How to Succeed | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1885

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 34

How to Succeed.

ABOUT twenty years ago, a young New York inventor spent every dollar he was worth in an experiment which, if successful, would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune, and—what he valued more—his usefulness.

It failed. The next morning the daily papers heaped unsparing ridicule on him. Hope for the future seemed vain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate little woman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like a fool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. If he were out of the way, she could return to her friends. He went into his chamber, sat down and buried his face in his hands, with a desperate resolve to end it all. Then, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect.

“It shall succeed,” he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was crying over the papers when he went back.

“They are very cruel,” she said.

“They don’t understand. I’ll make them understand,” he replied, cheerfully.

“It was a fight for six years,” he said afterwards. “Poverty and sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the dogged determination that it should succeed.” It did succeed. The invention was a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happy man. “Be sure you’re right,” he says to young men, “then never give up.”—Youth’s Companion.