4107 An Advantage To Disadvantage
Unfortunately, 99 percent of our people still carry the false image of physical wholeness and ability being synonymous. But you can be the best tennis player in town and have problem in finding a job to support your family. The average person uses only 25 percent of his physical capacity in daily living, and sometimes there is an advantage to disadvantage.
The blind man, tapping a cane, can hear an echo coming back that you can’t hear at all. And he knows whether there’s a wall ahead of him or an open area. You put that man in a job where he can use his overdeveloped senses of hearing and touch, as in a photographic darkroom, and he’ll outperform the ordinary worker.
—Howard A. Rusk
4108 They Took Away
They took away what should have been my eyes,
(But I remembered Milton’s Paradise).
They took away what should have been my ears,
(Beethoven came and wiped away my tears).
They took away what should have been my tongue.
(But I had talked with God when I was young).
He would not let them take away my soul,
(Possessing that I still possess the whole).
—Helen Keller
4109 Triumph Over Handicaps
History is full of men who triumphed over handicaps. POPE was a hopeless invalid, unable to stand without the aid of a cruel brace. CERVANTES stuttered but he became a public speaker of remarkable power. Look at the two sickly, puny children with scarely a chance for maturity who turned out to be CHOPIN and THEODORE ROOSEVELT. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, hunchback and statesman; EDISON, deaf and perfecting the phonograph; MILTON, blind and writing England’s greatest poem; FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, crippled by infantile paralysis and becoming President of the United States—all of them were victors over handicaps.
4110 Greatness From Adversity
JOHN KEATS live just twenty-six years, yet his poetry will live forever, much of it equal to that of Shakespeare. FRANZ SCHUBERT died at thirty-one. In those thirty-one years he wrote more than 110 musical compositions, more than sixty of them lyric songs.
Here is a boy so ugly and ridiculously clothed that he was tormented by his schoolmates. He spent his time reading to forget his misery. At eighteen he worked as a bricklayer. But he finally won the acclaim and esteem of England. He was honored by Queen Elizabeth and decorated by King James. His name was BEN JOHNSON, and he was one of the most brilliant playwrights England ever produced.
Here is a morbid, sensitive son of a poor preacher. He was regarded as a stupid blockhead in the village school. When he finally got a degree from college, he was the lowest on the list. He was rejected for the ministry. He tried law with the same result. He borrowed a suit of clothes to take an examination as a hospital mate, failed, and pawned his clothes. He lived in garrets, failing at everything he tried. Only one thing he wanted to do—write. This he did and rose above the handicaps of illness, poverty, and obscurity to high rank among the greatest writers of all time. His name was OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
THOMAS EDISON lost most of his hearing at about eight years of age, but he gave us the electric light, phonograph, movies and over a hundred other useful inventions.
There was another man who had terrible hemorrhages of the lungs, and he almost died several times from coughing spells. Yet, while he was an invalid, he gave us at least two masterpieces, Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
4111 Entering With Handicaps
It is wonderful how many of the elect of the human race, the winners of immortal fame entered the contest with a severe handicap. HOMER was a blind minstrel; and MILTON, too was blind. BEETHOVEN was deaf: “Though so deaf he could not hear the thunder for a token, he made music of his soul, the grandest ever spoken.” ALEXANDER THE GREAT was a hunchback; and so was ALEXANDER POPE, and a suffering weakling to boot. ST. PAUL was an uncouth manikin, the jest of coarse adversaries (cf. II Cor. 10:1, 10). “Three cubits high,” says St. Chrysostom, “yet he touched the stars.” And like him for stature were HORATIO NELSON and NAPOLEON. SHAKESPEARE on his own testimony was a cripple; and so were SCOTT, BYRON and KELVIN, to say nothing of EPICTETUS.
4112 No Stopping Them
When a man is determined, what can stop him? Cripple him and you have a SIR WALTER SCOTT; put him in a prison cell and you have JOHN BUNYAN; bury him in the snows of Valley Forge and you have a GEORGE WASHINGTON. Have him born in abject poverty and you have a LINCOLN. Load him with bitter racial prejudice and you have a DISRAELI.
Afflict him with asthma until as a boy he lies choking in his father’s arms and you have a THEODORE ROOSEVELT; stab him with rheumatic pains until for years he cannot sleep without an opiate and you have a STEINMETZ; put him in a grease pit of a locomotive roundhouse and you have a WALTER CHRYSLER; make him a second fiddle in an obscure South American orchestra and you have a TOSCANINI.
