UCCESS
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 PETER COOPER.
 
 HOW SUCCESS IS WON 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. SARAH K. BOLTON 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 BOSTON 
 LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1885, 
 
 BY 
 D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights rtseruuL 
 
 \
 
 TO MY ONLY SON, 
 
 WHOSE /NTEREST IN THESE SKETCHES HAS MADE TH 
 WRITING OF THEM A PLEASURE. 
 
 432337
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. PETER COOPER 7 
 
 II. JOHN B. GOUGH .22 
 
 III. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. ... 42 
 
 IV. JOHN WANAMAKER 59 
 
 V. HENRY M. STANLEY 74 
 
 VI. JOHNS HOPKINS 95 
 
 VII. WILLIAM M. HUNT 114 
 
 VIII. ELIAS HOWE, JR 132 
 
 IX. ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS . . . .152 
 
 X. THOMAS A. EDISON 174 
 
 XI. DR. WM. T. G. MORTON . . . . 195 
 
 XII. REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. . . . 221
 
 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 I. PETER COOPER. 
 
 ON the seventh of April, 1883, the great city of 
 New York was in mourning. Flags were at 
 half-mast. The bells tolled. Shops were closed, and 
 in the windows the picture of a kind-faced, white- 
 haired man was draped in black. All day long tens 
 of thousands passed by an open coffin in All Souls' 
 Church : Governors and millionnaires, poor women 
 with little children in their arms, workmen in their 
 common clothes, and ragged newsboys all with ach- 
 ing hearts. The great dailies like the Tribune and 
 Herald, gave six columns to the sad event. Messages 
 of sympathy were cabled from England. 
 
 Who was this man whom the world mourned on 
 this April day ? 
 
 Was he a President ? Oh, no. A great general ? 
 7
 
 8 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Far from it. \Qne-tfh9 ve d magnificently and had 
 splendid carriages and diamonds ? Not at all. 
 
 He was simply Pete'r Cooper, ninety-two years old, 
 the best-loved man in America. 
 
 Had he given money ? Yes ; but other men in our 
 rich country do that. Had he travelled abroad, and 
 so become widely known ? No. He would never go 
 to Europe, because he wished to use his money in a 
 different way. 
 
 Why, then, was he loved by a whole nation? for 
 even the Turks, Parsees and Hindoos talked about 
 him. A New York journalist gives this truthful 
 answer: 
 
 Peter Cooper went through his long life as gentle as a sweet 
 woman, as kind as a good mother, and as honest and guileless as 
 a man could live, and remain human. 
 
 Some boys would be ashamed to be considered as 
 gentle as a girl. Not so Peter Cooper. 
 
 He was born poor, and always was willing that 
 everybody should know it. He despised pride. When 
 his old chaise and horse came down Broadway, every 
 cartman and omnibus driver turned aside for him. 
 Though a millionnaire, he was their friend and
 
 PETER COOPER. 9 
 
 brother, and they were personally proud and fond of 
 him. He gave away more than he kept. He found 
 places for the poor to work if possible, gave money if 
 they were worthy, and though one of the busiest men 
 in America, always took time to be kind. 
 
 His sunny face was known everywhere. His pas- 
 tor, Rev. Robert Collyer, said this of him : 
 
 His presence, wherever he went, lay like a bar of sunshine 
 across a dark and troubled day, so that I have seen it light up 
 some thousands of care-worn faces as if they were saying who 
 looked on him, "It cannot be so bad a world as we thought, 
 since Peter Cooper lives in it and gives us his benediction." 
 
 And how did this poor boy come to his success 
 and his honor ? 
 
 By his own will and perseverance. Nobody could 
 have more obstacles to overcome. His parents had 
 nine children to support and no money. His father 
 moved from town to town, always hoping to do bet- 
 ter, forgetting the old adage, that " A rolling stone 
 gathers no moss." When Peter was born, the fifth 
 child, he was named after the Apostle Peter, because 
 his father said : " This boy will come to something." 
 But he proved feeble, unable to go to school only one
 
 IO HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 year in his life, and then only every other day. When 
 he was eight years old, his father being a hatter, he 
 pulled hair from rabbit skins, for hat pulp. Year 
 after year he worked harder than he was able, but 
 he was determined to win. When his eight little 
 brothers and sisters needed shoes, he ripped up an 
 old one, and thus learning how they were made, there- 
 after provided shoes for the whole family. A boy 
 with this energy would naturally be ambitious. At 
 seventeen, bidding good-by to his anxious mother, he 
 started for New York to make his fortune. He had 
 carefully saved ten dollars of his own earnings ; a 
 large sum, it seemed to him. Soon after he arrived, 
 he saw an advertisement of a lottery, where if one 
 bought a ticket, he would probably draw a prize. He 
 thought the matter over carefully. If he made some 
 money, he could help his mother. He purchased a 
 ticket, and drew a blank ! The ten dollars gone, 
 Peter was penniless. Years after, he used to say, 
 "It was the cheapest piece of knowledge I ever 
 bought; " for he never touched games of chance after- 
 ward. 
 
 Day after day the tall, slender boy walked the streets
 
 PETER COOPER. II 
 
 of New York, asking for work. At last, perseverance 
 conquered, and he found a place in a carriage shop, 
 binding himself as apprentice for five years, for his 
 board and two dollars a month. He could buy no 
 good clothes. He had no money for cigars, or pleas- 
 ures of any kind. He helped to build carriages for 
 rich men's sons to ride in, but there were no rides 
 for him. It is an old saying, that " Everybody has to 
 walk at one end of life," and they are fortunate who 
 walk at the beginning and ride at the close. 
 
 When his work was over for the day, his shop-mates 
 ridiculed him because he would not go to the taverns 
 for a jovial time; but he preferred to read. Making 
 a little money by extra work, he hired a teacher, to 
 whom he recited evenings. He was tired, of course, 
 but he never complained, and made many friends 
 because he was always good-natured. He used to 
 say to himself, " If I ever get rich, I will build a place 
 where the poor boys and girls of New York may have 
 an education free." How absurd it seemed that a 
 boy who earned only fifty cents a week for five years, 
 should ever think of being rich, and establishing 
 reading rooms and public institutions. Yet the very
 
 i a HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 kind and quality of his dreams was an earnest of 
 future success and greatness. 
 
 When Peter became of age, Mr. Woodward, who 
 owned the carriage factory, called him into his office. 
 "You have been very faithful," he said, " and I will 
 set you up in a carriage manufactory of your own ; 
 you could pay me back for the money borrowed in a 
 few years." 
 
 Peter was astonished. This was a remarkable offer 
 to a poor young man, but he had made a solemn 
 resolution never to go in debt, and he declined it, 
 though with gratitude. Mr. Woodward was now as 
 greatly astonished as Peter had been, but he respected 
 his good judgment in the matter. 
 
 The young mechanic now found a situation in a 
 woollen mill at Hempstead, Long Island, at nine 
 dollars a week. Here he invented a shearing machine, 
 which proved so valuable, that he made five hundred 
 dollars in two years. With so much money as this, 
 he could not rest until he had visited his mother. 
 He found his parents overwhelmed in trouble on 
 account of their debts, gave them the entire five hun- 
 dred dollars, and promised to meet the other notes
 
 PETER COOPER. 13 
 
 his father had given as they became due. His father 
 had made no mistake, evidently, in naming him after 
 the Apostle Peter. 
 
 Meantime the young man had fallen in love, not 
 with a foolish girl who cared only for dress, and her 
 own pretty face, but with one who had a fine mind 
 and lovely disposition. Sarah Bedell was worthy of 
 him. After fifty-six years of married life, she died 
 on the anniversary of her wedding day. Her husband 
 said, " She was the day-star, the solace and the inspir- 
 ation of my life." When their first baby was born, he 
 invented a self-rocking cradle for it, with a fan 
 attached, to keep off the flies, and a musical instru- 
 ment to soothe the child to sleep. 
 
 He now moved to New York and opened a grocery 
 store. An old friend advised him to buy a glue fac- 
 tory which having been mismanaged, was for sale. 
 He knew nothing of the business, but he had faith in 
 himself that he could learn it, and he soon made not 
 only the best glue, but the cheapest in the country. 
 For thirty years he carried on this business almost 
 alone, with no salesman, and no bookkeeper. He rose 
 every morning at daylight, kindled his factory fires,
 
 14 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 worked all the forenoons making glue, and afternoons 
 selling it, keeping his accounts, writing his letters and 
 reading in the evenings, with his wife and children. 
 He continued to work thus when his income had 
 reached thirty thousand dollars a year, not because 
 he was over economical, but that he might some day 
 carry out the purpose of his life, to build his free 
 school for the poor. He had no time for parties or 
 pleasures, but when the people of New York, because 
 he was both honest and intelligent, urged him to be 
 one of the City Council, and President of the Board 
 of Education, he dared not refuse if he could help 
 his own city. How different such a life from that of 
 a man, who, enjoying all the advantages of a govern- 
 ment, does not even take time to vote. 
 
 Mr. Cooper's business prospered. Once when his 
 glue factory burned, with a loss of forty thousand 
 dollars, before nine o'clock the next morning, lumber 
 was on the ground for a new building, three times 
 the size of the former. He now built a rolling mill 
 and furnace in Baltimore. At that time, only thirteen 
 miles of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad had been 
 completed, and the directors were about to give up
 
 PETER COOPER. 15 
 
 the work, discouraged, because they thought no en- 
 gine could make the sharp turns in the track. Mr. 
 Cooper needed the road in connection with his roll- 
 ing mill ; nothing could discourage him. He imme- 
 diately went to work to make the first locomotive ever 
 constructed in America, attached a box car to it, in- 
 vited the directors to get in, took the place of engi- 
 neer himself, and away they flew over the thirteen 
 miles in an hour. The Directors took courage, and 
 the road was soon finished. Years after, when Mr. 
 Cooper had become famous, and the hospitality of 
 the city of Baltimore was offered him, the old engine 
 was brought out to the delight of the assembled thou- 
 sands. 
 
 Mr. Cooper soon erected at Trenton, N. J.,the largest 
 rolling mill in the United States, a large blast furnace 
 in Pennsylvania, and steel and wire works in various 
 parts of the State. He bought the Andover iron 
 mines, and built eight miles of railroad in a rough 
 country, over which he carried forty thousand tons a 
 year. The poor boy who once earned only twenty- 
 five dollars yearly, had become a millionnaire ! No 
 good luck accomplished this. Hard work, living
 
 1 6 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 within his means, saving his time, not squandering 
 it as some men do, talking with every person they 
 meet, common sense, which led him to look carefully 
 before he invested money, promptness, and the sacred 
 keeping of his word, these were the characteristics 
 which made him successful. 
 
 Mr. Cooper was honorable in every business trans- 
 action. Once he said to Mr. Edward Lester, a 
 friend who had an interest in the Trenton works, " I 
 do not feel quite easy about the amount we are mak- 
 ing. Working under one of our patents, we have a 
 monopoly which seems to me something wrong. 
 Everybody has to come to us for it, and we are mak- 
 ing money too fast : it is not right." The price was 
 immediately reduced. A rare man indeed was Peter 
 Cooper, to lower the price simply because the world 
 greatly needed the article he had to sell ! 
 
 He was now sixty-four. For forty years he had 
 worked day and night to earn money to build his 
 Free College. He had bought the ground between 
 Third and Fourth avenues, and Seventh and Eighth 
 streets, some time previously, and now for five whole 
 years he watched the great, six-story, brown-stone
 
 PETER COOPER. If 
 
 building as it grew under his hands. The once 
 penniless lad was building into these stones for all 
 future generations, the lessons of his industry, econ- 
 omy, perseverance, and noble heart. In a box in the 
 corner stone he placed these words : 
 
 The great object that I desire to accomplish by the erection 
 of this Institution is to open the avenues of scientific knowl- 
 edge to the youth of our city and country, and so unfold the 
 volume of Nature, that the young may see the beauties of crea- 
 tion, enjoy its blessings, and learn to love the Author from 
 whom cometh every good and perfect gift. 
 
 But would the poor young men and women of New 
 York, who worked hard all day, care for educa- 
 tion ? Some said no. But Mr. Cooper looking back 
 to his boyhood and young manhood believed that 
 the people loved books, and would use an opportunity 
 to study them. 
 
 And when the grand building was opened, with 
 its library, class-rooms, hall, and art rooms, stu- 
 dents crowded in from the shops and the factories. 
 Some were worn and tired, as Peter Cooper was in 
 his youth, but they studied eagerly despite their 
 weariness.
 
 l8 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Every Saturday night two thousand came together in 
 the great hall to hear lectures from the most famous 
 people in the country. Every year nearly five hun- 
 dred thousand read in the Library and Free Read- 
 ing Room. Four thousand pupils came to the night- 
 schools to study science and art. 
 
 For many years this labor of love has been carried 
 on. The white-haired, kind-faced man went daily 
 to see the students who loved him as a father. His 
 last act was to buy ten type-writers for the girls in the 
 department of telegraphy. Has the work paid ? Ask 
 the forty thousand young men and women who have 
 gone out from the institution to earn an honorable 
 support, with not a cent to be paid for their educa- 
 tion. No person is accepted who does not expect 
 to earn his living, for Mr. Cooper had no love for 
 weak, idle youth who depend on their parents and 
 on the hope of an inherited wealth. 
 
 The work has now outgrown the building, and 
 another million dollars is needed as a monument to 
 the noble benefactor who gave two millions to found 
 Cooper Institute. Of the fifteen hundred who ap- 
 plied one year for admission to the School of Art for
 
 PETER COOPER. 19 
 
 Woman, only five hundred could be received, for 
 lack of room. The graduates from this department 
 one year, and the members of the following class, 
 earned over twenty-seven thousand dollars in twelve 
 months. Three pupils taught drawing in nineteen 
 of the Public Schools of New York City. One 
 taught twenty-five hours a week, in eight Public 
 Schools, at two dollars an hour. Several engraved 
 on wood for Harper and Brothers, and for the Cen- 
 tury Company. One scholar became the head of 
 the Decorative Art Society in New Orleans, with 
 a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a month, 
 earning nearly as much in outside work. Another, 
 with a photographer in Concord, N. H., received 
 twelve hundred a year. The superintendent of 
 schools at Winona, Miss., received one thousand 
 dollars the first year, and she was promised more 
 afterwards. One lady earned twelve hundred dollars 
 a year in a decorating establishment in Boston. One 
 designed in the Britannia works at Meriden, Conn. 
 One, having married a man of means, opened a 
 " Free School of Art," with fifty pupils, to show her 
 gratitude to Mr. Cooper.
 
 20 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Is it any wonder when Peter Cooper died, that 
 thirty-five hundred came up from the Institution to 
 lay roses upon his coffin ? 
 
 His last words to his daughter, Mrs. Abraham 
 Hewitt, and his son, ex-Mayor Cooper, and their 
 families, as they stood around his death-bed, were, 
 not to forget Cooper Union. They have just given 
 one hundred thousand dollars to it. The influence 
 of this noble charity will be felt as long as the Re- 
 public endures. It has given an impulse to the 
 study of art, opened a door for women as well as 
 men, and shown to the world that in America work 
 is honorable for all. 
 
 Peter Cooper came to highest honors. The learned 
 and the great sought his home. He was president 
 of three telegraph companies, one of the fathers of 
 the Atlantic Cable, and was nominated for the Presi- 
 dency of the United States by the National Indepen- 
 dent party, in 1876, but he died as he had lived, the 
 same gentle, unostentatious, unselfish man. He said 
 a short time before his death : " My sun is not 
 setting in clouds and darkness, but is going down 
 cheerfully in a clear firmament, lighted up by the
 
 PETER COOPER. 21 
 
 glory of God. . . I seem to hear my mother call- 
 ing me, as she used to do when I was a boy : ' Peter, 
 Peter, it is about bed-time ! ' " 
 
 NOTE. For many of these facts I am indebted to Professor J. C. Zachos, 
 Curator of Cooper Institute, and to Mrs. Susan N. Carter, Principal of the 
 Woman'* Art School
 
 II. JOHN B. GOUGH. 
 
 IT was a cold Sabbath evening in October. A 
 young man walked the streets of a Massachu- 
 setts city Worcester shivering and despairing. 
 The windows he passed were warm and golden 
 with the light of home, but he was homeless and 
 penniless. Those who knew him turned away with- 
 out any token of recognition. His hands trembled, 
 his steps were unsteady, his brain throbbed, he 
 wished he were dead. Later he stood by a rail- 
 road track with a bottle of laudanum pressed to 
 his lips ; but to take his own life seemed to him, 
 outcast though he was, too cowardly. But what 
 was the cause of this wretchedness ? Ah, this 
 young man was a drunkard, loathsome and de- 
 spised. 
 
 And had he expected to be an outcast, a drunk- 
 ard, at twenty-five ? Oh, no ; he took at first only 
 a glass of beer with his boyish companions. He
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 23 
 
 was very social, and he wanted to enjoy life. He 
 could, of course, control himself. He never ex- 
 pected to " form a taste for liquors," as the saying 
 goes. But, as nearly always, the serpent fastened 
 its coils about him, and at last he was helpless. 
 
 His life had been a peculiarly bitter one. Born 
 in a very humble home at Sandgate, on the Eng- 
 lish coast, gleaning with his mother and sister 
 after the reapers, that they might have bread to eat, 
 or cleaning knives and shoes in the gentleman's 
 house where his father was a servant, there was 
 little to make a boy's life bright. When he was 
 twelve, a family offered to bring him to America 
 if his parents would pay fifty dollars for his pas- 
 sage. It was difficult to earn this, but his mother 
 thought, after the manner of mothers, " Perhaps 
 in the New World our John will be somebody." 
 So, with tears, she packed his scanty clothing, 
 putting in a little Bible, and pinning these lines 
 on a shirt : 
 
 Forget me not when death shall close 
 These eyelids in their last repose ; 
 And when the murmuring breezes wave
 
 24 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 The grass upon your mother's grave, 
 O then, whate'er thy age or lot 
 May be, my child, forget me not. 
 
 JANE GOUGH. 
 
 Then, again and again she pressed her only boy 
 to her heart, and stole out behind the garden wall, 
 that, unobserved, she might catch a last look of the 
 stage which carried him to London. 
 
 The voyage was along one of nearly two months. 
 The little lad often cried in his cabin, and he 
 wrote back, " I wish mother could wash me to- 
 night," showing what a tender " mother's boy " 
 he was. When New York harbor was entered, and 
 he was eager to see his adopted country, he was 
 sent below to black boots and shoes for the family. 
 
 His school days were now over. After two years 
 of hard work in the country, he sold his knife to 
 buy a postage stamp, and wrote his father, asking 
 his permission to go to New York and learn a trade. 
 Consent was given, and, in the middle of the win- 
 ter, our English lad of fourteen reached the great 
 city, with no home, no friends, and only fifty cents 
 in his pocket. Hundreds passed by as he stood
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH.
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. a 7 
 
 on the dock, holding his little trunk in his hands, 
 but nobody spoke to him. But at last, by dint of 
 earnestness, he found a place to enter as errand-boy 
 and learn book-binding, receiving two dollars and 
 twenty-five cents a week, and paying two dollars 
 out of this for his board. How his employers sup- 
 posed he could live on one dollar a month for 
 clothes and washing has never appeared. 
 
 The first night he was placed by his boarding- 
 mistress in an attic, with an Irishman who was 
 deathly ill. The second night the man died, and 
 the horror-stricken young boy staid alone with the 
 dead till morning. 
 
 Now nearly two painful years more went by. 
 Finally, though he earned but three dollars a week, 
 he sent to England for his mother and sister. 
 When they arrived two rooms were rented ; the 
 girl found work in a straw-bonnet factory, and, poor 
 though they were, they were very happy. John was 
 now sixteen, devoted to his mother, and still a 
 noble, unselfish, persevering boy. 
 
 At the end of three months, through dullness 
 of business, both children lost their places, and no\
 
 28 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 began the struggles which the poor know so well 
 in our large cities. In vain they looked for work. 
 Then they left their two decent rooms, and moved 
 into a garret. Winter came on, and they had 
 neither fuel nor food. John walked miles out 
 into the country, and dragged home old sticks 
 which lay by the roadside. He pawned his coat 
 that the mother, who had now become ill, might 
 have some mutton broth. 
 
 One day he left her in tears, and went sob- 
 bing down the street. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " said a stranger. 
 
 " I'm hungry, and so is my mother." 
 
 " Well, I can't do much, but I'll help you a lit- 
 tle," and he gave John a three-cent loaf of bread. 
 
 When the boy reached home, the good woman 
 put the Bible on the rickety pine table, read from 
 it, and then all knelt and thanked God for the pre- 
 cious loaf. 
 
 In the spring, he obtained employment at four 
 dollars and a half a week, but poverty and priva- 
 tion had fallen too heavily, rested too long, upon 
 the mother. One day while preparing John's sim-
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 29 
 
 pie supper of rice and milk, she fell dead. All night 
 long the desolate boy held her cold hand in his ; 
 then, in that Christian city, she was put in a pine 
 box, and, without shroud or prayers, carried in a 
 cart, her two children walking behind it, and was 
 buried in the Potter's Field. 
 
 For three days afterwards John and his sister 
 never tasted food. Probably the world said " Poor 
 things ! " but it is certain that nobody offered to 
 help them. Bitter at heart, John ceased to attend 
 church. He strolled out in the fields instead on 
 the Sabbath. Occasionally he went to the theatre, 
 a place he shunned when his mother was alive. 
 Step by step he went along the downward road ; 
 not in a day, or a month, or a year, did he become 
 a sot. 
 
 He took comic parts on the stage, because he 
 was good in mimicry, and his companions were not 
 of the best. Sometimes, it is true, he worked at 
 his trade, for weeks abstaining from drink and other 
 spendthrift ways ; then appetite, or the invitation 
 of old friends, beguiled and overpowered him. 
 Once he went on a fishing voyage, laying up consid-
 
 30 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 erable money, married and made a pleasant home 
 for his wife ; but presently he went back to his old 
 habits, and at the time when she and her baby 
 died, he was lying drunk and unconscious in the 
 house. 
 
 It is needless to say that often, in agony, did he 
 lament the taking of a first glass. How easily, but 
 for that, could he have become self-educated and 
 honored ; now at last, ragged, and broken in body 
 by delirium tremens, he was walking the streets of 
 Worcester, on that Sabbath evening, absolutely 
 homeless and hopeless. He was thinking, utterly 
 heartsick as it is possible for men to be, of his 
 ruined life, when a hand was laid on his shoulder. 
 He was startled. Nobody had spoken to him in a 
 friendly way for months. 
 
 " Mr. Gough, I believe ? " said the stranger. 
 ' " That is my name," he replied, and passed on. 
 
 " You have been drinking to-day," said the kind 
 voice. " Why do you not sign the pledge and pro- 
 tect yourself ? " And then the young man, whose 
 name was Joel Stratton, took his arm in a broth- 
 erly way, and, as a brother might, asked if he would
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 3! 
 
 not like to be a sober man, go to church once 
 more, and have friends once more. 
 
 John Gough answered sadly: "I should like 
 all these things first-rate. Such a change cannot 
 be possible, however." 
 
 " If you will but sign the pledge and follow my 
 advice, I will warrant that it shall be so. I will 
 introduce you to good friends who will take a 
 pleasure in helping you to keep good resolutions." 
 
 After some pondering, he determined to make 
 the effort. He said : 
 
 Well, I will sign it." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " I cannot do so to-night, for I must have some 
 drink presently. But I certainly will to-morrow." 
 
 That night he drank heavily, and all the next 
 day at his work the longing for drink remained 
 unbearable. But when night came he said, " If it 
 should be the last act of my life, I will keep my 
 promise, even though I die in the attempt, for I 
 believe that man has placed confidence in me." 
 
 At the temperance meeting, with almost palsied 
 hand, he wrote "John B. Gough " to a Total Ab-
 
 32 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 stinence pledge. After a sleepless night, he went 
 to his work. But the craving for his daily drink 
 was as fierce as ever. His whole body trembled, 
 and his brain seemed on fire. It was the height 
 of torture, of temptation. Finally, as night came 
 on, he said, " I cannot fight this through. I will 
 not yield, but I shall die." 
 
 Just then a lawyer, Jesse Goodrich, came in. 
 
 "I saw you sign the pledge last night, Mr. 
 Gough. Come in and see me. Keep up a brave 
 heart. Good-by! God bless you." 
 
 These words seemed sent from heaven. He 
 repeated them over and over again on his way 
 home. The friendship, the kindliness, the sympa- 
 thy, seemed divine. For six days and nights, in a 
 wretched garret, without one hour of healthy sleep, 
 without one mouthful of food, John Gough fought 
 the dreadful battle with appetite. Weak, famished, 
 almost dying, he crawled out into the sunlight; 
 but he had conquered. 
 
 Hope, the ambitions of manhood came back 
 into his desolate life. The ragged clothes were 
 brushed, and the weekly temperance meetings were
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 33 
 
 regularly attended. He soon spoke with such in- 
 tense earnestness, in his gratitude, and his desire 
 to rescue others, that he received invitations to 
 go to neighboring towns, which he accepted, wait- 
 ing only to earn suitable clothes. He kept his 
 pledge for five months, and then, yielding to phy- 
 sical weakness, broke it. Tremblingly penitent, 
 almost despairing, he went to Mr. Goodrich and 
 others, telling them that he had disgraced them as 
 well as himself, and that he must leave Worcester 
 forever. But they held on to him ; they would 
 not let him go, and he re-signed the pledge. 
 
 Soon after this, he became a Christian, and then, 
 for nearly forty years, he well honored the name 
 he bore. " If the pledge had been offered to me 
 when I was a boy in Sunday-school, I should have 
 been spared those seven dfreadful years," I have 
 heard Mr. Gough say. He was now twenty-six. 
 This year he made three hundred and eighty-three 
 addresses, receiving about three dollars for each, 
 and paying his expenses out of it. With the first 
 money he could possibly spare, he purchased Rot 
 liris Ancient History, bent upon self education.
 
 34 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 And now there came into his life noble Mary 
 Whitcomb, a teacher, with fine mind and true heart. 
 She has shared alike his poverty and his fame. 
 No life of Mr. Gough will ever be complete with- 
 out " Mary " written on every page. 
 
 For eleven years he spoke eloquently through- 
 out our country, winning thousands upon thousands 
 of signers to the pledge. This public life was 
 by no means an easy one. He was opposed by 
 the liquor interest, and not always aided by those 
 who should have been his friends. In no year did 
 he receive, on an average, over twenty-five dollars a 
 lecture, and, in his zeal and sympathy, hundreds 
 were given without charge. 
 
 He was now urged to visit England. Sensitive 
 to an unsuspected degree, never forgetting the 
 stains on his early manhood, he sought the advice 
 of Doctor Lyman Beecher. 
 
 " John, my son, don't fear," he said. " I have 
 prayed for you. Go, and the blessing of an old 
 man go with you." 
 
 England gave him the greeting she gives to 
 heroes. Exeter Hall, London, where the welcome
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 35 
 
 meeting was held, was draped with the flags of 
 England and America. For four hours great 
 crowds waited on the sidewalks for the doors to be 
 opened. His brother Englishmen were eager to 
 hear the famous orator who had gone out from them 
 a poor, unknown boy. As he spoke simply yet 
 touchingly, the enthusiasm was unbounded, hun- 
 dreds weeping with joy. All through Great Britain, 
 crowds, numbering often seventeen thousand per- 
 sons, came to hear him. On his thirty-seventh 
 birthday he spoke in Sandgate. The village people 
 listened as though he were inspired. Old Mrs. 
 Beattie, who had known him when a lad, hastened 
 to grasp his hand. When he slipped twenty-five 
 dollars into it, telling her he was in her debt, 
 she said, " Goodness me ! What for ? " 
 
 " For a bottle of milk and some gingerbread 
 you sent me twenty-four years ago when I was 
 starting for America." 
 
 Inquiring into her needs, he expended money 
 without stint, for coal and groceries, and as long 
 as she lived sent her fifty dollars each Christmas. 
 
 Rich and poor alike were moved by the pathos
 
 36 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 and eloquence of Mr. Gough, and failing other ex- 
 pression, brought gifts of gratitude ; the London 
 Temperance Society, a dinner set of eighteen pieces 
 of solid silver ; the poor woman of Edinburgh a 
 handkerchief, saying to Mrs. Gough, " I'd give him 
 a thousand pounds if I had it. Tell him when he 
 wipes the sweat from his face while speaking, to 
 remember he has wiped away a great many tears 
 while he has been in Edinburgh." 
 
 One day, while riding to the station, Mr. Gough 
 observed the driver tie a handkerchief about his 
 neck and then lean his face close against the win- 
 dow. 
 
 " Are you cold ? " asked Mr. Gough. 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Have you the toothache ? " 
 
 " No, sir. The window of the carriage is broke, 
 and the wind is freezing, and I'm trying to keep 
 it from you. God bless you, sir! I owe every- 
 thing I have in the world to you. I was a ballad 
 singer once. I used to go round with a half- 
 starved baby in my arms for charity, and a draggled 
 wife at my heels half the time, with her eyes black-
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 37 
 
 ened. And I went to hear you in Edinburgh, and 
 you told me I was a man, and when I went out of 
 that house, I said, ' By the help of God, I'll be a 
 man ! ' And now I've a happy wife and a comfort- 
 able home. God bless you, sir ! I would stick my 
 head in any hole under the heavens if it would 
 save you any harm." 
 
 At a meeting in Glasgow, to which three thousand 
 " outcasts " came, the worst woman in the city 
 was present. She had been in jail scores of 
 times, and was the terror of the borough. Touched 
 by the story of Mr. Cough's sad life and of his 
 mother, and his rise from despair, she came forward 
 to sign the pledge. 
 
