best when sooner wrought, Lingering labors come to naught.

"Hoist up sail while gale doth last, Tide and wind stay no man's pleasure! Seek not time when time is past, Sober speed is wisdom's leisure; After-wits are dearly bought, Let thy fore-wit guide thy thought.

"Time wears all his locks before, Take You hold upon his forehead; When he flees he turns no more, And behind his scalp is naked. Works adjourned have many stays, Long demurs breed new delays."

Published by the Christian Herald, Louis Klopsch, Proprietor, Bible House, New York.
Copyright 1895 by Louis Klopsch.