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Chapter XXIII: The Reward of Persistence · Pushing to the Front

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Chapter twenty three of Pushing to the Front by Horizon Sweat Marden. This LibriVox
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recording is in the public domain recording by Luke Sartor, Chapter twenty three.
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The reward of persistence. Every noble work is at first impossible, Carlyle.
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Victory belongs to the most persevering Napoleon. Success in most things depends on knowing
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how long it takes to succeed. Montesquieu. Perpetual pushing and assurance put a
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difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming impossibility give way. Jeremy Collier,
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unstable as water. Thou shalt not excel. The nerve that never relaxes,
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the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders. These are the
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masters of victory. Burke the pit rose at me, exclaimed Edmund Keene in
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a wild tumult of emotion, as he rushed home to his trembling wife,
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Mary. You shall ride in your carriage yet, and Charles shall go to
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Eden. He had been so terribly in earnest with the study of his profession
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that he had at length made a mark on his generation. He was a
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little dark man, with a voice naturally harsh, but he determined when young
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to play the character of Sir Giles's overreach in Massinger's drama, and no other
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man had ever played it. By a persistency that nothing seemed able to daunt.
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He so trained himself to play the character that his success, when it
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did come, was overwhelming, and all London was at his feet. I
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am sorry to say that I don't think this is in your line, said
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Woodfall, the reporter, after Sheridan had made his first speech in Parliament.
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You had better have stuck to your former pursuits. With head on his hand,
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Sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, it is
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in me, and it shall come out of me. From the same man
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came that harangue against Warren Hastings, which the orator Fox called the best speech
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ever made in the House of Commons. I had no other books than Heaven
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and Earth, which are open to all, said Bernard Palissy, who left
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his home in the south of France in eighteen twenty eight at the age of
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eighteen. Though only a glass painter, he had the soul of an artist.
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The sight of an elegant Italian cup disturbed his whole existence, and from
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that moment, the determination to discover the animal with which it was glazed possessed
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him like a passion. For months and years, he tried all kinds of
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experiments to learn the materials of which the animal was composed. He built a
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furnace, which was a failure, and then a second, burning so much
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wood, spoiling so many drugs and pots of common earthenware, and losing so
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much time that poverty stared him in the face, and he was forced from
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lack of ability to buy fuel to try his experiments in a common furnace.
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Flat failure was the result, but he decided on the spot to begin all
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over again, and soon had three hundred pieces baking, one of which came
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out covered with beautiful enamel. To perfect his invention, he next built a
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glass furnace, carrying the bricks on his back. At length, the time
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came for a trial, but though he kept the heat up six days,
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his enamel would not melt. His money was all gone, but he borrowed
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some and bought more pots and wood and tried to get a better flux.
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When next he lighted his fire, he attained no result until his fuel was
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gone, tearing off the palings of his garden fence. He fed them to
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the flames, but in vain his furniture followed to no purpose. The shelves
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of his pantry were then broken up and thrown into the furnace, and the
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great burst of heat melted the enamel. The grand secret was learned. Persistence
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had triumphed again. If you work hard two weeks without selling a book,
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wrote a publisher to an agent, you will make a success of it.
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Know thy work, and do it, said Carlyle. And work at it
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like a Hercules. Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or indeed in
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any other art, said Reynolds, must bring all his mind to bear upon
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that one object, from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed.
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I have no secret but hard work, said Turner, the painter.
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The man who is perpetually hesitating, which of two things he will do first,
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said William Wort, will do neither. The man who resolves but suffers
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his resolution to be changed by the first counter suggestion of a friend who fluctuates
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from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weathercock
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to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows can
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never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he
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will be at best stationary and more probably retrograde in all. Perseverance built the
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pyramids on Egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous Temple at Jerusalem, enclosed in adamant,
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the Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud capped Alps, opened highway
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through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the New World,
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and reared in its steed a community of states and nations. Perseverance has
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wrought from the marble block, the exquisite creations of genius, painted on canvas,
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the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface, the
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viewless substance of the shadow. Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles,
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winged as many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted
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cars, and set them flying from town to town and nation to nation,
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tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the lightning's speed. It has
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whitened the waters of the world with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated
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every sea and explored every land. It has reduced nature in her thousand forms
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too. As many sciences taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured
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her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and computed their distances,
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dimensions, and velocities. The slow penny is surer than the quick dollar.