 A gentleman said, " She cannot keep it. She 
 will be drunk before she goes to bed to-night ; bet- 
 ter not give her the pledge." 
 
 " If I say I wull, I can," said she simply, and 
 signed it. 
 
 Two years afterward Mr. Gough went to her 
 home. "Ah," she said, "I'm a puir body. I 
 dinna ken much ; and what little I ha'e kenned 
 has been knocked out o' me by the staffs of the 
 
 432237
 
 38 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 policemen ; but sometimes I ha'e a dream. I 
 dream I'm drunk, and fichting, and the police ha'e 
 got me again ; and then I get out of my bed, 
 and I go down on my knees, and I don't go back 
 till the daylight comes, and I keep saying : ' God 
 keep me for I canna get drunk any mair.'" 
 
 She supported herself and daughter by sewing, 
 and gave all her spare time to reading the Bible 
 among the degraded, urging them to reform, follow- 
 ing in Mr. Cough's steps afar off, but as nearly as 
 she could. 
 
 Soon after Mr. Cough's return to America, Joel 
 Stratton lay dying. He hastened to his bedside, 
 and the man who had moved England by his elo- 
 quence embraced tenderly the waiter of the Tem- 
 perance Hotel who had saved him. "God bless 
 you, Stratton! thousands are thankful that you 
 ever lived." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " he said feebly. " When 
 I laid my hand on your shoulder that night I 
 never dreamed all this would come to pass ; did 
 you ? " 
 
 After his death, Mrs. Stratton received three
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 39 
 
 hundred dollars yearly from Mr. Gough, in token 
 of his gratitude. 
 
 For the last thirty years of his life John B. 
 Gough worked untiringly on both continents. 
 Though he swayed brilliant and crowded audiences 
 by his marvelous eloquence, he did not forget to 
 visit prisons and poorhouses. Thousands of the 
 lowest wrote to him in their despair, and thousands 
 of the highest in their admiration for his work. 
 His beautiful home at Hillside, Worcester, had no 
 end of choice remembrances from such friends as 
 Spurgeon, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Cruikshanks, 
 Doctor Guthrie, and our own statesmen, and min- 
 isters, and poets. His choice library showed his 
 love for books. 
 
 The last time Mr. Gough was in England four 
 thousand of the elite of that country received him 
 at a garden party in the grounds of Westminster 
 Abbey. Canon Wilberforce, Canon Duckworth, 
 Samuel Morley, the American Minister, and others 
 made addresses. Dean Stanley led him through 
 the grand old abbey. The next morning twenty 
 London papers, some in six columns, gave an ac-
 
 40 HOW SUCCESS IB WON. 
 
 count of this great reception to the great moral hero 
 of his time. 
 
 At Sandgate, where he went to lay the corner- 
 stone of the Memorial Coffee Tavern bearing his 
 name, the enthusiastic people removed the horses 
 from his carriage and drew it through the streets. 
 He was invited to dine at the stately homes where 
 fifty years before he had cleaned knives and 
 blacked boots. Public banquets were given in his 
 honor. To his own country each time he was 
 welcomed back with demonstrations no less hearty. 
 
 When asked at one time the secret of his suc- 
 cess, he replied : " Whether I speak to one or to 
 thousands in my audiences, I always try to do my 
 best." Another secret was his throbbing sympathy 
 for humanity. He was determined to win the 
 erring, and therefore succeeded. He gave nearly 
 ten thousand lectures, and travelled about five 
 hundred thousand miles to accomplish this pur- 
 pose. Over a million copies of his lectures have 
 been sold, and one hundred thousand of his help- 
 ful autobiography. He and his wife reared seven 
 fatherless children, and I know not how many boys
 
 JOHN B. GOUGH. 41 
 
 he helped through college. Mr. Cough's hair 
 grew white in his labors, and he passed away in 
 1886, at the age of sixty-nine. He perhaps did 
 more than any other one man to make temperance 
 an absorbing topic of the time. When he began his 
 work few had taken the pledge ; now the signers 
 are millions. States are prohibiting that which 
 works harm to citizens ; schools are teaching that 
 beer and brandy poison both blood and brain. 
 But his own personal history, his struggle and his 
 complete victory shall remain to the end of time as 
 personal hope and courage for the most complete 
 outcast.
 
 III. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 I FELT I was in the world to do something, and 
 thought I must" said Mr. Whittier, speaking 
 to me of his early years, as we sat in his home at 
 Oak Knoll, Danvers, before a cheerful wood-fire. 
 This consciousness of " must " is the secret of the 
 noble life and noble work which has impressed the 
 very heart of the American people. While no poet 
 has sung more lovingly of our flowers, brooks and 
 mountains, so no other has labored so heroically 
 for the great principles of the American Republic. 
 To free the slave, to give woman an equal chance 
 in the world with man, to make the nations love 
 each other and learn war no more these are the 
 once unpopular principles which he has fearlessly 
 championed. 
 
 " But," says Mr. Whittier, " it is always safe to do 
 right ; and the truest expediency is simple justice." 
 
 Mr. Whittier, when seventy-six years old, was a 
 42
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 43 
 
 tall, slender man, with dark, kind eyes, winsome 
 smile, and gentle manners. The moment he began 
 to talk, his self-forgetfulness showed, and his kindli- 
 ness. Probably no one in this country has helped 
 so many young writers, by kind words to editors, 
 or by commendation of a first book. " I read a 
 book with sympathy for the author," he said. " It 
 is easy to tear a volume in pieces by criticism, but 
 I try to find its merits." Many who have come up 
 through struggles to success forget the great crowd 
 of toilers below when they have reached the top 
 of the mountain, but Mr. Whittier never forgot. 
 His boyhood was passed in Haverhill, Mass., in 
 a lonely farmhouse half-hidden by oak woods, with 
 no other home in sight. Here, he says, on stormy 
 nights 
 
 We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
 The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
 And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
 Felt the light-sifted snow-flakes fall. 
 
 Besides a brother and two sisters, there were few 
 companions. The father was a good Quaker, one 
 of the selectmen of the town ; the mother a re-
 
 44 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 fined, dignified woman, fond of reading the best 
 books. She spun and wove the linen and woollen 
 cloth needed in the family, always finding time to 
 teach her children from the Bible. There were 
 only twenty volumes in the home, most of these 
 journals of Quaker ministers ; and the only fresh 
 book for the young boy was the yearly almanac ! 
 He longed for reading, especially for books of biog- 
 raphy and travel ; and whenever he heard of a vol- 
 ume, he would walk miles in the snow to borrow it 
 
 When he was fourteen, his first schoolmaster. 
 Joshua Coffin, brought a volume of Burns to the 
 house, and read it aloud. Little John was de- 
 lighted, begged him to leave it, and lo ! forthwith 
 began to make rhymes, and to imagine stories and 
 adventures. 
 
 This is not the first time that a book has 
 changed, or swollen the current of a life. Far- 
 aday would have remained a bookbinder, perhaps, 
 if he had not read an article on electricity in a book 
 he was binding. Robert Dick became the noted 
 Scottish geologist from reading a book of Hugh 
 Miller's. Between one baking and another, he often
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 45 
 
 walked fifty and eighty miles, toiling at his scien- 
 tific diggings and hammerings and spyings, with 
 but a dry biscuit for food, which he moistened in 
 brooks by the roadside. 
 
 Whittier's elder sister, Mary, encouraged him to 
 write in the spare moments he could save from 
 work on the farm, and errand-going for his mother ; 
 and, moreover, she sent one of his poems to the 
 Newburyport Free Press, edited by William Lloyd 
 Garrison. Says Mr. Whittier : 
 
 Some weeks afterwards, the news-carrier came along on 
 horseback, and threw the paper out from his saddle-bags. 
 My uncle and I were mending fences. I took up the sheet, 
 and was surprised and overjoyed to see my lines in the 
 " Poet's Corner." I stood gazing at them in wonder, and my 
 uncle had to recall me several times to my work. 
 
 Dickens had a similar experience when, as he 
 writes, "my first effusion, dropped stealthily one 
 evening, at twilight, with fear and trembling, into 
 a dark letter box, in a dark office, up a dark court 
 in Fleet street, appeared in all the glory of 
 print; on which occasion, by the by how well 
 I recollect it I walked down to Westminster
 
 46 How SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because 
 my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that 
 they could not bear the street and were not fit to 
 be seen there." 
 
 Some time after this Mr. Garrison called at the 
 farmhouse to see the young poet, who was at work 
 in the fields, simply clad like a true farmer boy 
 in shirt, pantaloons and straw hat. With beat- 
 ing heart he made himself ready to meet the 
 editor. Mr. Garrison encouraged him, urging his 
 father to send him to school. Young Whittier 
 desired an education, but there was no money to 
 procure it. "Where there is a will, there is 
 always a way," and reflecting that the young man 
 who worked for his father in summer, made shoes 
 in winter, he followed his example, and thus 
 earned enough to carry him through a six-months 
 term at the Haverhill Academy. After making 
 provisions for his board, tuition, and books, he 
 had twenty-five cents left in his pocket ! This he 
 carried all the term, not spending a cent more 
 than he had planned at the beginning and this 
 instance of self-denial and self-control, really Spar-
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 49 
 
 tan in a schoolboy, is surely a lesson in the art of 
 success. He was popular at the Academy, for he 
 was, even as a lad, wholly free from conceit, 
 wholly free from egotism two traits sure to be 
 at once detected and despised by schoolboys. He 
 had a fine, open face, then as now, was witty, 
 somewhat shy, did not *' ' over much, and was 
 very courteous. His cmor) was retentive, but 
 from the very first he formed the habit of storing 
 information in note books. 
 
 At the close of the term, he taught a school, 
 and thus earned money for another six months at 
 the Academy. After this, for some months, he 
 edited a paper called the American Manufacturer, 
 his salary being nine dollars a week ; but pres- 
 ently we find him again at work on the farm, and 
 writing whenever he can find time. How little 
 there seems, at first glance, in such a life to inspire 
 rapt or tender moods for the making of verses. 
 His impulse was surely inborn, and from forces 
 and fires of his own nature. Young Longfellow 
 had literary friends with whom he could take 
 counsel. Whittier had only his devoted sister.
 
 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 He still owned few books, still had little money, 
 and was troubled and depressed by poor health. 
 However, he worked constantly. We find him 
 next invited to Hartford, to take charge of the 
 New England Weekly Review, in the absence of 
 the editor, George D. Prentice, afterward so well 
 known in Kentucky. The young Quaker editor 
 showed his sense of hig>toned journalism by 
 refusing to engage in personal bickerings or 
 controversies, then the fashion of newspapers. 
 After a year and a half of this life he was called 
 home by the illness and death of his father ; and 
 again he "put his hand to the plough," literally, 
 supporting his mother and sisters by labor on the 
 farm, one and all working "to make both ends 
 meet." But if this life was hard it was mellowed 
 by the tenderest home affections. Elizabeth, the 
 younger sister, now wrote poetry, too, thus render- 
 ing the companionship more delightful, and already 
 Fame was busy with the name so dear to her now 
 these long years. 
 
 Garrison, meantime, poor, setting his own type, 
 and sleeping in his office, was editing the Liberator,
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 51 
 
 and persistently demanding the unconditional sur- 
 render of the slave. He had been imprisoned 
 and insulted by the great, mobbed by the igno- 
 rant, yet still he kept his eyes on his motto : " I 
 will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard ! " 
 Young Whittier, loving freedom as dearly as his 
 friend Garrison, at last resolved to give up his 
 projects of literary eminence, and join the "de- 
 spised abolitionists" instead. He wrote and pub- 
 lished with his own hard-earned money, an able 
 pamphlet concerning slavery, of which Lewis Tappan 
 of New York, presently had ten thousand copies 
 printed, to be distributed broadcast. It is not at 
 all surprising to learn of a young man so fearless 
 and so true, that he was a delegate to, and secretary 
 of, the first National Anti-Slavery Convention at 
 Philadelphia, in 1833, when he was but twenty-six 
 years old, and that two years later he was a mem- 
 ber of the Massachusetts Legislature. However, 
 few journals desired his ringing poems now. Ed- 
 itors drew back appalled at the impassioned 
 outcries for liberty; for action in behalf of the 
 oppressed four millions of fellow-men.
 
 52 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Soon after this, appearing at Concord, N. H., 
 with George Thompson of England, an eloquent 
 anti-slavery speaker, the twain were mobbed by 
 two or three hundred persons, severely bruised 
 with stones, and barely escaping with their lives. 
 Yet the fearless young Quaker soon went on 
 to take charge of the Pennsylvania Freeman, at 
 Philadelphia. There his office was broken open 
 by a mob, who carried his books and papers into 
 the large hall of the building, set fire to them, 
 turned on the gas, and then retired to watch their 
 wild work go on, till the building lay a smouldering 
 ruin. For a year longer he worked on the paper, 
 till failing health compelled his return to the farm, 
 but not to silence, or any abandonment whatever 
 of his aims, although he had seen a mob, led 
 by " men of property and standing," drag his old 
 friend Garrison through the streets of Boston, with 
 a rope around his neck, and rescued by the police 
 only to be thrown into jail. 
 
 In 1847 Mr. Whittier become the associate 
 editor of the National Era, in which Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin was printed as a serial. For this paper he
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 53 
 
 wrote nearly a hundred poems. Ten years later, 
 when the Atlantic Monthly was established, he was 
 one of its ablest writers. All these years he had 
 earned little money, but he had won enduring 
 fame, and everywhere was reverenced as the cham- 
 pion of every man's inalienable rights. Certain 
 literature may be popular for a time, and find 
 a large sale, but only that which is written to 
 elevate the world, has within it enduring life. 
 Dickens' books are sure of permanence, because 
 in them he showed the rich how wretchedly the 
 poor are housed and fed. Victor Hugo's works 
 will not cease to be read, because they are, one 
 and all, impassioned pleas for liberty and justice. 
 
 Whittier's mother died in 1857, having lived to 
 see her son come to his fame and honor. She 
 knew that his voice had thrilled thousands of 
 hearts ; and she also knew there must be later a 
 glorious outcome in the nation's life, from his fear- 
 less work. To the last, the devotion between 
 mother and son was beautiful. 
 
 There has been a glorious outcome. And the 
 poet of high courage, and deep tenderness, sing-
 
 54 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 ing always in clear, true keys, has gone on his way 
 from honor to honor, along peaceful and sunny 
 heights now for many a year. On Mr. Whittier's 
 seventieth birthday, Mr. Houghton, the publisher 
 of the Atlantic Monthly, gave a dinner in his 
 honor. Emerson and Longfellow, Holmes and 
 Howells, came with tender greetings, while from 
 Lowell, Bryant, Stoddard, Aldrich, and many 
 more, letters were read. The once " barefoot 
 boy " was hailed the poet of the American people. 
 Whittier's life was beautiful with the happiness of 
 noble aims fulfilled a life that hinged always on 
 that brief law, "Dare to be true!" Unmarried, 
 the world often wondered if, like Washington 
 Irving, he did not cherish the memory of some 
 fair, sweet face. An article having appeared 
 some time since, in a Western paper, stating that 
 a lady, recently deceased, was the one whom 
 Whittier loved, the poet wrote a letter to the edi- 
 tor, saying that the article was very interesting, but 
 somewhat imaginative, as he had never seen 
 the person mentioned since she was nine years 
 old.
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 55 
 
 But doubtless the poem In School Days was 
 written from the heart : 
 
 He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 
 
 The soft hand's light caressing, 
 And heard the tremble of her voice 
 
 As if a fault confessing. 
 
 " I'm sorry that I spelt the word ; 
 
 I hate to go above you, 
 Because " the brown eyes lower fell 
 
 " Because, you see, I love you." 
 
 Still memory to a gray-haired man 
 That sweet child face is showing. 
 
 Dear girl 1 the grasses on her grave 
 Have forty years been growing ! 
 
 He lives to learn in life's hard school 
 
 How few who pass above him 
 Lament their triumph, and his loss, 
 
 Like her because they love him. 
 
 " I have gotten a great deal out of life ; more 
 than most people," he said in his later years. 
 When I spoke of the early struggles, here recounted, 
 he replied, " I did not covet what was beyond my 
 reach. I try to remember only the bright and
 
 56 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 good," and added, playfully, " I have forgotten all 
 the mischief I did." He recalled to me the lines 
 in My Birthday: 
 
 Better than self-indulgent years 
 
 The outflung heart of youth ; 
 Than pleasant songs in idle years, 
 
 The tumult of the truth. 
 
 He lived in Lincoln's memorable words, "with 
 malice toward none, and charity for all ; " he was 
 an outspoken proclaimer of total abstinence; 
 never used tobacco ; he was modest, self-depre- 
 ciative; yet thankful for his poetic gifts. Still so 
 devoted to principle was he, so brightly flamed 
 to the last the early fires, that he said, " I set a 
 higher value on my name as appended to the 
 Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833, than on the 
 title page of any book." 
 
 Thirty-six different volumes have been issued 
 of Mr. Whittier's work ; among them biography, 
 essays, and a historical novel, Margaret Smith's 
 Journal. For many years, he was not able to 
 read or write for more than a half-hour at a time, 
 yet he still accomplished much.
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 57 
 
 Although Presidential Elector in 1860 and 1864, 
 voting for Mr. Lincoln, and one of the founders 
 of the Liberal Party, the early form of the present 
 Republican Party, he refused to participate largely 
 in public life. He said, " I have always taken 
 an active part in elections, but I have not been 
 willing to add my own example to the greed of 
 office." 
 
 He was once a member of the Board of Over- 
 seers for Harvard College, and a Trustee of 
 Brown University. He was greatly loved by his 
 townspeople, both at his home at Amesbury, and 
 in Danvers. His books furnished a comfortable 
 income. He was genuinely fond of children and 
 of animals. 
 
 When I saw him last, his dogs came to wel- 
 come me, one holding up a bruised paw for 
 sympathy, while the mocking-bird talked so much 
 louder than both of us, that Mr. Whittier was 
 * obliged to cover his cage. Such a life of cheer- 
 fulness in toil, of perseverance ; such an example of 
 unselfish allegiance to duty ; such an instance of 
 noble success won through utter devotion to high
 
 58 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 principles, is a rich legacy to the children of our 
 country. The close of his life occurred in Hamp- 
 ton Falls, N.H., September 7, 1892. 
 
 Some one has well said, "The most valuable 
 gift of a man or woman to this world is not money 
 nor books, but a noble life."
 
 IV. JOHN WANAMAKER. 
 
 TT was about twenty years ago that a poor young 
 * man, in Philadelphia, started, in the southwest 
 part of the city, a Sunday-school, in a shoemaker's 
 shop. Saloons were on every corner round about. 
 Rough men fought and stoned each other in the 
 streets, and murders were not uncommon. 
 
 " You will probably lose your life ! " said his 
 friends, trying to dissuade him. 
 
 But that young man had become a Christian. 
 The highest love always renders us heroic, and 
 forgetful of self. Young Wanamaker's sunny face, 
 his warm grasp of the hand, made him immediately 
 seem a friend to the roughest man he accosted. 
 
 His school grew in numbers, and was moved 
 into a tent. While the young men of his time en- 
 joyed their leisure, the encouraged superintendent, 
 laboring all day to earn his bread, went on gladly 
 giving his evenings and his Sabbaths to lifting the 
 59
 
 60 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 lowly ; year by year his hope, and his faith, and the 
 school grew. One after another the saloons dis- 
 appeared. Pleasant homes were built in their 
 places. The years still went on. By and by a 
 beautiful stone structure arose, with these words 
 graven on its front : A Little Child Shall Lead 
 Them. 
 
 On Sundays three thousand scholars gath- 
 ered in the spacious assembly room. This room 
 was of itself attractive, with its frescos of blue 
 and gold, and its cool silvery fountain in the centre. 
 Presently, too, the adjoining church was built for 
 the twelve hundred members which had grown up 
 from the Sabbath-school, the poor young man, now 
 a millionnaire, giving sixty thousand dollars as his 
 thank-offering for God's blessing on his work. 
 
 The last time I stood in Bethany Sunday-school 
 and heard the exquisite music, and listened to the 
 dying message of one of the boys, "Thank the 
 superintendent for the help he has been to me," 
 I bowed my head in gratitude that here and there, 
 like a beacon light, there shines out an ideal life 
 like that superintendent's to inspire noble aspira-
 
 JOHN WANAMAKER. 6 1 
 
 tions in others noble aspirations and courage to 
 undertake Christian work. 
 
 John Wanamaker was born in 1838. His par- 
 ents were Christian people, but they were poor, 
 and all his early life was a struggle with poverty. 
 Of a summer morning, before school-time, little 
 John turned five hundred bricks for his father, 
 that they might dry in the sun, thus earning two 
 cents each day. When a mere boy, he worked in a 
 bookstore at a dollar and a quarter a week, walk- 
 ing four miles each morning and evening to do 
 it, often buying a two-cent dinner a cup of 
 milk and a biscuit, that he might save the more 
 money for his mother. A good boy he, be sure, 
 who would undertake four-mile walks and two- 
 cent dinners to earn money for his mother ! 
 
 " Her smile was like a bit of heaven," he once 
 said to me, " and it never faded out of her face to 
 her dying day." If a kiss from Benjamin West's 
 mother made him a painter, the smile of John 
 Wanamaker's mother gave the inspiration and 
 cheer which have made, him the warm-souled 
 " Merchant Prince,"
 
 62 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 By and by the cheerful lad obtained a place in 
 a clothing store at a dollar and a half a week. 
 There he soon won the approval of his employer, 
 because he determined to be " the best in what- 
 ever he had in hand." This sort of ambition has 
 been the keystone of many a bridge over which 
 boys have passed from penury to plenty. 
 
 Balzac, the French author, when urged by his 
 father to enter law, because in literature one must 
 be either king or hodman, replied, " Very well ; I 
 will be king." 
 
 The boy's first intellectual stimulus was from 
 hearing a sermon which he did not understand. 
 Writing down all the difficult words, he looked 
 up the meaning of each in the dictionary, as soon 
 as opportunity offered. Not content simply to sell 
 goods at eighteen, with another lad, he published 
 a paper called Everybody's Journal, he solic- 
 iting the advertisements and serving the subscrib- 
 ers. The partnership could not be other than 
 harmonious, as he did all the labor. Until he was 
 nearly twenty-three years of age, he worked on 
 in the store, every week carrying his money to
 
 JOHN WANAMAKER.
 
 JOHN WAXAMAKER. 65 
 
 his parents. Does this seem business folly and 
 weakness to any of you? Well, I have never 
 known son or daughter who obeyed the fifth com- 
 mandment to go unrewarded. 
 
 And now the work of the Bethany Sunday- 
 school was begun. There was but one life to live, 
 and how could he make the most of it ? Full of 
 the seething, leaping strength and the unlimited 
 enthusiasms of youth, he was yet deeply medita- 
 tive and reflective. Should he study for the min- 
 istry ? He pondered the subject. Then, instead, 
 he considered men like George H. Stuart and 
 William E. Dodge prominent business men who 
 had done honor to Christianity in their daily deeds, 
 preaching a noble and very convincing gospel in 
 all their dealings, great and small Surely there 
 was as sore need for consecrated business men, 
 on 'Change and in the counting-room, in these days 
 of marvellous commerce with the ends of the earth, 
 as in the pulpit. 
 
 On his twenty-third birthday he had decided. 
 It was then, I think, that he wrote over his name 
 the resolutions which have governed his life. He
 
 66 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 said, " I will embark in the clothing business, 
 because I understand it, and I will let nobody dis- 
 suade me from my purpose." Two of his mottoes 
 were these : 
 
 " He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek 
 kirn." 
 
 " No man is ever lost on a straight road" 
 
 And now his life was well ballasted with a pur- 
 pose. That grand old Scotchman, Carlyle, once 
 said, " The man without a purpose is like a ship 
 without a rudder a waif, a nothing, a no man. 
 Have a purpose in life, if it is only to kill and divide 
 and sell oxen well, but have a purpose ; and hav- 
 ing it, throw such strength of mind and muscle 
 into your work as God has given you." 
 
 Young Wanamaker now began to show his busi- 
 ness sagacity. He invested the first one hundred 
 dollars which he was able to save, in an undivided 
 interest in an estate, bought two more shares on 
 credit, settled the matter to the satisfaction of all 
 parties, and cleared for himself a trifle less than 
 two thousand dollars. With this money he began 
 active business. Presently, too, he married a
 
 JOHN WANAMAKER. 67 
 
 Christian girl, who had faith in his future, and con- 
 fidence in him. She might well argue in her heart 
 that a dutiful son would make a devoted husband. 
 
 The Civil War had just begun. Many dis- 
 couraged his enterprise and prophesied failure, 
 but the self-reliant, straightforward young man 
 had no expectation of defeat. He possessed will- 
 power to the degree which Victor Hugo calls 
 genius. He had also the habit of hard work. He 
 swept his store, and kept his account books. When 
 a bill of goods was to be delivered, and no one 
 was at hand to do it, he was not too proud to 
 trundle the wheelbarrow along the street. Did he 
 dream, then, that some day Philadelphia would ask 
 him to represent her in Congress ? Emerson truly 
 said, " The man that stands by himself, the uni- 
 verse stands by him also." Canon Farrar well 
 calls labor the girdle of manliness. 
 
 Fifteen years passed on. The young merchant 
 had attended closely to business, advertised largely 
 and judiciously, held strictly to one price, given 
 customers the best for their money, chosen men 
 enterprising and sagacious for the heads of his de-
 
 68 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 partments, and now, at the end of these years, 
 found himself the owner of three stores, covering 
 nearly seven acres, one of them, the largest retail 
 dry goods store in America, with three thousand 
 employees ! 
 
 Was this chance ? Was this luck ? It was 
 consummate ability. It was the work of a mind 
 that thought out large plans and original methods. 
 It was the logical fortune of a man that with quick- 
 ness of perception knew how to seize opportuni- 
 ties, that could inspire prompt, strong men with his 
 own enthusiasm, that could systematize, and with 
 swift conclusions, few words and bold action, 
 could crowd much into little time ; that with genial 
 and polished manners knew how to win friends 
 in the business world, in circles high or low, and 
 also how to hold them ah ! it is his sincerity that 
 has held them. 
 
 He might count his honors, his public recogni- 
 tions, if he would. When the Centennial Exposition 
 was talked of, and Philadelphia looked about for 
 men to aid in the vast enterprise, John Wanamaker 
 was one of the first called to the national worki
 
 JOHN WANAMAKER. 69 
 
 He was made chairman of the Bureau of Revenue, 
 and with the aid of the Board of Finance, he raised 
 the first million dollars ; he was chairman of the 
 Press Committee that brought the subject before 
 the whole country ; and with much labor and 
 judicious management, he stood by and helped 
 carry the enterprise through to its success. 
 
 Meantime he had been a leader in every good 
 work. He was one of the founders of the Chris- 
 tian commission. In the Moody meetings, his elo- 
 quence and leadership were invaluable ; his sym- 
 pathy and tenderness touched thousands of hearts. 
 Daily and systematic reading had enriched his 
 thought, trained his mind, enlarged his sympathies, 
 broadened his outlook, widened the horizon of all 
 his heights. Said a prominent man to us recently, 
 " I have not read a book for five years, business is 
 so absorbing." But the man who does not daily 
 broaden his mind and heart, goes poor into eternity. 
 
 In the later years, Mr. Wanamaker has given 
 one hundred thousand dollars to the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, of which he has been presi- 
 dent for thirteen years, has built a church near his
 
 70 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 country home, has aided hospitals and orphanages, 
 and, says a friend, " He gives a fortune every year 
 in private charities." Some years ago he estab- 
 lished an Industrial College at Bethany, where five 
 hundred boys and girls, under the presidency of 
 Rev. Dr. Arthur T. Pierson, study bookkeeping, 
 telegraphy, cooking, embroidery, printing, painting, 
 etc. A mission akin to that of Cooper Institute. 
 Thousands of our future citizens will probably 
 bless him all their lives for having been thus en- 
 abled by him to earn their living, and to establish 
 themselves profitably and pleasantly in business. 
 
 How does he find time to accomplish these 
 charities, and yet manage his great business in- 
 terests? He saves the moments, often studying 
 the next Sunday-school lesson as he goes from his 
 business to his home. On his desk I read the 
 words, framed : " Nulla dies sine linea. " No day 
 without a line" the motto of the painter, Apelles. 
 
 Mr. Wanamaker is still in vigorous health. He 
 has blue eyes, with the light of youth remaining in 
 them, and a frank, manly face, whose sunny smile, 
 like his mother's, one never forgets. Said one
 
 JOHN WANAMAKER. 71 
 
 of his employees to me : " I can work better for a 
 week after a pleasant ' good-morning ' from him." 
 With a persuasive voice, a magnetic manner, a 
 noble presence, he wins every person with whom 
 he comes in contact, as I have said before. 
 
 Unostentatious, he is yet a born leader of men. 
 With the skill of a general, he deploys the seven 
 thousand persons who work for him. Years ago he 
 said to his associates, " I will not lie to sell goods," 
 and he requires no deception nor subterfuge from 
 his clerks in their dealings with buyers. He says, 
 " When a country boy, I was shy about going into 
 fine stores ; and I resolved if I ever owned one, 
 that everybody should feel at home in it, and not 
 be urged to buy goods." It is a pleasure to walk 
 through his immense houses, look at beautiful 
 things, or linger in the reading-rooms for rest. 
 Always progressive, he was the first in this country 
 to use pneumatic tubes for carrying money in place 
 of cash boys, and to utilize the electric light. 
 
