Success Through Perseverance

"My sons," said a dying farmer to his three indolent boys, "a great treasure lies hid in the estate which I am about to leave to you." "Where is it hid?" asked the eager sons in chorus. "I am about to tell you," gasped the sick man; "you will have to dig for it" - but here his spirit departed. The sons turned over every sod upon the estate, without finding any buried gold; but they learned to work, and when the fields were sown, an enormous harvest repaid their thorough digging.

The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first, will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend - who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather vane to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all.

Who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit - that man can advance to eminence in any line. We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, enclosed in adamant the Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of states and nations.

Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted cars, and set them flying from town to town and nation to nation, tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the lightning's speed. Perseverance has whitened the waters of the world with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored every land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured her undiscovered spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities. Lofty mountains are wearing down by slow degrees. The ocean is gradually but slowly filling up, by deposits from its thousand rivers. The Niagara Falls have worn back seven miles through the hard limestone, over which they pour their thundering columns of water, and will by and by drain the great lake which feeds the boiling chasm. The sea and whole regions of the Pacific Ocean are gradually filling up by the labors of a little insect, so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye.

The slow penny is surer than the quick dollar. The slow trotter will out-travel the fleet racer. Genius darts, flutters, and tires; but perseverance wears and wins. The all-day horse wins the race. The afternoon-man wears off the laurels. The last blow drives home the nail.

"Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions?" asked a reporter of Thomas A. Edison. "Do they come to you while you are lying awake nights?" "I never did anything worth doing by accident," was the reply, "nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead on it and make trial after trial until it comes. I have always kept strictly within the lines of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable simply as novelties to catch the popular fancy." continued the great inventor. "I don't know any other reason. You know some people like to collect stamps. Anything I have begun is always on my mind, and I am not easy while away from it until it is finished."

A man who thus gives himself wholly to his work is certain to accomplish something; and if he have ability and common sense, his success will be great.