The Mainspring of Success.

HON. FREDERICK ROBIE.

President First National Bank, Portland, Me.

HE supreme agency for gaining success in any calling is the mind. It is sometimes said, and more often thought, that the greatest cause of success is labor-meaning energy of body, strength of muscle. It is often stated that muscular labor produces the wealth of the world. This is a great mistake. Intellect is mightier, and of more importance to success and the highest degree of happiness, than manual labor. Indeed, mere muscular energy does but a very small part of the world's work to-day. It is by no means the greatest or the most efficient agent in the production of wealth, or in gaining success in any worthy calling. The product of a few brains is now doing by far the richest, largest, and most important part of the world's work of this nineteenth century. What wonderful machinery for using the mighty unseen forces of nature the brains of a few men have produced!

We have in this country sixty-five millions of people. Yet in the United States, machinery, the product of brains, is doing an amount of work, day by day, that would require the utmost exertion of the muscles of more than a thousand millions of men to perform. Skill and power are not of the nerve, but of the mind. He, therefore, who teaches a man how to handle a tool effectively, or who produces a labor saving machine, is as much a producer of the world's food and wealth as he who uses them. Indeed, he is much more a benefactor to his fellows than he can be who simply employs his muscle in the production of food and wealth. A teacher, therefore, is, in the highest sense, as much a producer of the world's wealth and food supply as

is the mechanic or the farmer. Nay, he is often much more so. He who taught James Watt the principles of mechanics that led him to that memorable walk around Glasgow green to evolve the "separate condensor," did more to enrich the world than any ten million laborers that ever lived. Now, just as a man may have great strength of body, yet do nothing worthy of it, so a man may have in him great mental sources of wealth, yet be very poor because he does not develop them. He may be richly endowed for the most eminent success, yet be a failure. The exhaustless well is in him, but he does not draw from it for his own and others' benefit.

It is a fact that every step of progress that has been taken since the world stood, has first been taken by some one man, or, at the most, some few men who were distinguished above their fellows by a superior energy, or foresight, or inventive faculty. Look over the chief events of history. Who caused them? Men of energy. Who were the actors in them? Individuals of energy, never the great masses of men. Who stand on the mountain heights as men of foresight or invention? Individuals, not the masses. Who climb the mountains? Only

a few men of energy. The laggards are at the foot. What is energy? Power in action. When not in action, power is not energy. Who talks of the energy of the stagnant water? But we do of steam; that is only the water in action. Have you inherent power? They who have it are sometimes, but not always, conscious of it. Often it needs the repression of poverty and the fires of adversity to develop it. Is that your condition? Then get up steam and use your power. Aspire after great ideals; great things; great men, of whom the world. has not a few. Do not be content to be commonplace. Strike out for something worthy. The general level of humanity is yet very low indeed, even in our civilized lands. Determine to rise, and so elevate others. You can do it. Don't be discouraged by a sneer or a laugh. Commonplace folk too often seem to have a common interest in wishing all to be commonplace like themselves. But if humanity were reduced to a common

level, either commercially, socially, intellectually, morally, or physically, what a world it would be! There is abundant work for you. Resolve to rise, therefore. Do not stay where you are. Reach out and up. If you would elevate others, climb to the heights yourself. Some one will be at the head and lead the van; why not you?

That keen intellectual scold, Carlyle, was wont to speak of the masses as the "plurality of blockheads." Whether it is an apt designation or not, you can perhaps tell; but, if you would reach success, you must give heed to Nature's laws, and use your brains and moral sense vigorously. Thrift and unthrift are not equal powers, nor will they ever be. One or the other rules you, and will ever rule you.

Whatever men of science may say as to action and reaction being equal in the physical universe, yet it is a fact that in the higher realms of the intellectual and the moral, Nature abhors an equilibrium and gives her chief honors to those who seek the heights. Success is not a matter of luck. Nature's laws cannot be neglected, nor defied with impunity. The laws which govern the production of wealth, or insure success in all worthy callings, are in the most absolute sense her laws, and the will of man can only be their servant and never their master. Do not for one moment imagine that because you may take no heed of Nature's laws in the conduct of your business, or in the government of your life, that therefore Nature will take no heed of you. Nature is never neglectful, lax, nor lazy; and she invariably demands interest on all her deposits. If she has given you power for success, you must use it, or forfeit it. It is her decree that power unused shall be dissipated. The heat and the steam that would drive an engine soon part with all their force if we do not use them. There is no mystery about success. Nature gives it to him who wills. The road to it is open to all who will take the journey, but, alas! that road is never crowded. There are tens of thousands to whom nature has given much of intelligence, very much of opportunity for success, but who, to the grief of their friends, never succeed

because they neglect or refuse to put forth sufficient effort to gain the prize. Again and again you may see such men ignominiously distanced in the race by those who have but a fraction of their ability. Why? Because they do not "stir up the gift that is in them."

Look at what a single man of energy may do. In the archives in the Atheneum at Hartford, Connecticut, there is carefully preserved a small strip of poor paper that has a most wonderful interest for the thoughtful. To a casual observer it is nothing but a simple telegram sent to Baltimore from the Supreme Court Chamber at Washington, D. C., on May 24, 1844, by the daughter of the then Commissioner of Patents. In telegraphic symbols, it reads, "What hath God wrought?" It is but a bit of paper, yet it represents a marvelous story of many disappointments, of toil, privation, poverty, suffering, and a final triumph that revolutionized the business. world; that multiplied immensely its stores of wealth, and brought the triumph of righteousness a thousand years nearer to us. That little paper is the first public message ever sent over the electric telegraph in the United States, by its inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse.

There were hundreds who listened to those lectures on electricity given by Prof. J. F. Dana before the New York Atheneum in the winter of 1826, but they were apparently and practically lost on all but one of his audience, the son of a clergyman, and a recent graduate of Yale, who was then earning a living and gaining some notice by painting portraits. The effect of that lecture upon him was to awaken a great interest in Franklin's discovery, to crowd out his love of art, and to set him about those long continued experiments that resulted in giving to the world its present system of telegraphy. It is not needful here to recount fully his twelve years of struggle, first to perfect and then to introduce his invention; of the scorn of his fellow men, who considered it a useless toy, and him a deluded, weak-brained enthusiast; of his fruitless journey to Europe to interest the stranger in it; of his return, when he wrote, "I am

without a farthing in my pocket, and have to borrow even for my meals, and, even worse than this, I have incurred a debt for rents"; of his having to go twenty-four hours at a time without food, because of his great poverty; of his efforts to prevent the theft of his invention; of his oft-repeated and oftdenied prayer to Congress for aid to practically apply for public use his discovery on a larger scale than he could then do; of the grant, in jest, in the closing moment of the 27th Congress of an appropriation of $30,000, given largely to stop his begging; of the almost failure, and then the splendid triumph, to the utter confusion of the doubters; of the vexatious lawsuits by jealous rivals; of the public acknowledgment of his right to the invention; of the homeless father gathering once more under his own roof his motherless and scattered children; and then the nations of the world showering their gifts of medals, decorations, orders of knighthood, and purses of gold upon the shrinking, modest man, so long despised and rejected, who had annihilated space on earth for them, and made the antipodes to be their neighbors, and the secret of whose world-wide fame was his unconquerable energy that would not brook a defeat, much less despair of final success.

It is the example of such men, who, in spite of the mocking crowd, persist in yoking the forces of heaven to do earth's work, and tell her story, that should stir up the latent energies of your soul to a determination to win success, position, and honor, which lie within your grasp, and can be had by every one who is willing to pay the price.