BELL TELEPHONE TALK

EXTREMELY polite, always anxious to render courtesy, no one carries great success more gracefully than Alexander G. Bell, the inventor of the telephone. His graciousness has won many a friend, the admiration of many more, and has smoothed many a rugged spot in life.

A NIGHT WORKER

When I first went to see him, it was about eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was in bed! The second time, I thought I would go somewhat later,—at one o’clock in the afternoon. He was eating his breakfast, I was told; and I had to wait some time. He came in apologizing profusely for keeping me waiting. When I told him I had come to interview him, in behalf of young people, about success—its underlying principles,—he threw back his large head and laughingly said:

“‘Nothing succeeds like success.’ Success did you say? Why, that is a big subject,—too big a one. You must give me time to think about it; and you having planted the seed in my brain, will have to wait for me.”

When I asked what time I should call, he said: “Come any time, if it is only late. I begin my work at about nine or ten o’clock in the evening, and continue until four or five in the morning. Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.”

So, when I went to see him again, I made it a point to be late. He cordially invited me into his studio, where, as we both sat on a large and comfortable sofa, he talked long on

THE SUBJECT OF SUCCESS.

The value of this article would be greatly enhanced, if I could add his charming manner of emphasizing what he says, with hands, head, and eyes; and if I could add his beautiful distinctness of speech, due, a great deal, to his having given instruction to deaf-mutes, who must read the lips.

“What do you think are the factors of success?” I asked. The reply was prompt and to the point.

PERSEVERANCE APPLIED TO A PRACTICAL END

“Perseverance is the chief; but perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our insane asylums. The same perseverance that they show in some idiotic idea, if exercised in the accomplishment of something practicable, would no doubt bring success. Perseverance is first, but practicability is chief. The success of the Americans as a nation is due to their great practicability.”

“But often what the world calls nonsensical, becomes practical, does it not? You were called crazy, too, once, were you not?”

“There are some things, though, that are always impracticable. Now, take, for instance, this idea of perpetual motion. Scientists have proved that it is impossible. Yet our patent office is continually beset by people applying for inventions on some perpetual motion machine. So the department has adopted a rule whereby a working model is always required of such applicants. They cannot furnish one. The impossible is incapable of success.”

“I have heard of people dreaming inventions.”

“That is not at all impossible. I am a believer in unconscious cerebration. The brain is working all the time, though we do not know it. At night, it follows up what we think in the daytime. When I have worked a long time on one thing, I make it a point to bring all the facts regarding it together before I retire; and I have often been surprised at the results. Have you not noticed that, often, what was dark and perplexing to you the night before, is found to be perfectly solved the next morning? We are thinking all the time; it is impossible not to think.”

“Can everyone become an inventor?”

“Oh, no; not all minds are constituted alike. Some minds are only adapted to certain things. But as one’s mind grows, and one’s knowledge of the world’s industries widens, it adapts itself to such things as naturally fall to it.”

Upon my asking the relation of health to success, the professor replied:—

“I believe it to be a primary principle of success; ‘mens sana in corpore sano,’—a sound mind in a sound body. The mind in a weak body produces weak ideas; a strong body gives strength to the thought of the mind. Ill health is due to man’s artificiality of living. He lives indoors. He becomes, as it were, a hothouse plant. Such a plant is never as successful as a hardy garden plant is. An outdoor life is necessary to health and success, especially in a youth.”

“But is not hard study often necessary to success?”

“No; decidedly not. You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them. It is perseverance in the pursuit of studies that is really wanted.

CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE

“Next must come concentration of purpose and study. That is another thing I mean to emphasize. Concentrate all your thought upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

“I am now thinking about flying machines. Everything in regard to them, I pick out and read. When I see a bird flying in the air, I note its manner of flight, as I would not if I were not constantly thinking about artificial flight, and concentrating all my thought and observation upon it. It is like a man who has made the acquaintance of some new word that has been brought forcibly to his notice, although he may have come across it many times before, and not have noticed it particularly.

“Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years. A horse is often a grandfather before a boy has attained his full maturity. The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. That intellectuality is more vigorous that has attained its strength gradually. It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider,—and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation,—persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

“If a man is not bound down, he is sure to succeed. He may be bound down by environment, or by doting parental petting. In Paris, they fatten geese to create a diseased condition of the liver. A man stands with a box of very finely prepared and very rich food beside a revolving stand, and, as it revolves, one goose after another passes before him. Taking the first goose by the neck, he clamps down its throat a large lump of the food, whether the goose will or no, until its crop is well stuffed out, and then he proceeds with the rest in the same very mechanical manner. Now, I think, if those geese had to work hard for their own food, they would digest it better, and be far healthier geese. How many young American geese are stuffed in about the same manner at college and at home, by their rich and fond parents!”

UNHELPFUL READING

“Did everything you ever studied help you to attain success?”

“On the contrary, I did not begin real study until I was over sixteen. Until that time, my principal study was—reading novels.” He laughed heartily at my evident astonishment. “They did not help me in the least, for they did not give me an insight into real life. It is only those things that give one a grasp of practical affairs that are helpful. To read novels continuously is like reading fairy stories or “Arabian Nights” tales. It is a butterfly existence, so long as it lasts; but, some day, one is called to stern reality, unprepared.”

