(Adapted for Young People, Nine to Eighteen Years.)
1. LONGFELLOW, POET
The poet, Longfellow, once wrote in his diary, “We have but one life to live on earth; we must make that beautiful.” The story of this beautiful life began at his birth in Portland, Me., February 27, 1807. He was the second of eight children. His father was an honored lawyer and his mother was a woman of refinement, a descendant of John Alden of the Mayflower. Henry was a noble, tender-hearted boy. One day when he went shooting, he killed a robin. The piteous look of the little fearless thing so pained him that he never went shooting again. The first book he loved was Irving’s “Sketch-Book.” Its strange stories of “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” pleased his fancy. During each summer he used to visit his Grandfather Wadsworth’s estate of seven thousand acres, just outside Portland, where they told him tales of ’76. The story of the fight with the Indians impressed him so deeply that at the age of thirteen he wrote his first poem, “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond,” which he slipped into an envelope and mailed to a newspaper, telling no one but his sister. He walked up and down in front of the printing-office, shivering in the cold, and wondering if his poem was being put in print. Next morning there was the poem, signed “Henry.” He read it again and again, and thought it a fine poem. In the evening he and his father were visiting at a neighbor’s house, when the neighbor said to Mr. Longfellow, “Did you see the little poem in to-day’s paper?” “No,” said Mr. Longfellow, “is it good for anything?” “No,” said the neighbor, “it’s stiff, and it’s all borrowed, every word; why, your boy there could write much better than that!” Poor Henry’s heart sank. He hurried home and sobbed himself to sleep that night. Yet criticism did not discourage this brave boy. He kept trying, saying, “I will succeed,” and he became the best-loved poet of the world. At fourteen he graduated from Portland Academy, and at eighteen from Bowdoin College. After three years’ travel in Europe, he became professor of modern languages in his alma mater for five years, and then for eighteen years professor of literature in Harvard, being succeeded by James Russell Lowell. The school children of Cambridge celebrated his seventy-second birthday by presenting him with a chair carved from the wood of the chestnut tree under which stood the village smithy that he made famous in his poem, “The Village Blacksmith.” The poet greatly appreciated this gift, and wrote one of his best poems about it. Each boy and girl who came was allowed to sit in the chair and each received a copy of a poem that Longfellow wrote. The same year fifteen hundred children of Cincinnati celebrated his birthday with recitations from his poems and singing his songs. His marble statue stands in the “Poet’s Corner,” in Westminster Abbey in London, England. His grave is in Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge. On his tombstone is the simple inscription: “Longfellow.” That is enough. There are few schoolboys in America or England who do not know the story of his beautiful life, or who have not recited his words in “A Psalm of Life”:
2. MOZART, MUSICIAN
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the greatest musicians and composers that ever lived, was born in Salzburg, Germany, January 27, 1756. His father was a famous violinist. At the age of three little Wolfgang loved to hear the playing of his sister Maria, who was just five years older. At four he was able to play minuets and compose little pieces. At five he played in public, and at six composed a difficult concerto for a full orchestra. One day before he was seven, his father was walking in the country with him when they came to a great church which contained the largest organ Wolfgang had ever seen. “Father, let me play it,” he said. Well pleased, his father began to blow the bellows. Wolfgang pushed aside the high stool, stood upon the pedals, and began playing. Softly at first the deep tones rose, awakening the stillness of the old church, and then the strains swelled louder and louder until all who heard marveled that a young child could play such wonderful music. No wonder the father was proud of his two children. No wonder the palaces of Europe were opened to them and that they were petted, admired, and loaded with caresses and presents. The little boy’s charming appearance and cheerful disposition endeared him to all. So innocent and natural was his manner that at Vienna he sprang up into the Empress’s lap and kissed her heartily. In another place when he slipped upon the polished floor, Marie Antoinette lifted him up, and he said, “You are very kind. When I grow up I will marry you.” He always loved his father, and was always gentle and obedient, saying, “Next after God is my father.” Though so modest, he played without fear before kings.
Many musicians were jealous of his genius and said, “A trick is being played on the people.” So one day he was invited to the house of a famous musician to play before a number of great performers. The old musician gave him the most difficult piece he had ever written, knowing Mozart had never seen it, and to the wonder of all, he played it so splendidly they were convinced of his great genius. But as the envy of his enemies did not decrease, he was obliged to seek Italy to earn his living. At Rome he went to the Sistine Chapel to hear the celebrated “Miserere,” which, on returning home, he wrote down note by note—a feat which created a great sensation, for the singers were forbidden to transcribe the music on penalty of dismissal. So delighted was the pope with him that he presented Mozart with the Order of the Golden Spur. He played the harp, the organ, the violin, and every instrument in the orchestra. He composed many operas as well as church music and concert music. Perhaps the happiest part of his life was when he traveled with his sister and his beloved father, revealing the wonders of his musical genius to the great of the earth, not for money or fame, but for the great pleasure he gave and received from his art.
One day a stranger called on him, requesting him to compose a requiem, and offering to pay him for this in advance. Mozart worked hard at it, but when the stranger returned it was not ready, and he paid the musician some more money in advance for it. When the stranger called the third time, Mozart was dead; and the requiem still unfinished. When he died he was very poor, and the few friends he had, because it rained on the day of his funeral, left him unattended, to be carried to his grave in a potter’s field. Thus he, who had in his lifetime produced so much wonderful music, was buried unhonored and unsung, without funeral ceremony or acclaim. But to-day, not only in Germany but over all the earth, the music of his immortal name is heard, and his praise is sung.
3. OLE BULL, VIOLINIST
In the quaint little town of Bergen, in Norway, February 5, 1810, was born a boy, the eldest of ten children. His father was a chemist, and his mother a noble, intelligent woman, and they both loved music. Little Ole Bull would often crawl under the settee or sofa to listen to the music when his relatives came to his home to sing and practise, and he was often whipped, when discovered, for being so naughty. He loved music, and when he was in the field, where he often played alone, he thought he heard the music of the little bluebells swinging in the wind, as he lay among the flowers. When he was four years old his uncle gave him a yellow violin. He kissed it in his delight, and began to learn the notes at the same time that he did his letters, and although forbidden to play until after study hours, he often forgot and was punished both at home and in school. When he was eight years old a music-teacher was provided, and his father bought him a new, red violin. That night Ole could not sleep. In his night-dress he stole to the room where the violin lay, and because it was so red and so pretty, and the pearl screws smiled at him, he just pinched the strings, and when it smiled more and more, he had to try the bow, and then he forgot that it was night and everybody asleep, so he played, very softly at first, and then he kept on forgetting until suddenly—crack went his father’s whip across Ole’s back, and the little red violin fell to the floor and was broken. He said, “I wept much for it, but it did no good, for the doctor never could make it well.” But he kept on with his study, and in two years he began to compose his own music, making his violin sing with the birds and brook, the roar of the waterfall, the dripping of the rain, and the whispering of the wind. When Ole was eighteen he went to the University at Christiania, where he attracted the attention of one of the professors, who encouraged him to give concerts and later aided him with money to go to Paris. In that great city no one cared for this unknown violinist, and he could not get a chance to play. One day when he had but little money left, an old man who lived in the same house with him advised the violinist to draw all his money out of the bank, pretending that it was not safe there. Ole drew his money out, and that night the old man stole all Ole’s money and clothes, leaving him penniless in the strange city. In his distress he sought a new home in a house with a card in the window, “Furnished Rooms to Let.” He went up the steps and when the woman saw how ill and poor he looked, she said there was no room. But her little granddaughter said, “Look at him, grandmamma.” The old lady put on her glasses and saw he looked like her son who had died, and so she took Ole in and nursed him tenderly through brain fever. Later little Felice, the granddaughter, became Ole’s wife. A nobleman asked him to play at a grand concert, where he earned three hundred dollars. Then he took lessons of some great teachers and made a tour of the world on which he received great sums for his playing. In America his audiences went wild with delight. He used to visit the asylums and hospitals and play for the inmates. All through his life he tried to help others, not only with his music, but with his money. His sweet wife and his beautiful children died, and he was left alone, but he was never too sorrowful or too busy to help the most humble who came to him. He died at his beautiful home near Bergen, Norway. At his funeral the rich and great gathered to honor him, and after his body was lowered into its flower-hung grave, the poor peasants came by hundreds with their green boughs or sprigs of fern or wildflowers and filled his grave with them—because they loved him!
4. LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, AUTHOR
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pa., November 29, 1832. Her father was a cultured school-teacher and her mother of an old aristocratic family. Louisa was the eldest of four daughters, whose happy life she pictures in “Little Women,” herself being “Jo.” She was a wild, happy-hearted, enthusiastic girl, preferring whistling and romping and boys’ games rather than girls’. Their home was frequently visited by such literary people as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, who were her father’s friends. At eight years of age she wrote this poem of eight lines:
Her mother preserved this poem, and told her if she kept on she might one day be a second Shakespeare. She was fond of telling fairy stories to amuse her sisters and friends, and often turned the old tales into little plays which the children acted in a barn. One of these plays was “Jack and the Bean Stalk.” A squash vine, placed in the barn, was the bean-stalk, and when it was cut down the boy who played Giant, would come tumbling down from the hay-loft. At thirteen she wrote the beautiful poem, “My Kingdom.” After she became a school-teacher she was always helping somebody, taking care of an invalid or the poor, or sewing to help her mother. She continued to write stories. Some of the stories were rejected and the publisher advised her to stick to her school-teaching. Returning from the Civil War, where she had been a valued nurse to the wounded soldiers, she presented, through her father, several short stories to a publisher, who rejected them, with the advice that she write a story for girls. She thought she could not do that, and wrote “Little Women” to prove that she could not, but it is perhaps the best-loved girls’ story ever written. Then she wrote “Little Men,” of which fifty thousand copies were ordered before it was printed. She received one hundred thousand dollars for her books. Her life-desire was now realized in having money enough to make her family comfortable. Her father died in 1888, and she followed him only three days after. Miss Louisa May Alcott, besides being a writer, was also an earnest advocate of woman suffrage and temperance.
5. ROSA BONHEUR, PAINTER
Rosa was born in poverty. Her father, an artist too, was compelled to give drawing lessons, and her mother had to go from house to house teaching music to assist in supporting their four children. Her mother dying when Rosa was twelve years old, and her father marrying again, the gifted girl was sent away to school where she spent most of her time in drawing funny pictures of her teachers. Later her father taught her to copy the old masters in the Louvre. When she was seventeen she determined her life-work—animal painting; but being too poor to buy models, she would take long walks into the country to study and draw living animals, and later on kept a sheep on her roof-garden for a model. At nineteen she sent two pictures to the Fine Arts Exposition, “Goat and Sheep” and “Two Rabbits,” and others soon followed. When her father died she took his place as Director of the School of Design for Girls, and her sister, Juliette, became a teacher in the same school. She studied eighteen months before painting “The Horse Fair,” which famous picture was purchased in England for eight thousand dollars, and later by A. T. Stewart, of New York, and is now in his collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Landseer, the great English artist, said of her “Horse Fair,” “It surpasses me, although it’s a little hard to be beaten by a woman.” When at her work Rosa Bonheur often dressed in male attire with a large, white collar. She was always busy, cheerful, and generous. Her pictures brought her large sums, which she spent not only in providing for her family and old servants, but in generously assisting poor students. She had one of the most beautiful studios in Paris. When Prussia conquered France the Prussian soldiers were ordered not to disturb Rosa Bonheur or her servants. The poor idolized this wonderful woman, for she always loved them. She died at her home May 25, 1899. But through her wonderful works she still helps us to see the beauty of common things and to feel the poetry in what might seem the drudgery of life.