 But this busy, alert, occupied man takes time to 
 carry flowers to the sick-bed of a Sunday-school 
 scholar, and to talk with any person who needs his
 
 J2 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 help. A man came to the office one morning and 
 asked for Mr. Wanamaker. A score were waiting 
 to transact business with him, involving thousands 
 of dollars. What was his errand ? To talk about 
 being a Christian ! The great merchant eagerly 
 responded. That hour together they knelt and 
 prayed over this, the most important decision of 
 life. 
 
 In his home, he is merry and light of heart. 
 He always entered heartily into the amusements 
 of his children. He plays croquet as though cro- 
 quet were the one important thing in a man's life. 
 He has often been seen to start off arm in arm with 
 a friend to see who could come out ahead in a 
 brisk mile walk. It is this warm winsomeness of 
 temperament that has kept him young in spirit. 
 He is interested in boys and young men. He says 
 often after the day's whirl of business, "The best 
 thing I have had to-day was a talk with a poor boy." 
 
 Does it seem strange now with his upright life, 
 his energy and his attention to his business and 
 good judgment, that he should have won success? 
 Does it seem strange, with his sympathy, his con-
 
 JOHN WANAMAKER. ^3 
 
 sideration for others, and his cheeriness, that 
 people love and trust him ? You must see, I 
 think, that it has not been chance or luck. And is 
 it not inspiring to see a man, still young, so 
 grandly successful in business, so eminent in 
 Christian work, and so joyous and brotherly as to 
 make life for himself, and for those having to do 
 with him, like one of those bright days in spring, 
 when hope, courage, a sense of youth and strength 
 and some gladness to come is in the very air ?
 
 V. HENRY M. STANLEY. 
 
 THIRTY years ago, had the wise men of the 
 world been asked who were to be the great 
 explorers of modern times, they probably would not 
 have pointed to a factory boy in Scotland, ten years 
 old, working fourteen hours a day, neither to a 
 homeless lad in a Welsh poor-house David Liv- 
 ingstone and Henry M. Stanley. But we may 
 well say with President Garfield, " I never meet a 
 ragged boy in the street without feeling that I 
 may owe him a salute, for I know not what possi- 
 bilities may be buttoned up under his coat." We 
 all of us naturally enjoy adventure, and admire 
 heroic adventurers. An unexplored region exerts 
 a strange and drawing fascination upon the most 
 sober-minded of us. The world's civilization 
 hinges often upon this element in our natures. 
 There is a long, royal line of brave and hardy 
 74
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 75 
 
 men who have given money and thought and life 
 to open up new lands and enlighten new races ; 
 but through all the centuries of exploration there 
 has remained, until our own years, a vast, unknown 
 country, covering over eight million square 
 miles Africa, the Dark Continent To be sure its 
 Egypt had at one time been the centre of the 
 world's learning ; its Alexandria, at the mouth of 
 the Nile, was as beautiful as Imperial Rome until 
 Julius Caesar conquered it, 48 B. c. ; but under the 
 rule of the Turks it had gone back into barbarism. 
 To be sure along the east and west coasts the 
 English and the Dutch had opened trading stations, 
 but into the great pagan interior, believed to be in- 
 habited by cannibals, and teeming with natural 
 riches, no traveller had dared venture. 
 
 It was about one hundred years ago that Eng- 
 land endeavored to send missionaries to the 
 African tribes, but the malarial fevers were invari- 
 ably fatal to life. This was well known to young 
 David Livingstone, when, in the Scottish cotton 
 factor}', he resolved to go into the dark and terri- 
 ble country as a missionary. He was twenty-five.
 
 76 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 He had for years worked from six in the morning 
 until eight at night, his books before him on the 
 loom, that he might study Latin and science while 
 he worked, learning Greek, theology and medicine 
 in his evenings. 
 
 For the next sixteen years he gave himself to 
 mission work in behalf of the Afric heathen, and 
 to exploration in behalf of the whole world. 
 Beset by strange hardships through tedious and 
 difficult journeys, he penetrated the country, ex- 
 ploring the Zambesi and the lakes. He never felt 
 fear. His manliness and kindliness won him the 
 friendliness of the terrible and pagan peoples. 
 
 He took constant and sensible care of his health. 
 In the greatest hardship he never re-enforced his 
 strength and spirits with stimulants ; water was 
 his only beverage. 
 
 When he visited home again, England and Scot- 
 land awarded the poor factory boy their greatest 
 honors medals, gold, and the applause of their 
 Scientific Societies. He soon returned to Africa, 
 however, this time sent by the Government and 
 empowered to suppress the barbarous, the brutal
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 77 
 
 slave-trade in Africa, carried on by Egypt, the 
 Portuguese, and the tribes among themselves. 
 Captured in the interior, these herds of human 
 beings were bound together in gangs, the chains 
 eating into their wrists, and were driven thus to the 
 seacoast to be sold. In two centuries, it is esti- 
 mated that forty million Africans had been sold 
 into slavery. 
 
 On the death of his wife, the daughter of the 
 Missionary Moffat, Livingstone once more returned 
 to England, where he staid to write his second 
 book, and then started for his last journey in 
 Africa in 1866. He was determined to give the 
 remainder of his life to this mission of Christianity 
 and exploration. He was equipped better than a 
 new man, by every year's experience. His con- 
 stancy to his youthful purpose never wavered. It 
 was not love of adventure, it was the noble zeal of 
 exploration which had sent him forth in the begin- 
 ning, the only sort of travel that really benefits the 
 world, and is chronicled by history. 
 
 This time, for three years, nothing was heard 
 from him. The whole world grew anxious. At
 
 78 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 last, while Royal Societies and Scientific Associ 
 ations were debating, and government was delay- 
 ing, a generous, energetic American, James Gordon 
 Bennett, the owner of the New York Herald, re- 
 solved to find Livingstone, be he dead or be he 
 alive. He quietly undertook this at his own ex- 
 pense. The chief question would seem to be, 
 Whom could he send ? There was, however, one 
 young man whose dauntless courage and deter- 
 mination he could depend upon. Henry M. 
 Stanley. 
 
 And who was Henry M. Stanley ? 
 
 Born in 1840, in Wales, at three years of age, 
 this Henry M. Stanley was sent to the poor-house. 
 There he remained for ten years. About that 
 time in his life he shipped as a cabin boy, and 
 came to America to New Orleans. There he 
 sought employment, and he must have shown 
 some very good qualities, energy and ambition, 
 probably, for he was adopted by a merchant named 
 Stanley. However, a restless nature asserted it- 
 self, and presently he was off to see the world. 
 He stopped for a time in Arkansas, living in a log
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY.
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 8l 
 
 cabin, and supporting himself in Thoreau-like sim 
 plicity, no doubt, as he had no settled occupation, 
 His friends supposed him dead, when suddenly 
 he appeared among them, having come down the 
 Mississippi on a flat-boat. His adopted father 
 died soon after, without having made a will, and 
 the adopted son was again penniless. He now 
 sought his fortune in California, among the miners 
 and the Indians, and at twenty, having lived at 
 the South, he naturally entered the Confederate 
 Army. Soon taken prisoner, and enjoying the 
 stir of battle, he joined the Union Army, and was 
 put on board a man-of-war, where he rose to the 
 position of acting ensign. 
 
 The war over, and feeling no disposition for a 
 civilian's life, he resolved to join the Cretans, who 
 were trying to throw off the Turkish yoke. It was 
 at this point in his career that he had the good 
 fortune and the good sense to engage himself to 
 the New York Herald as its correspondent. He 
 now travelled widely in the East, showing both 
 daring and good judgment in all his moves and 
 adventures. Returning, he took in the poor-house
 
 82 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 in Wales on his way, and gave the inmates a good 
 dinner and a friendly talk. 
 
 The next year, still turning his love of travel 
 and adventure into business, he accompanied the 
 English army against Theodore, king of Abys- 
 sinia, writing graphic letters to the Herald, and 
 making a reputation for himself by sending news 
 of victory to the English press before it was con- 
 veyed officially. The following year he was sent 
 to report the civil war in Spain, where he showed 
 the same triumphing will, the same quickness of 
 decision, the same despatch, the same pluck and 
 fearlessness, and always the same masterly com- 
 mon sense; whatever he attempted he. was sure to 
 accomplish. 
 
 One day as Stanley was sitting in his hotel in 
 Madrid, he received a telegram : " Come to Paris 
 on important business." In two hours he was on 
 the cars. There he met Mr. Bennett. Mr. Ben- 
 nett said, " Draw a thousand pounds now, and 
 when you have gone through that draw another 
 thousand, and when that is spent draw another 
 thousand, and so on, but FIND LIVINGSTONE."
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 83 
 
 What a tribute it was, that command ! A laurel 
 branch, a ribbon of honor. Mr. Bennett knew all 
 the promising young men of the day, and he had 
 chosen him ! 
 
 On the sixth of January, 1871, Stanley reached 
 Zanzibar, an island off the east coast of Africa. 
 From this point, he started off into the unknown 
 country. He knew that money would be useless 
 in the heart of Africa, as the natives do all 
 their trading by exchange. He had, therefore, 
 purchased three hundred and fifty pounds of brass 
 wire, twenty sacks of various colored beads, and 
 nearly four thousand yards of three different kinds 
 of cloth, to barter for food and service. These 
 goods, with his boat, etc., weighed six tons. With 
 this baggage, his train comprised twenty donkeys, 
 and one hundred and ninety men. He found his 
 progress a proceeding of quite as much peril as he 
 had counted upon. The roads were mere foot- 
 paths. Trees were felled to make bridges across 
 the streams. Now they waded to their necks in 
 swamps filled with alligators, and now, often on 
 their hands and feet, crept through miles of
 
 84 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 matted jungles, noisome with decaying vegetation. 
 Whenever they halted for rest, loathsome flies, 
 white ants and reptiles, crawled over them ; while 
 on the march, elephants, lions and hyenas were 
 too plenty and too near for comfort. The water 
 was so impure, also, that the donkeys died from 
 drinking it. 
 
 What strange, ignorant, warlike peoples they 
 found ! Most of them lived in huts of mud and 
 grass, crawling in through a single opening. They 
 were naked. The women wore great coils of 
 brass wire about their necks, wrists and ankles, 
 while their bodies were smeared with red paint 
 and grease. Some of the men inserted the neck 
 of a gourd in each ear ; in these receptacles they 
 carried tobacco and lime, obtained by burning 
 shells, while the women pierced their upper lips, 
 gradually enlarging the opening till they could 
 insert a shell. And each tribe spoke a differ- 
 ent language, and most were at war with one 
 another. 
 
 When they agreed to become friends they made a 
 slight gash in the hands, or right cheek and fore-
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 85 
 
 head, and tasting each the blood of the other, be- 
 come " blood relations ! " 
 
 Sometimes these tribes fled at the approach of 
 Stanley and his men ; sometimes they gathered in 
 great crowds to gaze upon them; and again, in 
 war paint and feathers, with bells on their ankles 
 and knees, flourishing battle-axes and assegais, 
 they attacked the travellers like packs of wolves. 
 
 For eleven months the determined Stanley had 
 led his men, sometimes coaxing the weary, half- 
 starved ones, and sometimes whipping the insub- 
 ordinate. The feet of some were bleeding from 
 thorns, and others had fallen by disease. Not 
 one word had yet been heard of Livingstone. 
 Once the young explorer, alone with savages, was 
 well-nigh discouraged, but he wrote in his journal : 
 " No living man shall stop me only death can 
 prevent me. But death not even this; I shall 
 not die I will not die I cannot die! Some- 
 thing tells me I shall find him and write it 
 larger FIND HIM, FIND HIM. Even the words 
 are inspiring." 
 
 One day a caravan passed, and they asked the
 
 86 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 news. The reply was that there was a white man 
 at Ujiji or Lake Tanganika he had just reached 
 there. 
 
 Stanley's heart beat at the announcement. 
 
 " Is he young or old ? " he asked. 
 
 " He is old. He has white hair on his face, and 
 he is sick." 
 
 With enthusiasm, yet hardly daring to hope, 
 Stanley pushed on, travelling night and day until 
 they came in sight of Ujiji. 
 
 " Unfurl the flags and load the guns ! " shouted 
 Stanley, his nerves for the first time quivering 
 with excitement. The Stars and Stripes floated out 
 with the Zanzibar flag, and fifty guns thundered 
 over the plain. They were immediately surrounded 
 by hundreds of Africans, who shouted " Yambo, 
 yambo, bana ! " These were words of welcome. 
 
 Suddenly from the crowd a voice called out, 
 " Good morning, sir! " 
 
 Startled by English words, Stanley replied, 
 " Who the mischief are you ? " 
 
 " I am Susi the servant of Doctor Living- 
 stone J "
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 87 
 
 Then a thrill went through Stanley's soul. The 
 fatigues and the perils of the long year were as 
 though they had not been. 
 
 Susi ran back to his master, and soon the worn, 
 gray-bearded Livingstone and the young Ameri- 
 can stood before each other. They clasped hands 
 warmly, a strange tie uniting them at once. 
 
 " I thank God, Doctor, I have been permitted 
 to see you," Stanley uttered from his heart. 
 
 " I feel grateful that I am here to welcome you," 
 was the response of the white-haired man, who, 
 without wife or children, receiving no letters for 
 years, with food only for a month, was hoping 
 against hope for aid. 
 
 For four months these two fearless men talked 
 and planned and explored together, the one re- 
 counting his privations and disappointments, the 
 other feeling that he must take up the work 
 *vhich the noble Livingstone would soon lay down 
 orever. At length the day of parting came, for 
 the great traveller could not be prevailed upon 
 to go home, feeble though he was. His journals, 
 in waterproof canvas cover, were sealed and given
 
 88 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 to Stanley. His letters written, supplies left him 
 for four years, and then the two men wrung each 
 other's hands in silence, and Stanley, with choking 
 voice, gave the word to his men : " Right about 
 face! March!" 
 
 Livingstone never looked upon a white face again. 
 For a year he struggled on, fording the rivers on 
 the shoulders of his men, till, too weak to walk, he 
 was carried on a litter to the village of Illala. At 
 four o'clock in the morning, May i, 1872, Susi 
 entered the doctor's tent to see if he might need 
 something. The latter was kneeling by the bed- 
 side, as if in prayer, his head buried in his hands 
 on the pillow, but quite cold and dead. For two 
 weeks his faithful servants dried the precious body 
 in the sun, and then, enclosing it in a bark case, 
 daubed with tar (pretending to bury it, as the 
 superstitious people would not let a dead body 
 pass through the land), they carried it on their 
 shoulders for nine long months, one thousand five 
 hundred miles, over rivers and through swamps to 
 the seacoast, where it was taken to England and 
 buried in Westminster Abbey. The great of the
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 89 
 
 earth gathered at that funeral. Among the pall 
 bearers was the negro lad who had borne the body 
 over the sea, Jacob Wainwright, and the young 
 American, Stanley, but for whom Livingstone 
 would probably have been buried on African soil. 
 
 Meantime Stanley had reached England, to find 
 that after all his hardships, his statements about 
 Livingstone were disbelieved. The delivery of 
 the journals and the letters, however, proved the 
 truth. The Royal Geographical Society then pre- 
 sented him with a gold medal, and the Queen sent 
 him a gold snuff box, with " V. R." set in brilliants 
 on the top. 
 
 But Stanley's work was far from completed. 
 To his joy, the London Daily Telegraph now united 
 with the New York Herald to send him again to 
 Africa to continue Livingstone's work. He at once 
 bought one hundred and thirty books relating to 
 that country, determining to know all that had 
 been written concerning it. November 17, 1874, 
 with eight tons of baggage, horses, dogs, and three 
 hundred and fifty-six men, Stanley started, with 
 his mind made u> to cross the Dark Continent
 
 90 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 from shore to shore, and to solve that question of 
 the centuries, What is the source of the Nile ? A 
 beautiful boat, the Lady Alice, was carried in 
 eight sections on the shoulders of the men, and in 
 the train was borne every appliance that could 
 lessen or shorten the labors of their long progress. 
 
 And now began one of the most heroic, yet 
 most painful marches in history. Losing their 
 way, wandering in jungles and swamps, stealing 
 aside to die in the brush, the company was 
 reduced soon to less than two hundred. Once, 
 when near starvation, two cubs were killed in a 
 lion's den, and Stanley made a soup in a sheet 
 iron trunk in which he used to carry baggage, giving 
 each of his men a good bowlful of lion broth 
 apiece. 
 
 About four hundred miles inland, they were 
 attacked by the natives, and twenty- five of the men 
 killed. At Uganda, on the contrary, they were 
 received with great state, and a present was made 
 them by King Mtesa of fourteen oxen, sixteen 
 goats, thirty-six fowls, and one hundred bunches 
 of bananas. This man was a powerful, half-civil-
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. gj 
 
 ized emperor, governing two million people, with 
 tens of thousands of soldiers. Four thousand 
 five hundred women were attached to his house- 
 hold as servants. His palace was an immense, 
 barn-like structure on the top of a mountain. 
 Stanley translated the ten commandments for him, 
 and through these he professed to accept the 
 Christian religion instead of Mohammedanism. 
 
 In exploring Lake Victoria Nyanza, the treach- 
 erous natives persuaded the travellers to land, by 
 holding up sweet potatoes as a sign that they were 
 friendly. The moment the boats touched the 
 beach they wrested the oars, and pointed their 
 spears at Stanley's head. They then retired, say- 
 ing they would speedily return and put him to 
 death. Pulling some boards from the bottom of 
 the boat, his men used these as oars, and rowed 
 away just as the furious savages came yelling 
 back to the shore. On a second exploring tour, 
 to punish them, Stanley put their king in irons, 
 killed forty natives, and wounded scores of others. 
 
 For over a year, sometimes in peace, sometimes 
 in war, Stanley explored the inland lakes, learning.
 
 2 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 meantime, all the horrors of the slave trade naked 
 creatures driven into pens like cattle, and half- 
 starved ; their villages burned that they might be 
 the more easily captured. Next he explored the 
 Lualaba River, which Livingstone believed to 
 empty into the Nile. Stanley found it to be none 
 other than the Congo, ten miles broad at its 
 mouth. 
 
 Stanley knew he had now reached the region 
 inhabited by cannibals. But he did not quail 
 among the monsters. Hiring four hundred more 
 men, he commenced his journey. At first they 
 could scarcely pierce the jungles ; now they felled 
 huge trees, and dug them out for canoes, now, 
 unable to pass the falls, they cut their way four 
 miles through dense forests, sometimes over 
 mountains one thousand feet high ; now exhausted, 
 they sank down in the wilderness to die, watched 
 by huge serpents. For four months they gained 
 only about a mile a day, yet the intrepid leader 
 toiled on, inspiring his heart-sick followers. 
 
 So superstitious were the natives, that, seeing 
 him writing in his notebook, they said such black
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 93 
 
 marks will bring disease and death upon the 
 people, and the book must be burned. Stanley 
 was now really aghast. Destroy the records of 
 nearly three long years, and his maps ! He could 
 not fight now, for the great company had become 
 reduced by death to only one hundred and fifteen, 
 and nearly half of these were ill. He bethought 
 himself of a similar book he had with him, and 
 hastening into his tent, brought out a volume of 
 Shakespeare, which he burned before their eyes, 
 to their intense gratification. 
 
 And now the long journey across the Continent 
 was nearly over. When Stanley announced to the 
 half-starved company that they were nearing the 
 ocean, one poor fellow went crazy with joy, and 
 shouting, "We have reached the sea; we are at 
 home ! " plunged into the forest, and was never 
 seen again. As soon as tidings of their distressing 
 condition could be sent, food was brought them 
 from the coast. On landing, every kindness was 
 shown them, and Stanley, true to his promise, took 
 his natives back to Zanzibar, around Cape Town, 
 When they reached home, they knelt on the beaqh,
 
 94 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 and cried " Allah ! Allah ! " as they bent their 
 faces to the sand. When Stanley returned to 
 England, the devoted fellows shoved his boat into 
 the sea and then bore him on their shoulders out 
 into the surf to reach it. 
 
 Well, the boy of the Welsh poor-house had come 
 to world-wide fame ! He had made that journey 
 of over seven thousand miles in the heart of Africa, 
 which he had planned ; he had discovered that 
 the Shimeeyu River, four hundred miles long, is 
 the true source of the Nile, making it the longest 
 river in the world ; and he was prepared to show 
 that this great land with its teeming millions was to 
 be invaluable to the world's commerce. 
 
 Europe hailed him now. Humbert, King of 
 Italy, sent him his portrait ; Victor Emanuel, his 
 father, bestowed a gold medal; the Khedive of 
 Egypt decorated him with the grand commander- 
 ship of the Order of the Medjidie ; the Prince of 
 Wales sent his personal congratulations ; London, 
 Paris, Italy and Marseilles sent gold medals from 
 their Geographical Societies ; a dozen other cities, 
 like Berlin and Vienna, made him an Honorary
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 95 
 
 Member of their largest associations ; and best of 
 all, he says: "The government of the United 
 States has crowned my success with its official 
 approval, and the unanimous vote of thanks passed 
 in both Houses of the Legislature has made me 
 proud for life of the expedition and its achieve- 
 ments." 
 
 Mr. Stanley went back to Africa; and under 
 the International African Association, with Leo- 
 pold the Second, king of the Belgians, at its head, 
 built a good road from the mouth of the Congo, 
 or Livingstone River, inland, in order to open the 
 country to trade and civilization. He returned in 
 triumph, and after a notable lecture tour in the 
 United States, married happily and settled in 
 England, where he secured political honors. He 
 died suddenly in London, May 10, 1904. 
 
 Africa will have a great future, doubtless, and 
 the boy of the Welsh poorhouse, by his indomi- 
 table will and courage, hastened the day by many 
 and many a year.
 
 VI. JOHNS HOPKINS. 
 
 WE are living in an age of remarkable wealth, 
 and remarkable business successes, and of 
 equally remarkable gift-giving and benefactions. 
 Mr. Otis of Connecticut gives a million dollars to 
 carry the gospel to the heathen ; Mr. Slater, of the 
 same State, a million to educate the colored people 
 at the South ; Mr. Durant a million to Wellesley 
 College for the education of young women ; 
 Leonard Case, of Cleveland, Ohio, a million and a 
 half to a School of Science ; Mr. Rich two millions 
 to Boston University, where young women share 
 equally with young men the benefits of higher 
 education. 
 
 But Johns Hopkins gave more than all these 
 princely men to found in Baltimore the University 
 and Hospital which bears his name. When asked 
 
 for money during his life he generally refused ; 
 96
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. 97 
 
 doubtless his reply often seemed somewhat enig- 
 matical : " My money is not mine. I did not 
 make it. It has merely rolled up in my hands, 
 and I know what for. I must keep to my own 
 work." 
 
 And who was this munificent giver ? 
 
 He was a farmer's boy; later, a clerk in a 
 grocery ; still later, the owner of a little shop ; by 
 and by, a bank-president ; at last, a money king. 
 
 Johns Hopkins, so named from the family name 
 of his ancestor, Margaret Johns Johns being an 
 early form of the word Jones was born May 19, 
 1795, and was the eldest of eleven children. His 
 father, Samuel, was a Quaker farmer, kind and 
 conscientious, but rich only in his large family. 
 His mother was a superior woman, both in intel- 
 lect and will ; so notably superior, in fact, that it is 
 said she guided not only the Yearly Meetings of 
 the Friends, but many matters of the county as 
 well. Such a mother would naturally impress her 
 strength of character upon her sons. There were 
 too, probably, fine forces latent in the father's 
 blood ; Governor Edward Hopkins of Connecticut
 
 98 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 and Bishop Ezekiel Hopkins of Londonderry, men 
 of mark, were among his relatives. 
 
 Little Johns worked on the farm in summer 
 and received whatever education was possible in 
 winter. He was an active boy, both in body and 
 mind, getting and reading every book in the county 
 within his reach. He enjoyed Shakespeare, he 
 enjoyed history, and especially did he enjoy biog- 
 raphy ; it probably stimulated him, even in boy- 
 hood, to find that men had begun at the foot of 
 the ladder and climbed, rung by rung, to the top. 
 
 When he was seventeen, a wealthy uncle, Gerard 
 Hopkins, came to pay his parents a visit. He 
 was at once interested in the intelligent boy, and 
 he persuaded the mother to permit Johns to go 
 back with him to Baltimore, and there to learn the 
 wholesale grocery business. Doubtless the boy's 
 heart at once stirred with ambition, perhaps thrilled 
 with pleasure at the thought of life in the fine city. 
 This Baltimore uncle was an eminent minister 
 among the Friends, and his company was much 
 sought after, so that the country lad had oppor- 
 tunities to meet intellectual and well-bred people.
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. 99 
 
 The aunt was a most cheerful woman, and very 
 kind to the young new-comer. If he were awkward, 
 she did not appear to see it, but always contrived 
 that he should feel at ease. 
 
 For two years Johns worked steadily ; the vic- 
 tory of success is half won when one gains the 
 habit of work. The uncle, about this time, was 
 appointed by the Baltimore Friends to go far out 
 to the State of Ohio, to attend the Yearly Meeting. 
 Who should be left in charge of the store, the 
 business, and the family? Mr. Hopkins called 
 his nephew Johns to him. He spoke to him 
 gravely : 
 
 " I am going on this long journey, and thee is but 
 a youth. N<nu, I want thee to put an old head on 
 young shoulders ; and as thee has been faithful to 
 my interests since thee has been with me, I am 
 going to leave everything in thy hands. Here are 
 checks which I have signed my name to ; there 
 are upwards of five hundred of them. Thee will 
 deposit the money as it is received, and as thee 
 wants money thee will fill up the checks which I 
 leave with thee. Buy the goods and do the best
 
 100 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 thee can. Be attentive at the house, and see after 
 our little children, whom we leave behind in thy 
 care and a female relative." 
 
 A company of five, including his aunt, started 
 on this long journey. There were no railroads. 
 There was often no pathway save the trail of the 
 Indians. They traveled on horseback, fording 
 deep rivers, and threading their way through dense 
 forests. Well, the lad Johns did his part nobly 
 during their absence. It was a time of great 
 excitement, disturbance and anxiety, for the coun- 
 try was engaged in the War of 1812 with England. 
 The British had entered Washington, burnt the 
 Capitol, and were marching up the Chesapeake. 
 The people of Baltimore were fleeing in every 
 direction. Johns might well have been nearly 
 frantic, not daring to leave the children, and yet 
 obliged to care constantly for the store. Finally, 
 three days before the bombardment of Fort Henry, 
 the uncle and aunt arrived home much to his sur- 
 prise and relief. It proved that he had done bet- 
 ter than the uncle supposed he could. He had, 
 during the absence, evidently mastered the detail
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. IOI 
 
 of trade, had visibly increased the business, and 
 won many friends. ' ',/ i v j V , 's-' i J 
 
 Five years after this fr'is uncte agjahv calleji h$m 
 aside. This time he said, " Johns, would thee like 
 to go into business for thyself ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but, uncle, I have no capital. I have 
 saved only eight hundred dollars." (He had 
 been willing to work hard for seven years to save 
 this eight hundred dollars. ) 
 
 " But that will make no difference. I will en- 
 dorse for thee, and this will give thee credit ; and 
 in a short time thee will make a capital ; thee has 
 been faithful to my interests, and I will start thee 
 in business." 
 
 " I will endorse for thee." That was a profound 
 compliment, a tribute most uncommon for so young 
 a man to win from an old, clear-headed business 
 man. Johns's habits were well known to his uncle ; 
 it was of course taken into consideration that he 
 never wasted his evenings, that he did not spend 
 his money carelessly or foolishly, that he did not 
 make unwise bargains, that, as a rule, he showed 
 good common sense in his dealings.
 
 102 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Starting for himself, he rented a small stoie, 
 foiKied* a partnership -with another young man, and 
 ;begjiH; business, unostentatiously. He soon found 
 that better than his uncle's endorsement was the 
 credit in the community which he had gained 
 through his devotion to his uncle's business. 
 
 For twenty-five years, a quarter of a century, 
 Johns Hopkins labored untiringly, late and early. 
 His business grew and extended into other States. 
 He was invariably temperate, and his word was as 
 good as his bond. While other firms failed in 
 seasons of financial depression, his house always 
 maintained the highest credit. While other men 
 drove fast horses, gave entertainments, attended 
 parties, he devoted his time to his business and to 
 reading. There is probably a connection between 
 these two series of facts. Bishop Jeremy Taylor 
 said, " Men will find it impossible to do anything 
 greatly good, unless they cut off all superfluous 
 company and visits." 
 
 Mr. Hopkins may have been called unsocial ; he 
 never was called ungrateful. He never forgot his 
 uncle. He said when nearly eighty years old, to
 
 JOHN HOPKINS.
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. 105 
 
 his cousin, Gerard Hopkins, now living in Balti- 
 more, " If not for him, I would in all probability 
 have remained a boy on the farm." 
 
 And now came the time when he retired from 
 the grocery firm, leaving it to his two brothers, 
 who also had come to Baltimore, and two of his 
 clerks. Did he sit down to luxuriously enjoy his 
 wealth ? Did he spend it in travel, or in fine so- 
 cial pleasure ? Oh, no ; accustomed to system- 
 atize monetary affairs, he was at once chosen 
 and elected president of the Merchants Bank, and 
 he accepted the position and held it until his 
 death. 
 
 Here he had many opportunities to do favors 
 for young business men. These he gladly aided, 
 provided they had shown the three sterling 
 qualities : diligence, good sense, and integrity. 
 In times of panic, when notes were brought before 
 the directors of the bank for consideration, Mn 
 Hopkins, unsolicited, would often endorse them, 
 thus helping worthy but unfortunate business men 
 when they most needed it. But for lazy people, 
 or for those who seemed to have no aptitude or
 
 106 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 tact in making a place for themselves in the world, 
 he had very little sympathy. 
 