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The slow trotter will outtravel the fleet racer. Genius darts, flutters and
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tires, but perseverance wares and wins. The all day horse wins the race.
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The afternoon man wears off the laurels. The last below drives home the
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nail. Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions? Asked a reporter of Thomas Ayerson.
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Do they come to you while you were lying awake nights? I never
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did anything worth doing by accident, was the reply. Nor did any of
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my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No. When I
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have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go ahead on it
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and make trial after trial until it comes. I have always kept strictly within
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the lines of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put
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on electrical wonders valuable simply as novelties to catch the popular fancy. I like
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it, continued the inventor. I don't know any other reason. Anything I
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have begun is always on my mind, and I am not easy while away
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from it until it is finished. A man who thus gives himself wholly to
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his work is certain to accomplish something, and if he have ability and common
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sense, his success will be great. How bull were wrestled with the fates
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to change his apparent destiny. His first novel was a failure, his early
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poems were failures, and his youthful speeches provoked the ridicule of his opponents.
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But he fought his way to eminence through ridicule and defeat. Gibbon worked twenty
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years on his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Noah Webster spent thirty
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six years on his Dictionary. What a sublime patience he showed in devoting a
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life to the collection and a definition of words. George Bancroft spent twenty six
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years on his History of the United States. Newton rewrote his Chronology of Ancient
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Nations fifteen times. Tittian wrote to Charles the Fifth, I send your majesty
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the Last Supper. After working on it almost daily for seven years. He
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worked on his Pietro Martin eighty years. George Stephenson was fifteen years perfecting his
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locomotive, what twenty years on his condancing engine. Harvey labored eight long years
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before he published his discovery of the circulation of the blood. He was then
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called a crack brained impostor by his fellow physicians. Amid abuse and ridicule.
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He waited twenty five years before his great discovery was recognized by the profession.
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Newton discovered the law of gravitation before he was twenty one, but one slight
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error in a measurement of the Earth's circumfor interfered with a demonstration of the correctness
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of his theory. Twenty years later he corrected the error and showed that the
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planets roll in their orbits as a result of the same law which brings an
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apple to the ground. Sothern, the great actor, said that the early
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part of his theatrical career was spent in getting dismissed for incompetency. Never depend
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upon your genius, said John Ruskin, in the words of Joshua Reynolds.
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If you have talent, industry will improve it. If you have none,
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industry will supply the deficiency. Savages believe that when they conquer an enemy,
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his spirit enters into them and fights for them ever afterwards. So the spirit
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of our conquests enters us and helps us to win the next victory. Bluecher
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may have been routed at Ligny yesterday, but today you hear the thunder of
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his guns at Waterloo, hurling dismay and death among his former conquerors. Opposing
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circumstances create strength. Opposition gives us greater power of resistance. To overcome one
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barrier gives us greater ability to overcome the next. In February fourteen ninety two,
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a poor gray haired man, his head bowed with discouragement, almost to
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the back of his mule, rode slowly out through the beautiful gateway of the
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Alhambra. From boyhood, he had been haunted with the idea that the earth
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is round. He believed that the peace of carved wood picked up four hundred
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miles at sea, and the bodies of two men, unlike any other human
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beings known, found on the shores of Portugal, had drifted from unknown lands
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in the west, but his last hope of obtaining aid for a voyage of
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discovery had failed. King John of Portugal, while pretending to think of helping
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him, had sent out secretly in expedition of his own. He had begged
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bread, drawn maps and charts to keep from starving. He had lost his
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wife. His friends had called him crazy and forsaken him. The Council of
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wise Men, called by Ferdinand and Isabella, ridiculed his theory of reaching the
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east by sailing west. But the Sun and moon are round, said Columbus.
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Why not the earth? If the earth is a bore, what holds
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it up? Asked the wise man. What holds the sun and moon up?
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Inquired Columbus. But how can men walk with their heads down and their
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feet up like flies on a ceiling? Asked a learned doctor. How can
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trees grow with their roots in the air. The water would run out of
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the ponds, and we should fall off, said another philosopher. This doctrine
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is contrary to the Bible, which says the heavens are stretched out like a
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tent. Of course, it is flat. It is rank heresy to say
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it is round, said a priest Columbus left the Alhambra in despair, intending
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to offer his services to Charles the seventh, but he heard a voice calling
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his name. An old friend had told Isabella that it would add great renown
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to her reign at a trifling expense. If what the sailor believed should prove
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true, it shall be done, said Isabella. I will pledge my jewels
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to raise the money. Call him back. Columbus turned, and with him
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turned the world. Not a sailor would go voluntarily, so the king and
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queen compelled them. Three days out in his vessels, scarcely larger than fishing
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schooners, the pinter floated a signal of distress for a broken rudder. Terror
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seized the sailors, but Columbus calmed their fears with pictures of gold and precious
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stones from India. Two hundred miles west of the Canaries, the compass ceased
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to point to the north Star. The sailors are ready to mutiny, but
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he tells them the north star is not exactly north, twenty three hundred miles
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from home, though he tells them it is but seventeen hundred. A bush
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with berries floats by land birds fly near, and they pick up a piece
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of wood curiously carved. On October twelfth, Columbus raised the banner of Castile
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over the western world. How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and
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all improvement appertaining to it, said Dickens. I will only add to what
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I have already ridden, of my perseverance at this time of my life,
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and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured. Cyrus
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w Field had retired from business with a large fortune when he became possessed with
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the idea that, by means of a cable laid upon the bottom of the
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Atlantic Ocean, telegraphic communication could be established between Europe and America. He plunged
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into the undertaking with all the force of his being. The preliminary work included
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the construction of a telegraph line one thousand miles long from New York to Saint
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John's, Newfoundland, through four hundred miles of almost unbroken forest. They had
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to build a road as well as a telegraph line across Newfoundland. Another stretch
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of one hundred and forty miles across the island of Cape Breton involved a great
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deal of labor, as did the laying of a cable across the Saint Lawrence.
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By hard work, he secured aid for his company from the British government,
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but in Congress he encountered such bitter opposition from a powerful lobby that his
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measure only had a majority of one in the Senate. The cable was loaded
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upon the Agamemnon, the flagship of the British fleet at Sebastopol, and upon
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the Niagara, a magnificent new frigate of the United States Navy. But when
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five miles of cable had been paid out, it caught in the machinery and
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parted. On a second trial, when two hundred miles at sea, the
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electric current was suddenly lost, and men paced the decks nervously and sadly,
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as if in the presence of death. Just as mister Field was about to
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give the order to cut the cable, the current returned as quickly and mysteriously
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as it had disappeared. The following night, when the ship was moving but
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four miles an hour, and the cable running out at the rate of six
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miles, the brakes were applied too suddenly, just as the steamer gave a
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heavy lurch breaking the cable. Field was not the man to give up.
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Seven hundred miles more of cable were ordered, and a man of great skill
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was set to work to devise a better machine for paying out the long line.
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American and British inventors united in making a machine. At length in mid
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ocean, the two halves of the cable were spliced, and the steamers began
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to separate, the one headed for Ireland, the other for Newfoundland, each
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running out the precious thread, which it was hoped would bind two continents together.
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Before the vessels were three miles apart, the cable parted again. It
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was spliced, but when the ships were eighty miles apart, the current was
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lost. A third time, the cable was spliced, and about two hundred
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miles paid out when it parted some twenty feet from the Agamemnon and the vessels
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returned to the coast of Ireland. Directors were disheartened, the public, skeptical
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capitalists were shy, and but for the indomitable energy and persuasiveness of mister Field,
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who worked day and night, almost without food or sleep, the whole
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project would have been abandoned. Finally, a third attempt was made with such
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success that the whole cable was laid without a break, and several messages were
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flashed through nearly seven hundred leagues of ocean, when suddenly the current ceased.
