CHAPTER XXX

SMALL BEGINNINGS

"It is the law of all organized beings that efficiency presupposes apprenticeship."-HERBERT SPENCER.

It is related of Washington Allston, that many years after he took rank among the masters of his art, a painting by a young man was brought to him for examination. "What is your opinion of it? Speak freely, I pray you," said the person presenting the picture. Allston declined to grant the request; but, being strongly pressed, he at last replied, after having placed the picture in a variety of positions, "Why, it is a queer thing, a very queer thing." "But does it indicate talent?" "Well, then, to deal plainly with you, it is a wretched affair. There is no ground for hope, - not even for hope. Let him give up the idea. He can never make a painter." "It was painted by yourself." "No-impossible!" "It was! Look,there is your name; and here - see! is the date; only seven years ago, you perceive!

This example of the humble beginning of a career in which high success was subsequently achieved, is one of thousands which might be cited that are full of encouragement to persons who are just starting in life. The beginner in a professional or business career often distresses himself with the thought that he has no genius or high talent, and therefore, with his utmost

efforts, will never soar above mediocrity. Let him dismiss all such thoughts, and remember that no man knows or can know what is in him, or what time, destiny, or circumstances may bring out of him, till he has tested himself by actual trial. Hardly any eminent man, even of phenomenal genius, contemplated at the outset of his career the elevation to which he rose at last. Cromwell followed little events before he ventured to control great ones; and Napoleon never sighed for the sceptre until he had gained the truncheon, nor dreamed of the imperial diadem until he had first conquered a crown. The biographies of nearly all the most successful men in every calling show that their careers, however brilliant at last, had humble and in many cases insignificant beginnings.

It is said that when Chantry, the celebrated English sculptor, was a schoolboy, a boy sitting near him saw him one day cutting a piece of pine, and asked him what was he doing. "I am cutting out old Fox's head," was the reply. Fox was his schoolmaster, and this was the humble beginning of his life-work. Look at the "Wizard of the North;" could anything have been humbler than the beginning of Scott's career as a romancer, or did he for a moment dream of the worldwide celebrity which he won? Writing a few chapters of a tale, in humble imitation of Miss Edgeworth, he throws it into an old cabinet drawer, forgets it utterly, lights upon it accidentally years afterward, when rummaging for fishing tackle, - completes and publishes it. It ("Waverley ") proves a hit; 6,000 copies are sold in seven months; he rubs his eyes and discovers that he has talent of which he was hardly conscious; throws off "Guy Mannering" in six weeks, and follows it up with a long succession of romances,

all written in the afternoon of his life, which utterly eclipse the achievements of its morning. Ruskin, when a mere stripling, chances to write a letter to a Review, to prove that an old artist, whom people were laughing at, could really draw trees and clouds; the letter is expanded into a volume (“Modern Painters "); the volume, into five volumes; and the author's reputation is established not only as the most brilliant and masterly art-critic in England, but as a powerful and suggestive writer upon ethics, philosophy, and religion. Charles Dickens engages in his youth to write, at ten guineas a sheet, a burlesque accompaniment to a series of comic woodcuts, illustrating the hackneyed theme of Cockney sports. He is so miserably poor that a couple of numbers are paid for in advance, to enable him to get married. The Nimrod Club of the caricaturist becomes the Pickwick Club; and the Cockney sportsmen, whose spider legs, swallow-tail coats, and absurd mistakes in sportsmanship are expected by artist and publishers to be laughed at for a few weeks and then forgotten, develop into the characters of one of the world's imperishable works of humor and imagination.

Few persons are aware that Rogers's first volume of poems was a small quarto of twenty-six pages, in which there were rivulets of text running through meadows of margin. Could anything have been much less promising than Cooper's first novel? He was reading an English society novel aloud to his wife when he suddenly laid down the book and said, "I believe I could write a better story myself." Challenged to make good his boast, he sat down at his table and wrote out a few pages of a tale which his wife encouraged him to complete. The tale was "Precaution," the plot and execution of which contained little suggestion of

the brilliant romances that followed it. How did Henry Clay acquire his bewitching eloquence? He began by declaiming, day after day for years, in barns, cornfields, and the forest, passages from histories. Sir Robert Peel began delivering speeches and repeating sermons to his father when but ten years old. Nearly all the most celebrated clergymen have begun their ministries in a humble way. Spurgeon began his great work in London by preaching to a very small number of persons. Dr. Guthrie "waited by the pool five long, weary years" after preaching his first sermon, before he got a call as a pastor. Dr. Payson made a very feeble beginning as preacher. Greatly depressed, he "felt thankful it was rainy," and that there were very few people at the meeting. When Arthur Stanley delivered his first discourse at Bergapton his bodily presence, it is said, was weak, his delivery shocking, and the spiritual refreshment in his discourses most meagre. Robert Hall broke down in his first attempt at preaching, and covered his face with his hands, sobbing, "I have lost all my ideas!" Lacordaire, who preached to crowded and admiring congregations at the Notre Dame, Paris, won his celebrity only after repeated failures; and Boileau, the famous French poet, failed in the pulpit after breaking down amid roars of laughter.

So in the legal, mercantile, political, and other professions. A poor clerk at Hamburg in Germany takes his meals at an obscure tavern, and carries home all the waste corks he meets with. After seven or eight years, he sells them for a hundred crowns, and this sum is the basis of the future fortune of M. Ostervald, the rich Paris banker. A beggar boy, Edmund Saunders by name, hangs about the attorneys' offices at Clem

ent's Inn, London; is taught to write by a clerk, who has a mock desk made for him at the top of a staircase, becomes a swift copyist and "an exquisite entering clerk;" is called to the bar, becomes an eminent practitioner, and is finally appointed chief justice of England. A poor dealer in spectacles and magic lanterns at Glasgow, Scotland, finding business dull, spends his leisure moments in taking asunder and remaking all the machines he can come at. A machine in the university collection needs repairing, and he is employed. He makes a new machine, and the steam-engine, the herald of a new force in civilization and of England's industrial supremacy, proclaims the genius of Watt.

An English boy on his way to school picks up a horseshoe, carries it three miles and sells it to a blacksmith for a penny. He scrapes up one day some wasted treacle, and selling it for three halfpence, counts himself rich; and this is the small beginning of Samuel Budgell's career as one of England's most active and successful traders. A lady offers to a miserably poor boy of eight years in Rochester, N. H., a Testament if he will read it through. Anxious to have a book of his own, he reads it through in eight days, and passes a creditable examination in its contents. At ten he becomes a farmer's apprentice; toils from daylight to dark till he is twenty-one; meanwhile reads, chiefly by firelight, and under other disadvantages, more than a thousand borrowed volumes of history, biography, and philosophy; becomes a shoemaker, then a teacher, and after years of almost incredible hardship and toil, is elected representative in the legislature of Massachusetts. He is next sent to the senate, of which he is twice elected president; in a few years is elected a senator