OPPORTUNITY

FOUR things come not back: the spoken word; the sped arrow; the past life; and the neglected opportunity.  Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock you may hold her, but if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again. Opportunities are the offers of God. Heaven gives us enough when it gives us opportunity. Great opportunities are generally the result of the wise improvement of small ones. Wise men make more opportunities than they find. If you think your opportunities are not good enough you had better improve them. Remember you are responsible for talents, for time, and for opportunities; improve them as one that must give an account. Make hay while the sun shines. Gather roses while they bloom. While you are deliberating, the season now so favorable may pass away never to return. No one should undervalue the advantage he enjoys.

There is an eastern story, which has its version in many languages, of a beautiful damsel, to whom a genius of surpassing power desired to give a talisman. He enjoined her to take herself across a field of standing corn; she was to pluck the tallest and largest ear she could find, but she was to gather it as she went forward, and never pause in her path, or step backward in quest of her object. In proportion to the size and ripeness of the ear she gathered so would be its power as a talisman. She went out upon her quest, says the legend, and entered upon the field. Many a stalk of surpassing excellence met her glance, but she still walked onward, expecting to find some one more excellent still. At last she reached a portion of the field where the crop was thinner and the ears more stunted. She regretted the tall and graceful stalks she had left but disdained to pick those which fell so far below what her ideas were of a perfect ear. But alas! the stems grew more ragged and more scanty as she trod onward; on the margin of the field they were mildewed, and when she had accomplished her walk through the waving grain she emerged on the other side without having gathered any ear whatever. The genius rebuked her for her folly, but we are not told that he gave an opportunity of retrieving her error.

We may apply this mystic little Indian fable to the realities of daily life.

Never whine over what you suppose to be loss of opportunities. A great many men have good early opportunities who never improve them, and many have lost their early opportunities without losing much. Every one may educate himself that wishes it. It is the will that makes the way. Many a servant that wanted knowledge has listened, while his master’s children were saying their letters and putting them together to form easy words, and has thus caught the first elements of spelling. If a man has a strong thirst for knowledge, we do not care where he is put, he will become an educated man. The first step toward self-improvement is, to leave of whining over the past. Let the past go, and bend every energy to the improvement of the present. This is the only way.

Accident does very little towards the production of any great result in life. Though sometimes what is called a “happy hit” may be made by a bold venture, the old and common highway of steady industry and application is the only safe road to travel.

Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found that there has really been very little that was accident about them. For the most part, these so called accidents have only been opportunities, carefully improved by genius. The fall of the apple at Newton’s feet has often been quoted in proof of the accidental character of some discoveries. But Newton’s whole mind had already been devoted for years to the laborious and patient investigation of the subject of gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple falling before his eyes was suddenly apprehended only as a genius could apprehend it, and served to flash upon him the brilliant discovery then bursting on his sight. In like manner, the brilliantly colored soap bubbles blown from a common tobacco pipe,—though “trifles light as air,” in most eyes,—suggested to Dr. Young his beautiful theory of “interferences,” and led to his discovery relating to the diffraction of light. Although great men are popularly supposed only to deal with great things, men such as Newton and Young were ready to detect the significance of the most familiar and simple facts; their greatness consisting mainly in their wise interpretation of them.

It is said that the Marquis of Worcester’s attention was first accidentally directed to the subject of steam power, by the tight cover of a vessel containing hot water having been blown off before his eyes, when confined a prisoner in the Tower. He published the result of his observations in his “Century of Inventions,” which formed a sort of text book for inquirers into the power of steam for several generations, until Savary, Newcomer, and others, applying it to practical purposes brought it to the state in which Watt found it when called upon to repair a model of Newcomer’s engine. This accidental circumstance was an opportunity for Watt, which he was not slow to improve; and it was the labor of his life to bring the steam-engine to perfection.

This art of seizing opportunities and turning even accidents to account, bending them to some purpose, is a great secret of success. Dr. Johnson has defined genius to be “a mind of large general powers accidentally determined in some particular direction.” Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves, will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not lie ready to their hand, they will make them. It is not those who have enjoyed the advantages of colleges, museums, and public galleries, that have accomplished the most for science and art; nor have the greatest mechanics and inventors been trained in mechanics’ institutes. Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty. Some of the very best workmen have had the most indifferent tools to work with. But it is not tools that make the workman, but the trained skill and perseverance of the man himself. Indeed, it is proverbial that the bad workman never yet had a good tool. Some one asked Opie by what wonderful process he mixed his colors. “I mix them with my brains, sir,” was his reply. It is the same with every workman who would excel. Ferguson made marvelous things,—such as his wooden clock, that accurately measured the hours,—by means of a common penknife, a tool in everybody’s hand. An eminent savant once called upon Dr. Wallaston, and requested to be shown over his laboratories, in which science had been enriched by so many important discoveries, when the doctor took’ into a little study, and pointing to an old tea-tray on the table, containing a few watch-glasses, test-papers, a small balance, and a blow-pipe, said, “There is all the laboratory that I have!”

Strothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies’ wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn-door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvass. Bewick first practiced drawing on the cottage walls of his native village, which he covered with his sketches in chalk; and Benjamin West made his first brushes out of the cat’s tail. Ferguson laid himself down in the fields at night in a blanket, and made a map of the heavenly bodies, by means of a thread with small beads on it stretched between his eye and the stars. Franklin first robbed the thunder cloud of its lightning by means of a kite made of two cross-sticks and a silk handkerchief. Watt made the first model of his condensing steam-engine out of an old anatomist’s syringe, used to inject the arteries previous to dissection. Gifford worked his first problem in mathematics when a cobbler’s apprentice, upon small scraps of leather, which he beat smooth for the purpose; whilst Rittenhouse, the first astronomer calculated eclipses on his plough handle.

The most ordinary occasions will furnish a man with opportunities or suggestions for improvement, if he be but prompt to take advantage of them.

Sir Humphrey Davy, when an apothecary’s apprentice, performed his first experiments with instruments of the rudest descriptions. He extemporized the greater part of them himself, out of the motley materials which chance threw in his way. The pots and cans of the kitchen, and the phials and vessels of his master’s surgery, were remorselessly put in requisition. The words entered in his note-bock, when about twenty years of age, were eminently characteristic: “I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth, to recommend me; yet, if I live, I trust I shall not be of the less service to mankind and my friends, than if I had been born with all these advantages.”

Cuvier, when a youth, was one day strolling along the sands, when he observed a cuttle-fish lying stranded on the beach. He was attracted by the curious object, took it home to dissect it, and began the study of the mollusca, which ended in his becoming one of the greatest among natural historians. In like manner, Hugh Miller’s curiosity was excited by the remarkable traces of extinct sea animals in the Old Red Sandstone, on which he worked as a quarryman. He inquired, observed, studied, and became a geologist. “It was the necessity,” said he, “which made me a quarrier, that taught me to be a geologist.”

It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world, but purpose and persistent industry. These make a man sharp to discern opportunities, and turn them to account. To the feeble, the sluggish, and purposeless, the happiest opportunities avail nothing, — they pass them by, seeing no meaning in them. But if we are prompt to seize and improve even the shortest intervals of possible action and effort, it is astonishing how much can be accomplished. Watt taught him self chemistry and mechanics while working at his trade of a mathematical instrument maker; and he availed himself of every opportunity to extend his knowledge of language, literature, and the principles of science. Stephenson taught himself arithmetic and menstruations while working as an engineman during the night shifts, and he studied mechanics during his spare hours at home, thus preparing himself for the great work of his life,—the invention of the passenger locomotive.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value. An hour in every day with drawn from frivolous pursuits, would, if profitably employed, enable any man of ordinary capacity, very shortly to master a complete science. It would make an ignorant man a well-informed man in ten years. We must not allow the time to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learned 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 his rounds among his patients. Dr. Darwin composed nearly all his works in the same way, while riding 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 traveling on a circuit. Dr. Burney learned French and Italian while traveling on horseback from one musical pupil to another in the course of his profession.  Kirk White learned Greek while walking to and from a lawyer’s office; and we personally know a man of eminent position in a northern manufacturing town, who learned Latin and French while going messages as an errand-boy in the streets of Manchester.

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. Withal, he was exceedingly modest, and thought his achievements nothing extraordinary. Like another learned and wise man, of whom it was said that he could be silent in ten languages, Elihu Burritt could do the same in forty. “Those who have been acquainted with my character from my youth up,” said he, writing to a friend, “will give me credit for sincerity when I say, that it never entered into my head to blazon forth any acquisition of my own.

* * * All that I have accomplished, or expect, or hope to accomplish, has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap,—particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if ever I was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of my country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called ‘odd moments.”

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 Gentis composed several of her charming volumes while waiting for the princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. Jeremy Bentham in like manner disposed of his hours of labor and repose, so that not a moment should be lost; the arrangement being determined on the principle that it is a calamity to lose the smallest portion of time. He lived and worked habitually under the practical consciousness that man’s days are numbered, and that the night cometh when no man can work.

What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is that inscribed on the dial at All Souls, Oxford, England,—” Periunt et imputantur,” —the hours perish and are laid to our charge. For time, like life can never be recalled. Melanchton 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 labors. “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, carved a rich inheritance of thoughts and deeds for their successors.

Sir Walter Scott found opportunities for self-improvement in every pursuit, and turned even accidents to account. Thus it was in the discharge of his functions as a writer’s apprentice that he first penetrated into the Highlands, and formed those friendships among the surviving heroes of 1745 which served to lay the foundation for a large class of his works. Later in life, when employed as quarter master of the Edinburgh Light Cavalry, he was accidentally disabled by the kick of a horse, and confined for some time to his house; but Scott was a sworn enemy to idleness, and he forthwith set his mind to work, and in three days composed the first canto of “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,”—his first great original work.