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Faith now seemed dead except in the breast of Cyrus W. Field and one
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or two friends. Yet with such persistence did they work that they persuaded me
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and to furnish capital for yet another trial, even against what seemed their better
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judgment. A new and superior cable was loaded upon the Great Eastern, which
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steamed slowly out to sea, paying out as she advanced. Everything worked to
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a charm until within six hundred miles of Newfoundland, when the cable snapped and
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sank. After several attempts to raise it, the enterprise was abandoned for a
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year. Not discouraged by all these difficulties, mister Field went to work with
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a will, organized a new company, and made a new cable far superior
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to anything before used, and on July thirteenth, eighteen sixty six, was
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begun the trial, which ended with the following message sent to New York Heart's
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content. July twenty seven. We arrived here at nine o'clock this morning.
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All well, thank God, the cable is laid and is in perfect working
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order. Cyrus w. Field the old cable was picked up, spliced and
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continued to Newfoundland, and the two are still working with good prospects for usefulness
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for many years. In Revelation we read he that overcometh, I will give
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him to sit down with me on my throne. Successful men, it is
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said, owe more to their perseverance than to their natural powers, their friends,
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all the favorable circumstances around them. Genius will falter by the side of
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labor. Great powers will yield to great industry. Talent is desirable, but
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perseverance is more so. How long did it take you to learn to play,
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asked a young man of Gerardini. Twelve hours a day for twenty years,
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replied the great violinist Lyman Beecher, when asked how long it took him
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to write his celebrated sermon on the Government of God, replied about forty years.
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A Chinese student, discouraged by repeated failures, had thrown away his book
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in despair when he saw a poor woman rubbing an iron bar on a stone
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to make a needle. This example of patience send him back to his studies.
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With a new determination, and he became one of the three greatest scholars
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of China. Marlabrand said, if I neglect my practice a day, I
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see the difference in my execution. If for two days my friends see it,
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and if for a week all the world knows my failure. Constant,
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persistent struggle she found to be the price of her marvelous power. When an
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East India boy is learning archery, he is compelled to practice three months drawing
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the string to his ear before he is allowed to touch an arrow. Benjamin
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Franklin had this tenacity of purpose in a wonderful degree. When he started in
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the printing business in Philadelphia. He carried his material through the streets on a
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wheelbarrow. He hired one room for his office, work room, and sleeping
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room. He found a formidable rival in the city and invited him to his
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room. Pointing to a piece of bread from which he had just eaten his
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dinner, he said, unless you can leave cheaper than I can, you
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cannot starve me out. All are familiar with the misfortune of Carlyle. While
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writing his history of the French Revolution. After the first volume was ready for
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the press, he loaned the manuscript to a neighbor who left it lying on
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the floor, and the servant girl took it to kindle the fire. It
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was a bitter disappointment, but Carlyle was not the man to give up.
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After many months of pouring over hundreds of volumes of authorities and scores of manuscripts,
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he reproduced that which had burned in a few minutes. Audubon, the
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naturalist, had spent two years with his gun and note book in the forests
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of America making drawings of birds. He nailed them all up securely in a
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box and went off on a vacation. When he returned, he opened the
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box only to find a nest of Norwegian rats in his beautiful drawings. Everyone
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was ruined. It was a terrible disappointment, but Audubon took his gun and
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note book and started for the forest. He reproduced his drawings, and they
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were even better than the first. When Dickens was asked to read one of
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his selections in public, he replied that he had not time, for he
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was in the habit of reading the same piece every day for six months before
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reading it in public. My own invention, he says, such as it
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is I assure you would never have served me as it has but for the
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habit of commonplace, humble, patient, toiling attention. Addison amassed three volumes
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of manuscript before he began The Spectator. Everyone admires of determined, persistent men.
