Stories of Achievement, Volume III | Page 5

lost sight of fear, of caution, of every prior attachment, and, through the force of his eloquence, fell with enthusiastic transports into the path of honour.
So powerful, indeed, were the efforts of the orator that Philip immediately sent ambassadors to Athens to apply for peace. Greece recovered her spirits, whilst she stood waiting for the event; and not only the Athenian generals, but the governors of Boeotia, were ready to execute the commands of Demosthenes. All the assemblies, as well those of Thebes as those of Athens, were under his direction: he was equally beloved, equally powerful, in both places; and, as Theopompus shows, it was no more than his merit claimed. But the superior power of fortune, which seems to have been working at revolution, and drawing the liberties of Greece to a period at that time, opposed and baffled all the measures that could be taken. The deity discovered many tokens of the approaching event.

ELIHU BURRITT
(1810-1879)
"THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH"
This man's career is the star example of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. For years, while earning his living at the forge, he denied himself all natural pleasures that he might devote every possible minute to cramming his head with seemingly useless scraps of knowledge.
The acquisition of knowledge merely for its own sake is of course foolishness, but it is a very rare kind of foolishness. Nearly always the learned man pays his debt to society in full measure, if we but give him time enough. So it was with "The Learned Blacksmith." From his deep learning, Elihu Burritt at last drew the inspiration which made him a powerful advocate in the cause of the world's peace.
From "Captains of Industry," by James Parton. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1884.
Elihu Burritt, with whom we have all been familiar for many years as the Learned Blacksmith, was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford. He was the youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children. His father owned and cultivated a small farm, but spent the winters at the shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in that day. When Elihu was sixteen years of age his father died, and the lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native village.
He was an ardent reader of books from childhood up, and he was enabled to gratify this taste by means of a very small village library, which contained several books of history, of which he was naturally fond. This boy, however, was a shy, devoted student, brave to maintain what he thought right, but so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar when his parents were going to have company.
As his father's long sickness had kept him out of school for some time, he was the more earnest to learn during his apprenticeship--particularly mathematics, since he desired to become, among other things, a good surveyor. He was obliged to work from ten to twelve hours a day at the forge, but while he was blowing the bellows he employed his mind in doing sums in his head. His biographer gives a specimen of these calculations which he wrought out without making a single figure:
"How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, cut into strips an inch wide, and allowing half an inch at each end for the lap, would it require to reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, and how much would it all cost at a shilling a yard?"
He would go home at night with several of these sums done in his head, and report the results to an elder brother, who had worked his way through Williams College. His brother would perform the calculations upon a slate, and usually found his answers correct.
When he was about half through his apprenticeship he suddenly took it into his head to learn Latin, and began at once through the assistance of the same elder brother. In the evenings of one winter he read the Aeneid of Virgil; and, after going on for a while with Cicero and a few other Latin authors, he began Greek. During the winter months he was obliged to spend every hour of daylight at the forge, and even in the summer his leisure minutes were few and far between. But he carried his Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being noticed by his fellow-apprentices.
So he worked his way until he was out of his time, when he treated himself to a whole quarter's schooling at his brother's school,