The Book of Courage Part 4

A well known writer for young people was also persistent in tracing a story to its source. When he came to America from his native Holland he heard for the first time the story of the Dutch hero who stopped the hole in the dike, a story unknown in Holland. He resolved to prove or disprove this. The record of his long search was published later. Not only did he prove the existence of the boy, but he proved that the boy's sister was a partner in the heroic deed. Thus the helpful story has been saved for future generations.

These incidents make interesting reading. But do they not do more?

Surely it is unnecessary to urge the lesson of persistence in a task seriously undertaken. Often there is temptation to slight some worth-while task, after one has worked on it painstakingly for a time.

"Why pay so much attention to detail?" is asked. "Surely no real harm will be done if I give less time to some of these things that seemed so important at the beginning!"

Fortunately there are mult.i.tudes of workers who are const.i.tutionally unable to slight a task. The proofreader on a paper of large circulation is an example. It is a part of her work to prove statements made, to verify facts and figures, to see that these are altogether accurate.

Once when there was an unusual pressure of work the editor suggested that she might wish to take certain things for granted, but she showed her conscientious thoroughness by performing the task to the end, according to the rules of the office, and in the face of weariness that was almost exhaustion.

It may not be given to you to be a historian. You may not be called upon to prove the story of a hero. It may not be your task to read proof or to verify ma.n.u.scripts. But each one has a definite part in the work of the world and there is no one to whom the example of historian and proofreader is without value. All need to remember the truth in the a.s.surance, "There is nothing so hard but search will find it out."

V

TOILING

Two young people were pa.s.sing out of a building where they had just listened to a speaker of note.

"What a wonderful talk that was!" said one who found it a heavy cross to make the simplest address in public. "I wish I had such a gift of speech."

"It isn't a gift in his case; it is an acquirement," was the response.

"If you had known that man five years ago, you would agree with me. When I first knew him he could not get up in a public meeting and make the simplest statement without floundering and stammering in a most pitiful manner. But he had made up his mind to be a public speaker, and he put himself through a severe course of discipline. To-day you see the result."

The biography of Dr. Herrick Johnson tells of courageous conquest of difficulties that seemed to block the way to success: "Hamilton College has always given great attention to public speaking and cla.s.s orations.

The high standard was set by a remarkably gifted man, Professor Mandeville, who inst.i.tuted a system in the study of oratory and public speaking which has been known ever since, with some modification, as the 'Mandeville System.'"

"In 1853, Dr. Anson J. Upson was in the Mandevillian chair, and had lifted up to still greater height the standard of public speaking, and had awakened a great, inextinguishable enthusiasm for it. Not one of the boys who entered that year, and who were at that prize-speaking contest, could fail to be seized with the public-speaking craze. It especially met Herrick Johnson's taste and trend and gifts, and fired his highest aim. Probably there was nothing he wanted so much as the prize in his cla.s.s at the next commencement. But unfortunately his standards and ideals of public speaking were just then as far as possible from the Mandevillian standard. He had acquired what was called a ministerial tone, and other faults fatal to any success, unless eradicated. The best speakers of the upper cla.s.ses were the recognized and accepted 'drillers' of the new boys, who at once put themselves under their care and criticism. Every spring and fall a certain valley with a grove, north of the college, was the resort of the aspirants for success at this time. The woods would ring with their 'exercises' and strenuous declamation, and I presume it is the same to-day.

"Herrick Johnson had a magnificent voice, well-nigh ruined by his sins against the right method of using it. He soon saw that it was going to be essential for him to go down to the foundation of his wrong methods and break them all up and absolutely eradicate his 'tone.' It was no easy thing to do, but the young man was intensely ambitious, and so he worked with the greatest energy. He failed of an appointment on the 'best four' of his Freshman cla.s.s. But he worked away throughout his Soph.o.m.ore year and failed again. The uppercla.s.smen saw his pluck, they recognized his grand voice, and they worked with him during his Junior year, until he had mastered the Mandevillian style, wholly eradicated his 'tone,' corrected all defects, and got his appointment for one of the best four speakers of the Junior year; and on the prize-speaking night of that commencement, he went on the platform conscious of his power and swept everything before him as the Junior prize speaker. It set the standard for that young man. Voice, manner, address, were all masterful and accounted easily for his great success as a public speaker through all his subsequent prominent and successful career in his profession."

A part of the good of "speaking a piece" is to try again, determined to retrieve failure. Success is not always a good thing for a boy or a girl, any more than for a man or a woman. The discipline of failure is sometimes needed. To fail is not always a calamity, if the failure leads to the correction of the faults that lead to failure. Whether it be speaking a piece or learning a lesson or facing a trying situation in business, no matter how many times one has failed, he needs to take to heart the message of Macbeth:

We fail!

But screw your courage to the sticking-point, And we'll not fail.

Always there is a reward for those who fight against difficulties, who persist in their struggle even when failure follows failure. Everyday the glad story of the sequel to such persistent struggles is recorded.

