CHAPTER III.

AN IRON WILL.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination. - NAPOLEON I. He wants wit, that wants resolved will. - SHAKESPEARE.

When a firm decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom. -JOHN FOSTER.

A strong, defiant purpose is many-handed, and lays hold of whatever is near that can serve it; it has a magnetic power that draws to itself whatever is kindred. - T. T. MUNGER. People do not lack strength ; they lack will. - VICTOR HUGO.

He who has resolved to conquer or die is seldom conquered ; such noble despair perishes with difficulty.-CORNEILLE.

Every man stamps his own value upon himself, and we are great or little according to our own will. - SAMUEL SMILES.

The saddest failures in life are those that come from not putting forth of the power and will to succeed. - WHIPPLE. As men in a crowd instinctively make room for one who would force his way through it, so mankind makes way for one who rushes toward an object beyond them. - DWIGHT.

In idle wishes fools supinely stay ;

Be there a will, and wisdom finds a way.

CRABBE.

"I CAN'T! it is impossible!" said a lieutenant to Alexander, after failing to take a rock-crested fortress. "Begone!" thundered the great Macedonian; "there is nothing impossible to him who will try; " and at the head of a phalanx he swept the foe from the strong hold.

"You can only half will," Suwarrow would say to people who failed. He preached willing as a system. "I don't know," "I can't," and " impossible " he would not listen to. “Learn !” “Do !” “Try!” he would exclaim.

Napoleon in Egypt visited those sick with the plague, to show that a man who is never afraid can vanquish that scourge. A will power like this is a strong tonic to the body, and it will stimulate to almost superhuman undertakings. Such a will has taken many men from apparent deathbeds, and enabled them to perform wonderful deeds of valor.

Aaron Burr was dangerously sick when he joined Arnold in leading the expedition against Canada. General Wolfe, sick with fever, led his troops up the heights of Abraham, defeated Montcalm, and compelled impregnable Quebec to surrender. But five days before, he wrote home to England: " My constitution is entirely ruined, and without the consolation of having rendered any considerable service to the State, or without prospects of it." When told by his physicians that he must die, Douglas Jerrold said, "And leave a family of helpless children ? I won't die." He kept his word, and lived for years.

After a sickness in which he lay a long time at death's door, Seneca said: "The thought of my father, who could not have sustained such a blow as my death, restrained me, and I commanded myself to live."

Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh University, was so fragile that no one thought he ever could amount to much; but he became a noted scholar in spite of discouragements which would have daunted most men of the strongest constitutions. Disaster, amputation of one foot, consumption, frightful hemorrhages, - no ,thing could shake his imperious will. Death itself seemed to stand aghast before that mighty resolution, hesitating to take possession of the body after all else had fled.

At fifty-five years of age, Sir Walter Scott owed more than six hundred thousand dollars. He determined that every dollar should be paid. This iron resolution gave confidence and inspiration to the other faculties
and functions of the body and brain. Every nerve and fibre said, "The debt must be paid;" every drop of blood caught the inspiration and rushed to the brain to add its weight of force to the power which wielded the pen. And the debt was paid. In his diary he wrote "I have suffered terribly and often wished that I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I can." His imperious will worked on and on after it seemed that every other faculty had abandoned his mind.

"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten ? " asked John Hunter. "He will do little. Is there one who will conquer ? That kind of a man never fails."

" Six O'clock A.M. - I, Edward Irving, promise, by the grace of God, to have mastered all the words in alpha and beta before eight o'clock." The young man had written this on his Greek lexicon. He added later "Eight o'clock A.M. -I, Edward Irving, by the grace of God, have done it."

"Nothing is impossible to the man who can will," said Mirabeau. "Is that necessary ? then that shall be. This is the only law of success."

"We have a half belief," said Emerson, "that the person is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man who is a match for events, - one who never found his match, - against whom other men being dashed are broken, - one who can give you any odds and beat you."

"There are three kinds of people in the world," says a writer in the "Eclectic Magazine," "the wills, the wonts, and the cants. The first accomplish everything; the second oppose everything; the third fail in everything."

"There is so much power in faith," says Bulwer, "even when faith is applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmly persuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seems
impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies."

What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; who never knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, will fight on the stumps ? Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He thrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determined endeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall place bounds to his achievements ?

Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries in science, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. Deprive Euler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems, thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. Lock up the poor Bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegory in the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of his cell. Burn the body of Wycliffe and throw the ashes into the Severn; but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeated with his principles, to all lands. The world always listens to a man with a will in him. You might as well snub the sun as such men as Bismarck and Grant.

The shores of fortune, as Foster says, are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith, and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they lacked the pluck to make a first effort; and who, could they only have resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements and successes.

