Self Help - Samuel Smiles (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📗

be worked up

into results of the greatest value. An hour in every day withdrawn

from frivolous pursuits would, if profitably employed, enable a

person of ordinary capacity to go far towards mastering a science.

It would make an ignorant man a well-informed one in less than ten

years. Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits,

in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good

principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened. Dr. Mason

Good translated Lucretius while riding in his carriage in the

streets of London, going the round of his patients. Dr. Darwin

composed nearly all his works in the same way while driving about

in his “sulky” from house to house in the country,—writing down

his thoughts on little scraps of paper, which he carried about with

him for the purpose. Hale wrote his ‘Contemplations’ while

travelling on circuit. Dr. Burney learnt French and Italian while

travelling on horseback from one musical pupil to another in the

course of his profession. Kirke White learnt Greek while walking

to and from a lawyer’s office; and we personally know a man of

eminent position who learnt Latin and French while going messages

as an errand-boy in the streets of Manchester.

 

Daguesseau, one of the great Chancellors of France, by carefully

working up his odd bits of time, wrote a bulky and able volume in

the successive intervals of waiting for dinner, and Madame de

Genlis composed several of her charming volumes while waiting for

the princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. Elihu Burritt

attributed his first success in self-improvement, not to genius,

which he disclaimed, but simply to the careful employment of those

invaluable fragments of time, called “odd moments.” While working

and earning his living as a blacksmith, he mastered some eighteen

ancient and modern languages, and twenty-two European dialects.

 

What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is that inscribed on

the dial at All Souls, Oxford—“Pereunt et imputantur”—the hours

perish, and are laid to our charge. Time is the only little

fragment of Eternity that belongs to man; and, like life, it can

never be recalled. “In the dissipation of worldly treasure,” says

Jackson of Exeter, “the frugality of the future may balance the

extravagance of the past; but who can say, ‘I will take from

minutes to-morrow to compensate for those I have lost to-day’?”

Melancthon noted down the time lost by him, that he might thereby

reanimate his industry, and not lose an hour. An Italian scholar

put over his door an inscription intimating that whosoever remained

there should join in his labours. “We are afraid,” said some

visitors to Baxter, “that we break in upon your time.” “To be sure

you do,” replied the disturbed and blunt divine. Time was the

estate out of which these great workers, and all other workers,

formed that rich treasury of thoughts and deeds which they have

left to their successors.

 

The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their

undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery

they regarded as the price of success. Addison amassed as much as

three folios of manuscript materials before he began his

‘Spectator.’ Newton wrote his ‘Chronology’ fifteen times over

before he was satisfied with it; and Gibbon wrote out his ‘Memoir’

nine times. Hale studied for many years at the rate of sixteen

hours a day, and when wearied with the study of the law, he would

recreate himself with philosophy and the study of the mathematics.

Hume wrote thirteen hours a day while preparing his ‘History of

England.’ Montesquieu, speaking of one part of his writings, said

to a friend, “You will read it in a few hours; but I assure you it

has cost me so much labour that it has whitened my hair.”

 

The practice of writing down thoughts and facts for the purpose of

holding them fast and preventing their escape into the dim region

of forgetfulness, has been much resorted to by thoughtful and

studious men. Lord Bacon left behind him many manuscripts entitled

“Sudden thoughts set down for use.” Erskine made great extracts

from Burke; and Eldon copied Coke upon Littleton twice over with

his own hand, so that the book became, as it were, part of his own

mind. The late Dr. Pye Smith, when apprenticed to his father as a

bookbinder, was accustomed to make copious memoranda of all the

books he read, with extracts and criticisms. This indomitable

industry in collecting materials distinguished him through life,

his biographer describing him as “always at work, always in

advance, always accumulating.” These notebooks afterwards proved,

like Richter’s “quarries,” the great storehouse from which he drew

his illustrations.

 

The same practice characterized the eminent John Hunter, who

adopted it for the purpose of supplying the defects of memory; and

he was accustomed thus to illustrate the advantages which one

derives from putting one’s thoughts in writing: “It resembles,” he

said, “a tradesman taking stock, without which he never knows

either what he possesses or in what he is deficient.” John Hunter-

-whose observation was so keen that Abernethy was accustomed to

speak of him as “the Argus-eyed”—furnished an illustrious example

of the power of patient industry. He received little or no

education till he was about twenty years of age, and it was with

difficulty that he acquired the arts of reading and writing. He

worked for some years as a common carpenter at Glasgow, after which

he joined his brother William, who had settled in London as a

lecturer and anatomical demonstrator. John entered his dissecting-room as an assistant, but soon shot ahead of his brother, partly by

virtue of his great natural ability, but mainly by reason of his

patient application and indefatigable industry. He was one of the

first in this country to devote himself assiduously to the study of

comparative anatomy, and the objects he dissected and collected

took the eminent Professor Owen no less than ten years to arrange.

