104 Character and Success 



importance for the good of mankind that our good 

 ness should be accompanied by wisdom than that we 

 should merely be harmless. If with the serpent 

 wisdom we unite the serpent guile, terrible will be 

 the damage we do; and if, with the best of inten 

 tions, we can only manage to deserve the epithet 

 of "harmless," it is hardly worth while to have lived 

 in the world at all. 



Perhaps there is no more important component 

 of character than steadfast resolution. The boy who 

 is going to make a great man, or is going to count 

 in any way in after life, must make up his mind not 

 merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win 

 in spite of a thousand repulses or defeats. He 

 may be able to wrest success along the lines on 

 which he originally started. He may have to try 

 something entirely new. On the one hand, he 

 must not be volatile and irresolute, and, on the 

 other hand, he must not fear to try a new line 

 because he has failed in another. Grant did well 

 as a boy and well as a young man; then came 

 a period of trouble and failure, and then the Civil 

 War and his opportunity; and he grasped it, and 

 rose until his name is among the greatest in our 

 history. Young Lincoln, struggling against incal 

 culable odds, worked his way up, trying one thing 

 and another until he, too, struck out boldly into the 

 turbulent torrent of our national life, at a time when 