6. JENNY LIND, SINGER
Jenny Lind, the “Swedish nightingale,” fills a place all her own among the world’s great artists of song. Gifted in voice, beautiful in face, lovely in character, a princess among givers, the guardian angel of the poor and unfortunate, she was for many years the idol of all classes of people, adored not simply for her talent, but also as one of the most perfect of women. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden, October 6, 1820. Her father was a good-natured man, who enjoyed song, but he was unable to provide for his family. Her mother was a woman of determination, who helped care for the family by teaching school. When very small Jenny showed a love for the singing of birds, and often when she sang to her pet cat, as it sat with a blue ribbon around its neck in the window, people in the street used to listen and wonder. One day a lady heard the child’s voice, and said, “She is a genius; she must be trained.” At nine she sang before the music-master of the Royal Theater, and he was moved to tears and at once accepted her, and for ten years she was educated in singing and elocution at the expense of the government of Sweden. Jenny began to act and sing in the Royal Theater at ten, and sang and played continuously until she was twenty. From twelve to fifteen she sang in concerts, and the Swedish people became very proud of her. At twenty she was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and was appointed court singer. The progress in her art led her to devote four hours or more daily for almost a year in practising the scales and exercises under a great teacher in Paris. Then she began to travel through Europe, singing before kings, nobles, and distinguished people, and to crowded audiences who hailed her as “the first singer of the world,” and paid enormous prices to hear her. At last she consented to sing in the United States. When she arrived at New York thousands were on the dock eager to catch a glimpse of her. Triumphal arches surmounted by eagles bore the inscription, “Welcome, Jenny Lind. Welcome to America!” At the first concert, where thousands listened enchanted to her in Castle Garden in New York, some persons paid as high as six hundred and fifty dollars for a single ticket. Jenny Lind’s share for this one concert was nearly ten thousand dollars. She immediately sent for the mayor of the city and distributed the whole amount among charitable institutions. Throughout her life she felt that the money she earned was only hers in trust, as well as her voice. She said: “It is a great joy and a gift from God to be allowed to earn so much money and afterward to help one’s fellow men with it. This is the highest joy I wish for in life.” Everywhere she gave benefit concerts for charitable institutions or for individuals in need. In New York alone she gave away forty thousand dollars in charities. When warned against so much liberality, as some unworthy persons would seek aid, she always replied, “Never mind, if I assist ten and one is worthy, I am satisfied.” At thirty-one she married Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, of Hamburg, an accomplished musician, and they secured a beautiful residence in England, where they lived most happily for many years, until her death, November 2, 1887, at the age of sixty-seven. Queen Victoria, who had often heard her sing and who greatly honored her, sent a wreath of beautiful white flowers.
Mendelssohn said of her, “I never met so noble, so true, and real an art nature as Jenny Lind.” N. P. Willis said: “To give away more money in charity than any other mortal; to be humble, simple, genial, unassuming, and still be the first of prima donnas; to have begun as a beggar girl and risen to receive more honor than a queen, this is the combination that makes the wonder of a dozen heroines in one single girl.”
7. LINCOLN, EMANCIPATION PRESIDENT
When the Hall of Fame was opened in New York City, George Washington was found to have the votes of one hundred per cent of the electors, and Abraham Lincoln came next with ninety-nine per cent. Lincoln, the great emancipator of four million slaves, and the preserver of the nation’s unity, came next to Washington, the Father and first President of his country. In Harden, now Larue County, Ky., February 12, 1809, he was born and grew up in such poverty as few boys have ever known. His mother died when the little fellow was very young, so that not until little Abe was seven years old, and his stepmother, a woman of energy and intelligence, took charge of the desolate household, did the shaggy-headed, ragged, barefoot, forlorn lad begin “to feel like a human being.” From the time he could hold an axe in his little hand he was expected to work. His father was a lazy, shiftless, “poor Southern white,” which is the last word in unthrift. He hired out Abe to the neighbors to plow, dig ditches, chop wood, drive oxen, and “tend the baby” when a farmer’s wife was busy, keeping all the scanty wages Abe earned and growling because the lad loved to read when he had finished his work. Often he came home at night all aching with cold and wet, not to lounge at leisure as other boys, but while his parents slept, he rolled another log on the fire to give him light, or by the aid of a pine-knot stuck in the wall to light the dingy cabin, he read such books as he could borrow. When sixteen years old, besides being a rail-splitter and teamster, he was earning six dollars a month by managing a ferryboat across the Ohio River. Perhaps the turning-point in his life came when he found two old law-books that had been thrown away with some rubbish he was hauling. He read these books and stored up the information they gave. His wide reading enabled him later to speak eloquently, especially against the slave-trade which he hated. One day, passing through the great slave-market of New Orleans, and seeing a girl being auctioned from the slave-block, his soul was so kindled that he decided then and there, “I’ll knock that thing hard, if I ever get a chance.” And he did. He was tender-hearted, and nothing aroused him more than to see a helpless animal or person mistreated.