The records of commercial life, of school life, of home life are full of these.

VI

CONQUERING INFIRMITY

Of all obstacles that can stand in the way of courageous conquest, one of the most fatal, in the opinion of many, is blindness. Yet it is not necessary that the loss of the eyes should be the fatal handicap it is almost universally considered. It is a mistake to feel that when a worker has anything seriously and permanently wrong with his eyes he cannot be expected longer to perform tasks that are normal for one who has the full use of all his five senses. In fact, when we hear that a man is going blind we are apt to dismiss with a sigh his chance for continuing productive labor of any sort; we feel that there is little left for him but sitting resignedly in a chimney corner and listening to others read to him or patiently fingering the raised letters provided for the use of the blind.

In protest against this error a novelist has taken for his hero a young man who lost his sight. His friends pitied him, talked dolefully to him, promised to look after him in the days of incapacity. Of course he sank lower and lower in the doleful dumps. Then one came into his life who never seemed to notice his blindness, who talked to him as if he could see, who encouraged him to do things by taking it for granted that they would be performed. Her treatment proved effective; before long the blind man was learning self-reliance, and was well on the road to achievement.

The story was true to life for, times without number, blind men and women have shown their ability to work as effectively as if they could see. More than two hundred years ago a teacher in London named Richard Lucas lost his eyesight. Many of his friends thought that he would, of course, give up all idea of being a useful man; in that day few thought of the possibility of one so afflicted doing anything worth much. But the young man thought differently. He listened to others as they read to him, and completed his studies. He became the author of a dozen volumes, and was among the leaders of his day. One of his greatest works was the book "An Enquiry after Happiness." He knew how to be happy, in spite of his affliction, so he could teach others to follow him.

A little earlier there lived on the farm of a poor Irishman the boy Thomas Carolan. When he was five years old, he had smallpox, a disease that was much more virulent in those days than it is to-day because the treatment required was not understood. As a result the boy lost his sight. Soon he showed a taste for music, and he was able to take a few lessons, in spite of the poverty at home. As a young man he composed hundreds of pieces of music, and it has been said of him that he contributed much towards correcting and enriching the style of national Irish music.

Another youthful victim of smallpox was Thomas Blacklock, the son of a bricklayer in Scotland. "He can't be an artisan now," his friends said.

But it did not occur to them that he could be a professional man. His father read him poetry and essays. When he was only twelve the boy began to write poetry in imitation of those whose verses he had heard. After his father's death, when the blind boy was but nineteen, he was more than ever dependent on himself. By the help of a friend he was enabled to go to school for a time. Then he became an author, and, later, a famous preacher. Often, as he walked about, a favorite dog preceded him.

On one occasion he heard the hollow sound of the dog's tread on the board covering a deep well, and just in time to avoid stepping on the board himself. The covering was so rotten that he would surely have fallen into the water.

As a boy Francis Huber, of Geneva, Switzerland, was a great student. He insisted on reading by the feeble light of a lamp, or by the light of the moon, even when he was urged not to do so, and the result was blindness. A few years later he married one who rejoiced to be "his companion, his secretary and his observer." He became the greatest authority of his day on bees, although he knew nothing of the subject until after his misfortune. The strange thing is that all his conclusions were based on observation. Among other things he studied the function of the wax, the construction of their combs, the bees' senses and their ability to ventilate the hive by means of their wings. In recognition of his work he was given members.h.i.+p in a number of learned societies. His name must always be connected with the history of early bee investigation.

Not long after the close of the American Revolution James Holman, a British naval officer, lost his eyesight while in Africa. He was then about twenty-five years old. Later he became one of the best known travelers of his day. The world was told of his travels in lectures and in books, and others were also inspired to travel. "What is the use of traveling to one who cannot see?" he was asked at one time. "Does every traveler see all he describes?" he replied. He said that he felt sure he visited, when on his travels, as many interesting places as others, and that, by having the things described to him on the spot, he could form as correct a judgment as his own sight would have enabled him to do.

In 1779 Richmond, Virginia, gave birth to James Wilson, who lost his sight when he was four years old, because of smallpox. He was then on s.h.i.+pboard, and was taken to Belfast, Ireland, where he grew to manhood.

When a boy he delivered newspapers to subscribers who lived as far as five miles from the city. When fifteen he used part of his earnings to buy books which he persuaded other boys to read to him. At twenty-one he entered an inst.i.tution for the blind, for fuller instruction. Then he joined with a circle of mechanics in forming a reading society. One friend promised to read to him every evening such books as he could procure. The hours for reading were from nine to one every night in summer and from seven to eleven every night in the winter. "Often I have traveled three or four miles, in a severe winter night, to be at my post in time," he said once. "Perished with cold and drenched with rain, I have many a time sat down and listened for several hours together to the writings of Plutarch, Rollins, or Clarendon." After seven or eight years of this training, he was "acquainted with almost every work in the English language" his biographer says, perhaps a little extravagantly.

