Conquering Success; Or, Life in Earnest

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...too, unless it is practical as well as classical and scientific, often unfits a man for contest with his fellows. It is said that, some forty years ago, four persons met at a gathering in Australia, three of whom were shepherds on a farm. One of the three had taken a degree at Oxford, another at Cambridge, the third at a German university. The fourth was their employer, a squatter, rich in flocks and herds, but scarcely able to read and write, much less to keep accounts. A few years ago a man committed suicide in London who could speak fifteen languages, but could not earn money enough to pay his office rent and board bill. Is there not something defective in an education that leads to, or rather allows, such results as these? Was not Abraham Lincoln's a better training, though it was obtained in the rude home of his father, in the unbroken forests of Indiana, in a Mississippi flatboat, and in the Black Hawk war? It is said that England is filled with "a great, silent crowd of thoroughbred Grecians," who are indisposed to public effort by the fullness of their minds and the severity of their tastes. Occasionally a powerful and impulsive nature may overcome this repression; but, where one does this, scores of others, trained in a school of fastidiousness rather than one of performance, have their standards placed so far above their power of creation as to make them unwilling to risk the chances of failure. Who can doubt that such over-education is a hindrance, rather than a help, to worldly success? Of what use is the polish of high culture, if, however desirable per se, it is obtained only by planing away the wood till it loses its vigor? Why rifle the cannon till its strength is gone? Chalmers, in his preface to the "Rambler," states th...