Phillips Brooks
"The best-loved man in New England."
"The ideal life, the life full of completion, hauntsus all. We feel the thing weought to be beating beneath the thing we are."
"First, be a man."
ARCHITECTS OF FATE
OR, STEPS TO SUCCESS AND POWER
A BOOK DESIGNED TO INSPIRE YOUTH TO
CHARACTER BUILDING, SELF-CULTURE
AND NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT
BY
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
AUTHOR OF "PUSHING TO THE FRONT
OR, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES"
ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN FINE
PORTRAITS OF EMINENT PERSONS
"All are architects of fate
Working in these walls of time."
"Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build."
"Let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy God."
TORONTO
WILLIAM BRIGGS
WESLEY BUILDINGS
MONTREAL: C. W. COATES
HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS
1897
Copyright, 1895,
BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN.
All rights reserved.
PREFACE.
The demand for more than a dozen editions of "Pushing to the Front"during its first year and its universally favorable reception, both athome and abroad, have encouraged the author to publish this companionvolume of somewhat similar scope and purpose. The two books wereprepared simultaneously, and the story of the first, given in itspreface, applies equally well to this.
Inspiration to character-building and worthy achievement is the keynoteof the present volume, its object, to arouse to honorable exertionyouth who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions inthose who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success, toencourage and stimulate to higher resolve those who are setting out tomake their own way, with perhaps neither friendship nor capital otherthan a determination to get on in the world.
Nothing is so fascinating to a youth with high purpose, life, andenergy throbbing in his young blood as stories of men and women whohave brought great things to pass. Though these themes are as old asthe human race, yet they are ever new, and more interesting to theyoung than any fiction. The cry of youth is for life! more life! Nodidactic or dogmatic teaching, however brilliant, will capture atwentieth-century boy, keyed up to the highest pitch by the pressure ofan intense civilization. The romance of achievement underdifficulties, of obscure b