His education he used in literary work.

B. B. Bowen was a Ma.s.sachusetts boy just a century ago. When a babe he lost his sight. In 1833 Dr. Howe--husband of Julia Ward Howe--selected him as one of six blind boys on whom he was to make the first experiments in the instruction of the blind. Later he wrote a book of which eighteen thousand copies were sold.

Another of the men who proved the loss of sight was not a bar to successful work was Thomas R. Lounsbury, the Yale scholar whose studies in Chaucer and Shakespeare made him famous. Toward the close of his busy life he was engaged in a critical study of Tennyson, preparatory to writing an exhaustive book on the life of the great poet. He did not live to complete the work, but he left it in such shape that a friend was able to put it in the hands of the publishers.

In the Introduction to the biography this friend told of the courageous manner in which Professor Lounsbury faced threatening blindness and continued his writing in spite of the danger. We are told that his eyes, never very good, failed him for close and prolonged work. "At best he could depend upon them for no more than two or three hours a day.

Sometimes he could not depend upon them at all. That he might not subject them to undue strain, he acquired the habit of writing in the dark. Night after night, using a pencil on coa.r.s.e paper, he would sketch a series of paragraphs for consideration in the morning. This was almost invariably his custom in later years. Needless to say, these rough drafts are difficult reading for an outsider. Though the lines could be kept reasonably straight, it was impossible for a man enveloped in darkness to dot an _i_ or to cross a _t_. Moreover, many words were abbreviated, and numerous sentences were left half written out. Every detail, however, was perfectly plain to the author himself. With these detached slips of paper and voluminous notes before him, he composed on a typewriter his various chapters, putting the paragraphs in logical sequence."

Francis Parkman, the historian who made the Indian wars real to fascinated readers, was a physical wreck on the completion of "The Oregon Trail," when he was but twenty-five years old. He could not write even his own name, except with his eyes closed; he was unable to fix his mind on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous system was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. But he would not give up. During the weary days of darkness he thought out the story of the conspiracy of Pontiac and decided to write it. Physicians warned him that the results would be disastrous, yet he felt that nothing could do him more harm than an idle, purposeless life.

One of his chief difficulties he solved in an ingenious manner. In a ma.n.u.script, published after his death, his plan was described:

"He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the size and shape of a sheet of letter paper. Stout wires were fixed horizontally across it, half an inch apart, movable back of thick pasteboard fitted behind them. The paper for writing was placed between the pasteboard and wires, guided by which and using a black-lead crayon, he could write not illegibly with closed eyes."

This contrivance, with improvements, he used for about forty years of semi-blindness.

The doc.u.ments on which he depended for his facts were read to him, though sometimes for days he could not listen, and then perhaps only for half an hour at a time. As he listened to the reading he made notes with closed eyes. Then he turned over in his mind what he had heard and laboriously wrote a few lines. For months he penned an average of only three or four lines a day. Later he was able to work more rapidly and he completed the book in two years and a half. No publisher was found who was willing to bear the expense of issuing the volume, and the young man paid for the plates himself.

Friends thought that now he would have to give up. His eyes were still troubling him, he became lame, his head felt as if great bands of iron were fastened about it, and frequently he did not sleep more than an hour or two a night. Then came the death of his wife, on whom he had depended for some years. At one time his physician warned him that he had not more than six months to live. But when a friend said that he had nothing more to live for, he made the man understand that he was not ready to hoist the white flag.

He lived for forty-five years after it was thought that he could never use his eyes again, and during all this time he worked steadily and patiently, accomplis.h.i.+ng what would have been a large task for a man who had the full use of all his powers.

An Englishman was told by his physician he could never see again. For a time the news weighed heavily upon him. Afterward he said: "I remained silent for a moment, thinking seriously, and then, summoning up all the grit I possessed, I said, 'If G.o.d wills it, He knows best. What must be will be. And,' I added, putting my hand up to a tear that trickled down my face, 'G.o.d helping me, this is the last tear I shall ever shed for my blindness.'" It was. He secured the degrees of doctor of philosophy and master of arts. He was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Chemical Society. He made many valuable scientific discoveries and inventions, saved a millionaire's life, and received the largest fee ever awarded any doctor--$250,000.

To these men difficulties were a challenge to courage. They accepted the challenge and proved themselves superior to circ.u.mstances. Thus their lives became a challenge to the millions of their countrymen who read of their triumph.

CHAPTER THREE

_THE COURAGE OF INDUSTRY_

ANYBODY can drift, but only the man or woman of courage can breast the current, can fight on upstream.

It is so easy to be idle or to work listlessly. Average folks drift heedlessly into occupations in which they have no special interest and for which they have as little fitness. Most people waste their evenings or use them to little profit: it never occurs to them that each day they waste precious hours. They give more thought to schemes to do less work than to attempts to increase output.