—Paul Speiker
4113 Edison’s Delight
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph at age 30, and he was almost totally deaf from childhood. He could hear only the loudest noises and shouts. This kind of delighted him, for he said, “A man who has to shout can never tell a lie!”
His other inventions: incandescent bulb, microphone, mimeograph, fluoroscope and movies.
4114 The Most With The Least
I saw him sitting in his door,
trembling as old men do;
His house was old, his barn was old,
and yet his eyes seemed new.
His eyes had seen three times
my years, and kept a twinkle still,
Though they had looked at birth and
death and three graves up a hill.
“I will sit with you,” I said, “and
you will make me wise;
Tell me how you have kept the joy
still burning in your eyes.”
Then, like an old-time orator,
impressively he arose.
“I make the most of all that comes,
and the least of all that goes.”
The jingling rhythm of his words
echoed as old songs do;
Yet this had kept his eyes alight
till he was ninety-two.
—Sunshine Magazine
4115 Not Knowing End Of Symphony
I suppose the paramount places in great music would be conceded by most to Bach’s B-minor Mass and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This last concluded with that magnificent choral ode to “Joy, thou heavenly spark of Godhead,” which to many of us represents the ultimate height which voices and orchestra can attain.
At the first performance of this tremendous work, Beethoven, standing in the midst of the rolling waves of sound, heard nothing. He did not even know when the symphony was over. He was practically stone-deaf. Nor was this his only bitter trouble. How could so miserable a man conceive the marvelous, majestic, superabundant transports of “Joy, thou heavenly spark of Godhead?” The incredible fact remains that he did.
—The British Weekly
4116 Henry Fawcett’s Challenge
Henry Fawcett, a young Englishman, hunting with his father, was accidentally blinded by a shell from his father’s gun. “I made up my mind inside of ten minutes after the accident to stick to my main purpose as far as in me lay,” he said in later life. He kept his word, worked his way at Cambridge, and was later made Postmaster General of England, giving the British people the first parcel post. His calamity was a challenge to success.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick
4117 Blind Milton’s Books
Blind men seldom quote books, but it is not so with Milton. The prodigious power, readiness, and accuracy of his memory, as well as the confidence he felt in it, are proved by his setting himself, several years after he had become totally blind, to compose his Treatise on Christian Doctrine, which, made up as it is of Scriptural texts, would seem to require perpetual reference to the Sacred Volume.
A still more extraordinary enterprise was that of the Latin Dictionary—a work which, one would imagine, might easily wear out a sound pair of eyes.
After five years of blindness, he undertook these two vast works, along with Paradise Lost.
—Julius C. Hare
4118 The Moon System
Dr. Moon of Brighton, England, at the height of his mental powers and acquisitions, become totally blind. At first there was a constant rebellion against God. “What are all my acquisitions, what are all my powers worth now, when I am shut up here and the whole world shut out?”
But Dr. Moon began to ask himself if it was possible that he might help the blind men to read the word of God; and while his own eyes were sightless, he invented the Moon System of alphabet; and that has gone into twenty different countries. From three to four million blind people all over the world are reading the Word of God in their native tongues because Dr. Moon’s eyes became blind under the providence of God.
—J. H. Bomberger
4119 Buying The Typewriter
Some years ago a Protestant minister by the name of Basil King was well-known for his writings. As rector of an Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, he had been a useful leader with a promising outlook. Suddenly his health and eyesight failed. A specialist broke the painful news that he would eventually become blind. What a crushing verdict for a man with life before him!
Years later King declared: “On the day that I knew I would lose my sight I bought a typewriter.”
4120 Two Single-Handed Claps
One night in London, Sarah Bernhardt was playing Fedora to a crowded house. As usual the posion scene drew tempestuous applause, but hardly had the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet died away, when loud laughter was heard in the upper gallery. The serious-minded turned reproachful looks at the boisterous boors, as they called them. However, their frowns turned to smiles and then to open laughter, when they noticed the cause of the merriment. Yes, right in the front row of the gallery sat two one-armed men. Without realizing that many were watching them, these two fellows were prolonging the applause by clapping their remaining hands together.