 Mrs. Caroline H. Dall tells of a Baltimore firm, 
 that, having hung his picture in their office after 
 his death, were thus interrogated : " What was 
 Johns Hopkins to you ? " 
 
 The reply was this : " We began with very little. 
 We were his tenants ; the rent was heavy ; he 
 exacted it to the moment, and we lost many an 
 opportunity because we dared not risk a dollar 
 after it became his due. One day he came in him- 
 self to look after it. ' Why don't you do a larger 
 business ? ' said he. ' You are prompt ; you ought 
 to get on.' We told him candidly, and he wrote 
 us a check for ten thousand dollars on the spot, 
 and told us not to hurry about paying it ! When 
 we were able to repay him, he returned the inter- 
 est. From that day we prospered." 
 
 They had never regretted the hard way in which 
 they earned his respect, and they warmly cherished 
 his name and memory. 
 
 His giving was usually along this line of indus- 
 try and energy and promptness. He delighted to
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. I Of 
 
 reward and recognize their qualities. For instance, 
 five persons gave each a hundred dollars to buy 
 goods for a poor widow. At the end of two years 
 she returned the sum with interest. Mr. Hopkins 
 refused his share. He said, "I don't want it. 
 Keep it, and lend again in the same way." 
 
 He was interested in all commercial enterprises, 
 especially those which concerned his native State. 
 Once when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad came 
 near to failure, he boldly pledged his great fortune 
 in its behalf, and thus inspired confidence to such 
 a degree that men of wealth immediately invested 
 in it and saved its future. He was made a direc- 
 tor of the road, then chairman of the finance 
 committee, and in 1573 furnished the company 
 with nine hundred thousand dollars, which enabled 
 it to pay its interest in cash. He was now the 
 possessor of two million dollars' worth of stock, 
 owned one hundred and fifty warehouses, was 
 director in five banks, treasurer of a large insur- 
 ance company, and large stockholder in various 
 coal and other companies. But it was by the same 
 pluck and same patience which enabled him to save
 
 I08 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 up eight hundred dollars dollar by dollar through 
 seven long, slow years of drudging detail work, 
 that he gained and managed and kept and increased 
 his millions. 
 
 "What will this rich man do with his money, as 
 he is unmarried ? " the people of Baltimore began, 
 by and by, to ask about the white-haired old mil- 
 lionnaire. He had given three thousand dollars 
 to help build a Quaker meeting-house, but this 
 was little to the public, thought the world, for a 
 man worth his millions. " Make your will," said 
 his friends. 
 
 " I am not ready," was the enigmatical reply. 
 " I have got something to do, and I shall live till I 
 have done it." 
 
 Absorbed in business, he still felt the early 
 training of that mother with a gift for administra- 
 tion whose constant thought was how to wisely 
 help the world. " Such a remembrance," says La- 
 martine, " is a North Star to any wanderer." Ran- 
 dolph said, " I should have been an atheist, if it 
 had not been for one recollection, and that was 
 the memory of the time when my departed mother
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. 109 
 
 used to take my little hand in hers, and cause me 
 on my knees to say, Our Father which art in 
 Heaven'' Certain it is that Johns Hopkins, as the 
 years went on, felt more and more the actuating 
 power of his mother's spirit. He pondered well the 
 disposition of his vast property. He determined 
 to place it where it would do constant good ; where 
 it would carry on his favorite work of aid to those 
 who were working their way up as he had done ! 
 Not by money itself ; they must earn that for 
 themselves it was necessary to the development 
 of mental and moral muscle. But he would give 
 them knowledge, which Daniel Webster said, at 
 the laying of the corner stone of Bunker Hill 
 Monument, " Is the great sun in the firmament ; 
 life and power are scattered with all its beams." 
 His heart went out, too, toward the sick, and 
 toward orphan children, because these could not 
 earn for themselves. 
 
 Therefore it was, that at his death, December 
 24th, 1873, when his will was read, it was found 
 that he had left seven million dollars to found Johns 
 Hopkins University and Hospital. It was a grand
 
 no HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 Christmas gift to a city, to the world at large. 
 Broad and wise in his giving, he made no condi- 
 tions, save that the principal should not be used 
 for buildings ; these were to be erected out of the 
 income ; and there was a request that there be 
 several free scholarships for poor students from 
 three States Maryland, Virginia and North Caro- 
 lina; and in the Hospital, which should be built 
 only after careful investigations of similar institu- 
 tions abroad, there should be a training-school for 
 nurses ; and on another piece of land, he provided 
 for an asylum for four hundred destitute or orphan 
 colored children. Plans of the Hospital, which 
 will be one of the working schools of the great 
 University, are hung in the halls of Oxford and 
 Cambridge, for the whole world is looking to see 
 what the seven million dollars of the grocery boy 
 will accomplish. 
 
 And what have they already accomplished? The 
 trustees, whom Mr. Hopkins had selected and 
 appointed, looked about the country for a presi- 
 dent, and the choice fell upon the youthful leader 
 of the University of California, who had married
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. Ill 
 
 the daughter of President Woolsey of Yale College. 
 When Doctor Oilman came to Baltimore, Johns 
 Hopkins's sister said to him, " I had thought of an 
 older man." He replied with a smile, " It is a 
 fault which will mend daily. I assure you, madam, 
 I will be as old as ever I can." 
 
 A letter recently received from one of the pro- 
 fessors in the University says : " Johns Hopkins's 
 knowledge of men was superb. He knew by a 
 kind of instinct whom he could trust. But the 
 wisest choice he ever made was that of Board of 
 Trustees, and the Board has shown its sovereign 
 sense in the choice of President Gilman." 
 
 The best professors possible have been secured : 
 Professor Sylvester, to whom the Royal Society of 
 London gave its highest scientific distinction, the 
 Copley Medal, for the chair of mathematics ; Pro- 
 fessor Martin of Cambridge University, Biology ; 
 Doctor Haupt of Gottingen, only thirty years of 
 age, for Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian, Ethiopic and 
 other languages in short, there now are forty- 
 one able scholars on the academic staff. Stu- 
 dents, most of them already graduated from other
 
 112 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 colleges, soon began to gather here for higher 
 education in special lines of work. Of all who 
 have studied at Johns Hopkins University, less 
 than one-tenth have gone into business; a large 
 proportion have become professors and instruc- 
 tors. Perhaps Johns Hopkins planned even better 
 than he knew, when he threw his great pebble 
 into the ocean of knowledge ; the circles will go 
 on widening forever. 
 
 The spirit of its founder certainly pervaded the 
 institution. Six valuable journals are maintained by 
 the University ; in Mathematics, Chemistry, Philol- 
 ogy, Biology, Historical and Political Science, and 
 Logic. Much has been done in original research. 
 Says a recent writer, "An idler is an unknown 
 bird at the Johns Hopkins University. Its mem- 
 bers are here, not for boating, base-ball playing, 
 and hazing, but for work." The atmosphere is 
 scholarly. For many years there has not been 
 reason for any officer to censure a student for dis- 
 order or discourtesy. 
 
 Each year twenty Fellowships of five hundred 
 dollars each are given to as many scholars of
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS. 113 
 
 marked ability who are fitting themselves for a life- 
 work of study. Among these recipients are Mit- 
 sura Kuhara and Kakichi Mitsukuri of the Univer- 
 sity of Tokio, Japan. Another is from the University 
 of France. Eighteen Honorary Hopkins's scholar- 
 ships are distributed among those under-graduates 
 who show great merit. The present college build- 
 ings are plain, but fine ones are to be permanently 
 built at Clifton, a Baltimore suburb, with grounds 
 several hundred acres in extent. This estate was 
 Mr. Hopkins's country seat, where he walked and 
 thought and saved and planned for his grand bene- 
 ficence. He might have reared a magnificent 
 granite shaft to himself ; he might have lived in 
 costly ease, but he has preferred a monument which 
 will proclaim his name throughout the world. To 
 be simply rich, is to be forgotten like thousands of 
 other millionnaires ; to give wealth like Johns Hop- 
 kins is to be remembered with honor and gratitude 
 forever. Generations of boys will grow to be men, 
 and their children's children will come into this 
 busy world and go out, but the work of this "seven 
 millions " will never be finished.
 
 VII. WILLIAM M. HUNT. 
 
 THERE is no royal road to art. The ascent 
 of the glittering ladder is no whit easier 
 than the exploration of the wilds of Africa, by a 
 Stanley, or the accumulation of seven millions by 
 a Johns Hopkins. The essentials of a success, 
 persistent work and indomitable will, have never 
 been other since the days of Adam. Certain, too, 
 is it that the story of most artists is the old story 
 of long poverty and long struggle, before victory. 
 
 Giotto, the " regenerator of Italian art," was 
 the son of a herdsman, and he tended sheep 
 near Florence, using his spare time in drawing 
 pictures of his flock on flat pieces of slate with a 
 pointed stone. One day the great painter, Cima- 
 bue, saw the unlettered boy of fourteen, intently 
 at work, and he asked him if he would like to go 
 
 home to learn his art with him. Giotto's father 
 114
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT. 115 
 
 consented, and by and by the shepherd-boy sur- 
 passed his master. Pope Boniface VIII. sum- 
 moned him to Rome, and kings were eager to pur- 
 chase his paintings. He created a new school of 
 art, built the famous Cathedral Tower at Florence, 
 which Longfellow calls " The builder's perfect and 
 centennial flower," and of which Ruskin says, 
 " Power and beauty in the highest degree exist, as 
 far as I know, only in one building in the world 
 the campanile of Giotto. It is the model and 
 mirror of perfect architecture." 
 
 Dannecker, the great German sculptor, was the 
 son of an ignorant stable-keeper, but he had a 
 refined and aspiring mother who fostered her boy's 
 artistic tastes. He worked in the stable till he 
 was thirteen, but whenever he could, he stole off 
 to the yard of a stone-cutter and there he staid 
 and covered the marble slabs with his designs, 
 although he well knew he should be beaten by his 
 rough father for what would be considered idle> 
 ness. At last, he set forth into the world and 
 
 walked to Paris, and there, always hungry and 
 
 t 
 always meanly clad, he worked for two years in
 
 Il6 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 the Louvre. Thence he walked on to Rome ; and 
 though often discouraged and heartsick, he de- 
 voted himself untiringly to his art. At fifty years 
 of age, he made his celebrated Ariadne, a beautiful 
 woman reclining on the back of a panther, a mas- 
 terpiece of sculpture, which draws thousands every 
 year to Frankfort. Fortunes have been offered 
 for it, but money cannot buy it from Germany. 
 For eight long years too, Dannecker worked upon 
 his famous statue of the Christ, which was pur- 
 chased by the Empress of Russia for her son 
 Alexander I. Goethe and Can ova were proud to 
 become the intimate friends of the man who was 
 once a stable-boy. 
 
 Thorwaldsen, the great Dane, was the son of a 
 poor wood-carver and a peasant mother, and he 
 had the same bitter struggle with poverty. Iv is 
 the old story : shy and melancholy, teaching draw- 
 ing and working with his father ; going to Rome 
 on an academy pension of ten dollars a month ; 
 sending his work back to Copenhagen for sale, 
 which nobody wanted because he was not famous ; 
 carving his Jason with the Golden Fleece, and
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT. 117 
 
 breaking the cast because people only admired 
 and did not buy ; at last, after nine weary years at 
 Rome, selling his humble furniture to go back to 
 obscure wood-carving in Denmark when, lo ! 
 the tide turns a rich man from England sees his 
 work, orders a Jason in marble, and Thorwaldsen 
 is thenceforth famous. Now the academy at Co- 
 penhagen sends him five hundred dollars as an 
 expression of pleasure in his work. How much 
 more he had needed it when he lived, half-starved 
 in his comfortless studio ! But the world has few 
 smiles for the struggling, but ah, how many smiles 
 when the struggles are over. Many a poor fellow 
 fails just at the border-land of success, when a 
 little more self-reliance and faith in self, and per- 
 sistent effort, would have won ! 
 
 Hiram Powers, in our own country, is another 
 remarkable instance of hard-earned success. His 
 story, too, runs the old way : He was born on a 
 bleak Vermont farm, the eighth among nine chil- 
 dren, his family removing to Ohio where, by the 
 death of the father, all the children were obliged 
 to work for their own support; he himself was
 
 Il8 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 first a clerk in a hotel reading-room, then in a 
 produce store ; then he collected debts for a clock 
 maker ; afterward, for seven years, he took charge 
 of wax figures in a Cincinnati museum ; then he 
 learned to model in plaster from a German 
 working, trusting, hoping, in this fashion till he 
 was thirty. Then the long path of toil turned, but 
 it turned as it usually does, only by his own deter- 
 mined effort, to tread a new way. He resolved 
 to go to Washington, and try his hand at model- 
 ling busts of distinguished men. But for such 
 bold venture, he might have spent his life among 
 the wax figures. Two years later, with a little 
 money laid by, and some aid from Mr. Nicholas 
 Longworth of Cincinnati, he started for Florence. 
 In one year his statue of Eve was finished, which 
 Thorwaldsen said was a work any sculptor might 
 be proud to claim as his masterpiece. Not long 
 after, his Greek Slave made him famous. The 
 first copy is in the gallery of the Duke of Cleve- 
 land ; the second is in the Corcoran Art Gallery 
 at Washington ; the third belongs to Earl Dudley, 
 and a fourth was purchased by A. T. Stewart of
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT.
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT.' 121 
 
 New York for eleven hundred dollars His 
 bronze statue of Webster in the State House 
 grounds, is familiar to all Boston boys. I went to 
 his beautiful home in Florence, as to a shrine, but 
 alas the great artist had gone out from its doors 
 forever. 
 
 Without the struggle of poverty, to be sure, but 
 amid the struggle of absorbing, tireless, enthusias- 
 tic work, another artist came to occupy the fore- 
 most position in American art, William M. Hunt. 
 Boston knew he was a great artist while he lived ; 
 she will be constantly confirmed in this belief as 
 the years go on, and the great world will finally 
 acknowledge a master. We are so busy a people, 
 making great fortunes and building elegant homes, 
 we are so eager to discover a new o ; l well or 
 a new coal or silver mine, that we have little time 
 to discover a genius, even though he live next 
 door. 
 
 Fortunately, the boy, Hunt, had a mother of 
 great yes, remarkable talent perhaps it would 
 be difficult to find a great man whose mother was 
 not a superior woman. Mrs. Hunt, it is believed,
 
 122 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 would have been a famous painter also, had not 
 her father, like others in those days, thought it 
 unwomanly for a girl to be an artist, and forbade 
 her, absolutely forbade her, to touch the brush. 
 She married early, and after four sons and a 
 daughter were born, her husband died, leaving to 
 her the education of the children. An Italian ar- 
 tist coming to the town, she took him into her 
 home, and mother and children began to study 
 art together and in earnest. 
 
 William, at twelve, carved small heads in mar- 
 ble, and later, in shell cameos. Fond of music, at 
 fifteen he played on the piano and violin. His 
 brown eyes were full of fun, and his sensitive, joy- 
 ous nature, with his deep sympathy, won hosts of 
 friends. At sixteen he entered Harvard College, 
 but failing in health, yet not discouraged, at nine- 
 teen left the University and went to Italy. Here 
 he made the determination to become a sculptor, 
 and for two years, part of the time in Dusseldorf, 
 he studied drawing and the anatomy of the human 
 body. Later, in Paris, he became the pupil of 
 Thomas Couture. There he worked long and pa-
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT. 1 23 
 
 tiently with the brush. He doubtless thought 
 with Turner : " I know of no genius but the gen- 
 ius of hard work." 
 
 Years after, he said to his class in Boston : 
 " You don't know what persistent effort is ! Think 
 of the violin student in the Paris Conservatoire, 
 who was more than a year trying to bend his 
 thumb as he had not been taught to do in the 
 provinces ! 
 
 " When I was a little boy I wanted to learn the 
 violin, but a certain man discouraged me. ' Don't 
 learn the violin ! It's so hard ! ' I could kick 
 that man now." So annoyed was he that anybody 
 should shrink from hard work it seemed to him 
 the most fatal of all weaknesses. 
 
 At another time, he said : " Be earnest, and 
 don't worry, and you will learn twice as fast. If 
 you could see me dig and groan, rub it out and 
 start again, hate myself, and feel dreadfully ! The 
 people who do things easily, their things you look 
 at easily, and give away easily ! 
 
 " What if Michael Angelo had done his work in 
 the Sistine Chapel easily ! An artist one day
 
 124 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 called upon Grisi, found her upon a sofa, weary 
 and forlorn. He expressed his surprise at her 
 appearance, declaring that she was the one mortal 
 whom he had envied, such was her strength, buoy- 
 ancy and joyousness. He had not thought she 
 could find life a burden. ' Ah,' said she, ' I save 
 myself all day for that one bound upon the stage. 
 Not for worlds would I leave this sofa, which I 
 must keep all day that I may be ready for my 
 work at night.' 
 
 " Inspiration is nothing without work. What 
 we do best is done against difficulties. Work 
 while your brain is full of the picture before you. 
 Work is a stimulus to work, and loafing a stimulus 
 to laziness." 
 
 While in Paris, he became enthusiastically fond 
 of Jean Francois Millet who was then struggling 
 with poverty. 
 
 " For years," said Mr. Hunt, " Millet painted 
 beautiful things and nobody looked at them. 
 They fascinated me, and I would go to Barbison, 
 his home, and spend all the money I could get in 
 buying his pictures. I brought them to Boston.
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT. 12$ 
 
 ' What is that horrid thing ? ' ' Oh, it is a sketch 
 by a friend of mine.' Now, he is the greatest 
 painter in Europe." 
 
 When Mr. Hunt was thirty-one, he came back 
 to America to live. He had then painted his 
 great painting of the Prodigal Son, leaning on the 
 breast of his father, his exquisite Marguerite 
 plucking leaves from a daisy, and several other 
 works now well known. There was less art cul- 
 ture among our people then than now, but he had 
 rourage and hope. He opened a studio in New- 
 port, and for seven years painted portraits mostly. 
 His standard was high. He lived in his art ; was 
 wedded to it. He said, " You want a picture to 
 seize you as forcibly as if a man had seized you 
 by the shoulder ! Strive for simplicity ; not 
 complexity ! Don't talk of what you are going 
 to do ! Do IT." There is a man for you who 
 was building his fame upon the foundation of 
 thorough work. 
 
 Once, when asked by a lady how long it had 
 taken to draw a charcoal picture, he replied, "I 
 think it took me an hour or two ; but I suppose I
 
 126 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 ought to say that it took me forty years, as I've 
 been drawing about that length of time." 
 
 Witty and brilliant in conversation, kind to 
 everybody, especially to young artists, he became 
 the centre of a circle of charming and earnest 
 people. He hated shams and affectations. Once 
 when asked what he thought of a young painter of 
 foppish appearance, he replied, "I don't know 
 him. I know his clothes. I can have nothing to 
 do with such a man when I meet him ; I look 
 right through, and beyond, and around him." But 
 he criticised all work tenderly as all great masters 
 do, saying, " Don't look too hard except for some' 
 thing agreeable. We can find all the disagreeable 
 things in the world between our own hats and 
 boots." 
 
 He was as genuinely simple, too, as he was gen- 
 uinely great. One morning as he came out of his 
 studio on Tremont street, he met an old woman 
 on the stairs carrying down a big box of ashes. 
 He at once assisted, and together they placed it 
 on the sidewalk, quite to the surprise of some of 
 his kid-gloved admirers.
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT. 127 
 
 When our artist was forty-three, and fame and 
 wealth had both been won, and time was precious, 
 he gladly opened his best studio to teach a large 
 class of women. How it broadened and beautified 
 the lives of those learners ! How small seemed 
 the round of shopping and making calls, after 
 studying with such a master ! His presence was 
 magnetic, raying out inspiration. One of his 
 ablest pupils (Miss Helen M. Knowlton) now a 
 well-known artist, used to jot down on bits of 
 paper in the class-room some of his brilliant words 
 and suggestions ; and so important were they that 
 in book form they have been heartily welcomed 
 both in Europe and America. Indeed the volume 
 is used as an art text-book in some of the normal 
 schools. 
 
 Five years after this, the great Boston fire swept 
 away much of the tangible labor of his lifetime, 
 but he met his loss bravely, and began work afresh, 
 toiling harder than ever. He said, " Painting, for 
 me, is the only work worth doing, and there is no 
 other play." " Draw whatever fascinates you. 
 Love something and paint it," was often his ad-
 
 128 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 vice. Sometimes envious people spoke of him as 
 the one-man-power in art in Boston." But in his 
 modesty he has been heard to say, " I've been at 
 painting all my life, and I don't feel to-day that I 
 know anything. I'm not sure that I can go on 
 with a single one of these portraits that I have 
 begun." 
 
 He studied incessantly. Veronese, Michael 
 Angelo, Titian and Velasquez were his teachers 
 among the old masters, and Millet, Delacroix, 
 Corot and Turner among the modern. Of the 
 latter he said, " One hundred years from now, Tur- 
 ner will be counted the greatest painter who ever 
 lived. His color is wonderful ! His color is iri- 
 descent. The Venetians could get such color only 
 by painting transparently, but Turner is solid, 
 clear, throughout." 
 
 In 1878 he was asked to paint two large pic- 
 tures upon the walls of the grand State House at 
 Albany, N. Y. He accepted, though shrinking 
 from it, and for five months, before beginning the 
 work, wrought at his plans. One of these great 
 mural paintings represents the Goddess of Night in
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT. 129 
 
 her cloud chariot ; before her three restive horses, 
 and behind her a sleeping mother and child. In the 
 other, is depicted Columbus, standing in a boat 
 in mid-ocean, with Hope at the prow and Fortune 
 at the helm. So careful was he in the execution 
 of these paintings that thirty charcoal drawings 
 were made, also twenty oil paintings, and the col- 
 ors were tested on stone sent from Albany. Then 
 for fifty-five days, Mr. Hunt and his assistants 
 painted on the walls from early morning till late 
 at night standing on scaffolding. 
 
 When completed, in coloring and finish, the pic- 
 tures were a triumph of art, but the artist had broken 
 down in health. He sought the Isles of Shoals, 
 hoping to find renewal of strength from the brac- 
 ing and restful ocean breezes, but it was too late. 
 One September morning the country was shocked 
 to hear that the great artist was found lying peace- 
 fully in a little pool back of the cottages, dead. It 
 is supposed that he missed his footing, and no 
 hand was near to help. 
 
 He died in the prime of life, at fifty-five ; but 
 his work lives on after him and is to live.
 
 IJO HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Whether he painted Niagara or Gloucester Har- 
 bor, the Street Musician or the Drummer Boy, the 
 Bugle Call or the Bathers, each of the paintings 
 was like himself, strong, refined, instinct with life 
 and feeling. Over four hundred of his pictures, 
 those owned by friends and therefore not burned, 
 were exhibited after his death, yet these probably 
 did not constitute one third of his work. Among 
 his best known portraits are those of Chief Justice 
 Shaw, Governor Andrew, Charles Sumner and 
 James Freeman Clarke. 
 
 It is to be noted that Mr. Hunt always honored, 
 never debased, his art. Being shown a picture, 
 very fine in technique, by a Munich artist, of a 
 drunken man holding a half-filled glass of wine, he 
 said, " It's skilfully done, but what is the use of do- 
 ing it? The subject isn't worthy of the painter." 
 It is to be remembered, too, that he never 
 wearied in his unselfish efforts to encourage and 
 develop art. " An inclination to draw evinces tal- 
 ent," he often declared. " I saw a beautiful sun- 
 set last night, and I would have given worlds for 
 the power to put it upon canvas, even in a mod-
 
 WILLIAM M. HUNT. 131 
 
 est manner. That desire indicates talent. Will 
 you use your talent or smother it ? . . . Chil- 
 dren should be encouraged; not flattered. With 
 no help and encouragement, the child gradually 
 loses its desire to draw." He persistently taught 
 artists to be individual in their thought, not copy- 
 ists, not followers after the manner of any school. 
 
 More than other American teachers, more than 
 any other American artist, he has left his impress 
 upon the working art talent of the time. His name 
 is spoken reverently by earnest young artists. 
 His paintings are sought and studied by art stu- 
 dents who never saw him. Pictures often are 
 characterized as belonging "to the Hunt school 
 of art," and his influence is most surely to survive 
 in art. 
 
 Surely, his successful life emphasizes what Sid- 
 ney Smith said of greatness : " There is but one 
 method, and that is hard labor."
 
 VIII. ELI AS HOWE, JR. 
 
 THE inventors of the world have been, with 
 rare exceptions, very poor men. The 
 stories of Palissy, the Potter, of Stephenson, the 
 Father of Railways, of Goodyear, and of Elias 
 Howe, are as pitiful as they are inspiring. History 
 scarcely furnishes a more pathetic picture than 
 that of Bernard Palissy of France, working six- 
 teen years to discover how to enamel pottery ; his 
 furnaces for burning his earthen ware were built 
 with brick carried upon his back, because he was 
 too poor to hire a horse to draw them ; the floors 
 of his house were torn up for fuel ; the doors even 
 taken off their hinges, and used to shut out the 
 driving storm from his workshop ; his six children 
 died primarily from starvation it is believed ; his 
 wife, in rags, was in despair over her husband's 
 
 folly ; Palissy himself was worn to a skeleton by 
 13?
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR. 133 
 
 privation, and he gave his clothes to his assistant 
 because he was unable to pay him in money ; he 
 was despised by his neighbors for what they con- 
 sidered his suicidal obstinacy; he was always 
 hoping, but always failing. At last success came. 
 He did discover the secret of one of the great in- 
 dustries of the world. Then he was made " Ber- 
 nard of the Tuileries," he received the patronage 
 of kings and emperors, he wrote books, he opened 
 a school of philosophy, and he was honored by the 
 disciples of art and science everywhere. Had he 
 been living in ease and luxury, he would perhaps 
 have never made those long, weary efforts ; but in 
 his poverty, he was ever saying to himself : " If I 
 find out the secrets of pottery, my wife and chil- 
 dren will live in plenty. Now it is starvation 
 by and by, it shall be wealth and fame." 
 
 George Stephenson, unable to read the alphabet 
 till he was eighteen, working in the coal pits for 
 sixpence a day, and mending the boots and patch- 
 ing the clothes of his fellow workmen in the even- 
 ings to earn a few extra pennies that he might 
 attend a night school, is another good illustration
 
 134 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 of what a poor and ignorant boy may become. 
 Never idle, never above doing the commonest 
 work, never an ale drinker, as was the custom 
 among miners, he showed the fine quality of his 
 nature by giving the first money which he ever 
 earned, one hundred and fifty dollars, to his blind 
 father, that he might pay his debts. 
 
 When he became an engineer, and projected a 
 railroad between Manchester and Liverpool, the 
 people said, " He is a madman ! His ' roaring 
 steam engine ' will set the houses on fire with its 
 sparks, the smoke will pollute the air, and carriage- 
 makers and coachmen will starve for want of work." 
 The excitement following his public proposals was 
 intense. For three days he was questioned by a 
 large committee of the House of Commons. This 
 was one of the questions : " If a cow gets on the 
 track in the way of an engine travelling ten miles 
 an hour, will it not be an awkward situation ? " 
 
 Very soberly answered George Stephenson, but 
 with a twinkle in his eye : " Yes, varry awkward 
 indeed for the coo ! " 
 
 One Government Inspector said that if a loco-
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR. 135 
 
 motive ever went ten miles an hour, he " would 
 undertake to eat a stewed engine wheel for his 
 breakfast." Stephenson's " Rocket," a clumsy 
 engine, but a wonder at the time, and now to be 
 seen at the Kensington museum, made the trial 
 trip at an average speed of fourteen miles an hour, 
 and so the Inspector had the opportunity of keep- 
 ing his promise. During the next ten years, being 
 employed to open up railroads in every direction, 
 Stephenson became wealthy and renowned, the 
 friend of Sir Robert Peel, the owner of a large 
 country seat, and the pride of England. He de- 
 clined the honor of knighthood. His famous son 
 Robert said of him, " His example and his char- 
 acter made me the man I am." 
 
 Charles Goodyear, of New Haven, Conn., for 
 eleven years struggling to make India rubber of 
 practical use, imprisoned for debt, pawning his 
 clothes and his wife's trinkets, his children gather- 
 ing sticks in the fields when he was no longer able 
 to buy wood for fires to melt his rubber, often 
 with neither food nor fire in the house, once with a 
 child dead and no means to bury it, and five others
 
 136 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 nearly starving this great inventor furnishes an- 
 other instance of heroic struggle. He was derided 
 by his friends ; one would say to another : " If 
 you see a man with an India rubber cap, an India 
 rubber coat, India rubber shoes, and an India rub- 
 ber purse in his pocket, with not a cent in it > 
 that is Charles Goodyear ! " But these same 
 friends lived to see his vulcanized rubber applied 
 to five hundred uses, to see sixty thousand persons 
 annually producing eight million dollars worth of 
 merchandise from it. It surely shall be counted 
 no mean part of a great success that the daily wel- 
 fare of thousands of people is involved and pro- 
 vided for that daily work and daily wages are 
 secured for multitudes. 
 