"Why not try for one of the prizes offered by the London Society of Arts ?" asked Mrs. Ross of her son William, then not twelve years old. “I will try,” was his reply, and his painting of the “Death of Watch”
Tyler" won the first prize. In after years he became miniature painter to Queen Victoria, and was knighted. Quentin Matsys despaired of becoming a painter, although desperately in love with his master's daughter; but when told that he could not marry her unless he produced a picture of merit, he went to work with a will which knows no defeat, and painted the “ Misers," one of the masterpieces of art. It is such intensity of purpose that accomplishes the "impossible."

Balzac's father tried to discourage his son from the pursuit of literature. " Do you know," said he, “that in literature a man must be either a king or a beggar ?” “Very well," replied the boy, "I will be a king." His parents left him to his fate in a garret. For ten years he fought terrible battles with hardship and poverty, but won a great victory at last.

Who could look into the pale, emaciated face of Rufus Choate without seeing the mighty conflict raging between the mind and the body, or realizing that death was held at bay by an unconquerable will ? When a friend remonstrated with him for injuring his constitution, he replied, " Good heavens ! my constitution was gone long ago, and I am living on the by-laws." A parallel example is that of William M. Evarts. For many years it has seemed as though life has been held in his emaciated body solely by the exercise of his indomitable willpower. Robert Hall made a miserable failure of his first sermon, and cried like a child in the pulpit. The second sermon was worse. yet, but perseverance finally made him the great pulpit orator of England.

A young French officer used to pace his room, exclaiming, “I will be Marshal of France and a great general." He became a great commander, and died a Marshal of France.

When asked why he repaired a magistrate's bench with so unusual care, a carpenter replied, "Because I wish to make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself." In a few years he did sit as a magistrate on that bench. Some one told the elder Pitt that a certain project was impossible. "Impossible ?" said he ; "I trample upon impossibilities." His power in Parliament seemed more than mortal: his royal will overwhelmed that of the proudest peers.

One secret of England's great power over her colonies and those of other nations has been her indomitable will; her grasp is like that of Destiny. But she does not always remember that her children are of the same blood, or she would have hesitated to arouse the spirit voiced by Patrick Henry: " Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery ? Forbid it, Almighty God ! I know not what course others may take; but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death."

Animated by such a spirit, the American colonies could not, be conquered, as Chatham, himself a man of iron determination, clearly understood. It was the weak, vacillating, obstinate, and stupid George III. who precipitated the conflict, from which his Minister sought to dissuade him. " Four regiments," wrote the king, “will bring them [the colonies] to their senses; they will only be lions while we are lambs."

"Impossible," said Napoleon, “is a word found only in the dictionary of fools.” He would have melted the rocks of. St. Helena before he would have remained a prisoner there, had he not lost that imperious will before which all Europe trembled.

When General Grant took command of the Northern armies, the Confederates knew that their doom was sealed, for in that mighty will they felt the grip of Fate. "On to Richmond!" was his watchword. Old commanders shook their heads, but the silent man with the iron will, who never knew when he was beaten, swerved not a hair's breadth from his purpose until Lee surrendered his sword at Appomattox.

Garrison wrote in the very first issue of the “ Liberator: " "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard." Such uncompromising determination was not only the making of himself, but also of such heroes as Lincoln and Grant, and the thousands of unknown heroes dead upon the field of honor. That was a will worth having.

At the close of the Revolutionary War, that consummate debater and unequaled master of sarcasm, the younger Pitt, began his long administration as Prime Minister of England. His policy was strongly opposed to the French Revolution. But at the end of many successes Austerlitz proved his death blow. Hearing of Napoleon's victory, he pointed to a map of Europe and said, "Roll up that chart; it will not be wanted these ten years." He then fell into a stupor, from which he awoke but once, murmuring faintly, “Alas, my country!" Napoleon's supreme will had overborne and crushed a mind and will of the very highest order; a mind sagacious enough to measure very accurately the force of events, as it was, almost to a day, ten years to Waterloo.

What a mighty will Darwin had! He was in continual ill health. He was in constant suffering. His patience was marvelous. No one but his, wife knew what he endured. "For forty years," says his son, "he never knew one day of health;" yet during those forty years he unremittingly forced himself to do the work from which the mightiest minds and the strongest constitutions would have shrunk. He had a wonderful, power of sticking to a subject. He used almost to apologize for his patience, saying that he could not bear to be beaten, as if it were a sign of weakness. One of his favorite sayings was: "It's dogged that
does it." A proof of his wonderful patience, perseverance, and carefulness is that he collected his material for his " Origin of Species " during twenty years, and for his "Descent of Man" during nearly thirty.

Tupper may be a little old-fashioned, but he has written four lines which can never die: -

"Confidence is conqueror of men; victorious both over them and in them; The iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail; A feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle, And rally to a nobler strife the giants that had fled."

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

'Oh, the power of ceaseless industry to perform

miracles."