4121 Will Opens Way
When a man has the will the way will mostly open itself. Francis Mouthelon, to whom was awarded the 1000-franc prize by the French society of artists for the loveliest painting in 1895, had no hands. He painted with wonderful skill by means of a wooden hand.
An artist of Antwerp, having no arms, held his brush between the toes of his right foot while he painted. He did his work most exquisitely. If you have the heart, my brother, to your work you will find the way.
—J. J. Smith
4122 Most Famous Cook A Cripple
Nearly every bride once received a copy of America’s famous cookbook entitled Fanny Former’s Cookbook. How many women, however, know that these culinary secrets were revealed by a cripple?
—Benjamin P. Browne
4123 Nancy Merki Kept Trying
One of the amazing stories of sheer courage in the face of tremendous odds is that of Nancy Merki. Stricken with polio at ten, she was condemned to wear heavy braces and later crutches. Yet, in four years she became a swimming champion who told President Roosevelt, when he asked her how she had become the youngest champ despite infantile paralysis: “Well I guess I just kept trying, Mr. President.”
Her parents had taken her to a man named Jack Cody, swimming coach at an athletic club in Portland. It took a year to teach her to swim the length of the pool. But she was determined. Finally the coach realized that this young girl was not only interested in swimming as a means of restoring her health and the use of her limbs, she wanted to be a champion. Four years after her paralytic attack, she came in third at a meet in Santa Barbara, California. At the age of nineteen she changed her style of swimming and emerged from the meet as national champion. She just kept trying.
—Selected
4124 Tennis Champ Of Smaller Town
A member of the Olympic ice-skating team of 1924, Valentine Bialis, was acclaimed the fastest man on skates. Everywhere he was idolized and honored as king of the ice. Eight years later, as he was preparing to take top honors as ice-skating champion of the world, Valentine Bialis was driving home one dark, drizzly night. The road and his windshield were slowly coating with ice.
Suddenly he heard the screech of a train whistle. He jammed on his brakes and skidded—right into the path of an engine. He was rushed to the hospital seriously injured. He came out of the hospital minus a leg. Gone were his hopes of a championship. He tried to make a comeback skating with one wooden leg but it was impossible.
Some time later, however, Bialis appeared in the headline of the paper in a small midwestern town. He had won a local tennis tournament. He had failed, through cruel fate, to win a skating championship, but he continued to compete in another sport and became tennis champ in a small town.
4125 He Rode An Unusual Bike
In our neighborhood there lives an unusual boy who has an unusual mode of transportation. This boy is unusual in that he had the misfortune to lose both legs in an accident. His mode of transportation is unusual in that he rides a bicycle. He has a specially constructed bicycle with the seat lowered to where he can reach the pedal with his right hand while sitting erect and steering with his left hand. Thus he gets along quite well for a person with such a great handicap. By sheer determination this boy has mastered the art of self-propulsion in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles.
—Carl C. Williams
4126 Byron Vs. Scott
Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott were both lame. Byron was embittered by his lameness, brooded on it till he loathed it, never entered a public place but his mind reverted to it, so that much of the color and zest of existence were lost to him.
Scott, on the other hand, never complained or spoke one bitter word about his disability, not even to his dearest friend. In the circumstances it is not so very surprising that Sir Walter should have received a letter from Byron with this sentence in it: “Ah, Scott, I would give my fame to have your happiness.”
—Harper
4127 Crippled Lieutenant’s Discovery
Lieutenant Maury rendered invaluable service to the sea-going nations of the earth, but would perhaps never have taken up the work for which his name is noted, had it not been for an accident that crippled him, and made it impossible for him to continue his career on the ocean. This is the way it came about:
For many years every sea captain was compelled to keep a logbook, in which he jotted down every day all facts of interest in his sailing, giving the direction of the wind and the currents, and other similar information. When the logbook was full, it was sent to Washington and stowed away among the records of the navigation department.
Young Lieutenant Maury, after he had been crippled, and so incapacitated for sea duty in the navy, went to Washington, got out the old logbooks from the Navigation Bureau, sorted the data from every book and assigned all the information to its respective block on the ocean map which he was drafting.
Thus he discovered the “rivers in the ocean” and the rivers in the air, making charts by which the sailing time was reduced by twenty-five percent, and the expenses and perils were greatly reduced.
