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Looking back upon the incidents of my city life, I
confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect for
those who do not succeed in life, as these words are commonly used. Heaven
has been said to be a place for those who have not succeeded upon earth;
and it is surely true that celestial graces do not best thrive and bloom
in the hot blaze of worldly prosperity. Ill success sometimes arises from
superabundance of qualities in themselves good, from a conscience too
sensitive, a taste too fastidious, a self-forgetfulness too romantic, a
modesty too retiring. I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet,
that
"The world knows
nothing of its greatest men;"
but there are forms of greatness, or at least
excellence, that die and make no sign; there are martyrs who miss the
palm, but not the stake; there are heroes without the laurel, and
conquerors without the triumph.
It cannot be denied that there is a class of men who
never succeed in business. With a fair amount of
earnest industry, they are still unable to get on. Bad luck seems to be
their fate, and they are perpetually railing at fortune. In this they are
not without sympathy. There are hundreds of simple, good-hearted people,
who regard them as ill-starred mortals, against whom an inscrutable
destiny had set itself, and who are always ready to pity their mischances
and help them in their last extremity. But is not that a very foolish
philosophy which refers the misfortunes or the prosperity of individuals
to preternatural causes, or even natural causes entirely foreign to the
persons? Some people, it is true, owe a great deal to accident. Much of
their success is due to circumstances not of their own making. So it is
with others who suffer disappointment or disaster. But in those cases in
which failure or success is certainly dependent on no extraneous
agencies, but on one's own means and energies, I am confident that no
little of the complaint of our hard lot is misdirected, and that the
charity which helps us out of our successive difficulties is misplaced.
In plain words, our failures in this or that thing are often attributable
to the fact that we engage in enterprises beyond our power. The world is
filled with examples of this truth. We see hundreds of men in all
professions and callings who never achieve even a decent living. The bar
of every city is crowded with them. They swell the ranks of our physicians
and theologians, and swarm in the walks of science and literature; in
short, they run against and elbow you everywhere. They
are the unfortunate people who have mistaken their mission. They
are always attempting tasks which they have not the first qualification to
perform. Their ambition is forever outrunning their capabilities. They
fancy that to call themselves lawyers, doctors, divines, or the like, is
to be what they are styled. Their signs are stuck thickly on doors and
shutters all over the city, but they are without honor or employment. Of
course they never prosper. They have no fitness for their vocation, no
practical skill, no natural talent, and hence they fail.
But both they and society are losers by this. There
is so much real ability for something useful that is thus sunk and wasted.
The community is encumbered with a host of very incompetent barristers,
preachers, physicians, writers, merchants, and so forth, and is deprived
of as many good mechanics, and farmers, and laborers. What a pity it is
that men will not be content to choose their pursuits according to their
abilities. To encourage them to persist in any business for which they are
not suited, and in which they never can obtain fortune or credit, is
really unkind. It would be much less cruel to let them early feel the
inconveniences of following a calling for which they are unfit, and go
into one for which nature may have given them the requisite aptitude and
powers.
But, in the ordering of
a good Providence, failure in one pursuit does not imply failure in the
next. I know and have proved this. The motto should
be to keep moving, to try it
again. Try it a hundred times, if you do not earlier succeed, and all the
while be studying to see if you have not failed through some negligence
and oversight of your own. Do not throw down your oars and drift stern
foremost, because the tide happens to be against you. The tide does not
always run the same way. Never anchor because the wind does not happen to
be fair. Beat to windward, and gain all you can until it changes. If you
get to the bottom of the wheel, hold on—never think of letting go. Let it
move which way it will, you are sure to go up.
If in debt, do not let time wear off the edge of the
obligation. Economize, work harder, spend less, and hurry out. If
misfortune should overtake you, do not sit down and mope, and let her walk
over you. Put on more steam, drive ahead, and get out of the way. If you
meet obstacles in your path, climb over, dig under, or go around
them—never turn back. If the day be stormy, you cannot mend matters by
whining and complaining. Be good-natured, take it easy, for assuredly the
sun will shine to-morrow.
