WHY SOME SUCCEED · While Others Fail. SUCCESS AND FAILURE. YOUNG man, two ways are open before you in life. One points to degredation and want. The other to usefulness and wealth. In the old Grecian races one only, by any possible means, could gain the prize, but in the momentous race of human life there is no limiting of the prize to one. No one is debarred from competing; all may succeed, provided the right methods are followed. Life is not a lottery. Its prizes are not distributed by chance. There can hardly be a greater folly, not to say presumption, than that of so many young men and women who, on setting out in life, conclude that it is no use to mark out for themselves a course, and then set themselves with strenuous effort to attain some worthy end who conclude, therefore, to commit themselves blindly to the current of circumstances. Is it anything surprising that those who aim at nothing, accomplish nothing in life? No better result could reasonably be expected. Twenty clerks in a store; twenty apprentices in a ship-yard; twenty young men in a city or village all want to get on in the world; most of them expect to succeed. One of the clerks will become a partner, and make a fortune; one of the young men will find his calling and succeed. But what of the other nineteen? They will fail; and miserably fail, some of them. They expect to succeed, but they aim at nothing; content to live for the day only, consequently, little effort is put forth, and they reap a reward accordingly. Luck! There is no luck about it. The thing is almost as certain as the "rule of three." The young man who will distance his competitors is he who will master his business; who lives within his income, saving his spare money; who preserves his reputation; who devotes his leisure hours to the acquisition of knowledge; and who cultivates a pleasing manner, thus gaining friends. We hear a great deal about luck. If a man succeeds finely in business, he is said to have "good luck.” He may have labored for years with this one object in view, bending every energy to attain it. He may have denied himself many things, and his seemingly sudden Success may be the result of years of hard work, but the world looks in and says: "He is lucky." Another man plunges into some hot-house scheme and loses: "He is unlucky." Another man's nose is perpetually on the grind-stone; he also has "bad luck." No matter if he follows inclination rather than judgment, if he fails, as he might know he would did he but exercise one-half the judgment he does possess, yet he is never willing to ascribe the failure to himself-he invariably ascribes it to bad luck, or blames some one else. Luck! success. There is no such factor in the race for Rufus Choate once said, "There is little in the theory of luck which will bring man success; but work, guided by thought, will remove mountains or tunnel them." Carlyle said, "Man know thy work, then do it." How often do we see the sign: "Gentlemen wILL not; OTHERS MUST NOT loaf in this room." True, gentlemen never loaf, but labor. Fire-flies shine only in motion. It is only the active who will be singled out to hold responsible positions. The fact that their ability is manifest is no sign that they are lucky. Thiers, of France, was once complimented thus: "It is marvelous, Mr. President, how you deliver long improvised speeches about which you have not had time to reflect." His reply was: "You are not paying me a compliment; it is criminal in a statesman to improvise speeches on public affairs. Those speeches I have been fifty years preparing." Daniel Webster's notable reply to Hayne was the result of years of study on the problem of State Rights. Professor Mowry once told the following story: "A few years ago a young man went into a cotton factory and spent a year in the card room. He then devoted another year to learning how to spin; still another how to weave. He boarded with a weaver, and was often asking questions. Of course he picked up all kinds of knowledge. He was He was educating himself in a good school, and was destined to graduate high in his class. He became superintendent of a small mill at $1,500 a year. One of the large mills in Fall River was running behind hand. Instead of making money the corporation was losing. They needed a first-class man to manage the mill, and applied to a gentleman in Boston well acquainted with the leading men engaged |