Topical Guide 605
Mark Dorset
Advice: Good
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 17:
“I’ll bet you’re wondering if you could train a chicken yourself,” he said. “Well, of course you could! It’s not easy, don’t let anybody tell you that. But it’s not impossible. Don’t let anybody tell you that, either. You remember what the great Dr. Johnson said about the dangers of overestimating or underestimating a task and how a little work, steadily applied, will eventually achieve its goal.”
There was an unspoken “don’t you?” at the end of that, and I answered it with “Well—”
“He said that you should carry in your mind, at once, ‘the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry’ and remember that ‘labor, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward.’ Now, you take the breeding and training of champion chickens—”
Samuel Johnson, Rambler, No. 25
There is [a] species of false intelligence, given by those who profess to show the way to the summit of knowledge, of equal tendency to depress the mind with false distrust of itself, and weaken it by needless solicitude and dejection. When a scholar, whom they desire to animate, consults them at his entrance on some new study, it is common to make flattering representations of its pleasantness and facility. Thus they generally attain one of two ends almost equally desirable; they either incite his industry by elevating his hopes, or produce a high opinion of their own abilities, since they are supposed to relate only what they have found, and to have proceeded with no less ease than they promise to their followers.
The student, inflamed by this encouragement, sets forward in the new path, and proceeds a few steps with great alacrity, but he soon finds asperities and intricacies of which he has not been forewarned, and imagining that none ever were so entangled or fatigued before him, sinks suddenly into despair, and desists as from an expedition in which fate opposes him. Thus his terrors are multiplied by his hopes, and he is defeated without resistance, because he had no expectation of an enemy.
Of these treacherous instructors, the one destroys industry, by declaring that industry is vain, the other by representing it as needless; the one cuts away the root of hope, the other raises it only to be blasted: the one confines his pupil to the shore, by telling him that his wreck is certain, the other sends him to sea, without preparing him for tempests.
False hopes and false terrors are equally to be avoided. Every man who proposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompence of labour, and that labour vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward.
Music
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 17:
MARVIN AND I walked together for a few blocks, the chickens in two orderly lines ahead of us, Marvin keeping them in line with a few bars from “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” now and then.
Duke Ellington & His Cotton Club Orchestra, 1927:
The Osceola County School for the Arts from Kissimmee, Florida, in the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival, 2017:
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