INVENTIONS IN AMERICA

“You have had experience in life in Europe and in America. Do you think the chances for success are the same in Europe as in America?”

“It is harder to attain success in Europe. There is hardly the same appreciation of progress there is here. Appreciation is an element of success. Encouragement is needed. My thoughts run mostly toward inventions. In England, people are conservative. They are well contented with the old, and do not readily adopt new ideas. Americans more quickly appreciate new inventions. Take an invention to an Englishman or a Scot, and he will ask you all about it, and then say your invention may be all right, but let somebody else try it first. Take the same invention to an American, and if it is intelligently explained, he is generally quick to see the feasibility of it. America is an inspiration to inventors. It is quicker to adopt advanced ideas than England or Europe. The most valuable inventions of this century have been made in America.”

THE ORIENT

“Do you think there is a chance for Americans in the Orient?”

“There is only a chance for capital in trade. American labor cannot compete with Japanese and Chinese. A Japanese coolie, for the hardest kind of work, receives the equivalent of six cents a day; and the whole family, father, mother and children, work and contribute to the common good. A foreigner is only made use of until they have absorbed all his useful ideas; then he is avoided. The Japanese are ahead of us in many things.”

ENVIRONMENT AND HEREDITY

“Do you think environment and heredity count in success?”

“Environment, certainly; heredity, not so distinctly. In heredity, a man may stamp out the faults he has inherited. There is no chance for the proper working of heredity. If selection could be carried out, a man might owe much to heredity. But as it is, only opposites marry. Blonde and light-complexioned people marry brunettes, and the tall marry the short. In our scientific societies, men only are admitted. If women who were interested especially in any science were allowed to affiliate with the men in these societies, we might hope to see some wonderful workings of the laws of heredity. A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with. A man is what he makes of himself.

“Environment counts for a great deal. A man’s particular idea may have no chance for growth or encouragement in his community. Real success is denied that man, until he finds a proper environment.

“America is a good environment for young men. It breathes the very spirit of success. I noticed at once, when I first came to this country, how the people were all striving for success, and helping others to attain success. It is an inspiration you cannot help feeling. America is the land of success.”

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3, 1847. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, now in Washington, D.C., was a distinguished Scottish educator, and the inventor of a system of “visible speech,” which he has successfully taught to deaf-mutes. His grandfather, Alexander Bell, became well known by the invention of a method of removing impediments of speech.

The younger Bell received his education at the Edinburgh High School and University; and, in 1867, he entered the University of London. Then, in his twenty-third year, his health failing from over-study, he came with his father to Canada, as he expressed it, “to die.” Later, he settled in the United States, becoming first a teacher of deaf-mutes, and subsequently professor of vocal physiology in Boston University. In 1867, he first began to study the problem of conveying articulate sound by electric currents; which he pursued during his leisure time. After nine long years of research and experiment, he completed the first telephone, early in 1876, when it was exhibited at the Centennial Exposition, and pronounced the “wonder of wonders in electric telegraphy.” This was the judgment of scientific men who were in a position to judge, and not of the world at large. People regarded it only as a novelty, as a curious scientific toy; and most business men doubted that it would ever prove a useful factor in the daily life of the world, and the untold blessing to mankind it has since become. All this skepticism he had to overcome. “A new art was to be taught to the world, a new industry created, business and social methods revolutionized.”

“I WILL MAKE THE WORLD HEAR IT”

“It does speak,” cried Sir William Thompson, with fervid enthusiasm; and Bell’s father-in-law added: “I will make the world hear it.” In less than a quarter of a century, it is conveying thought in every civilized tongue; Japan being the first country outside of the United States to adopt it. In the first eight years of its existence, the Bell Telephone Company declared dividends to the extent of $4,000,000; and the great sums of money the company earns for its stockholders is a subject of current comment and wonder. Some fierce contests have been waged over the priority of his invention, but Mr. Bell has been triumphant in every case.

He has become very wealthy from his invention. He has a beautiful winter residence in Washington; fitted up with a laboratory, and all sorts of electrical conveniences mostly of his own invention. His summer residence is at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His wife, Mabel, the daughter of the late Gardiner G. Hubbard, is a deaf-mute, of whose education he had charge when she was a child.

Mr. Bell, with one of his beautiful daughters, recently made a visit to Japan. The Order of the Rising Star, the highest order in the gift of the Japanese Emperor, was bestowed upon him. He is greatly impressed by the character of the people; believing them capable of much greater advancement.

Mr. Bell is the inventor of the photophone, aiming to transmit speech by a vibratory beam of light. He has given much time and study to problems of multiplex telegraphy, and to efforts to record speech by photographing the vibrations of a jet of water.

Few inventors have derived as much satisfaction and happiness from their achievements as Mr. Bell. In this respect, his success has been ideal, and in impressive contrast with the experience of Charles Goodyear, the man who made india-rubber useful, and of some other well-known inventors, whose services to mankind brought no substantial reward to themselves.

Mr. Bell is in nowise spoiled by his good fortune; but is the same unpretending person to-day, that he was before the telephone made him wealthy and famous.