How to Succeed

try to-day, using that term in its broadest sens

us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is th

commo

s is young am

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home in Dudley, Mass., and strike out for myself. So one morning in May, 1845, the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and, dressed in our Sunday c

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Office, a well disposed boy, able t

ree o'clock on Wednesday morning before I could go to bed, tired and lame from the heavy rolling. In addition, I also had the laborious task of carrying a quantity of water from the pump behind the block around to the entrance in front, and then up two flights of stairs, usually a daily job. I was at first everybody's servant. I was abused, called all sorts of nicknames, had to sweep out the office, build fires in winter, run errands, post bills, carry papers, wait on the editor, in fact I led the life of a genuine printer's devil; but when I showed them at length that I had learned to set type and run the press, I got promoted, and

nses in seven months, and was to receive one hundred and thirty-five from Judge J. M. Sterrett of the Erie Gazette for substitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest to his father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania, and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep from wolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, al

Fix up a case for him and we'll see if he can do anything." When the proprietor came in, he objected to the newcomer and told the foreman to let him go when his first day's work was done. That night Horace showed a proof of the largest and most correct day's work that had then been done. In ten years Horace was a partner in a small printing-office. He founded the New Yorker, the best weekly paper in the United States, but it was not profitable. When Harrison was nominated for President in 1840, Greeley started The Log Cabin, which reac

become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed like small business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but he did it well and with enthusiasm. In fact he was bound to do it as well as it could be done. Young Goul

eacher, and the rules of the plantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. But somehow, unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps of paper and patent medicine almanacs, and no limits could then be placed to his career. He put to shame thousands of white boys. He fled from slavery at twenty-one, went North and worked as a stevedore in New York and New Bedford. At Nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak in an anti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he was made agent o

seph, who became prime minister of Egypt four thousand years before, and that of Daniel, who was prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuries before the birth of Christ. He pushed his way up through the lower classes, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stood a maste

forego some portion of my food, though in a state of half starvation. I had no moment of time that I could call my own, and I had to read and write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the farthing I had to give, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. I was as tall as I am now, and I had great health and great exerc

ome this task," he added, "is there, can there be in the w

w-clerk and friend, Greene, according to McClure's Mag

his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walked seven or eight

dy subjects. Grammar was what he chose. He sought Me

he public," Mr. Graham tol

was but one in the neighborhood, Mr. G

ham's Grammar, and before night was deep in its mysteries. From that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his leisure to mastering the conten

schoolmaster kept him in mind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper let him come into his shop an

erk, Greene, "if that's what they cal

discovery-that he co

r lodging and breakfast. Half a century later he called there again, but then George Peabody was one of the greatest millionaire bankers of the world

n the near side, said: "Ah! that boy will never get along in

t Horace persevered, and became one o

sic. He was very practical in his work, and studied the taste and sensitiveness of audiences until he knew exactly what they wanted; then he would compose something to supply the demand. He analyzed the effect of sounds and combinations of sounds upon the senses, and wrote directly to human needs. His greatest w

rinciples were his invariable rules. Absolute regularity and system reigned in every department. In fifty years he made a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars. He was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury in 1869, but it was fou

cience wasting precious time over horoscopes. "I supplicate you," he writes to Moestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at Tübingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the pr

of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inches square (the Mother of Jesus), would be sold to the Empress of Russia, for $66,000? His Ansedei Madon

er without bending his head down near the street. He read and studied terribly. Finally a friend offered to send him to Oxford, but he failed to keep his promise, and th

manufacture it in enormous quantities. At that time there was no good wire made in the United States. One house in England had the monopoly of making steel wire for pianos for more than a century. Young Washburn, however, had grit, and was bound to succeed. His wire became the standar

al attention to every purchase and sale, roaming the woods to trade with the Indians, or crossing the Atlantic to sell his furs at a great profit in England, he soon became the leading fur dealer in the United States. His idea of what constitutes a fortune expanded faster than his acquisitions. At fifty he owned millions; at sixty his millions owned him. He invested in land,

nes Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10 lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of stars, 10 hours' forging. Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines Syriac, 11 hours' forging." He mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. He became eminent as the "Le

rd work, a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum of one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was born till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel weary miles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * In the firs

lways lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazing bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passed many a delightful night in reading. I remember in this way to have read a history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained fro

a little clothing in a hand cart in the streets of Philadelphia. But this youth had the indomitable spirit of a conqueror in him, and you could not keep him down. General Grant said to Geor

ee tuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employés; a provident fund affording a small capital for males and a marriage portion for females at the expiration of ten or fifteen years of service; a free reading room for the public; and a free art gallery for artists to exhibit their paintings or sculptures. After his sudden death in 1877, his only son carried forward his father's projects until he, too, died in 1879, when his widow, Marguerite Guerin, continued and extended his business and beneficent plans until her death in 1887. So well did this family lay the foundations of a building cover

for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher, newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer's devil, he started the New York

sense applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life. We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from Presid

escartes were soldiers. Ben Johnson was a brick layer and worked at building Lincoln Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket. Jeremy Taylor was a barber. Andrew Johnson was a tailor

Horace of a shopkeeper, Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a money sc

stoker on a Mississippi steamboat. When a young man, Cyrus Field was a clerk in a New England store. George W. Childs was an errand boy for a bookseller at $4 a month. Andrew Carnegie began work in a Pittsburg telegraph offic

ife as a child's nurse. Miss Braddon, the novelist, was a utility actre

d Leland that he could have all he could make from the timber if he would leave the land clear of trees. A new market had just then been created for cord wood, and Leland took some money that he had saved, hired other choppers

hopeless puzzle, and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But the printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the third time the "Cocker's Arithmetic," which had baffled him at school, and ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure. He then mastered a work upon navigation, which included the rudimen

im to any but a common country school, where he was drilled only in the "three R's." But he used e

o has triumphed over obstacles,

in baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power glows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler's benc