When Adam's crook-stick turned over the
brown earth to make it fertile, he began the industry of the world. The
whole horizon of man's endeavor is spanned by one word, Work. It has
built cities, bridged rivers, united continents, and sent the myriad
spindles of trade whirring under a thousand changing skies.
Work is the open-sesame of success. It is curious to see how uneasily
some men will roam from one end of the earth to the other, trying to
find an easy place, a place where work will not be needed or required.
There is no such place. The higher the honor, the harder the work. The
power to work is ordinarily the measure of a man's possibilities of
success. Long hours, hard toil, lack of recognition and appreciation,
drudgery, a thousand attempts to one successful issue,--these are the
ways in which the colossal achievements of mankind have been built up.
Work, as has well been said, is an ascending stairway. On its broad base
are ranged all the multitudes of the earth. Those who can climb mount
the higher and ever-narrowing stair.
The great man can begin anywhere, or with any task. He says, If I am
going into the giant-business, I may as well begin now! Born and bred in
the forest, he lays hand to his axe, and looking up at some tall oak,
cries out, I will begin here! With the first stroke of the axe, success
is not less sure than in his last endeavor.
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