in whose shop he
had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light?
Yet he managed, by studying with a book before him at his meals,
carrying it in his pocket that he might utilize every spare moment, and
studying nights and holidays, to pick up an excellent education in the
odds and ends of time which most boys throw away. While the rich boy
and the idler were yawning and stretching and getting their eyes open,
young Burritt had seized the opportunity and improved it.

He had a thirst for knowledge and a desire for self-improvement, which
overcame every obstacle in his pathway. A wealthy gentleman offered to
pay his expenses at Harvard. But no, Elihu said he could get his
education himself, even though he had to work twelve or fourteen hours
a day at the forge. Here was a determined boy. He snatched every
spare moment at the anvil and forge as if it were gold. He believed,
with Gladstone, that thrift of time would repay him in after years with
usury, and that waste of it would make him dwindle. Think of a boy
working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith shop, and yet finding
time to study seven languages in a single year.

It is not lack of ability that holds men down but lack of industry. In
many cases the employee has a better brain, a better mental capacity
than his employer. But he does not improve his faculties. He dulls
his mind by cigarette smoking. He spends his money at the pool table,
theater, or dance, and as he grows old, and the harness of perpetual
service galls him, he grumbles at his lack of luck, his limited
opportunity.

The number of perpetual clerks is constantly being recruited by those
who did not think it worth while as boys to learn to write a good hand
or to master the fundamental branches of knowledge requisite in a
business career. The ignorance common among young men and young women,
in factories, stores, and offices, everywhere, in fact, in this land of
opportunity, where youth should be well educated, is a pitiable thing
in American life. On every hand we see men and women of ability
occupying inferior positions because they did not think it worth while
in youth to develop their powers and to concentrate their attention on
the acquisition of sufficient knowledge.

Thousands of men and women find themselves held back, handicapped for
life because of the seeming trifles which they did not think it worth
while to pay attention to in their early days.