Pushing to the Front Part 17

Only thoughts that breathe in words that burn can kindle the spark slumbering in the heart of another.

Rare consecration to a great enterprise is found in the work of the late Francis Parkman. While a student at Harvard he determined to write the history of the French and English in North America. With a steadiness and devotion seldom equaled he gave his life, his fortune, his all to this one great object. Although he had, while among the Dakota Indians, collecting material for his history, ruined his health and could not use his eyes more than five minutes at a time for fifty years, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the high purpose formed in his youth, until he gave to the world the best history upon this subject ever written.

After Lincoln had walked six miles to borrow a grammar, he returned home and burned one shaving after another while he studied the precious prize.

Gilbert Becket, an English Crusader, was taken prisoner and became a slave in the palace of a Saracen prince, where he not only gained the confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair daughter. By and by he escaped and returned to England, but the devoted girl determined to follow him. She knew but two words of the English language--_London_ and _Gilbert_; but by repeating the first she obtained pa.s.sage in a vessel to the great metropolis, and then she went from street to street p.r.o.nouncing the other--"Gilbert." At last she came to the street on which Gilbert lived in prosperity. The unusual crowd drew the family to the window, when Gilbert himself saw and recognized her, and took to his arms and home his far-come princess with her solitary fond word.

The most irresistible charm of youth is its bubbling enthusiasm. Youth sees no darkness ahead,--no defile that has no outlet,--it forgets that there is such a thing as failure in the world, and believes that mankind has been waiting all these centuries for him to come and be the liberator of truth and energy and beauty.

Of what use was it to forbid the boy Handel to touch a musical instrument, or to forbid him going to school, lest he learn the gamut?

He stole midnight interviews with a dumb spinet in a secret attic. The boy Bach copied whole books of studies by moonlight, for want of a candle churlishly denied. Nor was he disheartened when these copies were taken from him. The painter West began in a garret, and plundered the family cat for bristles to make his brushes.

It is the enthusiasm of youth which cuts the Gordian knot age cannot untie. "People smile at the enthusiasm of youth," says Charles Kingsley; "that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back to with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it."

How much the world owes to the enthusiasm of Dante!

Tennyson wrote his first volume at eighteen, and at nineteen gained a medal at Cambridge.

"The most beautiful works of all art were done in youth," says Ruskin.

"Almost everything that is great has been done by youth," wrote Disraeli. "The world's interests are, under G.o.d, in the hands of the young," says Dr. Trumbull.

It was the youth Hercules that performed the Twelve Labors.

Enthusiastic youth faces the sun, it shadows all behind it. The heart rules youth; the head, manhood. Alexander was a mere youth when he rolled back the Asiatic hordes that threatened to overwhelm European civilization almost at its birth. Napoleon had conquered Italy at twenty-five. Byron and Raphael died at thirty-seven, an age which has been fatal to many a genius, and Poe lived but a few months longer.

Romulus founded Rome at twenty. Pitt and Bolingbroke were ministers almost before they were men. Gladstone was in Parliament in early manhood. Newton made some of his greatest discoveries before he was twenty-five. Keats died at twenty-five, Sh.e.l.ley at twenty-nine.

Luther was a triumphant reformer at twenty-five. It is said that no English poet ever equaled Chatterton at twenty-one. Whitefield and Wesley began their great revival as students at Oxford, and the former had made his influence felt throughout England before he was twenty-four. Victor Hugo wrote a tragedy at fifteen, and had taken three prizes at the Academy and gained the t.i.tle of Master before he was twenty.

Many of the world's greatest geniuses never saw forty years. Never before has the young man, who is driven by his enthusiasm, had such an opportunity as he has to-day. It is the age of young men and young women. Their ardor is their crown, before which the languid and the pa.s.sive bow.

But if enthusiasm is irresistible in youth, how much more so is it when carried into old age! Gladstone at eighty had ten times the weight and power that any man of twenty-five would have with the same ideals. The glory of age is only the glory of its enthusiasm, and the respect paid to white hairs is reverence to a heart fervent, in spite of the torpid influence of an enfeebled body. The "Odyssey" was the creation of a blind old man, but that old man was Homer.

The contagious zeal of an old man, Peter the Hermit, rolled the chivalry of Europe upon the ranks of Islam.

Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, won battles at ninety-four, and refused a crown at ninety-six. Wellington planned and superintended fortifications at eighty. Bacon and Humboldt were enthusiastic students to the last gasp. Wise old Montaigne was shrewd in his gray-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of gout and colic.

Dr. Johnson's best work, "The Lives of the Poets," was written when he was seventy-eight. Defoe was fifty-eight when he published "Robinson Crusoe." Newton wrote new briefs to his "Principia" at eighty-three.

Plato died writing, at eighty-one. Tom Scott began the study of Hebrew at eighty-six. Galileo was nearly seventy when he wrote on the laws of motion. James Watt learned German at eighty-five. Mrs. Somerville finished her "Molecular and Microscopic Science" at eighty-nine.

Humboldt completed his "Cosmos" at ninety, a month before his death.

Burke was thirty-five before he obtained a seat in Parliament, yet he made the world feel his character. Unknown at forty, Grant was one of the most famous generals in history at forty-two. Eli Whitney was twenty-three when he decided to prepare for college, and thirty when he graduated from Yale; yet his cotton-gin opened a great industrial future for the Southern States. What a power was Bismarck at eighty!