The collection contains some twenty thousand specimens, and is the

most precious treasure of the kind that has ever been accumulated

by the industry of one man. Hunter used to spend every morning

from sunrise until eight o’clock in his museum; and throughout the

day he carried on his extensive private practice, performed his

laborious duties as surgeon to St. George’s Hospital and deputy

surgeon-general to the army; delivered lectures to students, and

superintended a school of practical anatomy at his own house;

finding leisure, amidst all, for elaborate experiments on the

animal economy, and the composition of various works of great

scientific importance. To find time for this gigantic amount of

work, he allowed himself only four hours of sleep at night, and an

hour after dinner. When once asked what method he had adopted to

insure success in his undertakings, he replied, “My rule is,

deliberately to consider, before I commence, whether the thing be

practicable. If it be not practicable, I do not attempt it. If it

be practicable, I can accomplish it if I give sufficient pains to

it; and having begun, I never stop till the thing is done. To this

rule I owe all my success.”

 

Hunter occupied a great deal of his time in collecting definite

facts respecting matters which, before his day, were regarded as

exceedingly trivial. Thus it was supposed by many of his

contemporaries that he was only wasting his time and thought in

studying so carefully as he did the growth of a deer’s horn. But

Hunter was impressed with the conviction that no accurate knowledge

of scientific facts is without its value. By the study referred

to, he learnt how arteries accommodate themselves to circumstances,

and enlarge as occasion requires; and the knowledge thus acquired

emboldened him, in a case of aneurism in a branch artery, to tie

the main trunk where no surgeon before him had dared to tie it, and

the life of his patient was saved. Like many original men, he

worked for a long time as it were underground, digging and laying

foundations. He was a solitary and self-reliant genius, holding on

his course without the solace of sympathy or approbation,—for but

few of his contemporaries perceived the ultimate object of his

pursuits. But like all true workers, he did not fail in securing

his best reward—that which depends less upon others than upon

one’s self—the approval of conscience, which in a right-minded man

invariably follows the honest and energetic performance of duty.

 

Ambrose Pare, the great French surgeon, was another illustrious

instance of close observation, patient application, and

indefatigable perseverance. He was the son of a barber at Laval,

in Maine, where he was born in 1509. His parents were too poor to

send him to school, but they placed him as foot-boy with the cure

of the village, hoping that under that learned man he might pick up

an education for himself. But the cure kept him so busily employed

in grooming his mule and in other menial offices that the boy found

no time for learning. While in his service, it happened that the

celebrated lithotomist, Cotot, came to Laval to operate on one of

the cure’s ecclesiastical brethren. Pare was present at the

operation, and was so much interested by it that he is said to have

from that time formed the determination of devoting himself to the

art of surgery.

 

Leaving the cure’s household service, Pare apprenticed himself to a

barber-surgeon named Vialot, under whom he learnt to let blood,

draw teeth, and perform the minor operations. After four years’

experience of this kind, he went to Paris to study at the school of

anatomy and surgery, meanwhile maintaining himself by his trade of

a barber. He afterwards succeeded in obtaining an appointment as

assistant at the Hotel Dieu, where his conduct was so exemplary,

and his progress so marked, that the chief surgeon, Goupil,

entrusted him with the charge of the patients whom he could not

himself attend to. After the usual course of instruction, Pare was

admitted a master barber-surgeon, and shortly after was appointed

to a charge with the French army under Montmorenci in Piedmont.

Pare was not a man to follow in the ordinary ruts of his

profession, but brought the resources of an ardent and original

mind to bear upon his daily work, diligently thinking out for

himself the rationale of diseases and their befitting remedies.

Before his time the wounded suffered much more at the hands of

their surgeons than they did at those of their enemies. To stop

bleeding from gunshot wounds, the barbarous expedient was resorted

to of dressing them with boiling oil. Haemorrhage was also stopped

by searing the wounds with a red-hot iron; and when amputation was

necessary, it was performed with a red-hot knife. At first Pare

treated wounds according to the approved methods; but, fortunately,

on one occasion, running short of boiling oil, he substituted a

mild and emollient application. He was in great fear all night

lest he should have done wrong in adopting this treatment; but was

greatly relieved next morning on finding his patients comparatively

comfortable, while those whose wounds had been treated in the usual

way were writhing in torment. Such was the casual origin of one of

Pare’s greatest improvements in the treatment of gunshot wounds;

and he proceeded to adopt the emollient treatment in all future

cases. Another still more important improvement was his employment

of the ligature in tying arteries to stop haemorrhage, instead of

the actual cautery. Pare, however, met with the usual fate of

innovators and reformers. His practice was denounced by his

surgical brethren as dangerous, unprofessional, and empirical; and

the older surgeons banded themselves together to resist its

adoption. They reproached him for his want of education, more

especially for his ignorance of Latin and Greek; and they assailed

him with quotations from ancient writers, which he