If you lose money on a promising speculation, never
think of collecting a coroner's inquest about your dead body. Do not put
on a long face because money is not so plentiful as usual—it will not add
a single dollar to the circulating medium. Preserve your good-humor, for
there is more health in a single hearty laugh than in a dozen glasses of
rum. Be happy, and impart happiness to others. Look aloft,
and trust in God. Be prudent as you please, but do not bleach out
your hair, and pucker your face into wrinkles ten years ahead of time, by
a self-inflicted fit of the dismals.
I went into the country with a determination to
succeed. As others had there succeeded, I could not be induced to believe
that failure in so simple an enterprise could overtake me, as I felt
myself quite as competent as they. A resolute will overcomes all
difficulties. It was one of the leading characteristics of Napoleon to
regard nothing as impossible. His astonishing successes are to be
attributed to his indomitable will, scarcely less than to his vast
military genius. Wellington was distinguished for a similar peculiarity.
The entire Peninsular campaign was, indeed, but one long display of an
iron will, resolute to conquer difficulties by wearing them out. Alexander
the Great was quite as striking an example of what a powerful will can
effect. His stubborn determination to subdue the Persians; his
perseverance in the crisis of battle, and the emulation to which he thus
stimulated his officers and men, did more for his wonderful career of
victory than even his great strategic abilities. In the life and death
struggle between England and France, during the first fifteen years of
this century, it was the stubborn will of the former which carried the
day; for though Napoleon defeated the British coalitions again and again,
yet new ones were as constantly formed, until at last the French people,
if not their emperor, were completely worn out. The battle of Waterloo,
which was the climax of this tremendous
struggle, was also an illustration of the sustained energy, the superior
will of the British. In that awful struggle, French impetuosity proved
too weak for English resolution. "We will see who can pound the longest,"
said Wellington; and as the British did, they won the battle.
It is not only in military chieftains that a strong
will is a jewel of great price. Nations and individuals experience the
advantages of a resolute will; and this alike in large and small
undertakings. It was the determined will of our forefathers to which, with
divine help, we are principally indebted for our freedom. For the first
few years after the declaration of independence, we lost most of the
battles that were fought. New York and Philadelphia were successively
captured by the foe; South Carolina fell; New Jersey was practically reannexed to England; almost everything went against us. Had the American
people been feeble and hesitating, all would have been lost. But they
resolved to conquer or die. Though their cities were taken, their fields
ravaged, and their captured soldiers incarcerated in hideous prison-ships,
they still maintained the struggle, making the pilgrimage of freedom with
naked feet, that bled at every step. Had our fathers been incapable of
Valley Forge, had they shrunk from the storm-beaten march on Trenton, we
should never have been an independent nation. There are people in the Old
World, full of genius and enthusiasm for liberty, who yet cannot achieve
freedom, principally, perhaps, because they lack the indomitable will to
walk the bloody pilgrimage. The outbreak of the slaveholder's rebellion
covered the Union armies with defeat at numerous
points, because rebellions are always successful at the beginning. But the
determined will to crush out treason will eventually overwhelm and master
it.
A strong will is as necessary to the individual as
to the nation. Even intellect is secondary in importance to will. A
vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed aside,
in the race of life, by the man of determination. It is he who resolves to
succeed, who begins resolutely again at every fresh rebuff, that reaches
the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded wrecks of
business men who have wasted energy, and therefore courage and faith, and
have perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who
succeeded in making port. In fact, talent without will is like steam
dissipating itself in the atmosphere; while abilities controlled by energy
are the same steam brought under subjection as a motive power. Or will is
the rudder that steers the ship, which, whether a fast-sailing clipper or
a slow river-barge, is worthless without it. Talent, again, is but the
sail; will is what drives it. The man without a will is the puppet and
bubble of others by turns. The man with a will is the one that pulls the
strings and catches the dupes. Young man, starting out in life, have a
will of your own. If you do not, you will drag along, the victim of
perpetual embarrassment, only to end in utter
ruin. If you do, you will succeed, even though your abilities be moderate.