Lord Palmerston was an "Old Boy" to the last. He became Prime Minister of England the second time at seventy-five, and died Prime Minister at eighty-one. Galileo at seventy-seven, blind and feeble, was working every day, adapting the principle of the pendulum to clocks. George Stephenson did not learn to read and write until he had reached manhood. Some of Longfellow's, Whittier's, and Tennyson's best work was done after they were seventy.

At sixty-three Dryden began the translation of the "Aeneid." Robert Hall learned Italian when past sixty, that he might read Dante in the original. Noah Webster studied seventeen languages after he was fifty.

Cicero said well that men are like wine: age sours the bad and improves the good.

With enthusiasm we may retain the youth of the spirit until the hair is silvered, even as the Gulf Stream softens the rigors of northern Europe.

"How ages thine heart,--towards youth? If not, doubt thy fitness for thy work."

CHAPTER XIV.

"ON TIME," OR THE TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS

"On the great clock of time there is but one word--NOW."

Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of five hundred millions of miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second,--no, not the millionth part of a second,--for ages and ages of which it traveled that imperiled road.--EDWARD EVERETT.

"Who cannot but see oftentimes how strange the threads of our destiny run? Oft it is only for a moment the favorable instant is presented.

We miss it, and months and years are lost."

By the street of by and by one arrives at the house of never.--CERVANTES.

"Lose this day by loitering--'t will be the same story tomorrow, and the next more dilatory."

Let's take the instant by the forward top.--SHAKESPEARE.

"Haste, post, haste! Haste for thy life!" was frequently written upon messages in the days of Henry VIII of England, with a picture of a courier swinging from a gibbet. Post-offices were unknown, and letters were carried by government messengers subject to hanging if they delayed upon the road.

Even in the old, slow days of stage-coaches, when it took a month of dangerous traveling to accomplish the distance we can now span in a few hours, unnecessary delay was a crime. One of the greatest gains civilization has made is in measuring and utilizing time. We can do as much in an hour to-day as they could in twenty hours a hundred years ago.

"Delays have dangerous ends." Caesar's delay to read a message cost him his life when he reached the senate house. Colonel Rahl, the Hessian commander at Trenton, was playing cards when a messenger brought a letter stating that Was.h.i.+ngton was crossing the Delaware. He put the letter in his pocket without reading it until the game was finished, when he rallied his men only to die just before his troops were taken prisoners. Only a few minutes' delay, but he lost honor, liberty, life!

Success is the child of two very plain parents--punctuality and accuracy. There are critical moments in every successful life when if the mind hesitate or a nerve flinch all will be lost.

"Immediately on receiving your proclamation," wrote Governor Andrew of Ma.s.sachusetts to President Lincoln on May 3, 1861, "we took up the war, and have carried on our part of it, in the spirit in which we believe the Administration and the American people intend to act, namely, as if there were not an inch of red tape in the world." He had received a telegram for troops from Was.h.i.+ngton on Monday, April 15; at nine o'clock the next Sunday he said: "All the regiments demanded from Ma.s.sachusetts are already either in Was.h.i.+ngton, or in Fortress Monroe, or on their way to the defence of the Capitol."

"The only question which I can entertain," he said, "is what to do; and when that question is answered, the other is, what next to do."

"The whole period of youth," said Ruskin, "is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies--not a moment of which, once pa.s.sed, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron."

Napoleon laid great stress upon that "supreme moment," that "nick of time" which occurs in every battle, to take advantage of which means victory, and to lose in hesitation means disaster. He said that he beat the Austrians because they did not know the value of five minutes; and it has been said that among the trifles that conspired to defeat him at Waterloo, the loss of a few moments by himself and Grouchy on the fatal morning was the most significant. Blucher was on time, and Grouchy was late. It was enough to send Napoleon to St. Helena, and to change the destiny of millions.

It is a well-known truism that has almost been elevated to the dignity of a maxim, that what may be done at any time will be done at no time.

The African a.s.sociation of London wanted to send Ledyard, the traveler, to Africa, and asked when he would be ready to go. "To-morrow morning," was the reply. John Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent, was asked when he could join his s.h.i.+p, and replied, "Directly." Colin Campbell, appointed commander of the army in India, and asked when he could set out, replied without hesitation, "To-morrow."

The energy wasted in postponing until to-morrow a duty of to-day would often do the work. How much harder and more disagreeable, too, it is to do work which has been put off! What would have been done at the time with pleasure or even enthusiasm, after it has been delayed for days and weeks, becomes drudgery. Letters can never be answered so easily as when first received. Many large firms make it a rule never to allow a letter to lie unanswered overnight.

Promptness takes the drudgery out of an occupation. Putting off usually means leaving off, and going to do becomes going undone. Doing a deed is like sowing a seed: if not done at just the right time it will be forever out of season. The summer of eternity will not be long enough to bring to maturity the fruit of a delayed action. If a star or planet were delayed one second, it might throw the whole universe out of harmony.

"There is no moment like the present," said Maria Edgeworth; "not only so, there is no moment at all, no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hopes from them afterward. They will be dissipated, lost in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence."

Cobbett said he owed his success to being "always ready" more than to all his natural abilities combined.

"To this quality I owed my extraordinary promotion in the army," said he. "If I had to mount guard at ten, I was ready at nine; never did any man or anything wait one minute for me."

"How," asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much, and in so short a time?" "When I have anything to do, I go and do it,"