—Missionary Review
4128 Steinmetz The Electrical Wizard
Charles P. Steinmetz, who rivaled Thomas A. Edison in his discoveries and inventions in the field of electrical engineering, was terribly deformed. He did most of his work half-standing, half- leaning upon a stool. However, he did not allow his handicap to embitter or discourage him. He knew he would have to fight his way. There was no personal popularity, no pleasant social contacts to speed him along. He tortured his brain into headaches and his eyes into burning balls of pain. Time after time he was defeated and undone, but Steinmetz kept climbing until he became the greatest electrical wizard of his time.
—Selected
4129 Roosevelt’s Stamina
President Theodore Roosevelt offers one of the best examples of a man overcoming terrific handicaps. Born with weak eyes, he nevertheless became a keen-eyed hunter, a wide-ranged reader, and a skilled naturalist. Although he lost the use of one ear, he could distinguish the calls of many birds. With a body wracked by pain, Roosevelt kept working at his correspondence until he fainted. Cripples will take heart when they hear what the Rough Rider said when his physician told him in the last month of his life that he might be confined to his chair for the remainder of his days: “All right!” said Teddy. “I can live that way!”
4130 Crippled Newsboy Gave Life
Willie Rugh, a crippled Chicago newsboy, lived in a suburb of Gary. He died in the fall of 1912, as a result of having his lame leg amputated to provide skin for the burned body of Ethel Smith, a girl whom he hardly knew. After the operation he was doing well, when pneumonia set in. When the doctor told him he could not recover, Willie smiled and said weakly: “I’m glad I have done it, doctor. Tell her for me I hope she gets well real quick.” The lad then turned his face away, as he muttered: “I guess I’m some good after all.”
Papers far and near published the story. Gary went into mourning. Public offices were closed, business stopped. There was a band and a cordon of police, as his body was carried to rest. People contributed large sums of money to erect a monument to this courageous lad. In a proclamation the mayor declared: “The name of Willie Rugh should be remembered in Gary as long as the city shall last.”
4131 “Made Of Right Stuff”
A little brown cork
Fell in the path of a whale
Who lashed it down
With his angry tail
But in spite of its blows
It quickly arose,
And floated serenely
Before his nose
Said the cork to the whale:
“You may flap and sputter and frown,
But you never, never, can keep me down;
For I’m made of the stuff
That is buoyant enough
To float instead of to drown.”
—Pameii
4132 Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”
For several months after he was born, Robert Louis Stevenson was not expected to live, his health was so delicate. Sickness kept him from making much progress in school, and from joining in strenuous exercises, and so he developed a love for stories, especially tales of the sea. In early manhood he began to weave his own stories.
Bad health plagued him all through life. Yet, his courage and cheerfulness have seldom been equaled. He had made a resolution never to complain, even though he could not share in the strenuous life he admired so much. Still seeking soundness of body, he went to the island of Samoa, whose natives soon came to love him as they gathered about every evening to hear their “Tusitala” or “Teller of Tales” as they called him.
On this island he died in December of 1894, and is buried there. The world of literature is much richer for his efforts. Almost every schoolboy is familiar with his entrancing story Treasure Island. His tales have made him famous. But beneath it all is the more enduring and helpful legacy bequeathed by Stevenson—his courage and cheerfulness in the face of such overwhelming odds.
—Selected
4133 Bed And Medicine
In a letter to a friend, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “For fourteen years I have not had a day of real health. I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary. I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed and out of bed, when torn by coughing and when my head swam for weariness. The battle goes on. Ill or well is a trifle, so long as it goes on. I was made for conflict. The powers that be have willed that my battlefield shall be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the medicine bottle.”
4134 Ryun, The Fastest Miler
Jim Ryun, the world’s fastest miler was too frail and actually eliminated from the track team in his high school freshman year. But he tried again in his sophomore year and convinced track coach Robert Timmons that he had possibilities. Coach Timmons put Jim on a rigorous physical and mental buildup schedule.
Jim, after throwing his morning newspaper, would run six miles, the weather notwithstanding. He ran in snow and sleet, dust and fog. Then in the evening he would run some more. Early risers would see his lonely figure cutting across the prairie at the outskirts of Wichita and shake their heads in puzzlement.
Jim took track so seriously that for awhile his parents feared he would hurt himself physically. He would vomit after every race and come home at night and flop into bed without eating.
And, one day, he become the world’s fastest miler.
