Captains of Industry by James Parton (life changing books to read TXT) 📕

But again we may say it was not always winter. In the most dismal lot there are gleams of sunshine. The neighbors pitied and comforted him. His tyrant's wife was good to him as far as she dared. It was she, indeed, who inspired him with the determination to learn to read, and another friendly woman gave him regular instruction. He was sixteen years old when he learned his alphabet. A school-girl, the daughter of another weaver, would come into his shop to hear him read his lesson, and tell him how to pronounce the hard words. This bright, pretty girl of twelve would take her seat on the loom beside the bashful, lanky boy, who, with the book close to his eyes and his finger on the page, would grope his way through the paragraph.

Other children helped him, and he was soon able to get the meanings from the few books at his command. His solitary walks were still cheered by his observation of nature, although as yet he did not know there was such a thing as a science of botany. He could give no account of the interest he took in plants, except that he "loved the pretty little things," and liked to know their names, and to classify in his rude way those that were alike.

The exactions of his despot wore out at length even his astonishing patience. He ran away at twenty, and entered upon the life which he lived all the rest of his days, that of a weaver, wandering about Scotland according to his need of work. At this period he was not the possessor of a single book relating to his favorite pursuit, and he had never seen but one, an old-fashioned work of botany and astrology, of nature and superstition, by the once famous Culpepper. It required extra work for months, at the low wages of a hand-loom weaver, to get the money required for the purchase of this book, about five dollars. The work misled him in many ways, but it contained the names and properties of many of his favorite herbs. Better books corrected these errors by and by, and he gradually gathered a considerable library, each volume won by pinching economy and hard labor.

The sorrow of his life was his most woeful, disastrous marriage. His wife proved false to him, abandoned his home and their two daughters, and became a drunken tramp. Every now and then she returned to him, appealing to his compassion for assistance. I think Charles Dickens must have had John Duncan's case in his mind when he wrote those powerful scenes of the poor man cursed with a drunken wife in "Hard Times."

But the more miserable his outward life, the more diligently he resorted for comfort to his darling plants. For many years he groped in the dark; but at length he was put upon the right path by one of those accomplished gardeners so common in Scotland, where the art of gardening is carried to high perfection. He always sought the friendship of gardeners wherever he went. Nevertheless he was forty years old before he became a scientific botanist.

During the rest of his life of forty-four years, besides pursuing his favorite branch, he obtained a very considerable knowledge of the kindred sciences and of astronomy. Being obliged to sell his watch in a time of scarcity, he made for himself a pocket sun-dial, by which he could tell the time to within seven or eight minutes.

During this period steam was gaining every year upon hand power; his wages grew less and less; and, as his whole heart was in science, he had no energy left for seeking more lucrative employment. When he was past eighty-three he would walk twelve miles or more to get a new specimen, and hold on his way, though drenched with a sudden storm.

At length, old age and lack of work reduced him to actual suffering for the necessaries of life. Mr. William Jolly, a contributor to periodicals, heard his story, sought him out, and found him so poor as to be obliged to accept out-door relief, of which the old man was painfully ashamed. He published a brief history of the man and of his doings in the newspapers.

"The British people," says Voltaire, "may be very stupid, but they know how to give."

Money rained down upon the old philosopher, until a sum equal to about sixteen hundred dollars had reached him, which abundantly sufficed for his maintenance during the short residue of his life. For the first time in fifty years he had a new and warm suit of clothes, and he again sat down by his own cheerful fire, an independent man, as he had been all his life until he could no longer exercise his trade.

He died soon after, bequeathing the money he had received for the foundation of scholarships and prizes for the encouragement of the study of natural science among the boys and girls of his country. His valuable library, also, he bequeathed for the same object.

It would seem not to be so very difficult a matter to buy an article for fifty cents and sell it for seventy-five. Business men know, however, that to live and thrive by buying and selling requires a special gift, which is about as rare as other special gifts by which men conquer the world. In some instances, it is easier to make a thing than to sell it, and it is not often that a man who excels in the making succeeds equally well in the selling. General George P. Morris used to say:—

"I know a dozen men in New York who could make a good paper, but among them all I do not know one who could sell it."

The late Governor Morgan of New York had this talent in a singular degree even as a boy. His uncle sent him to New York, to buy, among other things, two or three hundred bushels of corn. He bought two cargoes, and sold them to advantage in Hartford on his way from the stage office to his uncle's store, and he kept on doing similar things all his life. He knew by a sort of intuition when it was safe to buy twenty thousand bags of coffee, or all the coffee there was for sale in New York, and he was very rarely mistaken; he had a genius for buying and selling.

I have seen car-boys and news-boys who had this gift. There are boys who will go through a train and hardly ever fail to sell a book or two. They improve every chance. If there is a passenger who wants a book, or can be made to think he wants one, the boy will find him out.

Now James Lackington was a boy of that kind. In the preface to the Memoirs which he wrote of his career he described himself as a person "who, a few years since, began business with five pounds, and now sells one hundred thousand volumes annually." But in fact he did not begin business with five pounds, but with nothing at all.

He was the son of a drunken shoemaker who lived in an English country town, and he had no schooling except a few weeks at a dame's school, at twopence a week. He had scarcely learned his letters at that school when his mother was obliged to take him away to help her in tending his little brothers and sisters. He spent most of his childhood in doing that, and, as he remarks, "in running about the streets getting into mischief." When he was ten years old he felt the stirring of an inborn genius for successful traffic.

He noticed, and no doubt with the hungry eyes of a growing boy, an old pie-man, who sold his pies about the streets in a careless, inefficient way, and the thought occurred to him that, if he had pies to sell, he could sell more of them than the ancient pie-man. He went to a baker and acquainted him with his thoughts on pie-selling, and the baker soon sent him out with a tray full of pies. He showed his genius at once. The spirited way in which he cried his pies, and his activity in going about with them, made him a favorite with the pie-buyers of the town; so that the old pie-man in a few weeks lost all his business, and shut up his shop. The boy served his baker more than a year, and sold so many pies and cakes for him as to save him from impending bankruptcy. In the winter time he sold almanacs with such success that the other dealers threatened to do him bodily mischief.

But this kind of business would not do to depend on for a lifetime, and therefore he was bound apprentice to a shoemaker at the age of fourteen years, during which a desire for more knowledge arose within him. He learned to read and write, but was still so ashamed of his ignorance that he did not dare to go into a bookstore because he did not know the name of a single book to ask for. One of his friends bought for him a little volume containing a translation from the Greek philosopher Epictetus, a work full of wise maxims about life and duty. Then he bought other ancient authors, Plato, Plutarch, Epicurus, and others. He became a sort of Methodist philosopher, for he heard the Methodist preachers diligently on Sundays, and read his Greek philosophy in the evenings. He tells us that the account of Epicurus living in his garden upon a halfpenny a day, and considering a little cheese on his bread as a great treat, filled him with admiration, and he began forthwith to live on bread and tea alone, in order to get money for his books. After ending his apprenticeship and working for a short time as a journeyman, he married a buxom dairymaid, with whom he had been in love for seven years. It was a bold enterprise, for when they went to their lodgings after the wedding they searched their pockets carefully to discover the state of their finances, and found that they had one halfpenny to begin the world with. They had laid in provisions for a day or two, and they had work by which to procure more, so they began their married life by sitting down to work at shoemaking and singing together the following stanza: