How to Succeed | Page 3

apparent in this age of specialties than the dwarfing,
crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions.

Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the
professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the age
tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business man
to a mere money-making career.
Think of a man, the grandest of God's creations, spending his life-time
standing beside a machine for making screws. There is nothing to call
out his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, judging,
deciding.
He stands there year after year, until he seems but a piece of
mechanism. His powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, to
inferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the machine he
tends.
Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man
who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No,"
though all the world say "Yes."
Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will
not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his
manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to
stunt or paralyze his other faculties.
Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low
estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a
living. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and
culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation.
As Nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewarding
their observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes their
violation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induce
us to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implanted
within us. She nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all great
blessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding up
before us glittering prizes, which we may almost touch, but never quite
possess. She covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of character
building through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over

the future; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and she
fail in her great purpose. How else could Nature call the youth away
from all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting to
his imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunt
his dreams until he resolves to make them real. As a mother teaches her
babe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child may
reach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength,
compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so Nature goes before
us through life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with
one object in view--the development of the man.
In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which
stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure on
the canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its real
significance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds its true
expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object of
creation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to the
central figure of the created universe--Man. Nature writes this thought
upon every leaf; she thunders it in every creation; it exhales from every
flower; it twinkles in every star.
Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide, And let in manhood--let in
happiness; Admit the boundless theatre of thought From nothing up to
God ... which makes a man! --YOUNG.
CHAPTER II.
SEIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY.
"The blowing winds are but our servants When we hoist a sail."
You must come to know that each admirable genius is but a successful
diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. --EMERSON.
Who waits until the wind shall silent keep, Who never finds the ready
hour to sow, Who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap.
--HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity
when it comes. --DISRAELI.
Do the best you can where you are; and, when that is accomplished,
God will open a door for you, and a voice will call, "Come up hither
into a higher sphere." --BEECHER.
Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do
what lies clearly at hand. --CARLYLE.
"When I was a boy," said General Grant, "my mother one morning
found herself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some
from a neighbor. Going into the house without knocking, I overheard a
letter read from the son