LESSON 20.
I sometimes tremble when I realise how slight is the difference between success and failure. Success is the child of Audacity. Failure is the offspring of discouragement.
There was a great inventor, once—great not because of his worldly possessions, but because he dreamed the most beautiful visions of helping humanity to bigger and better things. He had worked long and arduously on one of his ideas hampered by lack of funds, lack of friends, and (I am sorry to say) lack of food.
All the night through he had toiled over his model. There was just one little part needed to give the necessary movement, but the proper thought eluded him.
The cold gray dawn of another toilsome day found him discouraged and alone on a damp, park bench. He was thoroughly hopeless and ready to give up his idea and his ideal. True, the successful culmination of this experiment would mean fewer accidents in a great industry, and fewer lives sacrificed to unnecessary carelessness. But why struggle longer? The world called him visionary and an impractical dreamer. Why fight?
Indeed, the fight had clean gone out of him. Death, breakfast, or the lock-up were equally welcome to him. He was through!
And then, thelittlething happened. The doorway across the street was opened. Through it came a piping childish voice in joyous morning song. Little feet pattered down the steps and soon the lisping notes came from directly at his side, while a trusting little hand slipped confidently into his. And at that minute the problem was solved—somebody trusted him, somebody cared!
Exercises 11, 22, 24, and 30.