4135 Story Of President Of Wellesley
Alice Freeman Palmer, who was elected president of Wellesley College at twenty-six years of age, and who has been awarded a place in the Hall of Fame in New York for her remarkable work as an educator, did not have an easy path. She was hampered by poverty and a frail body. When she entered Michigan University at the age of seventeen, she failed in her entrance examinations.
This proved to be not so unfortunate, after all, as it brought her to the attention of President Angell. He had an interview with her and was so impressed with her alert mind and capacity for hard work that he asked the examiners to allow her to enter on a trial of six weeks, which they did. Her preparation had been poor but she set herself to the task of “catching up,” working vacations and economizing her time until she was able to matriculate regularly and continue her studies as a properly-qualified freshman.
—Homiletic Review
4136 Washington’s Ailments
The United States won its independence from Britain under the military leadership of a soldier who would have been turned down flat by a modern draft board. When George Washington took command of the Continental Army in 1775, Dr. Rudolph Marx writes in American Heritage, the 43-year-old general was a man rendered hopelessly 4-F by previous attacks of smallpox, influenza, tubercular pleurisy, dysentery, malaria. Despite his sickly condition, Marx says, “we have no record that Washington was ever incapacitated all during the Revolutionary War.”
—Newsweek
4137 Handel’s Faith
George Frederick Handel, the great musician, lost his health; his right side was paralyzed; his money was gone; and his creditors seized and threatened to imprison him. Handel was so disheartened by his tragic experience that he almost despaired for a brief time. But his faith prevailed, and he composed his greatest work, “The Hallelujah Chorus,” which is part of his great Messiah. The Apostle John wrote, “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” (I John 5:4)
—Sunday School Times
4138 Scott’s Debts
In 1826 the London firm of Hurst and Robinson went bankrupt, involving Sir Scott in a personal liability of 118,000 pounds. Proudly and nobly Scott responded: “My right hand and I against the debt.” From that time on he wrote novel after novel to wipe out his debt.
4139 “We Shall Fight”
Days immediately after Dunkirk were darkest for the modern world. In supreme disaster, all seemed irrevocably lost and the invasion of England loomed imminent. England lay prostrate. Forty-seven warships had been sunk in the operations off Norway after Dunkirk. When the evacuation was completed, half the British destroyers were in the shipyards for repairs while the Royal Air Force had lost forty percent of its bomber strength. Britain was on the brink of famine and her armies were without arms or equipment. They had left in France 50,000 vehicles.
Churchill spoke for the defenseless islanders, “We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight in the fields; we shall fight in the streets; and we shall fight in the hill. We shall never surrender and if this island were subjugated and starving, our empire on the seas would carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World with all its power and might steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the old.”
—Benjamin P. Browne
4140 To Grow A Big Soul
The story of one of the great presidents of Harvard College, Charles William Eliot, is worth recalling. Born with a serious facial disfigurement, he discovered as a young man that nothing could be done about it, and he must go through life with this mark. It is related that when his mother brought to him that tragic truth, it was indeed “the dark hour of his soul.”
His mother told him, “My son, it is not possible for you to get rid of this handicap. We have consulted the best surgeons, and they say that nothing can be done. But it is possible for you, with God’s help, to grow a mind and soul so big that people will forget to look at your face.”
—The Pulpit
4141 Never Touched The Heart
Katherine Bevis tells how among the students at a well-known college there was a young man who had to get about on crutches. He had an unusual talent for friendliness and optimism and so won the deep respect of his classmates. One day a student asked him what had caused his deformity. “Infantile paralysis,” he replied briefly, not wishing to elaborate on his difficulties. “With a misfortune like that, how can you face the world so?” inquired his classmate. “Oh”, replied the young Christian, smiling, “the disease never touched my heart.”
4142 Under Or Above Circumstances
A friend of mine once met a lady who was severely depressed by a series of disheartening events. When asked how she was weathering the storm of adversity, she answered, “Quite well, under the cir cumstances.” “Sister,” he replied kindly yet firmly, “you’ll never make it that way. Get ABOVE the circumstances—that’s where Jesus waits to help and strengthen you.” She took his wise admonition as a word from heaven, and laying aside her sadness and self-pity, she began to praise the Lord. New confidence in God’s love and kindness was generated in her soul, and she soon gained the victory of faith.
4143 Epigram On Overcoming Handicaps
• Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcomed while trying to succeed.
—Booker T. Washington