 Elias Howe's life, like the others, is the old fairy 
 story of poverty and toil, ending with the grandest 
 success. In the town of Spencer, Mass., in 1825, a 
 boy six years old, somewhat lame, might have been 
 seen any day working with several little brothers 
 and sisters at sticking wire teeth into leather, 
 to make cards for combing cotton. The father 
 was a miller by trade, but from sawing boards,
 
 ELI AS HOWE, JR. 137 
 
 or grinding corn, there came scarcely enough to 
 support a wife and eight children. It followed 
 presently that somebody must go out from the big 
 family and earn food for himself ; therefore at the 
 age of eleven, the cheerful, good-tempered Elias 
 was sent to a farmer's to " live out " till he was 
 twenty-one. 
 
 For a year he worked steadily; but naturally 
 weak in body, the hard labor proved too severe, 
 and he went back to his father's mill. At twelve 
 years old, most boys are in school, with little 
 knowledge or thought of how some other little 
 fellows work from morning till night, with no 
 opportunity for either study or play. 
 
 Elias was, as you see, one of these unfortunate 
 " other little fellows," but he was ambitious, and 
 having heard of Lowell and its mills, at sixteen 
 he obtained the consent of his parents to go there. 
 It was a risk ; he might make a permanent and 
 profitable place for himself, or he might be wrecked 
 by the bad habits of many about him. However, 
 the boy who could not at sixteen say " no," when 
 asked to drink, or go into other sins, probably
 
 138 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 would not have the backbone to say " no " at 
 twenty-one. For two years he labored faithfully ; 
 then the mill closed, and he was obliged to go 
 elsewhere. Under the shadow of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, he found another situation in the machine 
 shop where was employed his cousin, afterward 
 Major-General N. P. Banks, and they both boarded 
 in the same house. At twenty-one we find young 
 Howe with an inventor in Cornhill, Boston, earn- 
 ing the munificent sum of nine dollars a week. 
 This would have provided a fair support for one 
 person, but as he had married, and soon had three 
 little children to feed and clothe, life of course be 
 came again a struggle for bread. In poor health, 
 he was now so often very weary, that he said " he 
 longed to lie in bed forever and ever." 
 
 Liking machinery and curious about inventions^ 
 he was always asking himself if he could not "think 
 out something" which would give more money to 
 his family. At last, as his wife sewed, he fell to 
 wondering why some machine could not be made 
 to take fifty stitches while she was taking one. 
 This idea presently took possession of him. Foi
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR. 139 
 
 months he pondered over it. He experimented in a 
 simple way, with a needle pointed at both ends and 
 eye in the middle, and finally, by a rough model of 
 wood and wires, he convinced himself that a sew- 
 ing machine was a possibility. 
 
 But how was the money needed for the construc- 
 tion of a machine, to be obtained ? Nine dollars 
 a week left no surplus for such a purpose. Possi- 
 bly he might earn more if working in a shop of his 
 own, he thought ; so he moved his lathe and a few 
 tools into his father's garret in Cambridge. Day 
 after day he thought over his invention, but noth- 
 ing came of it. But it is a long road which never 
 turns, and by and by the way seemed open to suc- 
 ceed. He found an old schoolmate George Fisher, 
 who believed in him and his invention, and who 
 took him and his family to his own home, gave 
 him a small garret for a workshop, and five hun- 
 dred dollars with which to experiment. This was 
 a foothold indeed for the young mechanic. Satis- 
 fied that his family would have enough to eat for 
 a time at least, he threw off care and set himself 
 diligently at work on his machine, and in six
 
 140 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 months had completed one; it was only about 
 one foot and a half long, and equally high ; but 
 to his great delight it would actually sew seams. 
 
 Now he had visions of luxury for his wife and 
 babies. For of course, the world would eagerly 
 purchase a thing so valuable in saving labor and 
 time. He took it at once to Boston, and the tailors 
 all looked at it ; but nobody would buy. Indeed 
 they probably felt like breaking it in pieces, as the 
 miners did Watt's engine. They saw the curious 
 wizard thing that would take their sewing out of 
 their hands, and therefore they resolutely opposed 
 it. Besides the machine would cost five hundred 
 dollars, and few were able to pay that sum if they 
 so desired. By the help of Mr. Fisher the machine 
 was patented in Washington ; but the months went 
 slowly by, and there was no purchaser. 
 
 Want stared Elias Howe in the face, and he felt 
 that he must go back again, for the sake of his 
 family, to daily work. Through a relative he be- 
 came engineer on one of the roads leading out of 
 Boston, but his ill health forced him to abandon 
 it. Out of work, owing George Fisher nearly two
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR.
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR. 143 
 
 thousand dollars, with little prospect of ever pay- 
 ing it, he moved his family back into his father's 
 house in Cambridge. 
 
 He did not however lose his hope, for he believed 
 that if America did not care for his invention, Eng- 
 land would see the value of it. His brother Amasa 
 therefore took passage in the steerage of a sailing 
 vessel, carrying the precious, but apparently profit- 
 less machine to London. There William Thomas, 
 of Cheapside, with possibly some previous knowl- 
 edge of Yankee shrewdness, caught the idea of the 
 inventor, and was much sharper than a Yankee in 
 making a bargain. He bought the machine for 
 twelve hundred and fifty dollars, with the right to 
 make and use as many others as he chose ; and he 
 offered the inventor fifteen dollars a week if he 
 would come across the ocean to operate it. 
 
 After four months Amasa returned. The money 
 he brought was soon used in paying debts, and as 
 nothing else opened in the way of work, the broth- 
 ers started again in the steerage, cooking their 
 own provisions. It was a cheerless journey, but 
 it is, as we have seen repeatedly, grim necessity
 
 144 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 that forces men to heroic effort. For eight months 
 Elias worked for Mr. Thomas, and he sent for his 
 family ; but after the machine was in good work- 
 ing order, the inventor evidently was not wanted 
 longer. And now what should he do in a strange 
 country? He borrowed a few tools and tried to 
 make another machine, but this did not secure 
 daily bread. He pawned his clothes, raised a little 
 money, and again sent his family back to his father's 
 house in Cambridge. 
 
 Now alone, and penniless, he borrowed money 
 to pay for his scanty food often beans which 
 he cooked in his shop and toiled on. A man 
 less brave than Elias Howe would probably have 
 drowned himself in the Thames, or attempted to 
 drown his sorrows in drink, but he still believed 
 in the great utility, in the great public benefit of 
 his invention, though the world, as ever, thought 
 him an idiot, a crazed dreamer, for his pains. 
 With no work, no friend to lend him any more 
 money, he sold the machine which he had spent 
 four months in making for twenty-five dollars, 
 pawned another, drew his baggage in a hand-cart
 
 ELI AS HOWE, JR. 145 
 
 to an out-going vessel, found a place as cook in 
 the steerage, and set his face toward America. 
 
 His hopes had not been realized abroad. He 
 had come back in utter penury, but he was thank- 
 ful that he should see the dear ones whom he loved. 
 What was his amazement, his grief, when he landed 
 in New York, to hear that his wife, worn with the 
 privations incident to being the companion of an 
 inventor, was dying of consumption. He had but 
 sixty-two cents in the world, and could not possibly 
 go to Cambridge. At once he sought employment 
 in a machine shop, hoping in a few days to earn 
 enough to take him to her bedside, but fortunately 
 he received ten dollars from his father, hastened to 
 her, and received her dying words of love and en- 
 couragement. 
 
 Borrowing a suit of clothes to attend the funeral, 
 for his own were too shabby, for the first time the 
 hapless inventor looked and felt discouraged and 
 desolate. With his wife's companionship and cheer, 
 fragile though she was, he had ever been strong, 
 and he had always believed that he should earn 
 enough to make her comfortable, nay, to surround
 
 146 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 her with luxury and beauty ! To render his cir- 
 cumstances still worse, the ship in which were 
 stored all his household goods, had gone to the 
 bottom off Cape Cod. Perhaps now his visions 
 of success vanished ; certain it is that he at once 
 went back into a shop at weekly wages his friends 
 thought him a " sadder, yet a wiser man." 
 
 Meantime other men in America had been read- 
 ing about Howe's invention, and they were thinking 
 out and working out similar projects. One man 
 in New York State exhibited a " Yankee Sewing 
 Machine " as a curiosity, at twelve and a half cents 
 admission. Ladies came eagerly and carried home 
 pieces of the work as a marvel. Elias Howe read 
 of this. He knew that all this success belonged 
 to him; but how could he begin a suit for his 
 rights, with his only machine in pawn across the 
 seas ? Again and again he begged men to take 
 up the matter, striving to convince them that they 
 would make money for themselves, eventually ; but 
 those who believed in him, were without funds, and 
 those who had funds were unwilling to risk their 
 money in so novel an uncertainty. At last one
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR. 147 
 
 person was found who promised to cooperate pro- 
 vided that Howe's father would mortgage his farm 
 to him for security. This Elias himself felt was a 
 great risk in behalf of an invention which had thus 
 far brought only disappointment to its originator. 
 But the father consented, and for four years the 
 weary lawsuits dragged along. 
 
 The most important was with Isaac Singer, an 
 actor, who having seen Howe's machine, deter- 
 mined to make one, and in eleven days, working 
 twenty-one hours out of the twenty-four, had suc- 
 ceeded. At once, with great energy, he had adver- 
 tised, and had began to send out agents. The real 
 inventor now notified him that he was infringing, and 
 by and by, too, the courts decided in Howe's favor. 
 
 It was now nine years since the first machine 
 was made ; nine years of exceeding bitterness and 
 of hope deferred. He was thirty-five when the long 
 looked-for day of success dawned. Many machines 
 were made, and sold both here and abroad, and 
 Elias Howe's income soon increased, and swelled 
 to the large sum of two hundred thousand dollars 
 yearly ! The mechanic was no longer cook in the
 
 148 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 steerage, no longer subsisting upon a few beans, 
 cooked and eaten in his dingy workshop. In thirteen 
 years he had received two million dollars from this, 
 the thought of his own brain. He was recognized 
 as a benefactor to labor, to commerce, and to women 
 in every station in life. 
 
 When the civil war began, Mr. Howe was ready 
 to leave his prosperous business and help save the 
 Union. Did he enter the war as an officer ? No ; 
 the millionnaire considered himself no better than 
 any other true-hearted private. The following in- 
 cident shows well his character : 
 
 At the moment when Mr. Howe avowed his determination 
 to enlist, his coachman had entered the building to witness 
 the proceedings. He was a warm-hearted Irishman, named 
 Michael Cahill, past the age of military service as determined 
 by law. Upon hearing his employer's speech, he rushed for- 
 ward, and clambering upon the platform, he cried out : "Put 
 my name down too. I can't bear to have the old man go 
 alone." So down went the name of Michael Cahill, coach- 
 man, next to that of Elias Howe. Laughter and cheers min- 
 gled in about equal proportions. For four months after the 
 Seventeenth Connecticut entered the field, the Government 
 Was so pressed for money, that no payments to the troops
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR. 149 
 
 could be made. One day a private soldier came quietly to 
 the paymaster's office in Washington, and as there were 
 several officers there to be attended to, he took a seat in the 
 corner to await his turn. When the officers had been disposed 
 of, Colonel Walker turned to him and said : " Now, my man, 
 what can I do for you ? " 
 
 " I have called to see about the payment of the Seventeenth 
 Connecticut." 
 
 The paymaster, a little irritated, told him bluntly " that a 
 paymaster could do nothing without money, and that until 
 the Government could furnish some it was useless for soldiers 
 to come bothering him about the pay of their regiments." 
 
 " I know," said the soldier, " the Government is in straits, 
 and I have called to find out how much money it will take to 
 give my regiment two months' pay, and if you will tell me, I 
 am ready to furnish the amount." 
 
 The officer started with astonishment, and asked the name 
 of the soldier, who was no other than Elias Howe. On re- 
 ferring to his books, Colonel Walker found that the sum re- 
 quired was thirty-one thousand dollars. Upon receiving the 
 information, the private wrote a draft for the sum and received 
 in return a memorandum, certifying the advance, and promis- 
 ing reimbursement when the Government could furnish the 
 money. A few days after, at Fairfax Court House, the regi- 
 ment was paid. When Mr. Howe's name was called, he went 
 up to the paymaster's desk, receiving twenty-eight dollars
 
 150 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 and sixty cents of his own money, and signed the receipt 
 therefor, " Private Elias Howe, Jr." After rendering all the 
 services a man in his physical condition could render, he re- 
 luctantly asked a discharge and returned home. He used to 
 say to the soldiers : 
 
 " I have got to leave you, boys. I'm of no use here ; but 
 never mind ; when your time is out come to me at Bridgeport ; 
 I'm building a large sewing machine factory there, and I 
 shall have plenty of work for those that want it." 
 
 Many of his comrades took him at his word, and until 
 his death were at work under him in various capacities. 
 
 Three years after the war closed, in 1867, Mr. 
 Howe received a gold medal for his sewing machine 
 at the Paris Exposition, and the Cross of the Legion 
 of Honor; a personal distinction to a great in- 
 ventor. What was there left for him to ask ? He 
 had wealth, he had honors. He had overcome ill 
 health, poverty, and the schemes of men to rob 
 him of his inventions. He had held steadily to 
 one purpose in life, and through all he had been 
 uniformly just, kind, and never had he been in an 
 ill temper at the indifference of the world. That 
 man only has learned to live rightly, who takes 
 with a smile the world's praise or blame, and with
 
 ELIAS HOWE, JR. 151 
 
 steady head and hand goes straight on with the 
 work he has in hand. 
 
 In one sense, his was a completed life ; and that 
 same autumn in which he received the Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor, he took cold, and was soon quite 
 ill. Still in early middle life, only forty-eight, his 
 friends felt that he must recover ; but one Thurs- 
 day afternoon, October 3, as the sun was setting 
 he sank peacefully away. 
 
 The sewing machine companies of the country 
 passed resolutions of sorrow and respect for " an 
 inventor of genius and ability, a business man of 
 industry and integrity, a benevolent and kind-hearted 
 friend, and a citizen of liberality and patriotism." 
 
 Such a life as that of Elias Howe is surely full of 
 encouragement to those who, lacking money and 
 education, are yet determined to make the most 
 of themselves, who are determined to be true to the 
 ideas they believe in ; it is by these plucky men the 
 race is helped forward to its great achievements.
 
 IX. ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 
 
 IN a Georgia cornfield, might have been seen, 
 some years ago, a feeble little boy dropping 
 kernels for the colored " bands." The hills were 
 four feet apart, and by quick, faithful work, he 
 could cover ten acres a day. This little lad's 
 lovely and intelligent mother had died when he 
 was a baby, three months old. He had one " own " 
 brother and sister, and there were five half-brothers 
 and sisters. This family was poor, but its young 
 members were devoted to each other. 
 
 At eleven this slight boy was holding the plow ; 
 strange work for a child much smaller than boys 
 of his age, but children do not hesitate at impos- 
 sible undertakings when love rules the home. It 
 was the next year, I think, that a Sunday-school 
 was started in the little Georgia town, and Alexan- 
 der this was the name of our child plowman 
 152
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 153 
 
 who had read no books excepting the New Tes- 
 tament and spelling-book, was invited to attend. 
 He undertook to read Genesis by the light of a 
 pine-knot fire, after the day's work was over, and 
 soon sat up till midnight fascinated with the story 
 of Moses and Joseph. The taste for reading was 
 formed those nights the delight, the solace of a 
 long lifetime. 
 
 Three years later, the father and the step-mother 
 both died within the same week, and the family 
 was broken up and scattered. Alexander went to 
 the home of his mother's brother. His father had 
 been a good, kind man but with no genius for 
 making money, yet his death was a sad blow for 
 his helpless , flock. Intelligent and sympathetic, 
 his pure life had been a great moral force in the 
 home. The actual work for each child would be 
 no harder now than it had been, perhaps ; the 
 great woe of it was that each must go his own way, 
 alone. Alexander knew that he should not be 
 strong enough for farm work. He hoped to obtain 
 education sufficient to enable him to become a 
 merchant's clerk. For nearly a year, by means of
 
 154 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 the pittance left by his father, he attended school, 
 and then at fifteen regretfully bade good-by to the 
 schoolroom and carried home his books. The 
 next week he was to set forth. He meant to go 
 to a neighboring town and seek a place in a store. 
 
 Sabbath morning, with a heavy heart, he started 
 for his last day in the Sunday-school class. The 
 superintendent, Mr. Mills, asked how he was pros- 
 pering in his studies. 
 
 " I have finished school," was the low answer. 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " 
 
 " Try to find a place in a store, and save some 
 money, if I can, for further study." 
 
 Mr. Mills asked whether he would not like to go 
 to college, and study Latin. 
 
 If a great hope stole into the lad's heart for a 
 moment, he resolutely put it away. " I should like 
 it," he said quickly, " but I have no means." 
 
 And then came the unexpected words : 
 
 " I will lend you the money." 
 
 Alexander was too astonished to accept the pro- 
 posal. He said, at last, that he would talk the 
 matter over with his uncle and aunt. He went home
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 155 
 
 heart and brain in a tumult. The uncle said little. 
 The aunt argued how much he could accomplish 
 in the world with an education ; she said he ought 
 to accept at once, thankfully. She made the boy 
 a few new clothes, freshened up his old ones, and 
 with a woman's enthusiasm encouraged him, as he 
 started into the untried life. 
 
 Young Alexander pondered much the first few 
 days. He could not bear to be dependent but 
 since it seemed to be needful, he would strive to 
 make friends, to be manly, to give Mr. Mills rea- 
 sons to be proud of him. The Sabbath-school had 
 turned his mind toward the pleasures and benefits 
 of reading, furnished him a benefactor, and opened 
 his way, perhaps, toward usefulness and greatness. 
 Doubtless years after when, as Horace Greeley said, 
 Stephens stood the most eloquent man in Congress, 
 he would have said with Senator Frelinghuysen : 
 " To go from the Sunday-school to the Senate of the 
 United States, I consider no promotion ." 
 
 College life covered a happy, joyous period in 
 the life of this earnest Southern boy. He boarded 
 with a clergyman by the name of Webster, who,
 
 156 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 he afterwards learned, had made the suggestion to 
 Mr. Mills to advance the money for his education ; 
 and so fond did he become of this man that he 
 adopted his middle name, and ever after wrote his 
 own, Alexander Hamilton Stephens. 
 
 His first Latin book was Historic Sacra, and 
 here his Bible study so helped him, that he soon 
 stood at the head of his class. He became exceed- 
 ingly popular with both his instructors and his fel- 
 low-students. A letter to a friend shows how well 
 he deserved it : 
 
 During the four years that I spent at college, I was never 
 absent from roll-call without a good excuse ; was never fined ; 
 and, to the best of my belief, never had a demerit mark 
 against me. No one in my class, at any examination, ever 
 
 got a better circular than I did In my rooms we 
 
 talked, laughed, told stories, more than in any room in col- 
 lege. But there was never any dissipation in it ; neither liq- 
 uor nor cards were ever introduced ; nor were indecent 
 stories or jests ever allowed. I " treated " as much in the way 
 of fruit, melons, and nicknacks in season as any other boy 
 in college ; and yet my average annual expenses were only 
 two hundred and five dollars. Tobacco was not on my list. 
 What I saved in hats, shoes and clothes, I spent in this
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 157 
 
 way. It was not to gain popularity, only to give pleasure 
 to those about me. 
 
 These are helpful suggestions to boys that have 
 an ambition to stand well with their fellows, while 
 they also push ahead, and a boy without ambitions 
 rarely comes to true greatness. 
 
 College days ended at last, and now came the 
 struggle with the world. Everybody comes to this 
 struggle in one way or another. Perhaps it is to 
 secretly overcome various temptations ; perhaps it 
 is to openly earn bread ; perhaps to patiently seek 
 chances to earn. 
 
 Young Stephens had already engaged as assist- 
 ant in an academy. Teachers, patrons, students, 
 were strangers to him. He missed the college 
 friendships. The work wore upon his nerves. 
 He had no money and was of course in debt for his 
 education. He walked his two miles in the early 
 morning before the principal was awake. He 
 wrote in his journal : 
 
 In these walks, I poured forth my griefs to myself, and 
 often wept. .... A classmate called to see me and
 
 158 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 told me in a jocular way of a pleasure trip to the Springs, 
 which had cost him from five hundred to one thousand dol- 
 lars. Little did he know my feelings at the relation. They 
 were those of a destitute child, almost starving, yet too proud 
 to beg or steal. 
 
 He was a fine teacher because he was naturally 
 a good disciplinarian and was also genuinely inter- 
 ested in the progress of his pupils ; but at the end 
 of four months, with broken health, he accepted 
 a position in a private school. 
 
 Ah ! But we have indeed, to relate that there was 
 another reason for his leaving, untold for forty 
 years, and then only to a single friend. In his 
 school was a girl of charming disposition, whom 
 he could not help but love. He had reason to 
 believe that she was equally fond of him. Poor, 
 with no profession, so frail in body and health, with 
 death as he thought in the near future, he could 
 not ask her to be his wife. Neither could he stay 
 where she was, and see her day after day ; so 
 crushing all the new and inspiring helps of a pure 
 affection, he hastened away, travelling all night, 
 breaking his own heart, to render her prospects in
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 159 
 
 life brighter, he believed, than he could hope to 
 make them. 
 
 In the private school there were thirteen pupils, 
 for whose tuition he was to receive five hundred 
 dollars yearly. Ignoring his fragile health, he 
 admitted several poor lads to the school, without 
 charge, remembering his own longing for an educa- 
 tion. The next year, so much did his patrons like 
 him, he was offered a salary of fifteen hundred 
 dollars ; but his health completely failed, and he 
 was obliged to return home. 
 
 What now was before him? A little money 
 remained to him and he resolved to study law as 
 soon as he should become stronger. Some of the 
 townspeople " made fun " of this resolution ; he 
 was so small and boyish he weighed but seventy 
 pounds. 
 
 This stung him to the quick, but he wrote in 
 his journal : 
 
 My soul is bent upon success in my profession. 
 
 You will see he conquered by resolution ; not by 
 chance, nor by dash, but as Wellington and Napo-
 
 l6o HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 leon and Washington and Grant conquered by the 
 steady exertion of an iron will. And says he : 
 
 No one can imagine how I worked, how I delved, how I 
 labored over books. Often I spent the whole night over a 
 law book, and went to bed as the dawn of day was streaking 
 the east. 
 
 He was too, by nature, ambitious. He wrote : 
 
 I have a restlessness of spirit and ambition of soul which 
 are urging me on. My desires do not stop short of the high- 
 est places of distinction. I feel the ragings of ambition like 
 the sudden burst of the long smothered flames of a volcano. 
 
 He longed, too, for companionship. " I do wish 
 I had an associate a bosom confidant, whose 
 tastes and views were similar to my own, and whose 
 business and pursuits were the same," he said 
 once ; but the student did not find him, and he 
 turned and bent himself to his solitary work. 
 
 The day for examination came, a hot July day, 
 under a Southern sun. He was nervous, anxious. 
 But when it was over, the chief lawyers declared 
 they had never witnessed a better examination,
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. l6l 
 
 and the leading lawyer of the county offered him 
 a partnership, which he declined because he loved 
 the old home and determined to succeed there. 
 
 The first step had been successfully taken ; but 
 still he knew that for days and weeks he might not 
 have a case, or an item of legal business. He was liv- 
 ing most frugally on six dollars a month ! But the 
 young lawyer who had his first opening into a fair 
 future from the Sunday-school, did not forget to 
 whom to look for help ; for we find in his journal, 
 July 24 : 
 
 And now, in the beginning, I do make a fervent prayer 
 that He who made me and all things, and who has heretofore 
 abundantly blessed and favored me, and to whom I wish to 
 be grateful for all His mercies, may continue them toward 
 His unworthy servant ; that He may so overrule my whole 
 course that a useful success may attend all my efforts. 
 
 The next week he attended court some distance 
 away. He walked ten miles to the house of his 
 uncle, carrying his saddle-bags on his shoulders, 
 and there borrowed a horse for the rest of the 
 journey. When near the town, he stopped in a 
 pine forest, changed his travel -stained clothes for
 
 162 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 a pair of white cotton trousers which might pass 
 for linen, and appeared among his brother lawyers, 
 fresh and trim, only able, however, to tarry one 
 day. For his first address in court he received the 
 munificent sum of two dollars in silver ! 
 
 But presently came his first real case, where a 
 mother asked the restoration of her child which 
 had been stolen from her by its grandfather. The 
 Court House and yard were full of people. The 
 boyish lawyer was unknown and uncared for, but 
 he had not only carefully thought out his argu- 
 ments, but had declaimed them on a lonely hill- 
 side. He spoke with all the pathos, tenderness 
 and conviction of one who having lost a mother, 
 intuitively knows the depth and power of a mother's 
 love and her desolation when she is bereaved. 
 His great brown eyes filled with tears; his voice 
 quivered. Even the five judges wept, as they 
 restored the child to its mother, and " little Aleck 
 Stephens " took his rank as one of the first orators of 
 Georgia. Some one there remarked that " Stephens 
 would go to Congress in ten years ; " but he went 
 before the time they prophesied.
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 163 
 
 But you may be sure that the honor came through 
 resolution and work. He wrote to his warm friend, 
 Richard M. Johnston, who has published a valua- 
 ble biography of Mr. Stephens : 
 
 My time was occupied almost constantly on week-days in 
 reading, studying and office business. I never lounged about 
 with village crowds. 
 
 At twenty-four, he was elected to the State Leg' 
 islature. Here he spoke rarely ; but whenever he 
 did he commanded attention by his eloquence and 
 by his knowledge of his subject. The next year 
 he was prostrated by illness consumption was 
 feared. However, he rallied, and five years later, 
 he was elected to the State Senate. 
 
 Meanwhile he was sending his half-brother, 
 Linton, through college, loving him almost with a 
 mother's tenderness, and writing most frequently. 
 He tells him : 
 
 No day passes but you are in my mind, and you do not 
 escape from my dreams by night. 
 
 And then he gives wise counsel :
 
 164 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Always look up ; think of nothing but objects of the high 
 est ambition which can be compassed by energy, virtue, and 
 strict morality. In all things do nothing on which you could 
 not invoke the divine blessing. Never condescend to notice 
 small offenses. Be above them. 
 
 Again he writes him : 
 
 To be a scholar requires energy, resolution, time, self- 
 denial, patience and ambition. He that possesses them can 
 control not only his own destiny, but that of others. 
 
 Alexander Stephens had now reached the age of 
 thirty-one. His college debts were paid and he 
 was helping others as he had been helped. Per- 
 suasive in speech, profound in argument, Georgia 
 had sent him to the Congress of the United States. 
 He had no money to buy votes, no influential 
 friends to help, but his genius and his moral char- 
 acter, winning the people, won the position. He 
 could now turn back to his journal where he wrote 
 years before, " My soul is bent upon success," and 
 write after it, " I have succeeded." 
 
 In Congress, Mr. Stephens took fearless posi- 
 tions upon all great questions. At one time he
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEFHEMb.
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 167 
 
 incurred the displeasure of several Southern poli- 
 ticians by opposing the acquisition of California and 
 New Mexico, and Judge Cone called him a traitor. 
 Mr. Stephens was aroused, and threatened "to 
 slap his face." Demanding a retraction of the 
 threat, Cone met him on a hotel piazza., threw the 
 man scarcely half his size to the floor, and thrust 
 a dirk knife eighteen times into his body, one gash 
 coming within the sixteenth of an inch of his heart. 
 Once, as the knife was aimed at his throat, Mr. 
 Stephens grasped it in his hand, which was literally 
 cut to pieces. He recovered, against the expecta- 
 tions of everybody, and years after, looking at his 
 withered hand, said, " Poor Cone ! I'm sure he'd 
 be sorry if he knew what trouble I have to write 
 with these stiff fingers of mine." 
 
 For sixteen years, much of the time a great suf- 
 ferer, Mr. Stephens continued his honorable and 
 brilliant record in Congress. Meantime the ques- 
 tion of Slavery had become an all-important issue. 
 Naturally believing that slavery was legal and 
 righteous, from his life-long education and habits, 
 he yet fought earnestly against the secession of any
 
 1 68 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 State from the Union. However, when Georgia 
 would follow the example of South Carolina, he 
 felt it his duty to stand by the State which had so 
 long honored him with important trusts. He was 
 made Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, 
 yet so anxious was he that a reconciliation should 
 be brought about, that he, with two other Southern 
 men, met President Lincoln and Secretary Seward 
 at Hampton Roads in 1865, for a conference ; but 
 no terms could be agreed upon. At the downfall 
 of the Confederacy, when urged to go abroad 
 rather than be imprisoned and perhaps executed, 
 he replied, " I would rather die in this country 
 than live in any other. I will remain and accept 
 whatever fate has in store for me." 
 
 He was soon after taken, a prisoner, to Fort 
 Warren, Boston, where he remained some months, 
 treated, however, with kindness and respect ; for 
 the North heartily honored a man who could say, 
 " / never departed from principles I NEVER SHALL." 
 He was above bribery. " When I went to Con- 
 gress," he said, " I made a covenant with myself, 
 signing it the day before I took the oath of office :
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 169 
 
 'Except my pay, I will never make a dollar in 
 Washington, while a member of Congress.' I have 
 collected for others, I suppose, half a million of 
 dollars, and I would never take a cent of it." 
 
 While in Washington, a lady called upon the 
 great lawyer, asking his aid to save an imperilled 
 estate belonging to herself and three daughters. 
 He befriended her, chivalrously, and when she 
 offered to pay him, he refused it, but reminded her 
 of having given a " cup of cold water " on an 
 August day to a lad who was walking forty miles 
 to college ! She was astonished to learn that the 
 weary lad and the famous lawyer were the same 
 person. 
 
