The Secret Of Wealth
132 total pages.
When Sir Walter Scott was fifty-five years old, he awoke one morning to find himself in debt over half a million dollars, through the failure of a business of which he was part owner. He was not compelled to pay it, but he felt in honor responsible. "Time and I against any two!" he said, and set to work harder than before. He wrote the "Life of Napoleon" in nine volumes in thirteen months. Stricken with paralysis, he worked on in spite of great difficulty in holding a pen, and within four years had paid about two-thirds of that half million dollars. Work did it. Work earned over three hundred thousand dollars in four years. One of our famous presidents was asked by a titled European what was his coat of arms. He replied: "A pair of shirt sleeves." The famous astronomer, Herschel, earned his living as a musician in an orchestra, playing wherever he could get an hour's employment. After his work was done, he made his telescopes and searched the heavens. While he was playing at a summer resort, it was his habit to slip away between numbers on the program and gaze for a few minutes through his telescope; in this way he made the discoveries which lifted him in a day to fame and fortune. Darwin was a country doctor, and wrote his scientific books while driving a sulky through snow and mud, visiting the sick. He carried with him scraps of paper and jotted down the thoughts that came to him as he rode along. Napoleon worked eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. Often he spent only ten minutes at dinner. He worked far into the night, and when his secretaries were almost exhausted he would urge them to new efforts, saying: "Come, work faster, it is only two o 'clock and we must earn the money the French people pay us." Paul Scarron, one of the master writers of France, created the burlesque and made the world laugh at his witty jests, yet all the while he was a hopeless cripple and unable to move an arm or leg without screaming with pain.
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The Secret Of Wealth