Analyzing Character: The New Science of Judging Men; Misfits in Business, the Home and Social LifeBlackford, Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger)
Science
Analyzing Character: The New Science of Judging Men; Misfits in Business, the Home and Social Life
Blackford, Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger)
Characters and characteristics; Success
After G---- began earning money for himself by mechanical and electrical
work, he would go without luxuries, food and clothing, tramping to the
shop almost barefoot one entire winter, for the sake of buying tools and
equipment to carry on his mechanical experiments. It is not surprising,
therefore, that he left school at an early age to engage in actual work in
railroad shops. He afterward secured a position as a locomotive fireman.
Circumstances arose which made it necessary for him to give up
railroading. He secured a position as fireman on a stationary engine.
A HARD FIGHT FOR AN EDUCATION
It was while he was engaged in this kind of work that the suggestion was
made to him that he ought not to try to go through life with only the
rudiments of an education. It was pointed out that, while he had undoubted
mechanical and inventive ability, he would have small opportunity to use
it unless he also had the necessary technical and scientific knowledge to
go with it. At first his interest in mechanics was so intense and his
interest in school in general so comparatively slight, that he did not
look with very much favor upon the suggestion. However, as time went on
and he saw more and more of the results of such action as he was
contemplating, he became more and more interested in completing his
education. He therefore entered a good preparatory school and, with some
little assistance from relatives, worked his way through by doing
electrical and mechanical work about the little college town. In this kind
of work he soon became well known and was in constant requisition.
Occasionally his ingenuity and resourcefulness enabled him to do
successfully work which had puzzled and baffled even those who were
called experts. Having finished his preparatory course, he began a course
in mechanical and electrical engineering in one of the best known of our
universities. About this time practically all assistance from relatives
had been withdrawn, owing to changed circumstances, and he was left almost
entirely dependent upon his own efforts. The story of his struggles would
fill a volume. Oftentimes he was almost entirely without food. There was
one month during which he was unable to collect money due him for work
done. Because he was a poor university student he had no credit. So he
lived the entire month on $1.25. He thus explains how it was done:
LIVING A MONTH ON $1.25
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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