The Highest Claim to Fame in World To-day

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 643, 20 April 1929, Page 18

The Highest Claim to Fame in World To-day

The Imagination of Wells was born behind a drapery counter, and it doubtless continued to develop while he was usher at a boys’ school. Kipling worked an incredible number of hours a day on a local Indian paper, and yet found time for more work at home. O. Henry, the Edgar Allan Poe of modern short story writers, was in turn bank clerk and chemist’s apprentice, with at least one period of seclusion in prison. Bernard Shaw was a telephone operator, and Shakespeare a butcher’s assistant. Abraham Lincoln, one of America’s first Presidents, kept a country store and nearly went bankrupt because of his inability to keep accounts, while Hoover, his latest successor, was for some time a farm labourer. Most of the great musicians seem to have begun life in meagre circumstances. Caruso was a factory hand and Chaliapin apprenticed to a bootmaker. When I first met Mussolini he was an elementary school-teacher, and on the second occasion he had some sort of authority in Milan station, for he helped me to rescue my luggage from unwarranted durance! Among other world-famous contemporaries, Ramsay MacDonalod, Labour’s first Prime Minister.earned 15s a week in a warehouse; Rodin, the greatest sculptor France has yet produced, was an ornamental plasterer; and Gordon Selfridge, who owns more miles of counter than it is possible to compute, began life behind one of somebody else’s. Splendid Opportunities Sir Oliver Lodge was employed in the Potteries, and attended night classes after his day’s work; Lord Ashfield, who controls the destinies of the London General omnibuses, worked all day and all week to earn a guinea in the offices of an American tramway company; and Henry Ford, most spectacular of millionaires, began his epic career as a mechanic in as small a way of business as our own motor king. It’s no use saying, “I haven’t time.” The self-made giants, who are the busiest people in the world, always have time. It’s only those who have definitely made up their minds to stand aside and let life pass them by who can afford to Bay, “I haven’t time.”