CHAPTER III. THE WILL AND THE WAY.
CHAPTER IV. SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
CHAPTER VI. ONE UNWAVERING AIM.
CHAPTER VII. SOWING AND REAPING.
CHAPTER XI. THE GRANDEST THING IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER XII. WEALTH IN ECONOMY.
CHAPTER XIII. RICH WITHOUT MONEY.
CHAPTER XIV. OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU ARE.
CHAPTER XV. THE MIGHT OF LITTLE THINGS.
LIST OF PORTRAITS.
| CHAP. | ||
| I. | Phillips Brooks | |
| II. | Oliver Hazard Perry | |
| III. | Walter Scott | |
| IV. | William Hickling Prescott | |
| V. | John Bunyan | |
| VI. | Richard Arkwright | |
| VII. | Victor Hugo | |
| VIII. | James A. Garfield (missing from book) | |
| IX. | Thomas Alva Edison | |
| X. | Andrew Jackson | |
| XI. | John Greenleaf Whittier (missing from book) | |
| XII. | Alexander Hamilton | |
| XIII. | Ralph Waldo Emerson | |
| XIV. | Thomas Jefferson | |
| XV. | Louis Agassiz | |
| XVI. | James Russell Lowell |
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 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