Architects of Fate Part 1

Architects of Fate.

by Orison Swett Marden.

PREFACE.

The demand for more than a dozen editions of "Pus.h.i.+ng to the Front"

during its first year and its universally favorable reception, both at home and abroad, have encouraged the author to publish this companion volume of somewhat similar scope and purpose. The two books were prepared simultaneously, and the story of the first, given in its preface, applies equally well to this.

Inspiration to character-building and worthy achievement is the keynote of the present volume, its object, to arouse to honorable exertion youth who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions in those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success, to encourage and stimulate to higher resolve those who are setting out to make their own way, with perhaps neither friends.h.i.+p nor capital other than a determination to get on in the world.

Nothing is so fascinating to a youth with high purpose, life, and energy throbbing in his young blood as stories of men and women who have brought great things to pa.s.s. Though these themes are as old as the human race, yet they are ever new, and more interesting to the young than any fiction. The cry of youth is for life! more life! No didactic or dogmatic teaching, however brilliant, will capture a twentieth-century boy, keyed up to the highest pitch by the pressure of an intense civilization. The romance of achievement under difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant ends; the story of how great men started, their struggles, their long waitings, amid want and woe, the obstacles overcome, the final triumphs; examples, which explode excuses, of men who have seized common situations and made them great, of those of average capacity who have succeeded by the use of ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose: these will most inspire the ambitious youth. The author teaches that there are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who has the grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf; that the barriers are not yet erected which declare to aspiring talent, "Thus far and no farther"; that the most forbidding circ.u.mstances cannot repress a longing for knowledge, a yearning for growth; that poverty, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been able to bar the progress of men with grit; that poverty has rocked the cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbarism, and have led the world up from savagery to the Gladstones, the Lincolns, and the Grants.

The book shows that it is the man with one unwavering aim who cuts his way through opposition and forges to the front; that in this electric age, where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumbling-blocks and defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and victories to the strong and determined. The author teaches that every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage, and that true success follows every right step. He has tried to touch the higher springs of the youth's aspiration; to lead him to high ideals; to teach him that there is something n.o.bler in an occupation than merely living-getting or money-getting; that a man may make millions and be a failure still; to caution youth not to allow the maxims of a low prudence, dinned daily into his ears in this money-getting age, to repress the longings for a higher life; that the hand can never safely reach higher than does the heart.

The author's aim has been largely through concrete ill.u.s.trations which have pith, point, and purpose, to be more suggestive than dogmatic, in a style more practical than elegant, more helpful than ornate, more pertinent than novel.

The author wishes to acknowledge valuable a.s.sistance from Mr. Arthur W.

Brown, of W. Kingston, R. I.

O. S. M.

43 BOWDOIN ST., BOSTON, Ma.s.s.

December 2, 1896.

ARCHITECTS OF FATE.

CHAPTER I.

WANTED--A MAN.

"Wanted; men: Not systems fit and wise, Not faiths with rigid eyes, Not wealth in mountain piles, Not power with gracious smiles, Not even the potent pen: Wanted; men."

Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man.--JEREMIAH.

All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a man!

Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man,--it is you, it is I, it is each one of us! . . . How to const.i.tute one's self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it.--ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

"'Tis life, not death for which we pant!

'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant: More life and fuller, that we want."

I do not wish in attempting to paint a man to describe an air-fed, unimpa.s.sioned, impossible ghost. My eyes and ears are revolted by any neglect of the physical facts, the limitations of man.--EMERSON.

But nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth her n.o.bly born, And laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and rank to scorn; She moulds with care a spirit rare, half human, half divine, And cries exulting, "Who can make a gentleman like mine?"

ELIZA COOK.

"In a thousand cups of life," says Emerson, "only one is the right mixture. The fine adjustment of the existing elements, where the well-mixed man is born with eyes not too dull, nor too good, with fire enough and earth enough, capable of receiving impressions from all things, and not too susceptible, then no gift need be bestowed on him.

He brings his fortune with him."

Diogenes sought with a lantern at noontide in ancient Athens for a perfectly honest man, and sought in vain. In the market place he once cried aloud, "Hear me, O men;" and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully: "I called for men, not pygmies."

The world has a standing advertis.e.m.e.nt over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling; "Wanted--A Man."

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"

though all the world say "Yes."

Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one facility to stunt or paralyze his other faculties.

Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.

A thousand pulpits vacant in a single religious denomination, a thousand preachers standing idle in the market place, while a thousand church committees scour the land for men to fill those same vacant pulpits, and scour in vain, is a sufficient indication, in one direction at least, of the largeness of the opportunities of the age, and also of the crying need of good men.

Wanted, a man who is well balanced, who is not cursed with some little defect or weakness which cripples his usefulness and neutralizes his powers. Wanted, a man of courage, who is not a coward in any part of his nature.

Wanted, a man who is symmetrical, and not one-sided in his development, who has not sent all the energies of his being into one narrow specialty, and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and die. Wanted, a man who is broad, who does not take half views of things. Wanted, a man who mixes common sense with his theories, who does not let a college education spoil him for practical, every-day life; a man who prefers substance to show, who regards his good name as a priceless treasure.

Wanted, a man "who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose pa.s.sions are trained to heed a strong will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself."

G.o.d calls a man to be upright and pure and generous, but he also calls him to be intelligent and skillful and strong and brave.

The world wants a man who is educated all over; whose nerves are brought to their acutest sensibility, whose brain is cultured, keen, incisive, penetrating, broad, liberal, deep; whose hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic, whose heart is tender, broad, magnanimous, true.

The whole world is looking for such a man. Although there are millions out of employment, yet it is almost impossible to find just the right man in almost any department of life. Every profession and every occupation has a standing advertis.e.m.e.nt all over the world: "Wanted--A Man."

Rousseau, in his celebrated essay on education, says: "According to the order of nature, men being equal, their common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters little to me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. Nature has destined us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination concerning society. To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _Let him first be a man_; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another as she pleases, he will be always found in his place."

A little, short doctor of divinity in a large Baptist convention stood on a step and said he thanked G.o.d he was a Baptist. The audience could not hear and called "Louder." "Get up higher," some one said. "I can't," he replied. "To be a Baptist is as high as one can get." But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a _man_.

As Emerson says, Talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty?

is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody?

does he stand for something? He must be good of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand, all that State Street, all that the common sense of mankind asks.

When Garfield was asked as a young boy, "what he meant to be," he answered: "First of all, I must make myself a man, if I do not succeed in that, I can succeed in nothing."

Montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to train a man.

One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health.

It is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse throughout his body, who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice.

Pope, the poet, was with Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller, the artist, one day, when the latter's nephew, a Guinea slave-trader, came into the room.

"Nephew," said Sir G.o.dfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "I don't know how great men you may be,"

said the Guinea man, "but I don't like your looks. I have often bought a much better man than either of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."

Sydney Smith said, "I am convinced that digestion is the great secret of life, and that character, virtue and talents, and qualities are powerfully affected by beef, mutton, pie crust, and rich soups. I have often thought I could feed or starve men into virtues or vices, and affect them more powerfully with my instruments of torture than Timotheus could do formerly with his lyre."