He was six feet four inches tall, awkward and homely in countenance, very powerful, a famous wrestler, but he was never known to use his strength for his own benefit, and while he whipped the bullies that made him fight, he never picked a quarrel in his life. He served as captain in the Black Hawk war, and at the age of twenty-two ran for the legislature and was defeated. He ran a country store in Springfield, Ill., and failed, but he paid up the last dollar, although this took him fourteen years to do. He studied law and became a leading lawyer, admired for his honesty as well as industry. He stood always for peace if possible, and often persuaded his clients to make up their quarrel in his office instead of going to law. While he was an attorney, feeling that his lack of education put him at a disadvantage with Eastern men who, educated and trained in great colleges, were coming West, he determined “to be ready for them,” and so undertook a home course of study in mathematics, logic, and literature. It was hard work, but he won. He was elected to the Legislature of Illinois, sent to Congress at Washington, became the leader of the Republican party, and in 1860 was elected President of the nation. During the terrible years of the Civil War his hand guided the torn and distracted country out of the cyclone of hatred and bloodshed into peace and prosperity. Few souls in history have had fiercer trials than those through which he passed. His friends grew impatient and found fault, his enemies jeered, his closest followers doubted, but he could neither be hurried, delayed, nor swerved from the cause of right he had laid out for himself. His patience, self-possession, resources, tact, large-heartedness, and faith in God never failed him.
On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Proclamation of Emancipation, and by his stroke of the pen set four million human beings free. No wonder that in many churches in the United States, as well as in England, Christian people sang “The year of jubilee is come!”
In spite of his lack of early education, his speeches and documents are among the finest in our history. His Gettysburg address every boy should know. In his second inaugural address this sentence occurs: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Just as he was about to enjoy the hard-won victory of peace, an insane assassin laid low the great emancipator, “a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.” He died April 15, 1865, sincerely mourned by “the boys in blue” and “the boys in gray” and the States of the nation that he had saved in union.
Abraham Lincoln will always rank as one of the greatest presidents, and, as the years roll on, his place in the affection and reverence of his countrymen becomes more secure. James Russell Lowell wrote this fitting tribute to him:
8. HORACE GREELEY, EDITOR
Horace Greeley was born February 11, 1811, on a small stony farm in New Hampshire, in a lonely, unpainted house. His parents were very poor, being unable to feed and clothe and educate their family of seven children, of whom Horace was the third. His mother, a bright, cheerful, laughing woman, loved to tell her children stories. When Horace was two years old he would lie on the floor and look at the words in the Bible and ask about the letters. At three he went to school, and very soon learned to read and to spell wonderfully. Before he was six he had read the Bible, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and every book he could borrow. He would lie before the fireplace after a hard day’s work on the farm and read by the light of a pine-knot. When he went to bed, he would tell his brother what he had been reading or studying, but his brother would fall asleep while Horace was talking.
When he was thirteen the school-teacher said to Horace’s father, “Mr. Greeley, your boy knows more than I do. It is no use to send him to school any more.” He had always wanted to be a printer. One day he walked twelve miles and was given a trial in a printer’s office. He learned more in a day than most boys do in a month. The other boys joked him. They threw ink and type at him. Because Horace’s hair was light, they got the ink-ball and stained it black. Everybody looked for a fight, but he good-naturedly washed the ink from his hair, and became the favorite of all. During the four years he spent learning his trade he visited his home twice, walking most of the six hundred miles each way. Later he trudged all the way on foot to New York, walking along the canal-path, and arrived there with all his clothes in a bundle carried over his back with a stick, and with but ten dollars in his pocket. Soon he started the printing of several cheap newspapers, but he lost money on each of these until, on borrowed money, he started the New York Tribune, which has been increasingly successful to the present time. His income from the Tribune was long above fifteen thousand dollars a year, frequently as much as thirty-five thousand dollars or more. Subscriptions for his paper were found in all the North from Maine to Oregon, large packages going to remote rural districts, and everywhere a personal affection for the editor was felt. In his editorials he advocated from time to time such doctrines as protective tariff, national cooperation for the elevation of labor, total abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and above all, antislavery. He was elected to Congress, and while there introduced the first bill for giving small tracts of government land free to actual settlers. He wrote books, visited Europe, and traveled through America to California. On his return he wrote, “Go West, young man!” He helped to nominate Lincoln for president, and later was himself nominated for president, being defeated by Grant by more than one-half million majority. One month after this great defeat his wife died, and soon after he was attacked with brain fever and died November 29, 1872, aged sixty-one years. Through life his personal peculiarities, careless dress, and independent manners, had brought upon him endless ridicule, but his death revealed his high position as a leader of opinion and, as Whittier called him, “our later Franklin.”
