Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden

an education as Lincoln. He immediately started for the residence of the fortunate people who owned a copy of Kirkham's Grammar. The book was loaned to him without hesitation. In a short time its contents were mastered, the student studying at night by the light of shavings burned in the village cooper's shop. "Well," said Lincoln to Greene, his fellow-clerk, when he had turned over the last page of the grammar, "if that's what they call a science, I think I'll go at another." The conquering of one thing after another, the thorough mastery of whatever he undertook to do, made the next thing easier of accomplishment than it would otherwise have been. In order to practice debating he used to walk seven or eight miles to debating clubs. No labor or trouble seemed too great to him if by it he could increase his knowledge or add to his acquirements. No matter how hard or exhausting his work, whether it was rail splitting, plowing, lumbering, boating, or store keeping, he studied and read every spare minute, and often until late at night.

      But this sketch has already exceeded the limits of Lincoln's boyhood, for he had reached his twenty-second year while in the store in New Salem. How he was made captain of a company raised to fight against the Indians, how he kept store for himself, learned surveying, was elected a member of the Illinois legislature, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Springfield, and how he finally became president of the United States,—all this belongs to a later chapter of his life.

      Lincoln's rise from the poorest of log cabins to the White House, to be president of the greatest republic in the world, is one of the most inspiring stories in American biography. Yet he was not a genius, unless a determination to make the most of one's self and to persist in spite of all hardships, discouragements, and hindrances, be genius. He made himself what he was—one of the noblest, greatest, and best of men—by sheer dint of hard work and the cultivation of the talents that had been given him. No fortunate chances, no influential friends, no rare opportunities played a part in his life. Alone and unaided he made, by the grace of God, the great career which will forever challenge the admiration of mankind.

      The Marble Waiteth

       Table of Contents

      THE STATUE

      The marble waits, immaculate and rude;

       Beside it stands the sculptor, lost in dreams.

       With vague, chaotic forms his vision teems.

       Fair shapes pursue him, only to elude

       And mock his eager fancy. Lines of grace

       And heavenly beauty vanish, and, behold!

       Out through the Parian luster, pure and cold,

       Glares the wild horror of a devil's face.

      The clay is ready for the modeling.

       The marble waits: how beautiful, how pure,

       That gleaming substance, and it shall endure,

       When dynasty and empire, throne and king

       Have crumbled back to dust. Well may you pause,

       Oh, sculptor-artist! and, before that mute,

       Unshapen surface, stand irresolute!

       Awful, indeed, are art's unchanging laws.

      The thing you fashion out of senseless clay,

       Transformed to marble, shall outlive your fame;

       And, when no more is known your race, or name,

       Men shall be moved by what you mold to-day.

       We all are sculptors. By each act and thought,

       We form the model. Time, the artisan,

       Stands, with his chisel, fashioning the Man,

       And stroke by stroke the masterpiece is wrought.

      Angel or demon? Choose, and do not err!

       For time but follows as you shape the mold,

       And finishes in marble, stern and cold,

       That statue of the soul, the character.

       By wordless blessing, or by silent curse,

       By act and motive,—so do you define

       The image which time copies, line by line,

       For the great gallery of the Universe.

      ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

      At the gateway of a new year, emerging from the gay carelessness of childhood, stand troops of buoyant, eager-eyed youths and maidens, gazing down the vista of the future with glad expectancy.

      Fancy spreads upon her canvas radiant pictures of the joys and triumphs which await them in the unborn years. In their unclouded springtime there is no place for the specters of doubt and fear which too often overshadow the autumn of life.

      In this formative period, the soul is unsoiled by warfare with the world. It lies, like a block of pure, uncut Parian marble, ready to be fashioned into—what?

      Its possibilities are limitless. You are the sculptor. An unseen hand places in yours the mallet and the chisel, and a voice whispers: "The marble waiteth. What will you do with it?"

      In this same block the angel and the demon lie sleeping. Which will you call into life? Blows of some sort you must strike. The marble cannot be left uncut. From its crudity some shape must be evolved. Shall it be one of beauty, or of deformity; an angel, or a devil? Will you shape it into a statue of beauty which will enchant the world, or will you call out a hideous image which will demoralize every beholder?

      What are your ideals, as you stand facing the dawn of this new year with the promise and responsibility of the new life on which you have entered, awaiting you? Upon them depends the form which the rough block shall take. Every stroke of the chisel is guided by the ideal behind the blow.

      Look at this easy-going, pleasure-loving youth who takes up the mallet and smites the chisel with careless, thoughtless blows. His mind is filled with images of low, sensual pleasures; the passing enjoyment of the hour is everything to him; his work, the future, nothing. He carries in his heart, perhaps, the bestial motto of the glutton, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die;" or the flippant maxim of the gay worldling, "A short life and a merry one; the foam of the chalice for me;" forgetting that beneath the foam are the bitter dregs, which, be he ever so unwilling, he must swallow, not to-day, nor yet to-morrow,—perhaps not this year nor next; but sometime, as surely as the reaping follows the sowing, will the bitter draught follow the foaming glass of unlawful pleasure.

      As the years go by, and youth merges into manhood, the sculptor's hand becomes more unsteady. One false blow follows another in rapid succession. The formless marble takes on distorted outlines. Its whiteness has long since become spotted. The sculptor, with blurred vision and shattered nerves, still strikes with aimless hand, carving deep gashes, adding a crooked line here, another there, soiling and marring until no trace of the virgin purity of the block of marble which was given him remains. It has become so grimy, so demoniacally fantastic in its outlines, that the beholder turns from it with a shudder.

      Not far off we see another youth at work on a block of marble, similar in every detail to the first. The tools with which he plies his labor differ in no wise from those of the worker we have been following.

      The glory of the morning shines upon the marble. Glowing with enthusiasm, the light of a high purpose illuminating his face, the sculptor, with steady hand and eye, begins to work out his ideal. The vision that flits before him is so beautiful that he almost fears the cunning of his hand will be unequal to fashioning it from the rigid mass before him. Patiently he measures each blow of the mallet. With infinite care he chisels each line and curve. Every stroke is true.

      Months stretch into years, and still we find the sculptor at work. Time has given greater precision to his touch, and the skill of the youth, strengthened by noble aspirations and right effort, has become positive genius in the man. If he has not attained the ideal that haunted him, he has created a form so beautiful in its