The Book of Courage Part 3

"I looked as well as I could into every character that offered itself to my view, and resolved to apply where I found the most shining abilities, for I had learnt to distrust the humanity of weak people in all stations."

So he wrote to Edmund Burke, telling him that he could no longer be content to live in the home of poor people, who had kept him for nearly a year, and had lent him money for his current expenses. Describing himself as "one of those outcasts on the world, who are without a friend, without employment and without bread," he told of his vain appeal to another for gold to save him from prison, added that he had but one week to raise the necessary funds, and made his request.

"I appeal to you, sir, as a good, and, let me add, a great man. I have no other pretensions to your favor than that I am an unhappy one. It is not easy to support thoughts of confinement, and I am coward enough to dread such an end to my suspense ... I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, and if I have not the happiness to obtain credit with you I must submit to my fate ... I have only to hope a speedy end to a life so unpromisingly begun ... I can reap some consolation in looking to the end of it."

The appeal was successful. Edmund Burke became Crabbe's patron. The poet was glad to eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and submitted to many unpleasant slights and insinuations while he received the dole of charity.

That suing thus for a patron did not always have the effect of destroying an author's self-respect is shown by a letter written by Dr.

Samuel Johnson to Lord Chesterfield. When, after years of hard labor, Dr. Johnson's dictionary was known to be ready for publication, Lord Chesterfield wrote for "The World" two flattering articles about the author, evidently thinking that the work would be dedicated to him. At once Dr. Johnson wrote:

"My Lord: When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I ... could not forbear to wish ... that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it....

"Seven years, my lord, have pa.s.sed since I waited in your outward room, or was repulsed from your door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of a.s.sistance, one word of encouragement or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect for I never had a patron before.... The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labor, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.... I have long awakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, my lord,

"Your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,

"Sam Johnson."

The lapse of a century has brought a change. Self-respecting, courageous young workers do not seek a patron to help them to fame. To-day they ask only to fight their own battles, win their own victories.

III

UNCOMPLAINING

Nor do courageous workers complain when little things go wrong.

"I don't know what I shall do if the mail does not come to-morrow. Think of being two days without a morning paper!"

The complaint was heard when railway traffic had been tied up by washouts on the railway. The inconvenience suffered by the speaker seemed to him very great. Though there had been no other interruption to the many comforts and conveniences to which he had been accustomed, the single difficulty made him lose his temper and spoiled his day.

When one is tempted to magnify such a small difficulty into a mountain it is worth while to look at things from the standpoint of a man whose life far from the centers of civilization makes him so independent of circ.u.mstances and surroundings that he can be cheerful even in the face of what seem like bitter privations.

A company of travelers in the forests of Canada thought that the knowledge of the most recent news was necessary to happiness. They learned their mistake when they reached the camp of a man from whom they expected to learn news more recent than the events reported in the paper the day they left civilization, seven weeks before. They felt sure that, as he lived on the trail, he would have seen some traveler who had left the railroad since their own departure.

When they asked him for late news from the States, he said he had some very recent news, and proceeded to tell of events eight months old! "Do you call that recent?" he was asked, in disgust.

"What's the matter with that?" was the wondering reply. "It only happened last fall, and there ain't been n.o.body through here since." And he contentedly resumed the task at which he had been engaged when interrupted by the demand for "recent" news.

On the same journey the travelers--whose story is told in "Trails in Western Canada"--showed that they were learning the lesson. Carelessness in handling a campfire caused a forest fire which threatened their food supply. They saved this, but lost their only axes. After a long search they found these in the embers, but the temper had been utterly ruined by the heat. Only a few hours before they felt that an axe was absolutely necessary not only to comfort but to life itself, yet when the ruined tools were found the travelers turned to their tasks without giving the disaster a second thought. They knew that there is always a way out of difficulty. They continued their expedition without an axe, and found that they managed very well.

The lesson was impressed still more by the att.i.tude of a guide who spent a few days with them. Like many other people on vacation they allowed themselves to worry about finances. But their thoughts were set on a new track by the guide, who, after telling of the success in trapping grizzly bear and beaver which had enabled him to save a little money, said: "Life is too short to worry about money. If I lose all I have to-morrow, I can get a couple of bear traps and by next spring I'll be on my feet again. The mountains are always here, and I know where there is a bunch of bear and a colony of beaver, and I can get along out here, and live like a prince while those poor millionaires are lying awake at nights, lest someone come and steal their money."

Two other guides were engaged to pole the travelers' raft down the Fraser River. Nearly every day the cold rain fell in torrents, but the men were unmoved. "All day long they would stand in their wet clothes, their hands numb and blue from the cold as they handled their dripping poles; yet not a comment indicating discomfort is recalled. Physical annoyances, which in the city would bring an ambulance, scarcely are mentioned by them."

One day one of the men was asked what they did when they were sick.

"Cain't say we ever are sick," was the reply. "The worst thing that ever happened to us, I reckon, was when Mort here had a bad tooth; but, after a day or two, we got sick of it, and took it out." That was all he thought worth saying about it till he was pressed for an account of the operation. "Oh, I looked through our dunnage bag," he said, "and found an old railroad spike. Mort held it against the tooth and I hit the head with a big rock, and knocked her out the first time."

His companion was unwilling to agree that this was the most trying experience. He told of a day when the man who had reported the tooth extraction, cut his foot severely with an axe. "Oh, that didn't bother us," the victim interrupted. "I just slapped on some spruce gum and never thought anything more about it." Asked how long he was laid up, the surprised answer was: "Laid up for that? We weren't laid up at all.

Couldn't travel quite as fast for a day or two, but we didn't lose no time at that, for we traveled longer to make up."