All this may be viewed as a digression. But it is
not so. I do not write for the rich and prosperous, but for those who have
been unsuccessful. They need encouragement and bracing up. If their
experience has been disastrous, that of others, who have succeeded,
should be set before them. Some fifty years ago there lived in this city
an old man, who by dint of tact, with the aid of keen perceptive
faculties, had acquired much celebrity with a large class of his neighbors
as something between a prophet and a fortune-teller. He did not, however,
assume the character either of a religious fanatic or of a crafty disciple
of Faustus. But he was well read in the Scriptures; he had a good share of
common sense, and a voluble tongue, and by degrees he attained a fame for
wise sayings and for capability to advise, which he owed more to his
natural talents and a loquacious disposition than to any less worthy
means. Being advanced in years, and his lot humble, he turned the good
opinion formed of him to the account of his livelihood, by discussing
questions put to him by his visitors in a frank and manly spirit; and
without ever demanding recompense, he was ready to receive any gratuity
that was offered by them on their departure. Moreover, his advice was
always, if not valuable, at least good in kind; and few quitted his humble
dwelling without leaving their good wishes in a substantial shape, or
without having also formed a favorable opinion of their mentor.
At length, so extensive did this good man's fame
become, that many from curiosity alone were induced to visit him, and hear
his wise sayings. His counsel was usually couched in short and terse
sentences; frequently in proverbs, and often in the language of the Bible,
to which he would sometimes refer his inquirers for passages which he said
would be found applicable to their case. As these passages were usually
selected from the Proverbs, and other books of somewhat similar
description, which contained some rule of morals, or which advocated the
Christian duties, he seldom failed to be right. Among, others who were
led by curiosity to this wise man, was a young farmer, then not long
entered upon the threshold of life, whom, after some of the Scripture
references adverted to, he dismissed with the parting advice, "To keep a
smiling countenance, and a good exertion." The young farmer lived to
become an old man, and is now gathered to his fathers. But for many years
I heard him from time to time revert with pleasure to his visit, and say
that this simple aphorism had frequently cheered him in the hour of
difficulty; and that the thought of the old man's contented countenance
and encouraging voice when he uttered it, had gone far to make him place
confidence in his counsel.
We are all too prone to brood over the clouds upon
our atmosphere, and too feebly do we keep the eye of hope fixed on the
first sunbeam which breaks through as the symbol of their dispersion. In
reality, most of them are merely passing clouds.
Some glances at a blacker picture still, will go far
to clothe with brighter hues the less gloomy picture which may happen to
be our own. Thus, with "a smiling countenance and a good exertion," let
every one of us, whether his lot be cast with the plough, the loom, or the
anvil, put forth manfully his powers, and, thankful to a gracious God for
the blessings yet spared, be it our effort in our worldly duties to follow
the example set us in higher things, "forgetting those things that are
behind, and reaching forth unto those which are before, let us press
towards the mark for the prize;" and if we thus demean ourselves, we shall
not fail, in earthly any more than in spiritual things, to obtain our
reward.
All know that one effect of the rebellion was to
paralyze nearly every kind of business, suddenly enriching the few, but as
suddenly impoverishing the many. On my quiet little plantation I was
entirely beyond the reach of its disastrous influence. It lost me no
money, because my savings had been loaned on mortgage. It is true that
interest was not paid up as punctually as aforetime, but the omission to
pay occasioned me no distress; hence I occasioned none by compulsory
collection. The summer of 1861, however, did reduce prices of most of my
productions. The masses had less money to spend, and therefore consumed
less. Yet my early consignments of blackberries sold for twenty-five cents
a quart, and the whole crop averaged fourteen. My strawberries yielded
abundantly, escaping the frost which nipped the first bloom of all
other growers, no doubt protected by the well-grown peach trees,
and netted me sixteen cents. Raspberries bore generously, and netted quite
as much; while peaches, though few in number, brought the highest prices.
The total income that year was certainly less than usual, by several
hundred dollars—but what of that? It was double what I needed to support
my family. Thus, no national disaster, no matter how tremendous, seems
able to impoverish the farmer who is free from debt. Nothing short of the
tramp of hostile armies over his green fields can impoverish such a man.
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