Sydney Smith Part 1 Version B

Sydney Smith Part 1 Version B

notebook

Arthur P. Stone

Charles Dickens

deciphered shorthand

Sydney Smith

A shorthand dictation exercise titled 'Sydney Smith' by a practiced shorthand writer. The exercise is dictated from ‘Lecture IX: On the Conduct of the Understanding’ by the philosopher Sydney Smith.

Stone, Arthur P.

Dickens, Charles

Free Library of Philadelphia

1859-1860

Courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Please seek further permission from the Free Library to reuse this image.

image/tif

English

Brachygraphy shorthand

SydneySmith.1.versionB

Working transcription: A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who if they could only have been induced to begin would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of fame. The fact is, that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually [calculating] risk and adjusting nice chances it did all very well before the Flood when a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for 150 years, and then live to see its success for six or seven centuries afterwards but at present a man waits and doubts and hesitates and consults his brother and his uncle and his first cousins, and his particular friends till one fine day he finds that he is sixty-five years of age that he