PREFACE.

THE demand for more than a dozen editions of "Pushing to the Front" during its first year and its universally favorable reception, both at home and abroad, have encouraged the author to publish this companion volume of somewhat similar scope and purpose. The two books were prepared simultaneously; and the story of the first, given in its preface, applies equally well to this.

Inspiration to character-building and worthy achievement is the keynote of the present volume; its object, to arouse to honorable exertion youth who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions in those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success, to encourage and stimulate to higher resolve those who are setting out to make their own way, with perhaps neither friendship nor capital other than a determination to get on in the world.

Nothing is so fascinating to a youth with high purpose, life, and energy throbbing in his young blood as stories of men and women who have brought great things to pass. Though these themes are as old as the human race, yet they are ever new, and more interesting to the young than any fiction. The cry of youth is for life! more life! No didactic or dogmatic teaching, however brilliant, will capture a twentieth-century boy, keyed up to the highest pitch by the pressure of an intense civilization. The romance of achievement under difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant ends; the story of how great men started, their struggles, their long waitings, amid want and woe, the obstacles overcome, the final triumphs; examples, which explode excuses, of men who have seized common situations and made them great; of those of average capacity who have succeeded by the use of ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose: these will most

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inspire the ambitious youth. The author teaches that there are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who has the grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf; that the barriers are not yet erected which declare to aspiring talent, "Thus far and no farther"; that the most forbidding circumstances cannot repress a longing for knowledge, a yearning for growth; that poverty, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been able to bar the progress of men with grit; that poverty has rocked the cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbarism, and have led the world up from savagery to the Gladstones, the Lincolns, and the Grants.

The book shows that it is the man with one unwavering aim who cuts his way through opposition and forges to the front; that in this electric age, where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumblingblocks and defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and victories to the strong and determined. The author teaches that every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage, and that true success follows every right step. He has tried to touch the higher springs of the youth's aspiration; to lead him to high ideals; to teach him that there is something nobler in an occupation than merely living-getting or money-getting; that a man may make millions and be a failure still; to caution youth not to allow the maxims of a low prudence, dinned daily into his ears in this money-getting age, to repress the longings for a higher life; that the hand can never safely reach higher than does the heart.

The author's aim has been largely through concrete illustrations which have pith, point, and purpose, to be more suggestive than dogmatic, in a style more practical than elegant, more helpful than ornate, more pertinent than novel.

The author wishes to acknowledge valuable assistance from Mr. Arthur W. Brown, of W. Kingston, R. I.

43 BOWDOIN ST., BOSTON, MASS.
December 2, 1895.

O. S. M.

God is after a man. Wealth is nothing, fame is nothing. Man-
hood is everything.

II. DARE

10

Dare to live thy creed. Conquer your place in the world. All
things serve a brave soul.

III. THE WILL AND THE WAY.

38

Find a way or make one. Everything is either pusher or
pushed. The world always listens to a man with a will in him.
IV. SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES

60

There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight
its way to recognition through detraction, calumny, and persecu-
tion.

V. USES OF OBSTACLES

86

The Great Sculptor cares little for the human block as such;
it is the statue He is after; and He will blast, hammer, and chisel
with poverty, hardships, anything to get out the man.

Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Try to be
somebody with all your might.

VII. SOWING AND REAPING

125

What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life.
Start right.

VIII. SELF-HELP

145

Self-made or never made. The greatest men have risen from
the ranks.

IX. WORK AND WAIT.

167

Don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation.

X. CLEAR GRIT.

186

The goddess of fame or of fortune has been won by many a
poor boy who had no friends, no backing, or anything but pure
grit and invincible purpose to commend him.

XI. THE GRANDEST THING IN THE WORLD

202

Manhood is above all riches and overtops all titles; character
is greater than any career.

XII. WEALTH IN ECONOMY

227

"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust
reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than all.”

To have nothing is not poverty. Whoever uplifts civilization is
rich though he die penniless, and future generations will erect
his monument.

XIV. OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU ARE.

"How speaks the present hour? Act." Don't wait for great
opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great.
XV. THE MIGHT OF LITTLE THINGS.

There is nothing small in a world where a mud-crack swells to
an Amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold.
XVI. SELF-MASTERY

Guard your weak point. Be lord over yourself.

XVII. NATURE'S LITTLE BILL

239

256

.

268

288

306

Many a man pays for his success with a slice of his constitution.
Most of us carry our creeds in our bile-ducts. If they are healthy,
we are optimists; if diseased, pessimists.

XVIII. VOCATIONS GOOD AND BAD

327

Half the world is out of place and tortured with the conscious-
ness of unfulfilled destiny. Civilization will mark its highest tide
when every man finds his place and fills it.

The man with an idea has ever changed the face of the world.

XX. DECISION

358

To dally with your purpose, to half will, to hang forever in the
balance, is to lose your grip on life.

XXI. POWER OF THE MIND OVER THE BODY.

370

The mind has power to keep the body strong and healthy, to
renew life, and to preserve it from decay to a far greater extent
than we are apt to think.

XXII. THE CHARITIES

390

When everybody else denounces and curses a man, Charity
says, "Wait: there is a god in that man somewhere."

XXIII. THE CURSE OF IDLENESS

410

A lazy man is of no more use than a dead man, and he takes
up more room.

XXIV. OUR SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS

421

Poverty and hardship have ever been the great schoolmasters
of the race, and have forced into prominence many a man who
would otherwise have remained unknown.

XXV. BOOKS

430

Perhaps no other things have such power to lift the poor out of
poverty, the wretched out of misery, to make the burden-bearer
forget his burden, the sick his suffering, as books.

XXVI. EVERY MAN HIS OWN PARADISE.

Paradise is not lost except to those who have blinded their eyes
to its beauties, stopped their ears to its harmonies, and blunted
their sensibilities to its sweet experiences.

448