 During all these years of anxiety and excitement 
 he wrote almost daily to Linton. Now it is of 
 mighty matters of State, now he tells of the illness 
 and death of his pet dog, Rio : 
 
 He sleeps at my feet in the day [Mr. Stephens was ill], 
 and at night before I go up stairs to bed Dur- 
 ing the night he repeats his visit several times. Poor fellow, 
 he is blind. He barks incessantly if I leave him. He keeps 
 close after me and follows the sound of my feet. I usi*
 
 170 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 ally carry a cane, and let that drag along behind, for him to 
 hear it more distinctly than he can my tread. I find more 
 pleasure in thus exercising Rio, and witnessing the pleasure 
 it affords him, than I ever did in the enjoyment of all the 
 honors this world has ever seen fit to bestow upon me. . 
 . . . It is all over with poor old Rio. His strength 
 failed just at my room door, then he fell and died without 
 any struggle. He lay in the library all night. Next day he 
 was put into a box or coffin, and buried in the garden. Over 
 his grave I shed a tear, as I did over him frequently as I saw 
 nature failing. 
 
 After the war he wrote his Constitutional History 
 of the Rebellion; it was able and candid. He 
 received from the sales, thirty-five thousand dollars. 
 Four years of this time, afflicted with inflammatory 
 rheumatism, he did not leave his house. He wrote 
 often in great pain, while propped up in his bed by 
 pillows. Invited now to the Professorship of Polit- 
 ical Science and History in the University of 
 Georgia, he was obliged to decline. But during 
 this seclusion at his home in Georgia, which he 
 called Liberty Hall, " because," said he, "I do as 
 I please and all my guests are expected to do the 
 same," he had five law students in his office, to
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 1JI 
 
 whom he made no charge either for books or in- 
 struction. During his life he aided over one hun- 
 dred and twenty young men and women to go 
 through college, a large number of whom entered 
 the ministry. 
 
 And now came a great personal trial in the 
 death of his brother Linton, who had become a 
 prominent lawyer. Mr. Stephens said bitterly, 
 " The light of my life is extinguished. Why am I 
 here hobbling about and Linton gone ? " 
 
 He was soon after elected to the United States 
 Senate. None of us who have seen him seated in 
 his chair on wheels before the Speaker's desk 
 for he could not walk, save with two crutches and 
 but feebly with them will ever forget that pale 
 sad face, those clear, brilliant eyes ; his great mind 
 and his emaciated body. When Carpenter's pic- 
 ture " Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation," 
 was given to the Government by the beneficence 
 of a woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, who paid 
 twenty-five thousand dollars for it, he who had been 
 the Vice-President of the slave-holding States, was 
 asked to make an address in conjunction with
 
 172 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 General Garfield ; and eloquently did he speak of 
 Abraham Lincoln, and of the future of a reunited 
 country. 
 
 Yet once again Georgia longed to show her 
 pride in her favorite son; and in 1883 he was 
 made Governor. Savannah soon celebrated the 
 one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the coming 
 of Oglethorpe, and Mr. Stephens, now seventy- 
 one seated in his chair, brought in glowing review 
 the history of the State, before the assembled 
 thousands. But the effort, the excitement, the 
 enthusiasm, was too much, and on March 4, he 
 died at the Executive Mansion. Governor Steph- 
 en's last official act, after fifty years of service, 
 was to grant a pardon. 
 
 Nearly eighty thousand persons gathered to look 
 upon the beloved leader as he lay in state, at the 
 Capitol. The flowers brought by friends covered 
 numerous tables, and the roller-chair, now vacant, 
 was hung and cushioned with their beautiful bloom. 
 Throngs of the colored people walked many miles 
 to look upon the man who had always treated them 
 with protective kindness. A dozen bands played
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 173 
 
 the " Dead March " and thirty military companies 
 headed the procession, two miles long, to the grave. 
 At sunset they laid the Governor to rest, and just 
 as one bright star came out, the great, silent com- 
 pany departed. 
 
 The general mourning, the sense of loss and 
 bereavement will linger with the present genera- 
 tion. The people at large loved him ! The small 
 man was their hero. He furnished them with an 
 ideal. His kindness could no more be hidden 
 than the sun. Like the sun, it shone for all. 
 Some one said to him, " Governor, I am told you 
 keep a room for tramps at Liberty Hall." 
 
 The reply was characteristic : " Yes ; I feel it 
 my duty to try to make everybody as happy as I 
 can."
 
 X. THOMAS A. EDISON. 
 
 ONLY a few are remembered in the history of 
 a nation ; these, because they have been as- 
 sociated with some great event, or have given forth 
 some thought helpful to the world, or have called 
 into form some universal benefit. The name of 
 Lincoln shall endure because he freed four millions 
 of human beings ; the name of Faraday, who 
 though elected to seventy scientific societies, and 
 offered nearly a hundred titles, said he " would re- 
 main plain Michael Faraday to the last ; " of Morse, 
 because he rendered the telegraph practical, after 
 years of disheartening hindrances; of Stephenson, 
 because he wedded nations by his railroads; and 
 of Edison he already ranks as one of the world's 
 few great and original inventors. 
 
 Like Garfield, like Grant, General Sherman, How- 
 ells, and many another prominent man, Thomas
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 175 
 
 Alva Edison comes from Ohio. Like the majority 
 of those who have gained renown, his life has been 
 a battle with poverty; one long work-day, with lit- 
 tle recreation, no leisure. He was born February 
 u, 1847, m Milan. In this small canal town there 
 was nothing whatever to inspire a boy with dreams 
 of usefulness and greatness ; yes, he had one help 
 a loving and ambitious mother. She had been 
 a conscientious schoolteacher; and for her son, 
 her chief desire was that he should love and long 
 for knowledge. His mind was quick, inquiring, ex- 
 perimental, dwelling upon detail. One evening it 
 is humorously related that the parents missed their 
 six-year old boy. Search was made everywhere. 
 At last, he was found in the barn, sitting on a nest 
 of goose eggs, his dress-skirt spread out to keep 
 them warm, in the hope of hatching some goslings. 
 He had placed food near by, that he might remain 
 as long as need be at his task. He had witnessed, 
 it seems, the surprising results obtained by the 
 sitting of the mother-goose, and saw no reason 
 why he could not accomplish the same. To his 
 regret, the nest was broken up by his amazed
 
 176 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 parents, and the young incubator quickly trans- 
 ferred to the house. 
 
 He had only two months at a regular school. 
 His father and mother were his teachers, the former 
 paying him for every book he read, in order to en- 
 courage him. The boy needed little stimulus, how- 
 ever, for he devoured every volume which came 
 within his reach. At ten he was deep in Gibbon's 
 Rome, Hume's England, Sear's History of the World, 
 the Penny Encyclopaedia, and had also read several 
 books on chemistry. Especially did he enjoy read- 
 ing of great men and their deeds. His play was 
 in the direction of building plank roads, digging 
 caves, and exploring the banks of the canal. 
 
 At twelve it became necessary for him to go out 
 into the world to earn for himself ; a mere child, 
 he was ; but all the same he must encounter rough- 
 ness and selfishness in the eager rush for money. 
 He obtained a place as train-boy on the Grand 
 Trunk Railroad in Central Michigan; selling ap- 
 ples, peanuts, song books and papers. With his 
 sunny face and his natural insight into business, 
 he soon succeeded to an extent that he had four
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 177 
 
 boys working under him, in the fig, vegetable ivory, 
 and prize candy trade. 
 
 This was not sufficient to occupy his energies, 
 however. He had not lost his interest in chemistry. 
 He found or made an opportunity to exchange some 
 of his papers for retorts and other simple apparatus, 
 and to procure a copy of Fresenius's Qualitative An- 
 alysis, and then he proceeded to turn an old bag- 
 gage-car into a laboratory. Here he used every 
 spare moment in experiments, which were much to 
 his wonder and delight. For fear that somebody 
 might touch his chemicals, every bottle was labeled 
 "Poison." 
 
 Another business was soon added to our train- 
 boy's list. Three hundred pounds of old type were 
 purchased from the Detroit Free Press, and with a 
 little knowledge of printing, gained by using his eyes 
 when buying his papers, he started a brand-new 
 three-cent paper, called the Grand Trunk Herald. 
 This journal was twelve by sixteen inches in size, 
 and it was filled with railway gossip, changes and 
 general information all likely to be of use or inter- 
 est to travellers. The literary matter was contri-
 
 178 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 buted by baggage men and brakemen. So popular 
 did it become, that George Stephenson, builder of the 
 great tubular bridge at Montreal, ordered an extra 
 edition for his own use. The London Times spoke 
 of it as the only journal in the world printed on a 
 railway train. 
 
 These enterprises came to grief in a singular 
 manner. The jolting of the car tumbled a bottle 
 of phosphorus to the floor, setting the compart- 
 ment on fire. Of course all was in confusion, at 
 once. The conductor rushed in, threw all the 
 chemicals and type out of the car, and gave the 
 young chemist a " thrashing." A " sadder but a 
 wiser" boy, he gathered up the few scattered ma- 
 terials which remained and put them in the base- 
 ment of his father's house at Port Huron, Mich., 
 whither the family had moved. 
 
 In a short time, however, he was issuing another 
 small journal, called The Paul Pry, but larger and 
 finer than the Herald. Soon a contributed article 
 gave great offence to a subscriber. The indignant 
 *nan shortly after met the editor on the margin of 
 the St. Clair River, and without ceremony, picked
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 179 
 
 him up and threw him in. Being a good swimmer, 
 Thomas safely found his way out, but with his ardor 
 for editorial pursuits forever dampened. During 
 the four years in which he was train-boy, he had 
 earned two thousand dollars, giving it all to his 
 parents. He had slept at home nights, a great 
 help for any boy in keeping his good habits. At 
 the Detroit end of the line, as often as possible, he 
 had visited the library, at one time making the 
 laughable decision to read all the thousand of vol- 
 umes in course, just as they ranged on the shelves. 
 After reading a space fifteen feet in length, which in- 
 cluded Newton's Principia, lire's Scientific Diction- 
 aries, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, he concluded 
 that a man must needs live to the age of Methuselah 
 to read a library through, and he gave up the plan. 
 He now took up Les Miserable*, which he has read 
 a dozen times since then, Jules Verne, and what- 
 ever especially pleased him a natural rebound. 
 During the early part of our civil war, when he 
 was fifteen, he conceived the idea of telegraphing 
 the head lines of his papers to the next station, that 
 by thus whetting the appetite, passengers would
 
 180 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 be led to buy. It was not only a good business 
 scheme, but it served to develop more and more 
 his interest in the wonders of the telegraph. 
 He finally bought a standard work on electricity, 
 and presently the basement of the Port Huron 
 house had other attractions and recreations than 
 a printing press. Common stove pipe wire was 
 strung across and out of the room, connecting with 
 the residence of a boy friend. This wire was in- 
 sulated with bottles placed on nails driven into 
 trees. The magnets used were old wire wound 
 with rags, with a piece of brass serving as key. 
 If the other children had been like the irrepressi- 
 ble Thomas, the Port Huron house would not have 
 held them, but the mother, proud of anything that 
 looked toward knowledge in action, counted neither 
 old bottles, lines of wire, nor presses as nuisances. 
 , And now an act of heroism made a turning 
 point in his life. The station agent who was also 
 the operator, at Mount Clemens, near Port Huron, 
 had a little boy two years old, who one day crept 
 on the track before the incoming train. Quick 
 as thought, young Edison rushed on the scenft,
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. l8l 
 
 and, periling his own life, of course, saved that of 
 the child. In gratitude, the father offered to teach 
 the boy the art of telegraphy. This seemed a great 
 boon, and after laboring all day, each night on 
 reaching home, Edison would return on the freight 
 train to Mount Clemens to study at his new work. 
 In five months, though hardly sixteen, he became 
 operator at Port Huron at six dollars and a quarter 
 a week. Here he worked almost night and day, 
 perfecting himself in his delightful employment. 
 He took hold of each detail with a will, and labored 
 so patiently and constantly, that his devoted and 
 encouraged mother might well dare to say that the 
 world would hear from her boy sometime. All in 
 six months, he was at work in Canada, in Adrian, 
 in Fort Wayne, in Indianapolis ; at the latter place, 
 though not yet seventeen, he invented his first tel- 
 egraph instrument, and automatic repeater, which 
 always has been considered an important achieve- 
 ment for one so young. We next find him at Cin- 
 cinnati, and at Memphis, caring little for dress, 
 liked by his associates, but dubbed " luny," be- 
 cause absorbed in experiments which were con-
 
 182 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 sidered impracticable. His services were finally 
 dispensed with, as they had been several times be- 
 fore, on account of his having "such a thinking 
 mind ! " 
 
 Without money, and scantily clad, he took his 
 way to Louisville, walking much of the journey, 
 probably with no very cheerful thoughts about the 
 encouragement given to inventors. Here he re- 
 mained two or three years, till an unfortunate acci- 
 dent ended his connection with the firm. Under 
 the new telegraph rooms was an elegant bank. 
 One night, in his experimenting, he tipped over a 
 whole carboy of sulphuric acid, which ran through 
 the floor, spoiling the ceiling, the brussels carpet, 
 and the handsome furniture. At once another 
 man was engaged, one who would try no experi- 
 ments ! 
 
 Wending his way again to Cincinnati, he soon 
 lost the place he there obtained, because he spent 
 too much time in the Mechanics' Library, poring 
 over books on electricity. At twenty-one, being 
 really a skilful operator, he secured a position in 
 Boston ; but he presently abandoned it thinking he
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 183 
 
 could make more money in inventions, and opened 
 a little shop. He was always hoping for good 
 things, but, for a long time, the good things did not 
 come. He made a chemical vote-recording appa- 
 ratus, but the Massachusetts Legislature did not 
 adopt it. He developed various inventions and 
 improvements, but for lack of money, they were 
 not successful. Still he kept on thinking. In- 
 vited to speak before a company, he forgot the ap- 
 pointment, and when called for, was at the top of 
 a house putting up a telegraph line. He went 
 directly from his work, and was abashed to find 
 himself in the presence of a room full of elegant 
 ladies, but he was familiar with his subject, and 
 spoke impressively. This shifting life, the con- 
 stant struggle to make of use the thoughts within 
 him, was wearing. He was restless, too. He resolved 
 to try New York. Here for three weeks, he walked 
 the streets looking for work, penniless and de- 
 spondent. Nobody wanted an experimenting op- 
 erator ! Many would have given up in despair, but 
 only those win who persevere. By chance, he 
 stepped into the office of the Gold Reporting Tel-
 
 184 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 egraph Company. Their instrument was out of 
 order. His offer to repair it was received with 
 incredulity, but he was permitted to try. He suc- 
 ceeded, and was at once given an excellent posi- 
 tion. Shakespeare says : " There is a tide in the 
 affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on 
 to fortune ; " and this tide had come to our in- 
 ventor at twenty-three. Henceforward there were 
 to be no discharges for " luny " experiments. Hence- 
 forward the world was to sing his praises, and 
 fortune was to pour into his lap a half million dol- 
 lars in the next ten years ; the results of his " think- 
 ings." 
 
 The Western Union Telegraph and the Gold and 
 Stock Companies paid him a handsome salary, 
 with the provision that they might have the first 
 opportunity to buy any of his inventions. A large 
 electrical manufacturing establishment was opened 
 with this in view at Newark, N. J. With his force 
 of three hundred men, he soon had forty-five in- 
 ventions and improvements in hand, and was de- 
 scribed by the United States Patent Commissioner 
 as " the young man who kept the pathway to the 
 Patent Office hot with his footsteps."
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON.
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 187 
 
 For some time, it had been a dream of his to 
 perfect the duplex system of telegraphing. He be- 
 lieved that two messages could be sent at the same 
 time over the same wire a plan which the world 
 had heartily laughed at. But now, to the astonish- 
 ment of everybody, he invented the quadruplex 
 system by which four messages go at once over the 
 same wire ! The world ceased to laugh, and woke 
 up to the fact that the very troublesome young 
 experimentor was " not only the greatest inventor 
 of the age, but a discoverer as well;" in fact, 
 that the Grand Trunk train-boy was a genius ! 
 
 When he was twenty-six, a new force came into 
 his life, 2 love for an intelligent, sweet-tempered 
 girl, Mary Stillwell of Newark. There was no 
 time for a wedding journey, only an hour or two 
 for a quiet ceremony, and then the thinker went 
 back to his shop to work far into the night. A 
 friend returning from the Western Union Tele* 
 graph office in New York, seeing a light in the 
 laboratory, climbed the stairs. " Hello ! " said he. 
 "What are you doing here this late? aren't you 
 going home ? "
 
 1 88 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 "What time is it? " asked Edison. 
 
 " Midnight, easy enough. Come along." 
 
 " I must go home then. I was married to-day," was 
 the reply of the man as absent-minded as Sir Isaac 
 Newton, who is said to have stirred the ashes in 
 his pipe with the ringer of his lady love, who re- 
 fused him in consequence. 
 
 Three years later he removed to Menlo Park, a 
 barren place, twenty-four miles from New York, 
 where he hoped to work in quiet, which however 
 was not permitted him ; and he remarked jocularly 
 to a friend : " I am considering the idea of fixing 
 a wire connecting with a battery that knocks over 
 everybody that touches the gate." And yet, with 
 a pleasant smile, he gave kindly explanations to 
 any one really desirous to understand his work. 
 Sometimes his listeners were intelligent ; sometimes 
 stupid. Once after he had explained the telephone 
 most carefully, the visitor said, "Yes, I compre- 
 hend perfectly; simple enough. I understand it 
 all, except how the sound gets out again ! " 
 
 "You can imagine how I felt," says Mr. Edison. 
 " I gave him up."
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 189 
 
 At Menlo Park he built a laboratory twenty-eight 
 feet by one hundred, and filled it with batteries, 
 magnets, etc.,the machinery run by an eighty horse 
 power engine the Port Huron basement on a 
 larger and grander scale. 
 
 Here all the world came to see the wonderful 
 phonograph, the " talking machine," into which a 
 person can sing or speak, and by turning a handle, 
 the same tune or words be reproduced ; a blunt steel 
 pen or stylus is made to press against a sheet of 
 tin foil by the vibrations of a plate set in motion 
 by the voice ; when the pen is replaced at the end 
 of the groove which it has traversed, the sound is 
 given out again. Of this instrument, Edison says : 
 " I have invented a great many machines, but this 
 is my baby, and I expect it to grow up and support 
 me in my old age." 
 
 Here too was the carbon telephone, used in vari- 
 ous parts of the United States; the tasimeter, 
 which measures the heat even of the far-away stars ; 
 the aerophone, by which the sound of the voice is 
 magnified two hundred and fifty times ; the electric 
 pen for multiplying copies of letters and drawings,
 
 190 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 over sixty thousand now in use in this country ; the 
 automatic telegraph, which permits the transmis- 
 sion over a single wire of several thousand words 
 per minute ; the incandescent electric light all 
 these inventions and many others were at the great 
 wonder house at Menlo Park. 
 
 The public interest centres now in the electric 
 light, called Mr. Edison's " crowning discovery." 
 The first method of illumination by electricity was 
 by the voltaic arc, discovered by Sir Humphrey 
 Davy; the electric current passing between two 
 carbon points. In 1862 Faraday introduced the 
 electric light into a British lighthouse. The second 
 method was an arch, inside of a glass globe, brought 
 to white heat by the friction of an electric current. 
 Drexel, Morgan and Co., New York bankers, and 
 some others, put one hundred thousand dollars 
 in Mr. Edison's hands, that he might experiment 
 to make the light of practical use. He is said to 
 have tried two thousand substances before decid- 
 ing upon fibres of bamboo for the arch in the 
 vacuum of his glass globe. As the United States 
 has four hundred million dollars invested in gas,
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 19 1 
 
 and England five hundred million, the wealth in 
 this light of the future will be seen readily. In 
 ten cotton factories in Fall River, Mass., forty-five 
 hundred Edison lights are used, much to the joy 
 of the workers, where gas-heated rooms formerly 
 injured sight and health. Over sixty thousand 
 lamps are now in use, burning six hundred hours 
 before the bamboo is replaced by a new one. 
 
 Perhaps most interesting of all is Mr. Edison 
 himself, who has been called the Wizard of Menlo 
 Park. Five feet ten inches high, with boyish but 
 earnest face, light gray eyes, his dark hair slightly 
 gray falling over his forehead, his hat tipped to 
 the back of his head, as he goes ardently to his 
 work, which has averaged eighteen hours a day 
 for ten years, he is indeed a pleasant man to see. 
 You perceive he is not the man to be daunted by 
 obstacles. When one of his inventions failed a 
 printing machine he took five men into the loft 
 of his factory, declaring he would never come down 
 till it worked satisfactorily. For two days, and 
 nights and twelve hours sixty hours in all, he 
 worked continuously without sleep, until he had
 
 192 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 conquered the difficulty; and then he slept for 
 thirty hours. He often works all night, think- 
 ing best, he says, when the rest of the world sleeps. 
 He is the very embodiment of concentration and 
 perseverance. When developing his automatic tele- 
 graph, says his friend : 
 
 Edison sat with a pile of chemistries and chemical books 
 that were five feet high when they stood on the floor, and 
 laid one upon the other. He had ordered them from New 
 York and London and Paris. He studied them night and 
 day. He ate at the desk and slept in the chair. In six 
 weeks he had gone through the books, written a volume of 
 abstracts, made two thousand experiments on the formulas, 
 and had produced a solution the only one in the world 
 that would do the very thing he wanted done record over 
 two hundred words a minute on a wire two hundred and fifty 
 miles long. He has since succeeded in recording thirty-one 
 hundred words a minute. 
 
 Yet with all this devotion to work, he greatly 
 enjoys fun. He said one day to his old friend of 
 whom he learned telegraphing, Mr. Mackensie, 
 " Look here I am able to send a message from 
 New York to Boston without any wire at all."
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON. 193 
 
 " That is impossible." 
 
 " Oh ! no. It's a new invention." 
 
 " Well, how is it done ? " asked Mr. Mackensie. 
 
 " By sealing it up and sending by mail," was the 
 comical answer. 
 
 He cares nothing for display, and when tendered 
 a public dinner, declined, saying, that, " one hun- 
 dred thousand dollars would not tempt him to sit 
 through two hours of personal glorification." In 
 his home, he finds his recreation, with his family 
 to which he is devotedly attached ; one child, 
 Mary Estelle, is nicknamed " Dot," and another, 
 Thomas Alva Edison, Jr., " Dash." 
 
 But this modest man has received honors from 
 all the wo/Id. At the great Electrical Exposition 
 at Paris in 1881, two salons were devoted to his 
 inventions ; these halls were lighted, as well as 
 several others, by his beautiful lamps. The Royal 
 Society of London has exhibited his works with 
 pride. Union College has made him Doctor of 
 Philosophy. From scientists he receives over one 
 hundred and fifty letters daily, in French, German, 
 Italian, Spanish, Russian and Turkish.
 
 194 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 Already he has taken out several hundred 
 patents and is as enthusiastic, as absorbed, in his 
 work as ever. Only middle-aged, his life seems but 
 just ripening into its wonderful fruitage. Electric 
 engines are much in his thought. He said re- 
 cently, " Anything is possible with electricity. A 
 new discovery may be made any day." 
 
 That Mr. Edison has genius nobody will deny ; 
 but probably he would have accomplished little 
 without his broad reading, and well nigh unpar- 
 alleled devotion to work.
 
 XI. DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 
 
 WHEN William Murdock, of Birmingham, 
 invented lighting by gas, he was ridi- 
 culed all England over. After using gas satisfac- 
 torily in his own house and shop, the lighting of a 
 town was suggested, but Sir Humphrey Davy scorn- 
 fully inquired whether it was intended "to take the 
 dome of St. Paul for a gas-holder ! " And when 
 the subject was brought before Parliament, one of 
 the members exclaimed, " Do you mean to tell me 
 that it will be possible to have a light without a 
 wick?" 
 
 " Yes, I do, indeed," said Murdock. 
 
 " Ah, my friend," replied the educated legislator, 
 " you are trying to prove too much ! " 
 
 And when gas pipes were first placed in the 
 House of Commons, the members put their gloved 
 hands very carefully upon them, supposing that the
 
 196 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 gas passed along the irou tubes, on fire. No pa- 
 tent was obtained for the invention, Boulton and 
 Watt, whose works Murdock superintended, being 
 overwhelmed with their own lawsuits over the 
 steam engine, and too busy to assist him. He died 
 unrewarded for his great discovery. 
 
 When Doctor Edward Jenner of England, first 
 discovered vaccination, and after many satisfactory 
 experiments had been made upon his own little 
 six-year-old son, the medical societies forbade his 
 speculations upon the subject at their regular meet- 
 ings under pain of expulsion, refused to try his pro- 
 cess, accused him of an attempt to "bestialize " men 
 because the vaccine was taken from a cow, and 
 many clergymen pronounced it " diabolical." A 
 few years after, when the method became popular, 
 and Parliament voted him fifty thousand dollars for 
 his boon to humanity, small-pox having been a 
 dreaded scourge heretofore, and one hundred thou- 
 sand dollars later then several physicians claimed 
 the honor of its discovery themselves ! 
 
 Similar, in many respects, reads the history of an- 
 other of the greatest benefactors of our race, the
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 197 
 
 man who discovered anaesthesia, or a way to render 
 persons insensible to pain while undergoing surgi- 
 cal operations or in other form. In hospitals and 
 on battle-fields, a few years ago, when limbs were 
 cut off, the patients often died in the excruciating 
 agony. Now, this dread aspect of human woe is 
 changed. Under the influence of ether, pain is not 
 felt. 
 
 For this blessed alleviation, the world still owes 
 a great debt to Dr. Wm. T. G. Morton, an Amer- 
 ican physician, whose life was the same pathetic, 
 heroic struggle as that of most thinkers and invent- 
 ors. 
 
 Born in the little village of Charlton, Mass., Au- 
 gustg, 1819, Willie Morton, as he was called, a sunny 
 affectionate lad, passed his early life like other New 
 England farmer-boys, tapping maple-trees in the 
 sugar orchard, mowing hay, shearing sheep, and get- 
 ting such education as the town afforded. His mind 
 seemed naturally to turn toward medicine, his young 
 mates calling him " doctor," because he experi- 
 mented upon them with bread pills, carrying them 
 about in little vials made from elder branches. This
 
 198 HOW SUCCESS IS WOK. 
 
 early practice soon came to an inglorious end, when 
 he nearly caused the death of his baby sister, by 
 administering his " medicine " when she lay asleep 
 in her cradle, whereupon he was severely adminis- 
 tered to in another manner. 
 
 His father, always feeling keenly his own lack 
 of collegiate education, determined that his son 
 should have opportunities for study, and, at thir- 
 teen, sent him to Oxford Academy, where he made 
 his home with a well-known physician. Here he 
 could spend his leisure in poring over medical books, 
 and in talking to Doctor Pierce of the pleasure he 
 should some day have in his prof ession. The grave 
 man would shake his head and say, " You hardly 
 know what you talk about, and how hard I have to 
 work." Later, he went to Leicester, using all his 
 time in an eager search for knowledge ; while other 
 boys were deep in the sports natural to their years, 
 he was peering and pounding among the rocks for 
 minerals, or studying natural history. 
 
 It was when he was at Leicester that there came 
 the first great sorrow of his life. His father, in an 
 unfortunate business partnership, lost his money,
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 199 
 
 and as a consequence William, at seventeen, must 
 abandon his plans for an education, and at once go 
 out into the world to earn his daily bread. This to 
 a boy whose one ambition was study and research 
 was a test-trial of the elements in his character. 
 
 And then, what could he do ! His mother, a 
 woman of unusual practical good sense set out 
 with him for Boston. There she succeeded in plac- 
 ing him in the publishing house of Mr. James B. 
 Dow, a man of sterling integrity. As was the cus ? 
 torn at the time, the boy lived in his employer's fam- 
 ily. Mrs. Dow, a noble woman, tried to make him 
 contented, but he was so genuinely homesick that 
 at last, fearing for his health, as it seemed impos- 
 sible to overcome his despondency, he was returned 
 to his father's house, where he remained for some 
 time, learning as he had opportunity, and saving as 
 much as he could for future schooling. 
 
 About the time he reached his twenty-first year, 
 a college of dental surgery was opened in Balti- 
 more. Other young men had made money in the 
 practice of dentistry ; perhaps he could earn enough, 
 should he learn this business, to carry him through
 
 200 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 a medical course. For eighteen months he studied 
 diligently, using a small sum of money left him by 
 an aunt, and then boldly opened an office in Bos- 
 ton, where he made many friends, and did his work 
 well. 
 
 Two years of earnest labor passed, and then 
 from Farmington, Conn., one of the prettiest towns 
 in New England, he brought a lovely bride of eigh- 
 teen, Elizabeth Whitman, to share thereafter with 
 beautiful devotion, his struggles and his fame. It 
 was about this time also, that he entered the Medi- 
 cal School of Harvard University. At last, eight 
 years after his school life had been so rudely broken 
 up, he had reached the goal of his hopes. 
 
 With what delight he attended clinics in the wards 
 of the Massachusetts General Hospital is well re- 
 membered by many ; and it is recorded by Ben : 
 Perley Poore, the journalist, that such was his de- 
 votion to his profession, that " a skeleton was kept 
 in his bridal chamber, and that rising long before 
 sunrise, he used to prepare himself for the anatomi- 
 cal studies of the coming day." Late in the even- 
 ing, he would be found last at the dissecting tables.
 
