onment. The success of those about you who
are trying to climb upward will encourage and stimulate you to struggle
harder if you have not done quite so well yourself.

There is a great power in a battery of individuals who are struggling
for the achievement of high aims, a great magnetic force which will
help you to attract the object of your ambition. It is very
stimulating to be with people whose aspirations run parallel with your
own. If you lack energy, if you are naturally lazy, indolent, or
inclined to take it easy, you will be urged forward by the constant
prodding of the more ambitious.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE MAN WITH AN IDEA

He who wishes to fulfil his mission must be a man of one idea, that is,
of one great overmastering purpose, over shadowing all his aims, and
guiding and controlling his entire life.--BATE.

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of
life.--JEAN INGELOW.

A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.--J.
STUART MILL.

Ideas go booming through the world louder than cannon. Thoughts are
mightier than armies. Principles have achieved more victories than
horsemen or chariots.--W. M. PAXTON.

"What are you bothering yourselves with a knitting machine for?" asked
Ari Davis, of Boston, a manufacturer of instruments; "why don't you
make a sewing-machine?" His advice had been sought by a rich man and
an inventor who had reached their wits' ends in the vain attempt to
produce a device for knitting woolen goods. "I wish I could, but it
can't be done." "Oh, yes it can," said Davis; "I can make one myself."
"Well," the capitalist replied, "you do it, and I'll insure you an
independent fortune." The words of Davis were uttered in a spirit of
jest, but the novel idea found lodgment in the mind of one of the
workmen who stood by, a mere youth of twenty, who was thought not
capable of a serious idea.

But Elias Howe was not so rattle-headed as he seemed, and the more he
reflected, the more desirable such a machine appeared to him. Four
years passed, and with a wife and three children to support in a great
city on a salary of nine dollars a week, the light-hearted boy had
become a thoughtful, plodding man. The thought of the sewing-machine
haunted him night and day, and he finally resolved to produce one.

After months wasted in the effort to work a needle pointed at both
ends, with the eye in the middle, that should pass up and down