The spectacle of Sarah Bernhardt, past seventy, thrilling and gripping
audiences with the fire and brilliancy of youth, is inspiring. No
obstacle can daunt her. Losing a leg does not end her acting, for she
remains the "Divine Sarah" with no crippling of her work. She looks
younger than many women of half her years. "The years are nothing to
me."
Senator Henry Gassaway Davis, West Virginia's Grand Old Man, at
ninety-two was working as hard and hopefully as any man of the
multitudes in his employ. He was an ardent Odd Fellow, and one day at
ninety-two—just a short time before his passing—he went out to the
Odd Fellows' Home near Elkins, where he lived. On the porch of the home
was a row of old men inmates. The senator shook hands with these men
and one by one they rose from the bench to return his hearty greetings.
The last man on the bench did not rise. He helplessly looked up at the
senator and said, "Senator, you'll have to excuse me from getting up.
I'm too old. When you get as old as I am, you'll not get up, either."
"That's all right. But, my man, how old are you?"
"Senator, I'm old in body and old in spirit. I'm past sixty."
"My boy," laughed Senator Davis, "I was an Odd Fellow before you were
born."
The senator at ninety-two was younger than the man "past sixty,"
because he was going on south.
When I was a little boy I saw them bring the first phonograph that Mr.
Edison invented into the meeting at Lakeside, Ohio. The people cheered
when they heard it talk.
You would laugh at it today. It had a tinfoil cylinder, it screeched
and stuttered. You would not have it in your barn today to play to your
ford!
But the people said, "Mr. Edison has succeeded." There was one man who
did not believe that Mr. Edison had succeeded. His name was Thomas Alva
Edison. He had gotten to St. Paul, and he went on south. A million
people would have stopped there and said, "I have arrived." They would
have put in their time litigating for their rights with other people
who would have gone on south with the phonograph idea.
Mr. Edison has said that his genius is mainly his ability to keep on
south. A young lady succeeded in getting into his laboratory the other
day, and she wrote me that the great inventor showed her one invention.
"I made over seven thousand experiments and failed before I hit upon
that."
"Why make so many experiments?"
"I know more than seven thousand ways now that won't work."
I doubt if there are ten men in America who could go on south in the
face of seven thousand failures. Today he brings forth a
diamond-pointed phonograph. I am sure if we could bring Mr. Edison to
this platform and ask him, "Have you succeeded?" he would say what he
has said to reporters and what he said to the young lady, "I have not
succeeded. I am succeeding. All I have done only shows me how much
there is yet to do."
That is success supreme. Not "succeeded" but "succeeding."
What a difference between "ed" and "ing"! The difference between death
and life. Are you "ed-ing" or "ing-ing"?
