Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/261

^■J 242 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS all the panoply of triumph to the same blind goddess. It is not an uncommon thing for us not only to fail in rendering praise and honor where they are due, but there are always with us carping and captious critics who can glibly explain away the merit of a battle won through years of bitter sacri- fice, magnificent endeavor, and unceasing toil. We should not look down upon a man who is successful ; we should not suspect him of injustice because he has forged ahead of his fellows ; we should not criticize a man because he is rich. What are some of the factors which have made this man so successful? What are the mental habits and characteris- tics which are worthy of emulation? First of all he had nat- ural ability. He was given the legacy of a sound body and a sound mind, but in these things we do not feel him to have been superior to many others. To have these things, alas, is not to be successful. Thousands with his natural endowments have failed, many without them have graven their names deep in the marble of the ages. To his natural ability was added an overmastering ambition. As a boy he read and re-read the life story of Napoleon and he deliberately sought to pat- tern his life after that of the great conqueror. The trench- ant, virile prose of Thomas Carlyle painted many a pic- ture on the canvas of his fancy. The lode star of his fortune was raised in the West as he read Irving 's Astoria^ and with the supreme confidence of a strong man who has caught a vision, who has seen in the cramped present the latent possi- bilities of an expanded future, he moved out to the realization of the unseen. In such a man we are not surprised to find other characteristics of the conqueror — quickness of deci- sion, an impatience with unnecessary delay, an understanding of men, all these have contributed to his triumph. When asked for the key to his success he says, ** Whatever I have accomplished has been due to taking advantage of opportuni- ties, and I have not been watching the dock. The simple truth is that any man who attends to work will succeed any- where. He grasps the details of the present, he puts his feet squarely on the firm ground of an accomplished fact and