They finally found themselves

Title

Language

English

Source

Panorama 4 (7) July 1939

Year

1939

Subject

Ambition

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

THEY FINALLY FOUND THEMSELVES "WHAT ARE you going to be when you grow up?" is one of the commonest questions asked of young children. Occasionally some exceptionally bright youngster actually wants to be what he or she eventually becomes, but most children either say that they don't know or else they announce that their ambition is to be a fireman or a policeman, a soldier or sailor. Thereupon parents often decide arbitrarily upon the future of the child, training him for some career for which he is quite unsuited. But if this has been your fate, do not let it get you down. Benvenuto Cellini, the gold worker, painter, sculptor, engraver, engineer and author was trained by his father to be a flute player. Sir Joshua Reynolds hated school and spent most of his time drawing. His father wanted to train him to be a doctor but, fortunately for the world, the boy managed to follow his own inclinations with the result that he became one of the world's greatest portrait painters. JULY, 1939 Joseph Conrad was born a Pole and at the age of seventeen could not speak English. He became a sailor and it was not until he was thirty-two that he decided to become a writer. Conrad the sailor became one of the greatest of English novelists. When Irving Berlin worked in a Bowery restaurant, little did the customers dream that the fourteenyear-old boy who waited upon them was destined to become America's most famous song writer. Vincent Bendix was trained to be a lawyer but he soon gave up the legal profession for engineering. He is now the President of the Bendix Corporation and one of the most successful men in America. Tony Sarg was an officer in the German army until he was twenty-three years of age when he gave up soldiering to become an artist. One of Napoleon's favorite maxims was, "The truest wisdom is a resolute determination." When he was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies, he said, 23 "There shall be no Alps," and the road across the Simplon Pass was constructed through a district formerly almost inaccessible. "Impossible," said Napoleon, "is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools."-Carveth Wells, condensed from Your Life. 24 * * * FOR LOVE OF A LADY IT 1s one of fate's quaint ironies that the Japanese Navy, which may challenge England's supremacy of the sea, was conceived and built by an Englishman for love of a Japanese lady. Four centuries ago an English explorer named William Adams was the sole survivor of a shipwreck off the Nipponese coast. As Japanese law decreed death to any foreigner found on its shores, Adams was brought before Emperor Ieyasu for sentence. But the Emperor, amazed to see a big, blond man, imprisoned him instead, as a human curiosity. Months later a Japanese beauty named Kioto fell in love with Adams and helped him to escape to a hidden bay. There she marshaled hundreds of slaves, who labored secretly with Adams to build a ship to return him to England. But by the time the ship was completed, Adams was so deeply in Jove with the beautiful Kioto that he had no wish to return to his native land. Throwing himself on the mercy of Emperor Ieyasu, he offered his ship as a gift in exchange for his freedom and the privilege of marrying Kioto. The Emperor was impressed with the ship. No Japanese had been able to build a seagoing vessel. He promised to grant the Englishman his wish if Adams would superintend the construction of a dozen more such ships, and Adams agreed to do so. Years later, when the navy was completed, Emperor Ieyasu not only kept his word to Adams but made the white man a power in his realm. Today a tomb proudly overlooking the naval base at Y okosuka honors the Englishman, William Adams, sole survivor of a shipwreck, as the builder of the Japanese Navy. -Adapted from "Don't You Believe It" Program, Mutual Broadcasting System. PANORAMA

pages

23-24

Media