IS THERE A SECRET TO SUCCESS IN LIFE?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 203, 25 August 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

IS THERE A SECRET TO SUCCESS IN LIFE?

THE MESSAGE OF THE ACHES OF DIAMONDS." * By Dp. RUSSELL CONWELL, In The "American Magazine." There has l>een altogether too much talk about the secret of success. Success has no secret. Her voice is forever ringing through the marketplace and crying in the wilderness, and the burden of her cry is one word —WILL. Any normal young man who hears and heeds that cry is fully equipped tu climb to the very heights of life. THE DRIVING FORCE. The message 1 would like to leave with young jnien and women is this Your "future stands before you like a block of unwrought marble. You can work it into what you will. Neither heredity, nor environment, nor any obstacles superimposed by man, can keep you from marching straight through to success, provided you are guided by a firm, driving determination, and hav« normal health and intelligence. Determination is the battery tha' commands every road of life. It is the armour against which the missiles of adversity rattle harmlessly. If there >s one thing I have tried peculiarly to do through these years it is to indent in the- minds of the youth of America Hit. living fact that when they give WILL the reins and say "Drive!" they are headed toward the heights. The institution Out of wh'ch Temp.'e University grew was founded thirt> years ago .expressly to furnish opportun'ties for higher education to poor boys and girls who were willing to work for it. I have seen ninety thousand students enter its doors. A ver> large percentage of these came to Phi.', adelphia without money, but firmly determined to get an education. I have never known one of them to go bade defeated. Determination has tho properties of a powerful acid —al! shackles melt before it. Conversely, lack of will power is the readiest weapon in the arsenal of failure. The most hopeless proposition 'n the world is the fellow who thinks that success is a door through which he will some time stumble if he roams around long enough. Some men seem to expect ravens to feed them, the cruse r) oil to remain inexhaustible, the fish to /:ome up over the s'de of the boat it mealtime. They believe that life 's i series of miracles. They loaf about an.l trust in their lucky star, and boldly declare that the world owes them a living. As a matter of fact, the world owes a man nothing that he docs not earn. In this life a man gets about what .1 is worth, and lie must render an equivalent for what is given him. There u> no such thing as inactive success. TURNING POINTS IN MENS id YES. My mind is running back over tho stories of thousands of boys and girls I have known and known about who haiv faced every sort o fhadicap and hav« won out solely by will and perseverance in working with all the power that Goi had given them. It is now nearly thirty years since a young English boy came into my office. He wanted to attend the evening classes at our university and learn oratory. " Why don't you go into the law ?" i asked him. " I'm too poor! I haven't a chance 1' he replied, shaking his head sadly. I turned on him sharply. "Of course you haven't n chance," I excla-'med, " if you don't make up your mind to it!" The next nvght he knocked at my door again. His face was radiant, anil there was the light of determination .11 his eyes. "I have decided to become a lawyer,'' he said—and I knew from the ring c! his voice that he meant it. Many times after he became Mayor of Philadelphia he must have looked" back on that decision as the turning point of his life. Such illustrations I could multiply indefinitely. Of all the boys whom I have tried to help through college I cannot think of a single one who has fa : led for any other reason than (II health. But,'of course. I have never helped anyone who was not first helping himself. As soon as a man determines the goal toward which he is marchI ing, he is in a strategic position to see and seize everything tliat will contribute toward that end. B PRACTICAL ADVICE TO THE AMBITIOUS. Whenever a young man tells me that if he "had lis way he would be - lawyer, or an eng ; neer, or what not, ) always reply: "You can be what you will, providM that it is something the world will b«: demanding ten years hence." This brings to my mind a certan stipulation which the ambition of youth must recognise. You must invest yourself or your money in a known demand You must select an occupation that •••: fitted to your own special genius and to some actual want of the people Choose as ear'v as possible what your life wofk will ue. "Then you can continually equipping yourself by real. ing and observing to a purpose. The » arc many things which the average bov or gid learns in school that could be learned outside just as well. In mv lectures I have borne heavily on the fact that we are all walking over aires of diamonds and mines of gold. There are people who think that ther fortune lies in some far country. It is much more likely to lie right in ther own back yards or on their front doorstep, hidden from the : r unseeing eye. Most of our millionaires discovered their fortunes by simply look'ng around them. Recently I have been investigating tho lives of -104;? American millionaires. All but twenty of thorn started life as poor boys, and all but forty of them have contributed largely tu their communities. But, alas! not one rich man's son out of seventeen dies rich. WILL POWER YOUR GREATEST ASSET. But if a man has dilly-dallied through a certain space of wasted years, can he then develop the character— the inorive force—to drive him to success? . . . Whv. mv friend, Abraham Lincoln developed'the splendid s'news of lis will after he was twenty-one. Before that he was just a roving, good-natured ;-ort of a chap. Always have I regretted that I failed to ask him what special circumstance broke the chrysalis of Ir.s l ; l'e and loosened the wings of his will. Manv veers ago some of the students of Temple held a meeting 111 a bu Id iu<, 1 opposite the Bellvue-Stratt'ord Hotel. ' As ther were leaving the building they noticed a foreigner selling peanuts m the opposite kerb. While buying pennuts they not to talking wth the fellow, and told h'm that anyone could obtai'n an education if he was willing 0 work for if. Eagerly the poor fellow drank 110 all the information he could art. He enrolled at Temple and worked his war through, starting with the elementary studies. He is to-day an onrn,.•l* \-i*!\-fic : an in t-hi' national capital.

"Where there's a will there's a way!" But one needs to, use a little common sense about selecting the way. A general may determine to win a victory, but if he hurls his troops across an open field straight into the leaden sweep of the enemy's artillery he invites disaster and defeat. The best general lays Irs plans carefully, and advances his troops in the way that wi : ll best conserve* their strength and numbers. So must a man plan his campaign in We. No man has a right, either for lrmself or for others, to be at work in a factory, or a store, or anywhere else, unless he would work there from choice —money or no money--if he had the necessity's of life.

*"Acres of Diamonds" is the famous lecture which Dr. Russell Conwell has delivered 5730 times.