 VR, WM. T. G. MORTON.
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 2OJ 
 
 His sympathetic nature shrunk from the agony he 
 had often to witness in the hospital. He asked him- 
 self a thousand times if nothing could be found to 
 deaden pain. One day in applying sulphuric ether to 
 a sensitive tooth of one of his patients, he observed 
 that the surrounding parts became benumbed. At 
 once he began to question whether the whole body 
 could or could not be benumbed in some manner. 
 But how, with safety ! Sir Benjamin Brodie, a well- 
 known scientist abroad, had written, " I have given 
 ether to guinea-pigs, and it killed them ! " 
 
 The young medical student determined to experi- 
 ment upon himself. If he died, the world would 
 at least only say, " he was foolish." It took courage 
 of a high order to mix, in the interests of science and 
 humanity, morphine, opium and ether in a retort, put 
 a hot towel around it, and slowly inhale it. But head- 
 aches so terrible resulted, that he was obliged to dis- 
 continue experiments for a time. Like James Watt 
 when working upon his engine, he scarcely knew 
 whether he ate or slept ; now experimenting with 
 animals, and then again upon himself with pure 
 ether. Finally, so firm became his faith in theknowl-
 
 304 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 edge he believed himself to have gained, that he 
 calmly soaked his own handkerchief in this liquid 
 that killed guinea-pigs and deliberately placed it 
 over his mouth and nostrils. As regards the natural 
 question as to whether he would ever come out of 
 the sleep into which he knew he must enter, he said 
 afterward : 
 
 I looked at my watch, then soon lost consciousness. As I 
 recovered, I felt a numbness in my limbs with a sensation like 
 nightmare, and would have given the world for some one to 
 come and arouse me. I thought for a moment I should die 
 in that state, and that the world would only pity or ridicule 
 my folly. . . Gradually I regained power over my limbs 
 and full consciousness. I immediately looked at my watch, 
 and found that I had been insensible between seven and eight 
 minutes. 
 
 The young student was overjoyed at the result, 
 and impatient now to try the effect upon others. 
 Toward evening, September 30, 1846, a man came 
 into the office nearly frantic with toothache, and 
 ready to try anything in his pain ; he inhaled the 
 ether, and the tooth was removed before he was con- 
 scious of it. Young Morton was now fully confi-
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 205 
 
 dent that he had found the great " pain destroyer " 
 of the world, and he at once began to consider how 
 he should bring the knowledge to the public use. 
 He wished that he might give one trial before the 
 renowned physicians at the Massachusetts General 
 Hospital. How else would they believe that a young 
 student had found that for which learned men in all 
 ages had been seeking an annihilator of pain? 
 And yet, what if by any possibility the experiment 
 should prove a failure, and he should meet with ridi- 
 cule ? What if, indeed, the patient should die, and 
 he be arrested and thrown into prison ? 
 
 He called upon Doctor Warren, the senior sur- 
 geon, who expressed much interest ; he said he had 
 always hoped for the discovery, and that he would 
 immediately give an opportunity for the test upon 
 one of the inmates of the hospital. As the time 
 drew near, young Morton applied himself night and 
 day to continued investigation and continued test, 
 and to the perfection of his instruments for inhala- 
 tion. The night previous to the experiment at the 
 hospital, he worked till four o'clock in the morning, 
 to make sure that all was in readiness, His young
 
 206 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 wife of nineteen, who had watched every step in the 
 progress of the discovery, was unable to sleep from 
 her anxiety, and she met him as he came home, and 
 implored him for the sake of herself and her little 
 son, to give up the engagement. "You will ruin 
 yourself ; " she said. "You will be the subject of 
 universal ridicule." He playfully rallied her failing 
 courage, and then with solemnity and in tones of 
 assurance said, " I will not fail. To-morrow the 
 world will greet my success." With a reassured 
 heart, but sleepless, she waited, while he, saying he 
 had but two hours to sleep, almost immediately fell 
 into profound slumber. At six he arose, and with- 
 out breakfast, hastened to the instrument-maker's, 
 and thence to the hospital. The large amphitheatre 
 was filled with distinguished surgeons, physicians, 
 students and others invited to witness a difficult 
 surgical operation to be undergone without pain. 
 The patient, a young man of twenty-five, suffering 
 with a tumor on the mouth, was brought in. 
 
 " Are you afraid ?" said Morton to him. " No, 
 I feel confident, and will do precisely as you tel] 
 me," was the reply.
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 207 
 
 Grave, but with perfect self-possession, the young 
 student began his work. In four or five minutes 
 the patient was soundly asleep, and then, in a si- 
 lence like the tomb, with surprise and amazement 
 growing on every face, Doctor Warren cut out the 
 tumor, saying slowly and emphatically, "Gentle- 
 men, this is no humbug." 
 
 When consciousness returned, the patient said, 
 " I have experienced no pain, only a sensation like 
 that of scraping the part with a blunt instrument." 
 
 At once, doubt among the spectators gave place 
 to joy and congratulations. The student had 
 become in one brief hour, not only sure of fame 
 and honor, but also the benefactor of every race, 
 through unending ages, and those learned men 
 recognized these facts 
 
 Meanwhile the young wife was waiting at home in 
 suspense almost unimaginable. About one o'clock 
 he came, his bright, enthusiastic face tinged with 
 sadness, as though he saw in the distance the hard 
 fate and the long struggle to come. He seemed 
 lost in thought as in a dream, and embracing her 
 tenderly, he simply said, " I have succeeded."
 
 20S HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 But that meant that surgery had been forever 
 robbed of its terrors, and good news of escape from 
 pain was to go out over all the world from this 
 memorable day, October 16, 1846. 
 
 Mr. Robert Hinckley, a distinguished artist in 
 Paris, is now at work upon a large picture repre- 
 senting this impressive scene ; the surgeons and 
 physicians of the Massachusetts General Hospital 
 grouped about the patient, and in the centre the 
 manly face of young Doctor Morton, then only 
 twenty-seven years of age. After the exhibition of the 
 painting in the Paris Salon, and in this country, it 
 will probably be hung in the same room in the hos- 
 pital where this never-to-be-forgotten demonstra- 
 tion was made. 
 
 The new discover)- was talked about everywhere, 
 presently, at home and abroad. Said Doctor War- 
 ren : " It will awaken the gratitude of the present, 
 and of all coming generations ; " said Doctor Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes: "The deepest furrow in the 
 knotted brow of agony has been smoothed forever.' 
 English journals were eloquent it its praise : "Itb 
 a victory not for to-day nor for our own time, but
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 209 
 
 tor another age, and all time ; not for one nation, 
 but for all nations, from generation to generation, 
 as long as the world shall last." 
 
 Doctor Morton understood well the value to the 
 world of his discovery, and he spared no pains to 
 spread the knowledge everywhere. Pamphlets were 
 published at his own expense, giving examples of 
 the safe use of ether ; agents were sent into all the 
 larger cities and towns to instruct people in its 
 use, and with proper instruments. Says his lawyer, 
 Richard H. Dana, jr., the author of Two Years be- 
 fore the Mast : " Doctor Morton hardly knew a full 
 night's rest, or a regular meal, for three months." 
 
 But he had but just begun his struggles, his bit- 
 ter experiences. Several dentists at once issued a 
 "circular," to physicians and to the newspapers, 
 setting forth the alarming effects of ether, and up- 
 braiding him for announcing the discovery of a 
 " humbug." Some of his medical brethren, too, 
 seemed to be envious, and hoped " no one would 
 be reduced from the high professional path of duty, 
 into the quagmire of quackery ! " Even some religi- 
 ous teachers called it " a decoy of Satan," because
 
 210 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 God had condemned man to suffer pain, and " it 
 would rob him of the deep earnest cries which arise 
 in time of trouble for help ! " 
 
 All this incited the young physician to greater 
 energy. Having already been at so much expense 
 to introduce the new agent and defend it, his 
 friends advised that he apply for a patent, that he 
 might reap some necessary pecuniary benefit from 
 his discovery. This was granted ; but the Govern- 
 ment soon using ether in the Mexican War, yet 
 paying no regard to the patent, contracts made with 
 other parties were boldly broken, and much loss 
 fell upon Doctor Morton. At once prominent men, 
 among them Doctors Warren, Bowditch, Bigelow, 
 Holmes, Parkman and others, asked Congress to 
 reward the author of this great boon to his country. 
 It had given the heirs of Robert Fulton over 
 seventy-six thousand dollars for his improvement in 
 the steam-engine ; to S. F. B. Morse, eighty thou- 
 sand dollars for the telegraph ; to one firm twenty- 
 five thousand dollars for the right to use the im- 
 proved method of refining gold bullion; to another 
 twenty thousand dollars for elevating and point-
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 211 
 
 ing heavy cannon ; surely the Government would 
 give generously to him, whom Lecky declares in his 
 History of European Morals, " has done more for 
 the real happiness of mankind than all the moral 
 philosophers from Socrates to Mill." 
 
 But now came the most disheartening trial yet, 
 the same which had confronted Jen tier and Watt 
 and Morse and Harvey : several men came boldly 
 forward and declared themselves the discoverers of 
 the way to produce insensibility to pain ! One said 
 he had known it in his laboratory for five years. 
 To this Doctor Jacob Bigelow well replied : " If he 
 did make the discovery, as he asserted, he stands 
 accountable for the mass of human misery which 
 he has permitted his fellow creatures to undergo," 
 during all this time. Another said he had used 
 nitrous oxide in extracting teeth and deserved to 
 be considered the discoverer, though he had gone 
 out of dentistry, and given up experimenting. 
 Others still claimed to have had this knowledge 
 only they had failed to make it known. 
 
 Immediately the contest against Doctor Morton 
 became bitter and personal. As a result, the bill
 
 212 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 to give him one hundred thousand dollars, which 
 had been passed by the House, was lost in the 
 Senate. 
 
 This was a bitter disappointment, a most bitter 
 experience. That any person could lay claim to 
 this discovery, which he had worked out with al- 
 most infinite labor, hazarding his life and reputa- 
 tion with fearlessness, or say, as did one physician, 
 "I told it to him," seemed to Doctor Morton un- 
 explainable. He had spent all he had earned and 
 more in his work, was deeply in debt ; and now, 
 when only twenty-nine, he became ill from nervous 
 prostration. 
 
 He could not solve the problem while lavish 
 sums were spent on every new invention for slaugh- 
 ter, there was not a penny for the man who by his 
 discovery had saved thousands of lives, and pre- 
 vented incalculable suffering. 
 
 When partially restored to health, friends fur- 
 nished the means for a second petition to Congress. 
 Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, Rufus Choate, 
 Governor Marcus Morton were among his warm 
 supporters, but while the Legislators said of a de-
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 213 
 
 cisive report, " Doctor Morton is entitled to the 
 merit of the discovery," in the rush of the closing 
 session, no appropriation was made. 
 
 Once more, well, cheerful and hopeful, sustained 
 by his devoted wife and friends, though the new 
 claimants published their claims both at home and 
 abroad, Doctor Morton, ten years later, with an 
 immense amount of testimony from the highest in 
 the land, made his third application to Congress. 
 It would seem that there could be little doubt about 
 the sequel now, since two select committees of the 
 House of Representatives had reported in his favor; 
 the Military and Naval committees were on his side ; 
 and the Trustees of the Massachusetts General Hos- 
 pital, with one hundred of the leading men of Bos- 
 ton, had sent him one thousand dollars, with their 
 autographs, in a silver casket, with the words : 
 
 "In honor of the Ether Discovery, September 30, 
 1846. . . He has become poor in a cause which 
 has made the world his debtor." 
 
 But no sooner was the subject broached in Con- 
 gress, than different members argued the claims of 
 their constituents ; one branch of the Government
 
 214 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 passed a bill only to have it rejected in the other, 
 until everybody was worn out with the discussion, 
 and the matter was allowed to drop unheeded. 
 Doctor Morton went home dispirited, and was at- 
 tacked with a severe illness. For eight long years, 
 with loss of business and failing health, he had 
 fought this battle for his rights in vain. 
 
 There had been one joy in all this disappoint- 
 ment and depression and defeat ; one bright spot 
 in the darkness; at Etherton cottage, Wellesley, 
 Mass., where lived his wife and four pretty children, 
 he had always come home to rest and peace and love 
 and perfect trust and sympathy. Close to his home 
 was that of his tenderly loved mother, whom he 
 visited regularly every night after his return from 
 business in the city ; and there he could forget for 
 the time the indifference, the heartlessness, and 
 the selfishness of the world. But now misfortune 
 came even to Etherton. The home with its fine 
 library, its perfect collection of surgical instruments 
 which he had spent years in gathering, had to be 
 mortgaged and its treasures sold. 
 
 Feeling how sadly his country had wronged and
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 315 
 
 neglected him, such noble men as Doctors Bigelow, 
 Bowditch and Holmes, Robert C. Winthrop and 
 Longfellow, and leading physicians in every city, 
 started a Morton Testimonial, which by generous 
 contributions should show how deeply indebted the 
 whole world really was to this one man. All gave 
 heartily; but the Civil War soon absorbed the 
 thought of the country and prevented the raising 
 of a large amount. 
 
 Fourteen years had now gone by since his dis- 
 covery of ether. Doctor Morton, at the wish of 
 the Government, had hastened to our battle-fields, 
 and sometimes after a single battle had given ether 
 or chloroform to two thousand wounded men, be- 
 fore the surgical operations were performed. At the 
 Wilderness and Spottsylvania Court House, with 
 General Grant, where twenty thousand were 
 wounded, he had given anaesthetics, at the rate of 
 three minutes to the man, without a single failure. 
 The hospitals of London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin 
 were all using this wonderful blessing. One can 
 but pause again and again and reflect upon this 
 instance of national ingratitude.
 
 2l6 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 One year after Doctor Morton discovered the 
 use of ether in destroying pain, Doctor Simpson 
 of England had brought out another agent, chloro- 
 form, which though valuable, is dangerous, and its 
 use forbidden in most hospitals. For this England, 
 proud of the discovery, knighted him, and at his 
 death buried him ir Westminster Abbey. For 
 Doctor Morton who discovered an inhalent 
 safe as well as powerful and in use nearly the 
 world over before chloroform was discovered, 
 what has his country done ? Absolutely nothing, 
 save to leave his family in want, and himself unre- 
 warded. Once more, wounded soldiers, Generals, 
 Doctors, College Presidents and Medical Societies 
 united to ask Congress for an appropriation of 
 two hundred thousand dollars for Doctor Morton. 
 Doctor Willard Parker of New York said, "He 
 has laid the civilized world under an infinite obli- 
 gation, and exhausted his means by so doing ; " 
 President Chadbourne of Williams College said, 
 " In my judgment he has been grossly wronged in 
 the preposterous claims of others, and in the long 
 neglect of the American people to make him some
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 2 17 
 
 compensation for the honor he has conferred upon 
 us." The old opposition was at work, however, 
 and Congress did nothing. 
 
 Such injustice could not but have its effect upon 
 the strongest body and the most courageous heart. 
 True, he had reached the best success, that of im- 
 perishable fame as a benefactor, and had received 
 the largest gold medal of the Institute of France ; 
 the " Order of St. Vlademis " from Russia, the first, 
 it is said, ever bestowed by Russia on an American ; 
 the " Order of Le Vasa " from Sweden ; but anxiety 
 for the welfare of his family, a sense of wrong treat- 
 ment and unfair dealing, broke his health and his 
 heart. One year after, Doctor Morton was buried 
 in beautiful Mount Auburn, Doctor Jacob Bigelow 
 writing these expressive words, now upon his mon- 
 ument, erected by the citizens of Boston : 
 
 Born Aug. gth, 1819. 
 Died July i5th, 1868. 
 
 W. T. G. Morton. Inventor and Revealer of 
 Anesthetic Inhalation. Before whom in all time Sur- 
 gery was Agony. By whom Pain in Surgery was
 
 2l8 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 averted and annulled. Since whom Science has Con- 
 trol of Pain. 
 
 In the attractive Public Gardens of Boston, stands 
 the Ether Monument, of granite, the gift of Thomas 
 Lee, with a fine bas-relief on each side, and the 
 words : " To commemorate the discovery that the in- 
 halation of ether causes insensibility to pain, first 
 proved to the world at the Massachusetts General 
 Hospital in Boston, October, 1846." 
 
 Mrs. Morton, with her five children, was left at 
 her husband's death, to struggle on, as best she 
 might. Doctor Sims of New York, for many years 
 her husband's warm supporter, now suggested that 
 he would try to secure from Congress two hundred 
 thousand dollars to be equally divided between Mrs. 
 Morton and the widow of another claimant. Though 
 her beautiful home was in the market for sale, in 
 order to obtain means to support and educate her 
 children, though her own health was shattered, 
 though before her was the probability of poverty 
 while life lasted, she said to a friend, " The prospect 
 of one hundred thousand dollars gained by the sac-
 
 DR. WM. T. G. MORTON. 219 
 
 rffice of my husband's just claim, or indeed any 
 amount of money, presented to me not the slightest 
 temptation,"and she of course declined Doctor Sims' 
 proposal. And a little later the lovely home at 
 Wellesley was sold. 
 
 The children are now grown-up, grown up to a 
 heritage of honor and to honor in turn the famous 
 name they bear. The oldest son, Doctor William J. 
 Morton, graduating from the Boston Latin School at 
 seventeen with the first prize, from Harvard Univer- 
 sity at twenty-one, later from the Medical Schools at 
 Harvard and Vienna with honors, practising for 
 two years in South Africa, stands now one of the 
 leading men in his profession in New York City ; 
 President of the Neurological Society, a member of 
 the medical department oi the University of the 
 City of New York, and Professor in Vermont Uni- 
 versity. The youngest son, Doctor Bowditch Mor- 
 ton, named for his father's devoted friend, a grad- 
 uate also of Harvard, is universally esteemed for 
 his ability and successes already won ; Mrs. Morton 
 lives in the happy home of her oldest son. 
 
 But though America has never paid Doctor Mor-
 
 22O HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 ton the debt she owes him, though he died in sad- 
 ness, count his life a success the imperishable 
 good of it is secured to humanity. His patience 
 and perseverance, his courage and hope, his indom- 
 itable will and unflagging energy, under the most 
 trying obstacles, in the light of his achievement, re- 
 main also a legacy almost as priceless of inspira- 
 tion to those who are struggling unaided, either 
 in the development of science, or the progress of 
 philanthropy.
 
 XII. REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 
 
 THE success of successes is won by that man 
 who, sinking self in his noble plans, builds 
 highways for the people toward a general enlight- 
 enment and prosperity. We have seen that many 
 men of wealth recognize this at last, and leave 
 their riches to be used for the diffusion of knowl- 
 edge. But occasionally there is born a man with 
 that warm brotherly nature which prompts to im- 
 mediate and constant personal toil in behalf of 
 others; in conjunction with a great organizing 
 brain, the result of this broad and brooding sym- 
 pathy is like the creative blessing of sun and 
 shower. Such a man there is of our own day and 
 nation. He is not dead, but he has founded his 
 university. He is but in middle life, yet his 
 name is a household word, spoken with respect 
 and love. His success is bound up with that 
 
 221
 
 222 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 of multitudes. Each day he directs the studies, 
 the aspirations, the hopes of masses of the American 
 people he has opened for them beautiful gates 
 and avenues else probably locked for their gen- 
 eration. Surely this is the success of successes. 
 Let us look at the work of this man. 
 
 In Central New York, fourteen hundred feet 
 above the sea, is a beautiful sheet of water, twenty 
 miles long, bordered by rich green foliage which 
 covers the surrounding hills. Pretty villages dot 
 the shore, and a score of steamers give life to the 
 charming landscape. The Indians called the lake 
 Juduqua, which in time became Chautauqua. On 
 the west bank, in the midst of one hundred and 
 fifty acres laid out in parks, walks and drives, is the 
 "People's University," with its great auditorium 
 for six thousand persons, its Museums, Schools of 
 Language, and Hall of Philosophy. Every year 
 nearly one hundred thousand people gather there, 
 some to study literature, some art, and some the sci- 
 ences, to listen to lectures and to music, enjoying 
 nature the while, and gaining health and rest with 
 knowledge.
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 223 
 
 Who was it laid this successful plan for the 
 culture, not of one town, nor of one city, but of 
 a continent ? Two friends, still in early middle 
 life, Lewis Miller and John H. Vincent ; of the 
 latter I write at this time : 
 
 In Tuscaloosa, Ala., the land of orange blos- 
 soms and magnolia groves, John Heyl Vincent 
 was born, February 23, 1832, descended from the 
 noble Huguenots of France. His father was a 
 man of character, a great reader, an admirable 
 talker, highly conscientious, and devoting his best 
 energies to the careful education of his children. 
 The mother was a woman of singular beauty of 
 nature, patient, amiable, living as though she be- 
 longed to Heaven rather than earth. Her father, 
 Captain Bernard Raser, of Philadelphia, who died 
 at Batavia, Java, on one of his voyages, was a man 
 of elegant and refined manners, which his daughter 
 inherited. This grace of behavior, coupled with 
 the grace of a sunny, self-sacrificing life, made 
 Mary Vincent the idol of the community. Often 
 at the twilight hour, especially on Sundays, after 
 the family circle had joined in prayer and in sing-
 
 224 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 ing, she would take her children to her own room, 
 and there sweetly and tenderly tell them about 
 the life to come, and point out plainly their faults 
 and spiritual needs. The noble yet somewhat stern 
 type of character in the father commanded honor 
 and respect : the gentle winsomeness of the mother 
 won enthusiastic love. 
 
 The eldest child who survived infancy, John, 
 with a fine physique and impulsive nature, would 
 naturally have inclined to the boisterous sports 
 natural to boyhood, and to athletic feats, but this 
 early training made him serious and reflective. 
 Before he was six years old he would gather the col- 
 ored children of his father's place and of the neigh- 
 borhood, and then, while with a whip he ensured 
 their sitting still, he preached the gospel to them. 
 How much good such preaching did them, it would 
 be difficult to say. His eagerness for the perform- 
 ance of public service in due form went so far that 
 on one occasion he tore In pieces a valued red 
 morocco hymn-book the gift to him of his pastor, 
 giving each of his congregation a few leaves. He 
 forgot the reception he would surely have from his
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 225 
 
 father, when he had finished these services, and 
 brought away the dismembered hymn-book, for Mr. 
 Vincent, senior, did not "spare the rod and spoil 
 the child." 
 
 The lad seems early to have had conceptions of 
 the value of a college education, for when three 
 years old, with a little next-door neighbor, now the 
 wife of Bishop Hargrave of the M. E. Church 
 South, he walked a mile to the University of Ala- 
 bama, where the aspiring couple were picked up 
 by one of the professors, an intimate friend of the 
 families, and taken care of until a servant arrived 
 in quest of the runaways. 
 
 The family moved North in 1838 and settled near 
 Milton, Penn., where the father purchased a large 
 farm, and built a mill on the Chillisquaque Creek, 
 which empties into the Susquehanna a few miles 
 above Northumberland. Here, when our young 
 public speaker was between thirteen and fourteen, 
 we find him at a play missionary meeting one 
 afternoon ; the schoolhouse was full of children, 
 and some one suggested it become a temperance 
 meeting. John was asked to make a speech, which
 
 226 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 he did for three quarters of an hour, and it is said 
 there was great fun and enthusiasm, and quite 
 likely some of the fun was at the young orator's 
 expense. 
 
 Under a governess he fitted for, and entered, 
 Milton Academy. An eager reader, before he was 
 fifteen he had read many of the standard works in 
 his father's library : Addison's Essays, Rollin's His- 
 tory, Gibbon's Rome, Pitkin's Civil and Political 
 History of the United States, Pilgrim's Progress, 
 Shakespeare, Burns, Young, Pollock, and such 
 biographies as the lives of John and Charles Wes- 
 ley and John and Mary Fletcher. The simplicity 
 and beauty of Addison's style delighted him, 
 while the story of the Wesleys was an inspiration 
 to a youth who believed he should do something 
 in his life too for the good of the world. This 
 faith, this resolve, was doubtless both shaped and 
 strengthened by the society of the ministers and 
 other educated people who shared the hospitality 
 of the Vincent home. Here no denomination was un- 
 welcome, and young John Vincent, though a Metho- 
 dist in belief, grew to manhood with a Christian
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 227 
 
 love broader than any sect and wider than any 
 section. 
 
 At fifteen he was asked to teach a country school 
 near his father's house. Desiring work, and be- 
 Ueving that he should enjoy teaching, he accepted, 
 aud. performed his newly chosen duties with grea 
 enjoyment. The next year he took charge of an- 
 other school, and later still taught on the Juniata, 
 some distance away. This was his first genuine 
 absence from home. He dreaded the going. The 
 time came at last for him to start at midnight. 
 The dear mother tried to make the home even 
 brighter and cheerier than usual. The house was 
 gayly lighted, the younger children sat up till the 
 tired eyes could keep open no longer, there was 
 smiling cheer on every hand. " Do not cry when I 
 am leaving," John had said to his mother ; but when 
 the hour came, with pale face, and with tears on 
 her cheeks that could not be kept back, she put her 
 arms about him, but she could only say, " My son, 
 ]>ve near to God ; live near to God." The boy of 
 sixteen went out into the world with these words 
 ever before him in letters as of fire.
 
 Z28 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 So early as this the genial bents of the educator 
 asserted their strength. One of the schoolhouses 
 in which he taught was on the edge of a grove, 
 and there he constructed rustic seats for his pupils, 
 where on every pleasant day the school studied out 
 of doors a miniature Chautauqua. 
 
 During four years of teaching he had continued 
 his own studies, and finally registered at Alleghany 
 College, Meadville, Pa. It of course had required 
 unusual will and perseverance to teach all day, to 
 hear private pupils in the evening, and at the same 
 time to study so systematically as to be ready for col- 
 lege. He must have been tired often, often like 
 other boys longed for recreation and freedom, but h 
 never lost sight of his aim or let go his hold of his 
 self-appointed task. 
 
 But now came an unexpected turn of plan. 
 Having joined the church when a Sunday-school 
 scholar, he hoped some time to become a preacher. 
 " Why not enter the ministry at once ? " argued 
 some clergymen who were friends of the family. 
 "The world needs to be saved, and there is no 
 time to be lost." Young Vincent knew, yet not so
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D.
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 231 
 
 well as a man knows it in later life, how necessary is 
 a college training for one who has resolved to be- 
 come a leader of thought ; yet on the other hand, 
 with unfortunate haste, he was anxious to be at 
 his work as soon as possible. After some debate 
 he took the advice of these unwise counselors, 
 abandoning his plans for immediate collegiate edu- 
 cation, and at twenty years of age, on horseback, 
 with a pair of saddlebags, started out to preach, 
 on a thirty-mile circuit, over the mountains and 
 through the valleys of Luzerne County, Pa. Some- 
 times he developed his sermons as he rode, often for 
 miles without a single house in sight, speaking to 
 the echoing forests ; sometimes he read Dante, 
 and Comte's Philosophy, and committed to memory 
 portions of Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. Wher- 
 ever he stopped the people gave him welcome, for 
 he was interested in their home life and in all their 
 plans. Children were glad when his bright face 
 was seen in their midst. He never shook hands with 
 the tips of his fingers, nor preached dry sermons. 
 He usually spoke three times each Sunday, and 
 so eloquent was he that he was sometimes called
 
 232 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 the "Young Summerfield," after the brilliant 
 preacher who died in New York in 1825, only 
 twenty-seven years of age. 
 
 The fame of the boy-preacher grew apace in 
 the limited circle of his earliest ministry, but he 
 was not spoiled by the praise, for his discreet 
 father had told him that as he had great facility 
 of speech, he must be careful not to confound 
 ideas with words, nor think because he could talk 
 easily that he was edifying people. " Many young 
 ministers are spoiled by praise," he had said to 
 his son, " and you must compare your efforts with 
 the best standards, and try to feel how great is 
 the contrast between these and your own thought 
 and expression." 
 
 About this time the precious mother whose 
 pride and delight in her son gave zest to his life, 
 died, to the great grief of all who knew her. Says 
 a well-known minister : " She was one of the love- 
 liest Christian women I ever knew. Nothing 
 seemed ever to disturb the equanimity of her spirit, 
 or displace the smile from her countenance. Her 
 death was a personal bereavement to hundreds
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 233 
 
 beyond her own family and kindred." Her chil- 
 dren have often said, " We never once knew her to 
 speak a quick or impatient word." 
 
 Life seemed now more serious than ever tc 
 young Vincent. He spent a year at the Wesleyan 
 Institute of Newark, having joined the New Jersey 
 Conference in 1858. Says Rev. George H. Whitney, 
 D. D., President of the Centenary Collegiate Insti- 
 tute at Hackettstown, N. J., who was at this time 
 Secretary of the Newark Institute : 
 
 Tall, slender, graceful, genial, with a kind and intellect- 
 ual face, with abundant brown hair, but beardless, I was 
 struck with his manly appearance. We became fast friends. 
 At that early age he showed a mastery in controlling places, 
 people, and the dozen minor pulpits under his control ; 
 always mild in manner, strong in purpose, and equal to the 
 occasion. After school he usually walked with me for one 
 or two hours. It was his custom to commit to memory many 
 stanzas and couplets of poetry of wide range, repeat them 
 as we talked, and challenge me to equal him if I could. 
 Daily, in our walks, he would say, " Give me a text, and let 
 me analyze it." Quick as a flash he would produce first, sec- 
 ond, third, finally, and ask me to criticise it. I have never 
 met his equal in analytic power. He was full of sparkle and
 
 234 tt O w SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 cheer as now. All said " I see in this young man elements 
 of future greatness." Yet he was always modest and unas- 
 suming; true, pure and noble. He was a fine speaker in 
 those days, and popular everywhere. 
 