Still another guide gave an object lesson in making light of difficulties when his horse fell on him, bruising one of his knees so that it swelled to an enormous size. The injured man made no complaint, though his companions were full of sympathy. He knew he could reduce the swelling by heroic remedies.

One day when traveling was unusually difficult, the guide cheered his employers by telling them of the fine camp he owned just ahead--"a house like a hotel," he said. And when the camp was reached he pointed proudly to "a great log with a few great pieces of bark and some cedar slivers stretched over the top." In this camp the night was spent, without blankets and in the rain. "But as no one seemed to consider this anything out of the ordinary, the travelers made no complaint."

Perhaps a taste of the wilderness is what we need when we become impatient of trifles and make ourselves miserable because everything does not go to suit us.

IV

PERSISTING

Failure camps on the trail of the man who is ready to give up because difficulties multiply. A representative of a large paper warehouse made up his mind to add to his list of customers a certain Michigan firm.

Repeated rebuffs did not daunt him. Every sixty days he sent the firm a letter of invitation to buy his goods. During twenty-seven years one hundred and sixty-one letters were mailed without result. Then, in reply to the one hundred and sixty-second letter, the Michigan firm asked for quotations. These were given promptly, and two carloads of paper were sold. What if this letter writer had become discouraged before he wrote this final letter?

"I thought you were planning to complete your education," a friend said to a young man whom he had not seen for some time; "yet now you are clerking in a store. Perhaps, though, you are earning money for next year's expenses."

"No, I am earning money for this year's expenses," was the discouraged reply. "I did want an education, but I found it was too difficult to get what I sought, so I have decided to settle down."

Of course it is easier to give up than it is to push on in the face of difficulty, but the youth who pushes on is fitting himself to fill a man's place in the world, while the young man who is easily discouraged is fitting himself for nothing but disappointment. The world has no place for a quitter.

There is a tonic for young people who purpose to make the most of themselves in glimpses of a few college students who had the courage to face difficulty. One of these was an Italian boy, who was glad to beat carpets, wash windows, scrub kitchen floors, mow lawns, teach grammar, arithmetic and vocal exercises at a night school for foreigners.

Then--as if his time was not fully occupied by these occupations--he made arrangements to care for a furnace and sift the ashes, in exchange for piano lessons. That student finished his preparatory course with credit, taking a prize for scholarship.

A seventeen-year-old boy wanted an education, but he had nine brothers and sisters at home, and he knew that he could look for no financial a.s.sistance from his parents. So he picked cotton at sixty cents a hundred pounds, sawed wood, cut weeds and scrubbed floors--and thus paid his expenses.

One student could not spare the money to pay his railroad fare to the school of his choice. But he had a pony. So he rode the pony the entire distance of five hundred miles, working for his expenses along the way.

A beginner in college was too full of grit to give up when bills came on him more heavily than he had expected. During the school year he did ch.o.r.es, rang the bell for the change of cla.s.ses, did janitor work, and waited on table in restaurants. In the summer he found work on farms near by.

"No task is too difficult for the man with a purpose," declared a worker with young men, some of whom were ready to give up. "Two things are necessary if you would be successful," was another man's message to those whom he wished to inspire to do purposeful work. "First: know what you want to do. Second: do it."

Those who permit obstacles to stand in the way of the performance of tasks they know they ought to perform if they would make the most of themselves, need to take to heart the message given by a mother to her son when he was ready to give up the unequal struggle with poverty and physical infirmity. "Thou wilt have much to bear, many hardships to suffer," she said. "But mark what I say, we must not mind the trouble.

During the first part of the night we must prepare the bed on which to stretch ourselves during the latter part."

Giving up after failure is always easier than trying again, but the men and women who count are those who will not be dismayed by failure. When J. Marion Sims, the famous surgeon, was beginning the practice of medicine, he proudly tacked an immense tin sign on the front of his office. Then he lost two patients, and pride and courage both failed him. "I just took down that long tin signboard from my door," he wrote in the story of his life. "There was an old well back of the house, covered over with boards. I went to the well, took that sign with me, dropped it in there, and covered the old well over again. I was no longer a doctor in the town." But fortunately he conquered discouragement, made a fresh beginning, and overcame tremendous obstacles. After his death a famous man said that if all his discoveries should be suppressed, it would be found that his own peculiar branch of surgery had gone backward at least twenty-five years.

Indomitable perseverance is necessary for the business man as for the professional man; and it will just as surely bring reward to those who are engaged in Christian work as to those who are seeking worldly honor.

So when the uphill climb seems too difficult, there must be no faltering. Remember--as Christina Rossetti said--"We shall escape the uphill by never turning back."

In gathering material for a history of Charles V of Spain, a Spanish historian was painstaking in his researches. Finally he was able to tell the king's whereabouts on every day of his career, except for two weeks in 1538.

Then friends a.s.sured him that he had done his best. In all probability nothing of importance happened during those days. But the historian believed in being thorough to the end. So he delayed publication. For fifteen years he sought news of the missing fortnight. Finally, and reluctantly, when he was seventy-five years old, he published the book.

At length an American woman, studying in the archives of Spain, having learned of the lost days, resolved to find them. Among musty doc.u.ments, in many libraries, she toiled. Then, by a woman's intuition, she was led to look for doc.u.ments of a sort the Spanish historian had never thought of. And she found where the king was on some of those days. The news was sent to the historian, just in time for him to make additions to his inaugural address to be delivered on taking his seat in the Academy of History. In this address he rejoiced to give full credit for the discovery to the American.

But the woman was not satisfied; there was still a gap to be filled. She made further trials, and failed. Again intuition led her to doc.u.mentary sources that had hardly been touched since they were filed away nearly three hundred years before. She succeeded, and now that bit of history is complete.