, of course, like every other kind of success, may be
on a very big scale or on a small scale. The quality which the man
possesses may be that which enables him to run a hundred yards in nine
and three-fifths seconds, or to play ten separate games of chess at the
same time blindfolded, or to add five columns of figures at once without
effort, or to write the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or to deliver the
Gettysburg speech, or to show the ability of Frederick at Leuthen or
Nelson at Trafalgar. No amount of training of body or mind would enable
any good ordinary man to perform any one of these feats. Of course the
proper performance of each implies much previous study or training,
but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the altogether
exceptional man who has in him the something additional which the
ordinary man does not have.

This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be attained only
by the man who has in him the quality which separates him in kind no
less than in degree from his fellows. But much the commoner type of
success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that
which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of
quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has
given that quality. This kind of success is open to a large number of
persons, if only they seriously determine to achieve it. It is the kind
of success which is open to the average man of sound body and fair mind,
who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes, but who gets just
as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes that he does
possess. It is the only kind of success that is open to most of us. Yet
some of the greatest successes in history have been those of this second
class--when I call it second class I am not running it down in the
least, I am merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first
class. To the average man it is probably more useful to study this
second type of success than to study the first. From the study of the
first he can learn inspiration, he can get uplift and lofty enthusiasm.
From the study of the second he can, if he chooses, find out how to win
a similar success himself.

I need hardly say that all the successes I have ever won have been
of the second type. I never won anything without hard labor and the
exercise of my best judgment and careful planning and working long in
advance. Having been a rather sickly