 He became pastor, for two years, at North Bel- 
 ville, N. J., and for the following two years at Ir- 
 vington. It was now, not satisfied with pulpit 
 work alone, that he developed an educational plan. 
 Every Saturday afternoon pastor and people came 
 together, imagining themselves a band of tourists 
 in Palestine. Bible History and Geography were 
 studied. Every scholar was personally examined, 
 and as he or she had made progress, was promoted 
 by grades to " Pilgrim," " Explorer," " Dweller in 
 Jerusalem," and " Templar." During a later pas- 
 torate, where a similar class had been organized, 
 the pastor wrote weekly letters for the village 
 paper, and so graphic and interesting were they 
 that many believed there was an actual excursion. 
 Meantime he had pursued the four years' course 
 of theological study required by his church. 
 
 His father having moved to Chicago to take 
 charge of large business interests, young Vincent
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 235 
 
 was naturally drawn to the West where he preached 
 several years in Northern Illinois. In Joliet, Mt. 
 Morris, Galena and Rockford, the Saturday after- 
 noon Palestine classes were crowded by old and 
 young, and from all denominations. 
 
 Although so busy and engrossed, he was not too 
 busy to fall in love ; but he wisely waited till he 
 was old enough to be certain what kind of wife he 
 wanted. When he was nearly twenty-seven, he 
 married Elizabeth Dusenbury, from Western New 
 York, whose father was a Presbyterian elder, hon- 
 ored and beloved by everybody. The daughter 
 had a fine mind, unusual strength of character, and 
 good judgment, with a delicate sense of propriety 
 and steadiness of purpose. Well may Doctor 
 Vincent say, " I owe more to my wife than to 
 any other human being save my mother." Into his 
 plans she entered heartily, and became a coun- 
 selor and helper. Four years after his marriage 
 he spent a year in Europe, traveling over Egypt 
 and Palestine, thoughtfully surveying those coun- 
 tries which he had taught thousands to love. He 
 returned home refreshed, to enter upon still wider
 
 *36 HOW SUCCESS is WON. 
 
 activities. He had always been deeply interested 
 in Sabbath-school work. How could he reach the 
 children of America so that they would love Bible 
 study, and how help the teachers to make this 
 study interesting ? " He decided to start a paper 
 devoted to that end. This was the Northwestern 
 Sunday-school Quarterly. He had before that 
 organized the first Sunday-school Institute in the 
 country, and a little later, in 1866, he originated 
 and edited the Chicago Teacher, from which has 
 come the International Lesson System now used 
 among Protestants throughout the world. 
 
 He was now only thirty-four, yet the foremost 
 leader in Sunday-school work. He was made 
 agent of the Sunday-school Union of Chicago, and 
 a little later the Secretary of the Sunday-school 
 Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to which 
 position, for the fifth term, of four years each, 
 he was re-elected in Philadelphia last May. The 
 mother's prayers and beautiful life were surely 
 having their influence in the Christian energy and 
 patient, far-reaching power of her eloquent son. 
 
 When appointed to the Secretaryship, he removed
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 237 
 
 to Plainfield, N. J., where his home became a centre 
 of social and intellectual activity. Says a leading 
 clergyman : 
 
 Doctor Vincent preached in the Presbyterian, Congrega- 
 tionalist, Baptist, and other churches in Plainfield, many 
 times. His name crowds any church on any occasion, in a 
 hard rain or a hot night, and this has lasted for sixteen years 1 
 Doctor Vincent has few peers in the American pulpit. He 
 is a princely preacher. 
 
 All these years he had recognized, for himself 
 as well as for others, the necessity of collegiate 
 education. Though his hands were full of work, 
 he had continued his studies alone, carefully taking 
 up higher mathematics, science, metaphysics and 
 classics, till he had mastered the college course, 
 receiving his A. B degree after a regular examin- 
 ation. 
 
 The absorbing question with him then became, 
 " How can the great world catch the ' college out- 
 look ? ' ' He reflected that few of the vast number 
 can afford the means. Tens of thousands are too 
 busy earning their daily bread.
 
 238 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 What seemed a grave mistake in his early life 
 the neglect to secure a college training in 
 his treatment of it became a blessing to the world. 
 " Some way must be opened for old and young to 
 become educated," resolved the earnest minister ; 
 but still it was not opened for some years. 
 
 In 1874, Mr. Lewis Miller, of Akron, Ohio, a 
 wealthy and generous man who loves Sunday- 
 schools, suggested the idea of a large gathering at 
 Chautauqua, where Christian people could enjoy 
 lectures, science, literature and theology. The plan 
 was perfected ; Mr. Miller was made President, 
 and Doctor Vincent Superintendent of Instruction. 
 The place soon attracted large numbers of visitors, 
 and has been the parent of all other Sunday-school 
 assemblies. 
 
 Four years later, while Doctor Vincent was cross- 
 ing the ocean homeward, after a resting-time at the 
 foot of the Alps, the old idea of a College Reading 
 Course for the people was matured. Doctor Vincent 
 calculated that by reading at least one hour a day, 
 for four years, as long a time as many tired fathers 
 and mothers could spare, a fair knowledge of liter-
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 239 
 
 ature, history and science could be obtained. But 
 would the people of this country take hold upon the 
 idea ? Time would tell. He laid the plan before 
 President Warren of Boston University, Doctor 
 Howard Crosby, Doctor J. G. Holland, William 
 Cullen Bryant and others, and all gave it their 
 hearty endorsement. 
 
 On August 10, 1878, the Chautauqua Literary 
 and Scientific Circle (C. L. S. C.) was inaugurated 
 at Chautauqua in the huge tent where the Amphi- 
 theatre now stands, and more than seven hundred 
 joined at once. A college president was the first 
 to give his name. The class of the first year num- 
 bered eight thousand people, and the demand for 
 the needed books exhausted the entire stock of the 
 publishers on the first day ! ah, yes, the people were 
 anxious to learn. 
 
 A circle with three hundred members was formed 
 at Cleveland, Ohio, one with five hundred at Pitts- 
 burg. Letters came from all over the country. 
 One wrote : 
 
 I am so grateful to you that I can't express what I feel. I 
 am a hard-working man. I have six children, and I work
 
 240 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 hard to keep them in school. Since I found out about your 
 Circle I am trying my best to keep up, so that my boys will 
 see what father does, just for an example to them. 
 
 Another : 
 
 I am a night-watchman, and I read as I come on my night 
 rounds to the lights. 
 
 A Mississippi captain wrote that the course was 
 of value to him, " because," he says, " when I stand 
 on deck stormy nights, I have something to think 
 about." 
 
 President Garfield, not forgetting how he had 
 hungered for an education, studying his open book 
 as he drove the mules along the tedious path by 
 the Erie Canal, spoke earnestly before the assem- 
 bled thousands at Chautauqua, urging the value of 
 this plan of study : 
 
 You are struggling with one of the two great problems of 
 civilization. The first one is a very old struggle ; it is, " How 
 shall we get leisure ? " That is the problem of every hammer 
 stroke, of every blow that labor has struck since the founda- 
 tion of the world. The fight for bread is the first great primal
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 241 
 
 fight, and it is so absorbing a struggle that until one conquers 
 It somewhat, he can have no leisure whatever. So that we 
 may divide the whole struggle of the human race into two 
 chapters first, the fight to get leisure ; and then comes the 
 second fight of civilization, what shall we do with our leisure 
 when we get it ? And I take it that Chautauqua has assailed 
 this second problem. Now leisure is a dreadfully bad thing 
 unless it is well used. A man with a fortune ready made, 
 and with leisure on his hands, is likely to get sick of the 
 world, sick of himself, tired of life, and become a useless, 
 wasted man. What shall you do with your leisure ? I un- 
 derstand that Chautauqua is trying to answer that question, 
 and to open out fields of thought, to open out energies, a 
 largeness of mind, a culture in the better sense, with the 
 varnish scratched off, as Brother Kirkwood says. We are 
 getting over the business of varnishing our native woods and 
 painting them. We are getting down to the real grain, and 
 finding whatever is best in it, and truest in it; and if Chau- 
 tauqua is helping to garnish our people with the native stuff 
 that is in them, rather than the paint and varnish and gew- 
 gaws of culture, they are doing well. 
 
 The delightful work goes on, always making new 
 channels, and always broadening all its old ways. 
 About sixty thousand persons are studying the 
 Chautauqua Course, several hundreds of these in
 
 242 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Canada, and some in India, South Africa, Japan 
 and the Sandwich Islands. One half the required 
 readings for the members are published in the 
 Chautauquan, a magazine edited by Rev. Theodore 
 L. Flood, a man in whom every good cause has a 
 true and able advocate. Ten or more Chautau- 
 quas have been organized in various States. 
 
 Out of this work has grown the Chautauqua 
 University, chartered by the State of New York, 
 conducted by well-known professors through writ- 
 ten examinations. The "Young Summerfield," 
 who rode over his mountain circuit in Pennsylva- 
 nia at twenty, has become its chancellor, known 
 and honored throughout America. Still he has 
 found time for other labors, as those know who 
 have listened to his lectures on Reading, The Model 
 Husband^ Egypt and the Pyramids, That Boy, That 
 Boy's Sister, Sidney Smith, The Witty Dean, Tht 
 Every Day College, etc. ; he has written a manual 
 of Bible History and Geography, entitled "Little 
 Foot-prints in Bible-lands" a volume on the Church 
 School, small books on Sunday-school work, and 
 several text books for the Chautauqua course ; and
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 243 
 
 he haf spoken at innumerable famous gather- 
 ings, like the Sunday-school centenary at Guildhall, 
 London, and preached in such far-off places as Jeru- 
 salem and Damascus. One secret, I think, of his 
 remarkable success is that his enthusiasm and sym- 
 pathy never fail. His humor, his genial face, his mag- 
 netic manner, his sunny outlook, his confidence in 
 work to achieve anything and everything for a man, 
 make him the idol of his audiences, while his energy, 
 his own capacity for endless work, and his execu- 
 tive power fit him for this leadership. 
 
 Another secret is, that while the details of his 
 varied labor is something unparalleled, his home 
 life is joyous and refreshing. 
 
 The Vincent home at New Haven is like the 
 father's, in the early days, most hospitable. Dr. 
 Vincent and his only son have from the latter's 
 earliest boyhood been like brothers, counseling 
 together. I heard him say once, " My boy is my 
 only 'pet.' I like birds in the free air of heaven. 
 I like dogs in my neighbor's yard. I like cats 
 in pictures and at somebody's else fireside. I 
 like horses when somebody else drives them."
 
 244 HOW SUCCESS IS WON. 
 
 Another secret is that both in his study, and 
 on the wing, Dr. Vincent is a great reader, mark- 
 ing his books, and re-reading the things he likes. 
 He says : " I get strength, breadth, out of general 
 reading, and put them into my work. The best 
 service of a book to me is not the ideas I get out 
 of it, but the force intellectual, and the breadth of 
 view it gives, which force and breadth I can use 
 in producing my own ideas and plans." He has the 
 excellent and orderly habit of jotting down random 
 thoughts, always having a memorandum-book with 
 him while riding on the cars, or in his office, and 
 at night often makes note of a fugitive thought, 
 caught and caged while flitting through his mind. 
 A good talker himself, he broadly makes it a matter 
 of duty to draw people out on a subject, not for 
 the sake of argument, but that he may modify his 
 own views, or get a better chance to modify theirs. 
 Some of his best sermons have grown out of stir- 
 ring conversations with people, especially skeptics, 
 or those holding different views from himself. 
 
 Another secret is that he is a careful worker, 
 depending upon both accuracy and finish ; often
 
 REV. JOHN H. VINCENT, D. D. 245 
 
 re-writing the outline of a sermon a dozen times, 
 always maturing each detail of a plan. 
 
 In this grand work going on so noiselessly and 
 so closely all around us that we can hardly get the 
 " distance " from which to survey its noble out- 
 lines, its projector may sometimes feel fatigue, but 
 exhaustion never. It yields him, as all work of 
 pure beneficence always does, new ideas, new aims, 
 new hopes for the advancement of the people. 
 Does it yield him dollars ? some one asks. No ; 
 he receives no salary from Chautauqua. His re- 
 ward, his "support" comes in the consciousness 
 of the love of thousands, in the consciousness of 
 the " lift " Chautauqua has given to the family life 
 of the people and the better " start " thus secured 
 for the sons and daughters of these happier homes.
 
 SUCCESS BOOKS 
 
 By DR. ORISON SWETT MARDEN 
 
 STEPPING STONES 
 
 lamo. Red Cloth. Decorative Cover. Illustrated. Price, $1.25 
 
 Dr. Harden'* new volume of essays," Stepping Stones," has the attractive 
 qualities made familiar to a large audience of readers by his earlier books. 
 At the same time it is entirely new in contents and most helpful and enter- 
 taining in character. It contains talks to young people of both sexes full of 
 practical value, happy sketches of great characters, salient suggestions on 
 deportment and conduct, and shrewd advice of all kinds touching everyday 
 living. The author's wide knowledge of history and literature is used to 
 give the essays atmosphere and quality, and no success book of the series is 
 more engaging and wholesome than " Stepping Stones." 
 
 HOW THEY SUCCEEDED 
 
 Life Stories of Successful Men told by Themselves 
 
 . Red Cloth. Decorative Cover. Illustrated. Price, $1.50 
 
 The author in this book has set down the story of successful men and 
 women told by themselves, either in a series of interviews or by semi- 
 autobiographical sketches. They make a most entertaining and inspiring 
 series of life stories, full of incentive to ambitious youth. 
 
 The Boston Transcript says : " To the young man who is determined to 
 succeed in life, no matter in what direction his aim may lie, this volume will 
 
 ugn pull or social position. It empn 
 cess depends wholly and entirely upon the person himself." 
 
 WINNING OUT 
 
 A Book about Success 
 ismo. Red Cloth. Decorative Cover. Gilt Top. Illustrated. Price, $1.00 
 
 Dr. M?rden has made for himself a wide reputation by his earlier volumes, 
 "Architects of Fate "and "Pushing to the Front." But " Winning Out," 
 while constructed along somewhat the same lines, is his first book designed 
 especially for young readers. Its theme is " Character Building by Habit 
 Forming." 
 
 The Louisville Courier Journal says : " Pleasant teaching Dr. Mar- 
 den's anecdotes make. They are of men and things that have actually been 
 and happened. The moral is often an epigram, always apropos. Through 
 the pages of the small volume pass a procession of figures that have aspired, 
 struggled, and achieved. Such work is good for the world, good fer the 
 youth in it, and for more experienced and serious middle age." 
 
 Lothrop Publishing Company - - Boston
 
 FAMOUS PEPPER BOOKS 
 
 BY MARGARET SIDNEY 
 IN ORDER OF PUBLICATION 
 
 Five Little Peppers and How they Grew. Cloth, 
 I2mo, illustrated, $1.50, postpaid. 
 
 This was an instantaneous success ; it has become a genuine 
 
 child classic. 
 
 Five Little Peppers Midway. Cloth, I2mo, illus- 
 trated, #1.50, postpaid. 
 
 " A perfect Cheeryble of a book." Boston Herald. 
 
 Five Little Peppers Grown Up. Cloth, i2mo, illus- 
 trated, $1.50, postpaid. 
 
 This shows the Five Little Peppers as "grown up," with all 
 
 the struggles and successes of young manhood and womanhood. 
 
 Phronsie Pepper. Cloth, i2mo, illustrated, 1.50, 
 postpaid. 
 
 It is the story of Phronsie, the youngest and dearest of all the 
 
 Peppers. 
 
 The Stories Polly Pepper Told. Cloth, I2mo. 
 
 Illustrated by Jessie McDermott and Etheldred B. 
 
 Barry. $ i . 50, postpaid. 
 
 Wherever there exists a child or a "grown-up," there will be a 
 welcome for these charming and delightful "Stories Polly 
 Pepper Told." 
 
 The Adventures of Joel Pepper. Cloth, i2mo. 
 
 Illustrated by Sears Gallagher. #1.50, postpaid. 
 As bright and just as certain to be a child's favorite as the 
 others in the famous series. Harum-scarum" Joey " is lovable. 
 
 Five Little Peppers Abroad. Cloth, I2mo. Illus- 
 trated by Fanny Y. Cory. $1.50, postpaid. 
 The " Peppers Abroad " adds another most delightful book to 
 this famous series. 
 
 Five Little Peppers at School. Cloth, I2mo. Illus- 
 trated by Hermann Heyer. Price, $1.50; postpaid. 
 
 Of all the fascinating adventures and experiences of the 
 
 " Peppers," none will surpass those contained in this volume. 
 
 Five Little Peppers and Their Friends. Illustrated 
 by Eugenie M. Wireman. Cloth, I2mo, $1.50; postpaid. 
 
 The friends of the Peppers are legion, and the number will 
 be further increased by this book. 
 
 Ben Pepper. Illustrated by Eugenie M. Wireman. 
 
 Cloth, I2mo, $1.50. 
 
 This story centres about Ben, "the quiet, steady-as-a-rock 
 boy," while the rest of the Peppers help to make it as bright 
 and pleasing as its predecessors. 
 
 LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, BOSTON
 
 SALLY, 
 MRS. TUBES 
 
 An amusing and sympathetic study of a Ne c w England 
 woman of humble station, hut nohle character. 
 
 By MARGARET SIDNEY, author of the Famous " Pepper " 
 books, etc. 
 
 CHICAGO RECORD-HERALD says: 
 
 What can be said is, that those who have read " Mrs. Wiggs " 
 will purchase " Sally, Mrs. Tubbs." The author of this pleasant 
 story, who is Margaret Sidney of the " Pepper " books renown, 
 has rightly dedicated this tale for grown-ups to " all who love 
 simplicity, truth, and cheerfulness." These virtues characterize 
 Sally Plunkett, whose soul-devouring ambition was " to have 
 'Bijah Tubbs fer life." 
 
 As a chapter out of human life " Sally, Mrs. Tubbs " is, per- 
 haps, as good as " Mrs. Wiggs." Regarded artistically, it shows 
 the workmanship of a more practised hand; it has a plot, and 
 this plot pleasantly complicated, and thus differs from its next 
 of kin. We judge that Sally and her 'Bijah, who, though little, 
 is " sizable " enough to meet her wants, will make the acquaint- 
 ance of those who like a book that is not over-intellectualized 
 nor yet lacking in soundness of heart and penetrating vision 
 into human nature. " Sally, Mrs. Tubbs " will furnish a hearty 
 laugh and a quickened sensibility. 
 
 BOSTON TRANSCRIPT says: 
 
 As a brief character-sketch, " Sally, Mrs. Tubbs " deserves no 
 little praise for its geniality and its humor. 
 
 BOSTON HERALD says: 
 
 This short story of 180 pages is captivating from start to finish, 
 and the masculine reader takes off his hat, and the feminine 
 reader courtesies, to this matron of the tubs, with her homely 
 heroism and true kindness of heart. 
 
 J2mo. Picture Cover. Postpaid, $1.00. 
 
 Lothrop Publishing Company - - Boston
 
 A Little Maid of Concord 
 Town 
 
 A Romance of the American Revolution 
 
 By MARGARET SIDNEY. One volume, J2mo, 
 illustrated by F. T. Merrill, $1.50 
 
 A DELIGHTFUL Revolutionary romance of life, 
 love and adventure in old Concord. The author 
 lived for fifteen years in the home of Hawthorne, in 
 Concord, and knows the interesting town thoroughly. 
 Debby Parlin, the heroine, lived in a little house 
 on the Lexington Road, still standing, and was sur- 
 rounded by all the stir and excitement of the months 
 of preparation and the days of action at the begin- 
 ning of our struggle for freedom. 
 
 By Way of the Wilderness 
 
 By "PANSY" (Mrs. G. R. Alden) and MRS. 
 C M. LIVINGSTON. J2mo, cloth, illustrated by 
 Charlotte Harding, $J,50 
 
 THIS story of Wayne Pierson and how he evaded 
 or met the tests of misunderstanding, environ- 
 ment, false position, opportunity and self-pride ; how 
 he lost his father and found him again, almost lost 
 his home and found it again, almost lost himself and 
 found alike his manhood, his conscience and his 
 heart is told us in Pansy's best vein, ably supplement- 
 ed by Mrs. Livingston's collaboration.
 
 The Little Citizen 
 
 By M. E. WALLER 
 
 Illustrated by H. Burgess. 12mo> blue cloth, illustrated cover, 
 $1.25 
 
 is a right royal, good juvenile story. 
 It has the narrative of the development 
 of a waif of New York streets in the simple 
 and wholesome life of a Vermont farmer 
 neighborhood. The lad, Miffins, is taken 
 into the household of Jacob Foss, a farmer. 
 The story tells of the transformation wrought 
 in Miffins's character. It is a story of heart 
 power ; and with its study of the evolution 
 of a street gamin into a useful little citizen, 
 and with its graphic descriptions of Vermont 
 country life in summer and winter, it makes 
 a book of unusual power and interest. 
 
 Lothrop Publishing Company - - Boston
 
 W. O. Stoddard's Books 
 
 AHEAD OF THE ARMY. Four illustrations by C Chase 
 Emerson. I2mo. Pictorial cover in color. Price, $1.25, 
 postpaid. 
 
 This is a lively narrative of the experiences of an American boy who 
 arrives in Mexico as the war with the United States is beginning, is thrown 
 into contact with such young officers as Lieutenant Grant and Captains Lee 
 and McClellan, all of them destined to become famous later in American 
 military history. 
 
 THE ERRAND BOY OF ANDREW JACKSON: A War 
 Story of 1812. Illustrated by Will Crawford. Cloth, 
 I2mo, $1.25, postpaid. 
 This tale is of the War of 1812, and describes the events of the only land 
 
 campaign of 1812-1814 in which the Americans were entirely successful. 
 
 JACK MORGAN: A Boy of 1812. Illustrated by Will 
 Crawford. i2mo, cloth, postpaid, $1.25. 
 
 It is the adventures of a boy of the frontier during the great fight that 
 Harrison made on land, and Perry on the lakes, for the security of the 
 border. 
 
 THE NOANK'S LOG: A Privateer of the Revolution. 
 Illustrated by Will Crawford. I2mo, postpaid, $1.25. 
 
 The further adventures of the plucky Guert Ten Eyck, as he fought 
 King George on land and sea. 
 
 THE DESPATCH BOAT OF THE WHISTLE : A Story 
 of Santiago. Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. I2mo, 
 postpaid, $i-2$. 
 A breezy story of a newspaper despatch boat, in the war with Spain. 
 
 GUERT TEN EYCK. Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. 
 I2mo, postpaid, $1.25. 
 A hero story of real American girls and boy, in the American Revolution. 
 
 THE PARTNERS. Illustrated by Albert Scott Cox. I2mo, 
 postpaid, $1.25. 
 
 A capital story of a bright, go-ahead country girl and two boys who 
 helped her keep store. 
 
 CHUCK PURDY : A New York Boy. Illustrated. i2mo, 
 postpaid, $1.25. 
 A delightful story of boy life ia New York City. 
 
 GID GRANGER : A Country Boy. Illustrated. 12010, post- 
 paid, $1.25. 
 
 A capital story of American life. 
 
 Lothrop Publishing Company - - Boston
 
 George Gary Eggleston's 
 Juveniles 
 
 The Bale Marked Circle X 
 
 A Blockade Running Adventure 
 
 Illustrated by C* Chase Emerson. 12mo, red cloth, illustrated 
 
 cover, $1.50. 
 
 Another of Mr. Eggleston's stirring books for youth. In 
 it are told the adventures of three boy soldiers in the Con- 
 federate Service who are sent in a sloop on a secret voyage 
 from Charleston to the Bahamas, conveying a strange bale of 
 cotton which holds important documents. The boys pass 
 through startling adventures : they run the blockade, suffer 
 shipwreck, and finally reach their destination after the 
 pluckiest kind of effort. 
 
 Camp Venture 
 
 A Story of the Virginia Mountains 
 
 Illustrated by W. A. McCullough. J2mo, dark red cloth, 
 
 illustrated cover, $1.50. 
 
 The Louisville Courier Journal says : " George Gary Eggles- 
 ton has written a decidedly good tale of pluck and adventure 
 in ' Camp Venture.' It will be of interest to young and old 
 who enjoy an exciting story, but there is also a great deal of 
 instruction and information in the book." 
 
 The Last of the Flatboats 
 
 A Story of the Mississippi 
 
 Illustrated by Charlotte Harding. J2mo, green cloth/illustrated 
 
 cover, $1.50. 
 
 The Brooklyn Eagle says : " Mr. George Gary Eggleston, 
 the veteran editor and author, has scored a double success in 
 his new book, 'The Last of the Flatboats,' which has just 
 been published. Written primarily as a story for young 
 readers, it contains many things that are of interest to older 
 people. Altogether, it is a mighty good story, and well 
 worth reading." 
 
 Lothrop Publishing Company - - Boston
 
 BOOKS BY ANNIE H. RYDER. 
 
 Hold up Your Heads, Girls! 
 
 12mo, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 "The author of ' Hold up your Heads, Girls! ' has, in the tre..i.>.iit of a 
 very important subject, invested it with an interest and brightness which will 
 make it pleasant and even fascinating reading for the class of young people 
 to whom it is addressed. In the eleven chapters of which the contents con- 
 sist there is more sound practical advice, sensibly put, on points of every-day 
 interest to girls, than we have ever before seen put into the same number of 
 pages. It is a book for study, for companionship, and the girl who reads it 
 thoughtfully and with an intent to profit by it will get more real help and 
 good from it than from a term at the best boarding-school in the country." 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 Margaret Regis and some other Girls. 
 
 12mo, illustrated, $1.25. 
 
 " The college life of young women is described in this book in a very enter- 
 taining way, and in a spirit the most wholesome and cheerful. Margaret 
 Regis is a splendid creation of the author's fancy, just such a young woman as 
 all of us like to read about. In her schooldays she is not different from 
 others. There is a shade of profound thought in her description of this 
 period of life : ' She is like the many, many girls, increasing in numbers 
 every year, who, unfixed and restless, go into college or the office, with a 
 vague determination to do something that shall make them independent or 
 superior to the greatest number of girls, but with no definite idea of how 
 they are to use the knowledge and experience they gain.' Margaret Regis 
 does not remain long in this unsettled state. She is emphatically a woman 
 with a purpose. How its current was turned from the intended course makes 
 an interesting narrative which the reader will find full of profit." Cleveland 
 Leader. 
 
 New Every Morning. 
 
 A Year Book for Girls. Edited by Annie H. Ryder. 
 Square 16mo, cloth, $1.00; gilt, $1.25; limp, seal, 
 $2.50. 
 
 A book of choice reading for girls for every day In the year. 
 " There is a happy blending of practical common sense, pure sentiment and 
 simple religious fervor." Education, Boston. 
 
 BOSTON 
 LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY
 
 WHEN GRANDMAMMA 
 WAS FOURTEEN 
 
 By MARION HARLAND 
 
 WITH FOUR FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS AND NUMEROUS PICTURES 
 IN THE TEXT PRICE $1.25 
 
 Later adventures of the heroine of 
 "WHEN GRANDMAMMA WAS NEW." 
 
 THOSE who recall this noted author's delightful story, "When 
 Grandmamma was New," will be glad to hear that in this 
 book are the adventures of the heroine at a later period. 
 Through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Molly Burwell, the reader 
 sees much that is quaint, amusing and pathetic in ante-bellum Rich- 
 mond, and the story has all the charm of manner and rich humanity 
 which are characteristic of Marion Harland. All healthy- hearted 
 children will delight in the story, and so will their parents. 
 
 WHEN GRANDMAMMA WAS NEW 
 
 The Story of a Virginia Girlhood in the Forties 
 By MARION HARLAND i2mo Illustrated Price #1.25 
 
 The BOSTON JOURNAL says: 
 
 If only one might read it first with the trained enjoyment of the 
 grown-up ' mind that is ' at leisure from itself,' and then if one might with- 
 draw into ten-year-old-dom once more and seek the shadow of the friendly 
 
 The INTERIOR, Chicago, says: 
 
 " Grandmamma' may have charmed other folks, has charmed them all, 
 incontrovertibly, but she has never tried harder to be vivid and dramatic 
 and entertaining, and to leave a sweet kernal of application, withal, than in 
 these memory-tales of a sunny childhood on a big Virginia plantation. It is 
 a book which will delight, not children alone, but all such as have the child 
 heart and a tender memory of when they were ' new.' " 
 
 AT ALL. BOOKSELLERS, OR SENT POSTPAID ON RECEIPT 
 OF PRICE BY THE PUBLISHERS 
 
 LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON
 
 By Chaplain H. H. CLARK, U.S.N. 
 
 THE ADMIRAL'S AID 
 
 A Story of Life in the New Navy 
 
 lamo, blue cloth, illustrated by I. B. HAZELTON 
 $1.25 
 
 In this favorite author's two earlier books we learned somewhat 
 of the old navy. In this story it is the new navy, with all of its 
 progress and development, which engages our attention. But the 
 hope of the new navy is built upon the same qualities that have 
 distinguished officers and men from its beginning. These Chaplain 
 Clark portrays, to the delight of every reader, in this thrilling story. 
 
 JOE BENTLY, Naval Cadet 
 
 izmo, blue cloth, illustrated by F. O. SMALL. $1.25 
 
 In this story Joe Bently meets with many new and intensely inter- 
 esting adventures. 
 
 BOY LIFE IN THE UNITED 
 STATES NAVY 
 
 I2mo, blue cloth, illustrated. $1.25 
 
 The book is a true picture of a healthy, attractive life of the navy 
 that is little known to the general public, and full enough of adventures 
 to please all classes of readers. 
 
 Lothrop Publishing Company - - Boston
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-25m-9,'47(A5618)444 
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 CT 
 
 105 Bolton - 
 
 How success is 
 
 won. 
 
 006 345 250 2 
 
 CT 
 
 105 
 
 B63h