9. AUDUBON, NATURALIST
Every boy who loves out-of-door life should know the story of John James Audubon. He was born on a farm in Louisiana, May 4, 1780. His parents were French and when very young he was taken to France where he attended school. His favorite study was of animals and birds. He often roamed the woods, bringing home birds’ nests and eggs, curious rocks, and bits of moss. His father bought him a picture-book of birds. The delighted boy painted these copies, but saw they were not like real birds. Later he took lessons of the great French painter, David, who taught him to draw and paint things as they are. Returning to America, his father gave him a large farm in Pennsylvania where his studies of birds led him to decide to write a book on bird life, and illustrate it by his own drawings. This was a great task, but when this young man decided to do anything he never allowed difficulties to stand in his way. So he began his work and studied and painted year after year. He had to live much of the time in the woods, studying how the birds lived and built their nests. Sometimes he went by boat down the river; sometimes he went on horseback. Often he tramped alone through the trackless woods. Many nights he slept out-of-doors. He lost all his money and was obliged to stop his work and paint portraits and sell his choice drawings for a living. His heroic wife took up school-teaching to help him out with his work. One day while traveling he left his paintings of nearly a thousand birds in a wooden box in the home of a friend. Two months later, when he returned and opened the box, he found two large rats had got into the box and cut up all the paintings with their sharp teeth, making a nest for their young among the gnawed pieces. He said, “I will make better paintings!” It took him four long years to complete his pictures, but at last the great book was completed and published and praised throughout France, England, and the United States.
The Society for the Protection of Our Feathered Friends was organized by this great naturalist, who spent the rest of his life for this great object. At present there are few places where boys and girls have not heard of Audubon. He died at his beautiful home on the Hudson River, greatly honored and beloved in France, England, and the United States.
10. EDISON, WIZARD OF ELECTRICITY
Thomas Alva Edison, the “Wizard of Electricity,” was born in Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847. His birthplace was located on the canal. As there were no railways, it was a very busy little place. Edison used to spend all his playtime at the shops where the canal-boats were built, learning all about the tools being used. Thus before he was seven he began to show his love of machinery. When he was seven years old his parents removed to Michigan. Edison was already well advanced in education for a boy of his age, for his mother had been his careful teacher and companion. They had read and discussed many books together, especially history, of which he was very fond. Two or three books on electricity had come into his hands and these he read with great interest. As his father was poor, it became necessary, when Thomas was eleven years of age, for him to earn his own living. He applied for a position as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad, and he was soon making from four to five dollars a day. When the Civil War broke out his earnings so greatly increased that he hired another boy, and had a place fixed up in an express car, in which he placed a small printing-press and began to publish a paper of his own. He gathered his news on the train and from agents on the route, often securing the latest news being telegraphed to the great papers. His papers had a good sale. Stevenson, the great English engineer, was so pleased with a copy he bought on the train, and with its editor, that he took one thousand copies, and thus the Weekly and its editor became known and quoted in England. He was reading, studying, and experimenting every moment he could get from his work. But he experimented once too often when a bottle of phosphorus was jerked out of his hand by the jolting of the train and instantly the car was in flames. The conductor helped put out the fire and then deposited the youthful inventor, with his printing-press, on the platform of the next station. This ended his laboratory on the train, but he still continued his work, and coaxed his father to let him fit up a workshop at home, where he experimented with telegraph instruments, stringing wires on trees, insulating them with old bottles, and teaching his boy friends the mystery of their use. He was anxious to learn telegraphy, which he succeeded in doing, being taught by a telegraph-operator whose little child Thomas had saved from being killed by a freight-train at the risk of his own life. He soon secured a night operator’s position, but instead of sleeping in the daytime, young Edison spent his days experimenting, and so was too sleepy at night to do his work well. He lost several night positions, but soon got day-work and continued his experiments. He went from city to city, but he cared more for the wonders of electricity than the routine of office work, though his work was always accurate. In Boston he chanced to buy Faraday’s book on electricity, and at once decided that life was short, and he had so much to do that he must hustle—and he has been hustling ever since.
