Patience and Steadfastness

The Education Corner

A famous judge in England was asked why the successful succeed, and he answered... some succeed because they possess great talents.. some thanks to friends.. but the great majority succeeded because they began without a piaster, and because they toiled and strove.

Hundreds of the successful in life tell us of years filled with struggle.. Columbus was the son of a cloth weaver, and we all know the difficulties he met, and before that how he was turned away from every king's door on the plea that he was a crack-brained adventurer. Shakespeare guarded the gentlemen's horses at the outer door of the theater, winter and summer; and Isaac Newton, the discoverer of gravity.. and Vanderbilt, one of the money kings of America, and Bernard Shaw, England's mocking philosopher, and dozens like them — their names did not shine until after fifty; think, then, how they must have struggled before fifty.

Hundreds of the successful in life were forced, in the dawn of their youth, to earn their bread and their parents' bread.. Need compelled them to work more than was required of them.. The owner of a famous bank in England said: For long years I worked by night at one employee's job and by day at another's.. and for years I would reach my place of work at sunrise and would not leave it until 15 to 18 hours had passed.

The successful in life were hard on themselves, denying themselves food, sleep, rest, and holidays. We all remember Madame Curie, her hunger and her cold in the bare room, and how she would lay her clothes over her blanket for warmth, and on top of it all the chair, so the clothes would not slide off.. We all remember how her only pair of shoes fell to pieces, and she saved from her meals to buy another.

The successful in life kept long vigils. We all remember Abraham Lincoln laying piaster upon piaster to buy a book on the lives of famous men, reading it stretched on his stomach before the lamp in the lodging of poverty. We all remember Edison, the father of electricity: a friend passed by his office at midnight and saw the light shining through the windows, and said, I will go up and see what this man who never rests is doing.. He went up and knocked at the door, and Edison came out tousle-haired and dreaming. The friend cried: It is midnight — what are you still doing? And Edison struck his forehead and said: Oh, you have reminded me — they are waiting for me at home, for it is my wedding night.

The elements of success, then, are a lamp and late vigils.. night joined to day... hard work in the full meaning of the word.. and with all the pleasure the word holds.. For striving is a delight, and overcoming difficulties is a victory.. and how sweet victory is.