What is it you so admire in men whom you think fortunate—­what is it but their mastery of adversity after adversity?  What is that which you call success but victory over untoward events?  Do not, then, let your resolution be softened by the hard luck that keeps you out of college.  If that bends you, you are not a Damascus blade of tempered steel; you are a sword of lead, heavy, dull, and yielding.

Next to Collis P. Huntington, the railroad man of the last generation, whose ability rose to genius, was President Scott of the Pennsylvania System.  He thought, with Mr. Huntington, that a college training was unnecessary; and his own life demonstrated that the very ultimate of achieving, the very crest of effort and reward may be reached by men who know neither Greek nor Latin, nor Science as taught in schools, nor mental philosophy as set down in books.

Colonel Scott was a messenger-boy—­just such a messenger-boy as you may see any day running errands, carrying parcels, doing the humble duties of one who serves and waits.  From a messenger-boy with bundle in his hand, to the general of an industrial army of thousands of men, and the directing mind planning the expenditure of scores of millions of dollars belonging to great capitalists—­such was the career of Thomas Scott.

Very well, why should you not do as well?  “Because my competitors have college education and I have not,” do you answer?  But, man, Colonel Scott had no college education.  “Because the other fellows have friends and influence and I have none,” do you protest?  But neither President Scott nor most monumental successes had friends or influence to start with.  Don’t excuse yourself, then.  Come!  Buck up!  Be a man!

“I am greatly troubled,” said to me the general superintendent of one of the most extensive railroad systems in the world as we rode from Des Moines, Iowa, to Chicago.  “I am greatly troubled,” said he, “to find an assistant superintendent.  There are now under me seven young engineers, every man a graduate of a college; four of them with uncommon ability, and all of them relatives of men heavily interested in this network of railroads.  But not one of them will do.  Three nights ago all of them happened to meet in Chicago.  While there all of them went out to have what they called ‘a good time’ together—­drinking, etc.

“That, in itself, is enough to blacklist every man for the position of my assistant and my successor.  This road will not entrust its operating management to a man who wilfully makes himself less than his best every day and every night.  Besides this, each of them has some defect.  One is brilliant, but not steady; another is steady, but not resourceful—­not inventive—­and so forth and so on.  We are looking all over the United States for the young man who has the ability, character, health, and habits which my assistant must have.”