His first invention was an automatic repeater by which messages could be transmitted without the presence of the operator. Since then his inventions have been many and important, among them the quadruplex telegraph, the printing telegraph, the megaphone, the aerophone, the phonograph, the moving-picture machine, the storage battery, the incandescent lamp and light system, and the kinetoscope. He has received patents for more than seven hundred inventions by which daily life has been made more attractive. Thomas Alva Edison is the foremost genius of his day, and the modern magician who has made “the fairy tales of science” as fascinating as “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp,” or “Boots and His Brothers.”
11. BURBANK, FAIRY GODFATHER OF THE ORCHARDS
This is the story of a boy with a magic wand who has made everything he touched more beautiful and more useful. Even when a little baby, he would hold flowers in his hands for hours, never harming them. He loved flowers best of all—better than pets or animals or playthings; better than anything else in the world except his dear mother with her loving, smiling eyes. He and his mother were chums. His father loved books, but his mother loved flowers. While Luther Burbank loved beautiful thoughts from books, like his father, the flowers, trees, and plants that his mother loved, attracted him to the fields and orchards. All the time he longed to help nature. He wondered if he could make weeds useful and make more and better potatoes grow in each hill. He planted the potato-seed ball, watched it, picked it up when the dog knocked it down and, after a great deal of work he had the delicious Burbank potato.
Then, taking the little field-daisy that he found growing by the roadside, he sent to Japan for daisies from that land, and planted the two together. The bees carried the pollen from one flower to another, and after a long time there was the beautiful Shasta Daisy, which is named for Mount Shasta that is within sight of Mr. Burbank’s home.
He is the fairy godfather of the orchards, for he waves his magic wand, and year after year his trees bear finer fruit—sweeter oranges, better plums, larger apricots; and the world is richer for his work.
He teaches the men who help him his magic. They grow tender-eyed, and their fingers are quick and gentle as they plant the tiny seeds, set the tender grafts, and nurse the little frail flower-stalks. He is now a rich man, but he was not always so. When he first left his home in Massachusetts to go to California, he could get no work, and he was often hungry. At last he got a place in a hothouse doing the work he loved—tending flowers and plants. But the poor boy had no money for a room, and had to sleep in the plant-house. But this place was so damp he grew ill, and a poor woman, seeing that he was ill because he did not have the right kind of food, made him drink a pint of milk from her one cow every day. Luther was afraid he might never be able to pay her back, but when he got better and was able to work he paid the good woman for the milk.
When people saw what a wonderful boy Luther Burbank really was, he had more than he could do. He saved his money, bought a little farm, and began to invent wonderful ways of doing things. Later he bought a great nursery, where he loved to experiment with plants and berries and vegetables. He took the prickly, ugly cactus growing in the desert, scratching the hands and tearing the clothes, and caused it to shed its thorns and to put forth flowers and fruit that is good for man and beast. No wonder he is called the “Fairy Godfather of the Orchards,” this man with the smiling blue eyes, loving boys and girls next after the flowers, and loving his mother best of all. What is the magic wand of the “Flower Magician”? It is “Patient Toil”!