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Marcus Morton ran sixteen times for governor of Massachusetts. At last his opponents
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voted for him from admiration of his pluck, and he was elected by a
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majority of one. Such persistence always triumphs. Webster declared that when a pupil
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at Philip's Exeter Academy, he never could declaim before the school, he said
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he committed peace after peace, and rehearsed them in his room. But when
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he heard his name called in the academy, and all eyes earned towards him,
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the room became dark, and everything he ever knew fled from his brain.
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But he became the great orator of America. Indeed, it is doubtful
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whether Demosthenes himself surpassed his great reply to Hayne. In the United States,
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Senate Webster's tenacity was illustrated by a circumstance which occurred in the academy. The
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principle punished him for shooting pigeons by compelling him to commit one hundred lines of
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Virgil. He knew the Principle was to take a certain train that afternoon,
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so he went to his room and learned seven hundred lines. He went to
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recite them to the Principle just before train time. After repeating the hundred lines,
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he continued until he had recited two hundred. The Principle anxiously looked at
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his watch and grew nervous, but Webster kept write on. The Principal finally
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stopped him and asked him how many more he had learned. About five hundred
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more, said Webster, continuing to recite. You can have the rest of
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the day for pigeon shooting, said the Principal. Great writers have ever been
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noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their works have not been flung off from
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minds aglow with genius, but have been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty,
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until every trace of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty
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years incessantly on his analogy, and even then was so dissatisfied that he wanted
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to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his style
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only by ceaseless in quietude, by endless blotchers and erasures. Virgil worked eleven
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years on the Aenid. The note books of great men like Hawthorne and Emerson
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are tell tales of the enormous drudgery of the years put into a book which
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may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was twenty five years writing his Esprit
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des Luis, yet you can read it in sixteen minutes. Adam Smith spent
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ten years on his Wealth of Nations. A rival playwright once laughed at Euripides
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for spending three days on three lines when he had written five hundred lines.
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But your five hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while
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my three lines will live forever, he replied. Ariosto wrote his description of
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a tempest in sixteen different ways. He spent ten years on his Orlando Furioso,
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and only sold one hundred copies at fifteen pence each. The proof of
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Burke's Letters to a Noble Lord, one of the sublimest things in all literature,
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went back to the publisher so changed and blotted with corrections that the printer
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absolutely refused to correct it, and it was entirely reset. Adam Tucker spent
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eighteen years on the light of nature. Thorough's New England pastoral A week on
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the Concord and Merrimack rivers was an entire failure. Seven hundred of the one
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thousand copies printed were returned from the publishers. Thorough wrote in his diary,
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I have some nine hundred volumes in my library, one hundred of which I
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wrote myself. Yet he took up his pen with as much determination as ever.
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The rolling stone gathers no moss. The persistent tortoise outruns the swift but
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fickle hair. An hour a day for twelve years more than equals the time
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given to study in a four years course at a high school. The reading
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and rereading of a single volume has been the making of many a man.
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Patience, says Bulwar, is the courage of the conqueror. It is the
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virtue, pyre, excellence of man against destiny, of the one against the
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world, and of the soul against matter. Therefore, this is the courage
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of the Gospel, and its importance in a social view, its importance to
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races and institutions, cannot be too earnestly inculcated want of constancy is the cause
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of many a failure, making the millionaire of to day a beggar tomorrow.
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Show me a really great triumph. That is not the reward of persistence.
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One of the paintings which made Titian famous was on his Easel eight years another
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seven How came popular writers famous by writing for years without any pay at all,
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by writing hundreds of pages as mere practice work, by working like Galley
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slaves at literature for half a lifetime with no other compensation than fame. Never
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despair, says birth, but if you do work on in despair. The
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head of the god Hercules is represented as covered with a lion's skin with claws
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joined under the chin, to show that when we have conquered our misfortunes,
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they become our helpers. Oh, the glory of an unconquerable will. End
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of chapter twenty three. The Reward of Persistence recording by Luke Sartor, Brisbane, Queensland,