12. MARY LYON, EDUCATOR
Girls who appreciate the possibility of the higher education of women in America will hold the name of Mary Lyon in high esteem. She was born on a stony Massachusetts farm, February 28, 1797. She was not pretty, but her face was bright and intelligent, and her spirit was proud, energetic, and helpful. She loved to devise ways by which she could do the largest amount of work in the shortest time. One day she said, “Mother, I have found a way to make time.” At school she showed a wonderfully retentive memory. When Mary was still young, her father died, leaving the family quite poor. But Mary’s mother with energy, prudence, and cheerfulness, managed the little farm so as to keep her children together. Her flowers were the sweetest anywhere. She always found time to do many kind deeds for her neighbors. Struggling against poverty, Mary taught school for almost nothing; spun and wove her own clothes; and studied hard. Her friends thought her foolish to try and learn so much, saying she could never use it. But deep down in her heart she felt she was to lift the world toward the higher education of woman. So she toiled on for years amid hardship, disappointment, and opposition, for neither the men nor the women of that day approved of women being educated or speaking in public. When she solicited funds for her college her friends thought she was unwomanly and a disgrace to her sex. But her earnest, unselfish, persistent spirit won friends for her cause, and on October 3, 1836, Mount Holyoke Seminary, the first school in America for the higher education of women, was founded. She was at the head of it until her death. Her influence over the young ladies was wonderful. She was firm but kind, always expecting them to do right without rules. She was greatly beloved. When she died she was buried in the seminary grounds and a beautiful marble tablet stands over her honored grave, on one side of which are the words:
Mary Lyon, the Founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, and for twelve years its Principal; a Teacher for more than thirty-five years and of more than three thousand pupils. Born Feb. 28, 1797; Died March 5, 1849.
After her death a paper was found containing seven ways of wasting time, against which she guarded, as follows:
13. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, NURSE
Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, in 1820. She was the daughter of an English landowner, who lived on a picturesque estate in Derbyshire, and who gave her the best education she could secure from books, school, and travel. As a little girl she showed great interest in the poor and sick, and was kind to animals. Even the squirrels on the lawn made friends with her. Often as she sat at her father’s table with all the good things to eat and the beautiful silver, glass, and china before her, she would think of the poor and sick who were without even an orange to quench the thirst of fever. Frequently she drove with her father’s physician into the country, taking baskets filled with dainties, often denying herself something that she might share with others. Everybody loved to have her enter the sickroom, for her unselfish and helpful nature made her a tender nurse. Until then, nurses were taken from the same class of women as ordinary domestic servants. Few realized that nursing was an art to be learned, requiring intelligence, knowledge, and skill, as well as sympathy and love. But the devotion of Florence Nightingale changed all this. She was an accomplished young lady, possessing abundant wealth. She was happy at home, a general favorite, and the center of an admiring circle. She was favored with everything that might have made her social and domestic life full of attractiveness to most young women. But she turned her back on the gay world that opened to her to tread a path that led to suffering and sorrow. She went to Germany to take training as a nurse, beginning at the very start. She learned the use of the washing-cloth, the scrubbing-brush, and the duster. For three months she was in daily and nightly attendance on the sick in the German hospital. Returning to England she gave her time, strength, and means to nursing her sisters in the Hospital for Sick Governesses in London. Here her health began to fail, and she returned home to seek the needed rest in her father’s home of wealth. But a new cry arose for help. The Crimean war was raging. There was a great want of skilled nurses to relieve the dreadful sufferings of the wounded soldiers who were lying in the hospitals. She at once offered her services to her country, and was sent, with thirty-four other women nurses, reaching Russia on the day of the fearful battle of Inkerman, November 5, 1854. The hospitals were filled with sick and wounded soldiers—four thousand suffering from cholera and other horrors that war brings. Miss Nightingale met the wounded and dying with smiles and words of cheer. Many of the sick wept for joy at the first touch of a woman’s hand they had felt for years. She seemed to be everywhere, superintending the washing of their clothing, and beds, cooking their food, assisting the chaplain with his school, furnishing books for the soldiers to read, writing their letters, saving their money, or sending it to their relatives at home. How the soldiers loved her! Many of them whom she could not personally tend kissed her very shadow as it fell on their pillows, as she passed at night. They called her the “Lady of the Lamp.”
Returning to England at the close of the war she was invited to Balmoral Castle by Queen Victoria, who gave her a beautiful jewel, an emblem of her work, with the inscription, “Blessed are the Merciful,” engraved on one side, surmounted by a crown of diamonds. The English Government gave her two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which she used in founding “The Nightingale School of Nurses” in London. The English soldiers wanted to erect a statue of her in London, and each promised to give one penny for it, thinking she could not object to a gift so small from each grateful giver; but she refused to let them do it, telling them that it would please her more if they would give the money to the hospitals. She left a record of unselfish devotion to duty which has enriched the world. She died in 1910, full of years and honors.